Hello everyone,

I am Monish Vyas, a wanna be indie game dev from India. This post is about my first ever Ludum Dare experience, I would like to share what I went through in those testing 72 hours and despite not been able to complete and submit the entry why I feel content.

I started my game dev journey in 2015 when I started to learn Unity, Since then I have worked on more than 30 mobile game projects for a client. But don't get impressed by this number, most of them were kids games which were basically point and click and an animation starts to play. Though this work was good for me as it brought good money for me, I was never happy with what was I doing, so one fine day of September 2018 I stopped working for clients.

I thought I will have all the time in the world for myself and the games I wanted to make and I will make some quality games for myself, boy was I wrong. Since that day I was never able to finish any project and I kept running in circles and was getting nowhere for different reasons. Finally not anything going my way at one point I started doubting myself and I questioned myself again and again that do I have any skills to make a game at all?

Finally I took break from the programming and picked graphics design as a new skill to develop, I always suck at graphics design so I thought I should give it a shot. I went through a couple of tutorials for a week and learned a few things in vector design. Now I was able to at least draw that was 40-50% close of what I intended.

In the meantime I came across Ludum dare 44, I was following Asbjorn from Brackeys and Noa from BlackThornProd as everything I learned in Unity, I learned it from them. But every time for different reasons I didn't participate. One time I chickened out after almost being determined about it. So Ludum dare 44 was my ultimate test and this year I forced myself to participate as I had all the time in the world.

It was still a week to go so I cancelled all my schedules (not that I have many) for the weekend, and I was ready to dive in head first. After the theme was announced which was 6:30 in the morning where I live, I poured myself some tea(yes not coffee), I started sketching ideas and settled on to make a space game where you go to different planet and trade items from the planet with the oxygen you have (to fit the theme "Your life is currency"). I quickly started prototyping it and made some basic scripts like Camera movement travelling to different planets.

After the half day passed, NOT finishing a single project paid off big time. I started feeling the game does not fit the theme well, the game may not be that good etc. All the motivation I had was wearing off. But as time was running out I had to focus on the game and have to somehow complete it. So...? You guessed it right! I scrapped the idea and started to work on a new one.

I came up with an idea of a "Plants Vs Zombies" kind of tower defense. To fit the theme I decided to allow the player to buy stuff but at the cost of the hit points of the object you are defending(which is even today Im not sure what you are defending). At the end of the first day I had enemies and units ready. Next day I spent to design the enemy which did not take a lot of time as I had a week of practice so I already had become a pro. I managed to design 3 enemies (same shapes different in colors), a shooting gun and a shield like looking thing. I swear if Picaso was alive he would have killed me first and then committed suicide after watching these "artwork".

Shamelessly posting a screenshot. ENJOY!

At the end of day 2 I had some decent spawning and buying / selling mechanics ready. I was happy that I will be able to complete the game (boy was I wrong). After the basic concept was ready I started to balance the game but also I was aware that some of the graphics for background and stuff still remains. At this point I had no idea how will find or create game music or SFX.

After some hustle and the last day was half gone, I had a working game but it wasn't balanced. Some graphics done (looked decent given my skill set), no sounds. At this point I was testing the game to determine the variables I need to tweak to make this game somewhat balanced (Spoilers: I never found any tweaking). But finally I was ready to submit my duct tape patched entry hoping and praying this will not fall apart. I built the project and was ready to upload the game, I created everything required and was filling up details and guess what I slept before hitting the "Publish" button (In my defense I was tired).

Now the REAL reason I wrote this long ass post is that despite I could not submit my entry I was so much happy. I never worked this hard on anything before. This made me realize that if I can make something this close to a game given only 72 hours, I can one day make a decent game that people can really enjoy. For the first time I was able to build something from scratch, and was able to join the pieces together to make it work. This was close to a complete project for me which I was never able to do in past so many months.

I take away so many positive points from this experience. The first and foremost is that if you keep a strict deadline for something it gives you a push to work through. I learned to break something big into smaller tasks you can get it done one at a time. Second is that I shared this with a couple of close people who were constantly nagging me about the progress and it made me responsible for my actions and kept me focused. In contrast to regular working days where no one knows what I'm doing. I did not feel alone going through this journey which is very important given how game dev sometimes can feel when there is no one there to hear about the progress or updates. And last and the most important is to visualize the end product that you are creating. When you know what you are set out to make, you get motivated just by the thought of it. There were couple of times I felt like I wanted to give up but when I thought what I will achieve I was able to guide myself back into this mammoth looking task.

I sincerely apologize for engaging you in this 1259 words long post, (YES! MS Word told me), but I hope you read this and can relate to what I've been through and what miracles can happen if you just stick it till the end. I wish all the best to all the participants and hope to see you everyone in Ludum Dare 45 silently hoping I don't screw up next time. Have a good day all.