Try our game here: Decrypt https://ldj.am/$297394

Making the game:

This is my third time participating in Ludum Dare, and each time we're getting better and better at it! or I'd like to think so :P This time we wanted to keep the concept simple and easy to polish, focus more on the UI and less on extravagant animation. In the past, we would struggle with level design and playtesting in a short time. So we decided that a word game would help us stay focused on playtesting and fully polish the game design.

We were inspired by tetris, scrabble, and plateup (yes I am addicted to plateup). We actually had an idea for "Use it or lose it" and ultimately changed that idea to fit the theme of every 10 seconds, which actually turned out well!

This was the first time I used adobe illustrator and xd for a game in game jam. It's also the first time I made predominantly just UI assets for a game. It was also the first time I made a track that's longer than an 8 bar-loop. So a lot of firsts for me, a lot of learning. I'm genuinely surprised by all the feedback we got for the game. I'm just very happy how many people played our game and left a message saying that they liked it, feel like I just achieved a small life goal. Super proud of us :D

Reflection:

Our team is still very passionate about this game, so much that we might put another project on hold to develop this one further into a mobile game? We had some really good ideas going, and the feedback from everybody really helped! There were still a lot of bugs we had to fix, features we didn't have time to implement. Hopefully those will be seen in the full version later on.

Things we did well:

• We discussed ideas for all the themes that made it to the final round. It made all of us less worried about what theme we're gonna get, we felt a little more prepared. Even though we didn't come up with an idea for every single theme, it was easy to modify and work around it.
• We immediately started playing other people's games and leaving feedback after submission hour. I think this gave our game a lot of traction -> more people play our game and gave us feedback -> more bug fixes.

For future game jams:

• I think we should take some time early on with prototyped assets and develop more standards for how the assets should be exported, sizing, positions... Even though we had experience with it in the past, I still took a lot of extra time re-exporting things because they weren't up to standard.
• We also originally wanted to do post processing filter, ui animation, lighting and all that. There was clearly not enough time to learn to do that for the first time during a game jam. We should take time learning and testing those things before coming into this game jam.
• We reeeeeally need to figure out how to build the game ui properly so that it doesn't have to be played in full screen. This already happened once for our LD 49 game Ouch! https://ldj.am/$259834 did not learn from that experience lol
• Take more breaks gaming! I think the team was super exhausted and mentally checked out on day 3. I think if we took some time to play a game or two together on day 2, everyone would be a lot more productive on day 3. Working for 3 days straight day to night is definitely not easy.

Thanks:

Thanks to our friends coming up with the name of our game Decrypt, and helping us out with QA. We all know how hard it is to come up with a name.

Thanks to my team for persevering and being so hardworking even on the Monday when we all had other stuff to do. My two programmers @gabriel-chan @chan-gim kept working on the bugs even after we worked nonstop for 3 days. They also encouraged me so much when I was not confident with the sound work.

Thanks to everybody that played, rated, or commented on our game. It meant a lot to me. Reading all the comments really motivated me on making the game better. I'm trying my best to play everyone's creation and leave feedback as well!

Other Games

Seeing all the other games in this jam was super inspiring as well, I have to let people know about them!! Here are a few of my personal favorites. I link them here so I can go back to play them. Go try them out!

Poda Wants a Statue https://ldj.am/$296784 This game is what I aspire to make. It's absolutely adorable, the sprites are so clean, and the design has so much detail and love.

Yes, Comrade. https://ldj.am/$297272 Anyone who enjoyed Papers Please would enjoy this game. This was super polished, and the voice acting... Chef's kiss! definitely a gem

À la carte https://ldj.am/$304910 I'm just addicted to games where I can make food without having to wash dishes irl, what can I say

Scribble Rush https://ldj.am/$300241 This game was unexpectedly hilarious, I also just like drawing games. It was a simple concept executed flawlessly

Bygone Melodies https://ldj.am/$300039 A rhythm game that looks like a story book??? say less

An Average Day At The Cat Cafe https://ldj.am/$307658 Angela never disappoints!

I might have forgotten a few, I will update this list as I test more.

Will also update when voting period is over!