So, my game Within suffered a lot due to real life experiences I had to deal with during this event. I almost opted out of the event completely, but thanks to a few good friends and, what I’m guessing to be, luck, I actually made my first game and I was able to submit it to Ludum Dare 33. Pretty surreal!

My ratings weren’t too bad:

My highest score was Mood (which is cool, because I was definitely going for that with my take on the theme) but out of all the other ratings, Audio is technically the highest as I placed pretty well. What’s interesting, too, is that I only spent an hour on my music (including writing and editing it). What’s even more interesting is how this reflects who I am as a person; I studied music and music composition in college. It’s very uplifting to see that education playing a vital role in my game’s success.

Unfortunately, I was going through a big move during this event. I was actually couch surfing during the creation of the game, and after I moved in and judging was commencing I was unable to rate and play as effectively as I wanted due to lack of internet. I was able to get a couple of games in here and there with my terrible laptop and a connection provided by a coffee shop, but these were mostly restricted to web games.

Things I realized that need significant more focus in my coming games:

1. Level design

My game has very simple controls, so the level design is simple as well. However, if you have played it, you realize that the switches or buttons in each level can be cryptic and their effect can be lost on the player because of poor implementation. I’m sure if I had more time, I would have been able to make a better system.

2. Coding

I used Game Maker to make this game, and thanks to Shaun Spalding’s tutorials on YouTube I was able to have a quickly working platformer engine for my game that I was also able to tweak. Still, in the future I would like to have more experience writing code from scratch for an event like this.

3. Graphics

Several commenters pointed out that my game looks and even feels a bit like “Thomas Was Alone” by Mike Bithell. The square based sprites was really all I had time for and, naturally, I see the resemblance, but rest assured that I didn’t even have that beautiful game in mind when I was crafting my own. This area is probably my weakest point with game creation. If I pursue games, this will be the area I will need to work the most on. That, or work with a team.

All in all, though, I had a blast participating in this event. I learned a lot, gained a ton of experience, and enjoyed all the games I played (while I was able to). I’m looking forward to participating in Ludum Dare 34 in December. Hope to see you all there! 😀