I know this is hard to believe for many, but for once, I think that the theme didn't suck. While I don't think it was the best option out of the last round of themes, it was a solid one that left a lot of options while not being too broad. Sure, many of the games I played did fall under some kind of farming category – and we had those elements, too – but they were quite enjoyable for the most part, unlike with 10 seconds, where it felt like the majority of them would have been better without the theme tacked on.

We'd discussed making a Zelda-like and, after the theme was announced, quickly settled with the idea of combining that sort of gameplay with growing your own weapons. The latter mechanic premeditated having to change your weapon regularly, so we ended up with the short durability of the Breath of the Wild and a general look-and-feel closer to the NES and SNES Zeldas.

Overall, I feel the jam went quite smoothly this time, and we didn't end up making any drastic changes in direction or big gameplay overhauls. As usual, a lot of the details crystallised during the weekend as the game started to materialise, and the story the game should have had only afterwards (which is why there'll be one last big post-jam update soon). We had a relatively large team but didn't hit many snags with communication or organisation. One thing I wish we'd maybe planned better was the enemies, as I didn't see the scale from the early concept art drafts, and we ended up having too large, almost boss-like monsters (in addition to the boss itself!) and only one normal-sized one. I was able to address the unbalance in the enemies by adding one that was visually just a simple particle effect, though, so I don't feel like it was a bad problem.

Once again, I'm super happy with how the game turned out visually. The art certainly stands out not just in quality but also in style, with the quirky use of colour and the, uhm, happy trees (RunicPixels wrote an article about what went into the tilemap here).

(Concept art by Rumboots)

Technically, we made the call before the jam not to do anything too experimental this time (isometric maps ended up taking much more time in the last jam than I originally anticipated), so I was mostly just implementing things I already knew how to do and tweaking the design. One thing that did cause more problems than I thought were the cameras, as I wasn't aware you can't constrain a Cinemachine camera to a simple BoxCollider2D. It wasn't too much work to roll my own constraint system, but it's still a bit wonky.

It was also a great relief on Monday when, in addition to again composing the amazing music and doing the sound effects, Danae stepped in to help and coded a lot of the small polishes that got the game across the finish line in much better condition.

I'm also happy that I had time to add a simple tutorial/onboarding to the beginning of the game, as it looks like it helped a lot of people to grasp the gameplay a bit better, and it's something that I usually don't have time for. In the future, I'm planning to add some even earlier, though, and make the system a bit more robust. It probably says something that I actually have the energy to make one big update now that the jam is over, and it won't mess up the rating, overhauling the story to the idea I got a bit too late and adding a few extra touches based on the feedback we received. I'm not convinced Warden of the Woods is a game make an actual release out of, like Ignis Universia was, but it ended up as a good game for Ludum Dare, the purpose it was made for.