Overview

And Then You Fall was an abstract top down shoot em up made for Ludum Dare 50 as a Jam entry. It is a feverish bullet hell game where you collect product, shoot it back at customers, and fire disinfectant at viruses while avoiding their spikes as well as the antagonist, an undead-appearing apparition of the protagonist representing their exhaustion. The game was supposed to represent the protagonists’ struggle with post-viral syndrome as they worked for a faceless corporation ringing up merchandise for customers.

What Happened

I had happened to see on Twitter that Ludum Dare had started 30 minutes after the official start time with a theme announcement tweet. The theme of the jam was “Delay the Inevitable”. Having recently lost my job due to an ongoing struggle with post-viral syndrome onset by COVID-19, I decided it would be a timely and relevant story to tell; Delaying the Inevitable by trying to ‘push through’ post-viral syndrome and ending up worse as a result. I had decided to go with an abstract shoot em up because I knew based on personal experience I could prototype one incredibly quickly. Because I had made the decision on the spot, there were several issues that would propagate throughout the entire development process and affect the final result: - No pre-planning what-so-ever - Ended up with an overscopped concept for a game jam - Rushed through coding the game state - No knowledge of how Ludum Dare submissions and post-submission process went

Overall the programming and implementation of assets went incredibly smoothly aside from one or two major road blocks- I had a basic prototype in 6-7 hours -however as the jam progressed it became more and more difficult to complete. Eventually it was completed but not without major issues: the game loop from level complete to level start was only just finished within minutes of the deadlines and introduced several crash bugs. Upon submission of the project I realized several things: - Entries were judged - You had to judge at a minimum 20 other entries - The goal wasn’t just to complete a game, but to complete a game good game.

My goal to complete a jam game was way below the bar of expectation for Ludum Dare, and as a result my game struggled with early reviewers. It found its own footing with later reviewers who had some patience and weren’t deathly exhausted by 72 hours of straight game development, but I had completely missed the point.

Originally my concept included a full tutorial, progressive gameplay elements that were introduced over multiple days (i.e. levels), and a game over state that indicated it was the end of the story rather than a failure of the player. All of these were cut and condensed due to time constraints, and a long the way a part of the point of the story was lost.

The end result was a project that was technically finished, but was missing some pretty key elements, such as the actual tutorial, actual sound design (i.e. sound effects), and actual player feedback for collecting items. The UI also suffered, being unintuitive and too experimental.

The game was praised for its originality as much as it suffered for it, the feverish, hectic, and frantic experience both being a positive and a negative. In my opinion however, it was more a negative as players didn’t quite understand the objectives of each wave, the failure various failure states, and the various gameplay elements. The theme also wasn’t a good fit for the jam, as player are more looking for (consciously or not) a fun and light-hearted experience in light of the pandemic, current world events such as the invasion of Ukraine, and the fact that everyone just came out of a hellish 48 to 72 hour development cycle. Notably however, it was positively received for being a bullet hell, which apparently is a rarity among Ludum Dare entries. I can only assume this is because of the technical skill required in order to program wave and fine-tuned collision correctly, of which I see as a win.

What I Learned

The execution overall was a bit poor given the scope of the game and the time and skill constraints I had. The game ultimately fails to properly communicate its gameplay and failure states, and is the victim of poor planning and poor pacing. Next Ludum Dare I will do the following: 1. Focus on a Jam entry only with Boilerplate code and more prefab assets 2. Go with a smaller scope or micro game. Focus on a cleaner design with fewer symbols, fewer colors, fewer features, and a less elaborate boss if any. 3. Properly pace myself and not try to do too much by building scheduled 'jam blocks' of which I set aside for game dev. 4. Ensure I have a proper tutorial, proper sound design, and adequate gameplay feedback. 5. Ensure that I have time to playtest & polish. 6. Do a proper UI/UX development pass. 7. Ensure the game better communicates the theme and had a more thematically correct ‘game over’/ending. 8. Do a Ludum Dare specific pass to ensure the game is up to snuff with the specific intricacies of what is necessary for Ludum Dare entries.

While the game didn’t meet all expectations, it met my expectation of completion and I personally learned a ton. My goal was to finish a Ludum Dare, something that I've been building the courage to do since I first heard of the competition. I am overall happy with what I accomplished. I plan on revisiting this concept for a full commercial release, as this game tells a story that I want to put out into the world.