Now that I know how to publish stuff to the main feed, I figured I might as well talk about my game jam's post mortem here, since I received a lot of nice feedback and comments from folks here (thanks again everyone! I really appreciate it! It makes me happy to see how welcoming this community is :) )

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's dive into this!

Things that went well

• Trimming the scope: From all of the feedback that I received so far, I think for being my first game jam, this is something that I am really glad turned out well. While I did have a lot of ideas for my game, as the jam went on, I realized there were just some things that I unfortunately could not get to. As such, it allowed me to really focus on the aspects of the game that are already in the game (i.e. difficulty increases over time)
• Sticking with the theme: I was a little worried that my game would be a little too simple for the theme, but from what I been hearing, people really like the theme I went for! That makes me really happy since I honestly had a bunch of ideas for taking on the theme, but to hear this one stuck like gum gave me a lot of confidence.
• Persistence: I did have some moments during the weekend where I was getting burned out since there was so much that had to be done still for the game. However, what really kept me going is realizing that this will be one of the rare moments where I can actually complete an entire game over the weekend. That as well as the feeling of accomplishment helped me realize that this is only temporary, the satisfaction of the end result will make the time well spent.

Things that didn't go well

• Coding Style: While this could be seen as a benefit since I was on a huge time crunch, as a programmer first, seeing the code I written for scripts makes me really sad ahaha! I know I could do MUCH better with it, but because I knew I would be pressed for time, I had to take some shortcuts. While in the end, the product works, I knew if I spent my time a little more wisely, I could have had more time under my belt to do some clean up work.
• Time Management: Ahh the old classic for a game jam. This honestly boils down to spending a lot of time on work that wouldn't have made it in the end as well as not sticking to one task until it is complete. For working alone on this, I had my time divied up on multiple aspects (art, music, programming, game design), which really pushed my limits on how much I can do in one sitting. While it is a lesson that I found very valuable, I know that I need to be more organized with my ideas and execution for any future game jam.
• Feature Creep: This kind of goes along with the last point, but I want to address that there was more things that I really wanted to do for the game (more challenges, scene transitions, random level layouts, etc), but I unfortunately learned the hard way right before the halfway point of the challenge. So in the end, I am happy on the end result. I wanted to improve the initial thinking process that I had for the game, since that would helped my stress levels a LOT.

Future Goals

• Cleaning up the code. Did I mention that already?
• Adding in the second challenge. I did have some of it done, but it is not fully implemented yet.

Next Steps?

• Going to mark on my calendar the next Ludume Dare and any other game jams since I LOVED my time here!

And that's about it for my post mortem! Apologies for the long duration, but I had a fun time overall on the challenge. I wish everyone luck on their projects and I look forward to trying other people's games as this month goes on! If you haven't already, come try out my game here. You can even play it in the browser!