After I failed Global Game Jam, I decided that I was all jammed out and needed to take a break. The only jam I plan to do is Ludum Dare, at least in the first half of 2015, and it feels like forever since the last one!

Goals

• SIMPLE!
  That was my goal last time but I went overboard, yet again. Polish, polish, polish is the name of the game. I’ll probably ignore this one again.
• Hex Grids
  If possible I’d like to use a Hex Grid in the game somewhere. Outside LD I’m planning to work on a 4X prototype, so learning Hex Grids will be useful knowledge
• Rating of 4+ in a category
  I was close last time (3.85 Innovation), so I’d really like to get something over 4 stars. It’s a sign of quality I haven’t been able to reach yet.
• Top 100 Overall
  The hardest goal… especially since I put all my blood, sweat, and tears into Silian Rail and could only reach top 200! Gotta put more bodily fluids into it this time!

Tools
My usual tools;

• Engine: GameMaker Studio (I might play around with the HTML compiler to try and get a web version)
• Graphics: Adobe Fireworks + Pyxel Edit
• Sound: Reason 7

Overall Thoughts

Bugs hurt me last time… another reason I want to keep things simple. Learning new things in a Game Jam doesn’t work very well for me because I’m under too much pressure to research and implement tricky solutions (I’m not a programmer by trade). Although Hex Grids is new, and something I want to try, I will practice a little with it beforehand and will drop it like it’s hot if there’s a hint of bugginess!

Finally, I know everyone complains about the theme but last time it was really uninspiring. ‘Entire Game on One Screen’ is basically what I do every single time I make a game already (I’m still pretty amateur!). It doesn’t inspire me to do anything interesting, and while I tried to create a mechanic that really exploited the nature of the game’s lifecycle in one screen… I got a crap theme score so no-one seemed to ‘get it’.

As a disclaimer, I liked Beneath the Surface and Connected Worlds. They were good themes. Interestingly enough, the last LD was my best product so maybe I’m making too much of a meal of it.