It's that time again! Time to dissect my LD43 entry, The Gods Are Angry, and look at the positives and negatives of its development. I'm more proud of it than I am of my LD42 entry - and it fared much better on Newgrounds - but there's still plenty I can improve on for LD44. So, without further ado...

What Went Well

• I wanted to make a more story-based game this time round, and the theme, "Sacrifices must be made", was absolutely perfect for that. The game's story and atmosphere have generally been praised, and I do think I did a pretty good job with them.
• Compared to my previous LD games and their plain black backgrounds, The Gods Are Angry has actual environments, and with a pretty good level of visual detail. I'm still really proud of the lightning effect, if you couldn't tell from the fact that I show it off at every opportunity!
• I didn't feel like there was much I could do with my previous Ludum Dare games, but this time round, I have a complete (if basic) platforming engine. I've had a couple of ideas for more complex, full-length platformers lying around for years, and now I feel like I have a decent starting point for them.

What Went Badly

• One of these days I'm gonna learn my gosh-darn lesson about testing things. I programmed the game's ending and restart procedure, then immediately shipped it without testing to see if they worked. Predictably, they didn't. It took me a total of fifteen minutes to write the patches that fixed those issues. Nice going, me.
• The game generally lacks polish. The gameplay is too simple, and lacks any interesting mechanics; the level design isn't challenging or varied enough; there are no visual effects when you die, your sprite just disappears. Part of this is due to PICO-8 limitations, and part of it is due to me spending way too much time programming the basic engine and running out of time on Day 2.
• My sound design is still terrible. I still don't know how to use PICO-8's music tracker, and the sound effects are still annoying to a lot of people. It's at the point where I'm seriously considering entering the Jam next time round instead of the Compo, just so I can get someone else to do the music and SFX for me.

What Comes Next

Earlier today I published the final post-jam update for The Gods Are Angry on Newgrounds. It fixed the game's horizontal collision detection, and tidied up the code to make it neater and more reusable. Love Is A Battlefield DX, the post-jam version of my LD41 game, will finally be posted on Newgrounds on either January 23rd (the site's annual Pixel Day), or Valentine's Day.

For 2019, I plan to start developing more indie games outside of Ludum Dare. As I stated earlier, I've got a couple of ideas for full-scale PICO-8 platformers, for which I can re-use parts of the game's engine. My ultimate ambition is to publish a full game to Steam and/or the Discord Store, either next year or in 2020. I will continue to take part in Ludum Dare in the meantime.

A big thank you to everyone who's played The Gods Are Angry and left feedback so far! I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!