LudumData

Exiled: Lessons learned and tools I used

[raw] LD48LDJam 01. May 2021 · 09:38 UTC · 7 days after compo start by ladybenko · 4

Hi! This is the second part of the post-mortem for Exiled, my entry for LD48. It's a narrative-based exploration game with retro graphics, and I hope you enjoy it.

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Lessons learned

You can check out the full dev log to get a gist of what actually happened while developing the game, but the TL;DR version is: my initial idea was to make a Diablo demake, and it ended up being like a Zelda without combat. However I added a bit of narrative to it, and that kind of saved the entry and made it a "full" game.

What went well

  • I did submit something somewhat finished, even though the game ended up being something different to what I had in mind at the beginning of the jam.
  • It was my first time making 1-bit pixel art and it turned out relatively well (keep in mind that I'm a programmer!).
  • I made a cute, charismatic character.
  • Godot made exporting to HTML5 a breeze and I didn't encounter any issues with it. It also made rendering a multiple-layer tilemap really easy and creating levels was super fast.

What went wrong

  • I overslept and had a very slow morning on Sunday and I cost me a bunch of hours. I also watched FCBarcelona game in the afternoon, and I lost another two extra hours in there. I could have used that time to wrap the ending in a better way, or design more levels or more tiles, or add a Credits screen…

  • I spent too many hours in the comic-like text balloon for dialogues. It turns out UI in Godot is not easy or intuitive and my ego got in the way, so instead of hacking my way out of it or hardcoding the graphics for dialogues I wasted time making it "right".

  • Since I made most of the art assets before coding, I ended up with graphics I didn't have time to include, like a walking animation or a sword.

Tools I used

Thanks for reading this! If you are curious about the game, I'd appreciate it a lot if you play it and leave a comment. And if you made a game for LD48 and it's playable on a Mac or a browser, let me know and I'll play & rate it.