This was my first ever official Game Jam and I decided to do the compo. I am incredibly proud of what I made, especially since I've only been making games for a little over 9 months. With that said, some things I personally learned.

1) When in doubt, do art.

I am the worst at art, so from the very start I started making art. I used paint.net which is free and opensource. It's less advanced than Krita, but I'm more comfortable with it. If I didn't know what I was doing, I made art. The entire idea for the game came from the initial character and what I thought would look cool.

2) Keep it small.

I wanted to make a level editor so I could quickly put together levels and allow others to do so. I thought, originally, I could do this because I've made them a few times already so I'm comfortable with that process, but time is a major factor so it was out of scope for me. I wanted enemies, again, out of scope. I boiled the idea down to what I knew I could already do and then threw in a few things I didn't just to test myself. This kept me within the time limit pretty comfortably.

3) Balance around the lowest power level

I don't force upgrades - in fact they are somewhat hidden or a puzzle to get to and there were choices. I can't predict what players will choose, just what I like, thus, balance and playtest throughout the entire process on the default power level. If you can beat it like that, then those powerups feel fun rather than necessary. That said, my style of balance is to play through every small part of a level as I build them, not just the finished level. I find it makes it a lot more fun. You also catch bugs faster that way.

There's a bunch more things I learned, but these are definitely the biggest three takeaways for me.

I can't wait to play everyone else's games!

You can find "The Oarsman" here!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/the-oarsman?fbclid=IwAR3zxZN8kvPfeY5oUcmPvtkCTCG2YJNtItJI86fsY-j4XwqJq83E7yhtlxs