This is a quick post-mortem of what went well and what didn't with ...and to Nothingness Return. I may do a more thorough post-mortem after the scores are in.

What went well

• Narrow Focus - This is the most focused LD entry I've ever made, and it shows. By limiting myself to a few simple game mechanics I was able to spend more time on level design rather than implementation. While the resulting level designs aren't necessarily spectacular, I'm pretty happy with them on the whole.
• Following Jam rules - In previous LDs, I've entered the Jam, but still mostly followed Compo rules, just using the Jam for the extra 24 hours. This time, it occurred to me that if I'm doing the Jam, I'm allowed to use e.g. CC-licensed music rather than trying to come up with something on my own. Obviously it meant I had to opt out of the relevant categories, but it improved the quality of the game overall both by including better music than I would have made myself, and by giving me more time to focus on what I can do, such as writing code and designing levels.
• Actual Playtesting - While it was only one person, I did manage to get someone else to playtest my game for me during the jam. Their feedback was invaluable in helping me order the levels more or less in order of difficulty. Judging difficulty when making a puzzle game is very hard, since as the level designer you already know the solutions, so getting playtester feedback is super valuable. Obviously more playtesters would have been even better, but the jump from 0 -> 1 makes an enormous difference.

What didn't go so well

• Bugs - Obviously bugs aren't particularly surprising in Ludum Dare, but this time there were some fairly problematic ones that prevented people from playing at all on certain Windows machines (but not all of them, for some reason). The bugs weren't that hard to fix in the end, but it took me almost a week simply because I had other stuff going on once the jam ended.
• Sound effects - The game really needed some more (and better) sound effects, as it stands there is only one, which plays on level start. And the one effect I did have generated a mixed response from players. Unfortunately, I didn't really get to SFX until the last few hours. I spent ~45 minutes searching for a publicly available effect that I liked, and then when that didn't work I spent ~45 minutes more trying to make something in BFXr. I should have settled on something way earlier and moved on to more effects, rather than spending so much time on a single one.

The Response

All in all, I've been very happy with the response my ...and to Nothingness Return has received. The people who commented seemed to genuinely like it, and a number of people stuck through it all the way to the end, including the final, very difficult level. Once judging is over (just a few hours now), I'm definitely going to dive back in and design more levels, as well as introduce some additional mechanics I didn't have time for in the Jam proper.