My goodness! This has been an incredible experience taking part in a game jam after so long.

I just want to thank everyone who spent time playing my game, whether you viewed it as a good or bad submission. I've still got a lot to learn, which is why I want to keep doing jams on a regular basis. With this being my second one I'm starting to realize how much motivation something like Ludum Dare gives you to finish a project, and even after you've finished your submission, you get some incredible feedback to help improve both yourself as a developer and your game as a whole.

In light of this I wanted to take a bit of a look back two years ago to reflect on some personal progress of mine and see if someone can get some good inspiration from this.

My first Ludum Dare was under an account called NerdyTea. Back then I was a bit younger and a lot less experienced when it came to game development as a whole. I decided to join Ludum Dare to test myself.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/holding-aces-the-card-game-shoot-em-up

My game was a very simple platformer with a shooting mechanic that didn't really feel fun or that it made a significant difference. It honestly put me off of developing for a while after it was finished, seeing how the game had turned out and seeing how low the ratings were. I really shouldn't have let it get to me so much, but it did. At that point I hadn't made any sort of progress on creating games and that's a deep regret of mine.

2020 has been hard on everyone, myself included. I ended up getting a significant cut on my hours at work, but that ended up being a blessing in disguise. I started dabbling with Unity tutorials again. Then I delved deeper and got some Udemy courses off of Humble Bundle and learned more from there, focusing a lot more on C# than when I studied before.

Ultimately, it led to me joining Ludum Dare again a second time, a little more experienced than before. And it led to a result I never thought I could achieve before, even with the flaws my game has.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/co-routine

No matter what rating my submission gets this time around, I can say confidently just playing through this and comparing it to what I managed last time I've improved so much and that I'll be able to improve again.

What I'm trying to say is if you aren't satisfied with your result after the ratings get revealed, don't get discouraged. Pick yourself back up, and get back to work. I hate that I didn't take this advice two years ago because I know I could have done even better this jam if I did. But even so, I'll be sure to work harder than ever, knowing that I have the ability to keep building on top of my skillset and make things that people will be able to enjoy.

See you all in LD48! And thanks for being an incredible community. :tea: :green_heart: