Ludum Dare 41 have almost passed, I think now is the perfect time for a post-mortem.

Prologue

To the last minute (and even 4 hours after) my participation wasn't certain because there was an exam to pass that started a half an hour after the theme was announced. Nonetheless, I was too excited about the upcoming LD and couldn't resist picking the theme before going to the university. The theme was completely unexpected (the first thought was like "Really, Ludum Dare, REALLY???"). Then I came to the university and discussed the theme with my groupmates who came up with a handful of ideas, from completely stupid or impossible to complete in 72 hours to pretty acceptable ones. As I passed the exam, I took @komnotmr and after a lazy brainstorm session, we finally came up with an idea for the game: a platformer, controlled from a command line. It was a somewhat difficult choice because there are not many people who find typing-based games fun and I had no idea if such a combination will be playable. But I decided to take the risk and began coding (unfortunately, @komnotmr couldn't join me this time).

What went right

• Graphics. ASCII art is quite a shortcut, but it can help you make the right mood. I've seen this in action in @bwalter's first day's posts and fell in love with this aesthetic. I instantly generated an idea of a robot controlled via command line and from that point giving up was no longer an option.
• Polish. One of the personal goals I wanted to reach this time was making a finished game with an intro, a tutorial (or self-explaining UI), win condition and some other stuff. And thanks to graphics' simplicity, I think I got it fully covered.
• Level design. That's where the things got really interesting. It was the first time I was doing level design for a game, but, surprisingly, I didn't feel unconfident and somehow I managed to do it quite well.

What went wrong

• Tools. Yes, Phaser, I'm looking at you. I wasted several hours trying to figure out why the officially supported physics engine doesn't work with tilemaps. The solution was... it wasn't! I was forced to change the physics engine. And it's not the first time Phaser behaves unpredictable, in fact I have already encountered strange thing like this working on Snaketris' gamepad support.
• Collisions. Now I know why they say that platformers are not that easy to create. Almost every collision-related decision I made was a workaround, not the real solution. I don't think it's such a bad thing, especially for a jam game, but deep inside me a perfectionist programmer cries.
• Timing. Sometimes life decides to split an event into two parts and seizes the day in the middle of it. That is my case.

You should always learn, young padawan

...and Ludum Dare is a great opportunity to do it! This is what I got from the LD41:

• First of all, the theme doesn't really suck. Even the worst one can be transformed to an exciting game, you just need to dig it deep enough to find the actual gem of an idea.
• If you want to do something, do it yourself. Sadly, this time my enthusiasm wasn't as contagious as is was during the previous Ludum Dare, so I couldn't team up with my friends. Lonely ride is a completely different experience with its pleasant aspects (no useless arguments, no bloody merges in the git) and the unpleasant ones (sometimes you are wrong and you realize it when it's too late).
• Be ready to cut the most of your game's content. Can't say I didn't know it before the current jam, but want to point it one more time. The first concept for Remote Bot contained a lot of animated (!) sprites I made for the objects I didn't have time to implement (e.g. a spring from the image below). Maybe if I didn't spend my time on that useless animations, I would sleep better (haha).

Boink!

It's all about journey, not the destination

For me Ludum Dare is a full spectre of emotions, from despair ("No way I can do it in the time this short.") to overwhelming excitement ("Holy crap, I did it!"). And the pleasant bonus in the end of it are a game to be proud of and a pile of awesome games to play and rate.

The next time I want to take part in the compo and use something different to Phaser, more low-level stuff like PIXI with Matter or even some sort of C. For now, I just want to relax and play some more games. =)

Thanks for reaching this line!

P.S.: for everyone who left their feedback for my game: thank you very much, guys and gals! You are the greatest power of Ludum Dare! And special thanks to @jupiter-hadley and @philstrahl: watching someone playing my game is not only a pleasure, but a rare kind of feedback, the most valuable one, I guess.