Hello!

Another Ludum Dare complete and another game made! We're really happy with how this one turned out so I thought I'd write a little post-mortem.

Trenchrunner

Play and rate! ♥

The game idea came from all three of us on the team. My wife (@curleyrach) had the idea of setting the game in WW1 in the trenches (We've been very into war movies recently). I said about making it a runner game with the gas chasing you and @olliemotion had the idea to strap a bomb to the main character! This tied the whole thing together and made it have a point. It brought the theme in nicely too!

The original drawing

What went right

I wrote the game using Monogame and my own framework on top of it. I have been making it since the last time we entered a Ludum Dare (LD46). This was a nice test to see all the pieces come together and see if it worked 😂 It turned out great, easy to use (mostly) and it was very fulfilling!

I was able to get lighting and particle effects into the framework just in time for the jam which i think really added to the game!

I was also happy with the design of the venting mechanic. It added a layer of depth to the game that I didn't see coming until we were half way through. That's one of my favourite things about game jams, it feels like I'm discovering the game whilst I'm making it. 😃

Another thing that went well was the art. My boy Ollie always knocks it out of the park with the character art and animations and this time was no exception. When he sent over the main character, I was like 🤩🤩🤩 My wife (who is fairly new to game development and pixel art) did an amazing job making all the environmental art and info screens for the game. She even made all the posters and the itch.io page too!

I spent some time making sure the art sat well together and we are really pleased with the result.

People also seem to like the music, which always feels good as I started my game making journey (10 years ago 😭) as a sound guy. 😃 I think the sound effects turned out neat too.

I also was able to get levels loading in from Tiled this time so we could have multiple levels and I had a lot of fun making them.

This was also the first game where I have been able to add a boss! Every Ludum Dare I'm like "yeah this time, I'll add a boss and it'll be dope!" but this is the first time I've managed it! It turned out great and was super fun to make!

What went wrong

Not a lot! I felt pretty relaxed about it the whole time and there wasn't anything major that blocked development. The collision of the enemies can be a little bit janky sometimes, but I was rushing it! In a perfect world I would have made it clear that the bomb builds up pressure over time as it took people a death or two to figure it out 😂 Another enemy to encourage shooting the gun would have been good too but its Ludum Dare so I'm just happy with what we finished!

I also wish I had automated the tile placement a bit as each level consists of: a top layer, a bottom layer, a sandbag layer, a shadow layer, and objects. This was quite time consuming to hand place for each level!

If I could do it again I would change the balance slightly, as the game ended up too easy for some. It's a hard balance to strike in a jam, you want it to be easy enough for people to complete in a jam setting but not so easy that they can just blast through the game. We found submitting the game to streamers and watching them play a huge help in this regard!

Lessons Learned

I will be taking some of the new developments from this game and implementing them back into my framework so for future games it'll be even better!

I think we'll put out a post jam version with a little balance update to make the game more challenging and add a few particle effects in a few places so I will post about that when it's done!

Bonus photo of husband+wife+cat gamedev desk set up 😁😺

Play and rate! ♥

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