Introduction

Even though the both of us have joined at least 9 successful Ludum Dare jams and with the previous 3 games completed every planned feature. This time we massively overscoped the game by a large margin.

Original concept vs final game

1. Instead of a timer counting down, the objective used to involve solving various puzzles around the house in order to escape.
2. The original house plan was massive and had a loop around hallway.
3. After killing the zombie, they turn into a higher level zombie after staying dead on the ground for a while. Therefore, it was inadvisable to kill them. The only way to ensure they stay dead is by shotgun or kill them again when they are a level 3 zombie.
4. There will be zombies trying to break through the window, after which they will start spawning mobs slowly from that opened window, making the game harder as it progresses.
5. The inventory was supposed to be the central focus of the theme. The unimplemented items are: med-pack, wooden planks (to block off the window), and other puzzle items.
6. Pistol and shotgun ammo was supposed to be so rare, you would rather use the knife, but we totally scrapped it while trying to balance the game at the last minute.
7. Immersive sound effects instead of the 8-bit generated sfx we ended up with.

The Bad

Mistakes were made along the way, but we learnt so much from being so massively overscoped in this Ludum Dare.

• Lightweight Rendering Pipeline (LWRP) - We decided to try out the package in Unity for this LD. It's still in preview, therefore we encountered a lot of technical issues like the depth camera, limited lighting options, and frustum culling.
• WebGL Exclusive! - As if that wasn't enough, we decided to make an FPS game for WebGL, and WebGL is really hostile towards anything that has locked mouse and mouse movement unless we spend more time testing and fixing it. We were on the verge of dropping WebGL for Windows platform instead.
• Art experimentation went badly - Took too much time experimenting with art at the wrong time, only to end up losing the original zombie model and ended up having bad game visuals due to insufficient time.
• Implementing FPS with inventory for first time on Unity during LD - I mean come on, what could go wrong guys? :ok_hand::joy:
• Miscommunication - It's not our first time having miscommunication during LD (it happens on each of our LD anyway), but the amount of time lost due to it costed heavily this time around.
• Weak connection to theme - Originally, we intend on connecting to the theme with limited inventory slots with the needs to juggle between various items + tough zombies that chases after you. Now we only have zombies part.

The Good

Even though we didn't managed to finish all of our planned features, we did learnt a lot during this LD.

• Everything is made from scratch! - All of the programming and art are made from scratch, and that is something we're proud of.
• Technical issues around LWRP and WebGL - We know what to expect the next time we develop for these.
• Programming and art skills - Based on our previous track record, we knew we could improve and develop much faster if we trained more.
• Inventory system - Proudly developed from ground up without following any tutorials!
• Lighting - We did learn how to avoid leaks and fix shadow bias after this LD (We didn't have time to actually fix it though).

Conclusion

We are still hopeful that we can get our development speed up to par to what we did to our Technocide game made on GameMaker:Studio 2. In our early days of using GameMaker, we also did massively overscope and failed to deliver a quality game experience. Fast forward few years later, we're making a game with a slightly bigger scope but better, stable and a much more complete experience. For now, we'll just make games with a smaller scope while trying to learn more about Unity. Probably make a 2D game for upcoming LD jams?

Link to our latest game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/close-call-a-claustrophobic-survival-shooter