Post Mortem

Information

• Start: 10 AM ( 4 AM EST )
• End: 3 AM ( 9 PM EST )
• Time spend sleeping: ~12 hours
• Software used: Sublime Text 3, Aseprite, Pixitracker

Intro

So I’m kinda late with this, but with the results showing up, I thought I might as well do a quick post mortem.

Idea

The entire game on 1 screen was not the most popular theme, was it? I really disliked the theme myself. I tried to think of a way to implement the theme in a clever way, and came up with a theater. A theatre has the limitation of having only “1 screen”. So I went with that. I’m not sure anymore what it was, but I was in a rather bad mood at the time, maybe because of the theme. Anyway, I didn’t really feel like making a game. I wasn’t enjoying myself. But I have a combo of 9 Ludum Dare games, this would be my 10th. I’m not going to let a bad mood break that combo. So I sat through it, and eventually found the enjoyment I knew from participating in Ludum Dare.

As soon as I got the idea, and had it worked out a bit, I realized how similar this was to one of my previous Ludum Dare games, One Take. You play something according to a script, and get a review for it. Instead of trying to hide that, I decided to accept that fully, and make use of it. I decided to make a sequel (or rather prequel) to One Take. While making the game I wasn’t really sure if this was the right thing to do. One Take got #1 Overall, and I thought people might think I want to use that to my advantage. All by all I kept going, and finished a game I’m happy with.

What went right?

• I got the idea rather quick
• I didn’t get any super big bugs that annoyed me for hours (though I think there still is one in the game.

What went wrong?

• I still suck at programming, the code was a big mess.
• I wasted a lot of time on Twitter and xChat, I always ended my livestream quickly as I felt it wasn’t working. I’m going to try to focus on the game only next time.
• Trying to come up with acts. I might have been able to make a 4th act, had I worked harder, but I wouldn’t know what to do as 4th act. There aren’t many famous plays besides Romeo & Juliet and Waiting for Godot. Like, maybe Hamlet. But there isn’t a particular famous scene in Hamlet.

In the end

With a bad theme, and a concept that is similar to an old one (of mine), I wasn’t enjoying this Ludum Dare as much as the other LDs, but still had quite some fun.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the game!