The last ludum dare I did was LD40, and I'm back with more experience under my belt. Last time I did well with my art skills, hopefully this one will improve on game design. Was going to try C++ this time, but I need to work more on my engine first.

My setup: Programming Java with libGDX, Eclipse, and Git, drawing with GIMP, sound with sfxr, audacity, and possibly OpenMPT.

Lessons learned from last time:

• A consistent art style is good, but important items and characters should be distinct from the background. Choose colours carefully.
• Animations take time, but are very much worth it done right.
• Git isn't meant to be used from the web browser, use the command line (I wasted so much time uploading files separately last time).
• Don't try to improvise on physics if you don't have to. My last game had dumb turrets with poor aim since I neglected to use proper physics equations for projectiles.
• Low game difficulty makes it easier to test, but people will be disappointed. Have a debug setup that makes your character invulnerable for play tests.

Here's to hoping we get some good games out of this!