Theme/idea: Ok, so I totally expected ‘Snowman’ to win and had a few ideas relating to that (mountain climbing, sled racing…). I struggled with ideas for the actual theme. So many games are already ‘one screen’, so I really admire devs who found clever innovations using this.

Anyway, I looked through the other final-round themes; ☃ + Death is Useful + Everything Falls Apart + You Are Not Supposed To Be Here + Chaos + You Can’t Stop, and combined them all!
The cinema overlay idea came on Day 2. Not super-original I know, but adds the theme again.

Day 1 summary:
Was a tough start, trying to get my ideas together. Prototyped the rope swinging and did a few graphics. Wrote almost no code, just used the Unity editor. Wasted time on a Unity line rendering issue. Very slow progress; thought about packing it in, but slept on it…

Day 2 summary:
Up early. Needed to be super-productive all day, and was! Got working on enemy code. Game seemed fun. No major coding headaches. Added the movie theatre theme, changed name to ‘Release the Yeti’. I knew by early afternoon that I could deliver the game. Uploaded it around 10pm.

Original sketch and finished game. Close enough.

What worked:
I’ve made a few Unity games, so fairly confident with it. No new tech to learn, aside from the physics joint stuff.
Day 2 was amazingly productive, felt good.
Rope physics seems to work well enough.
Scope was about right, more ambitious than my previous LD games, but didn’t cut anything major out.
Had time for some extra touches, like the intro scene, and crate escape scene.
Fairly happy with the graphics/style; didn’t spend ages on it, or become too annoyed with my drawing skills.

What didn’t:
After Day 1 the game seemed waaay off from anything complete. A little more progress would’ve kept me more positive.
Use of theme? I did kinda use the theme in 2 ways, but ideally I’d try something more innovative.
Audio is still a low priority, i.e. I’m just glad of a few noises from Sfxr, and a short music loop.
Could’ve done with some level progression and goals? (players pointed this out).
Controls aren’t perfect, partly due to physics.
As usual, should get more user feedback early on. So easy to miss this, but important!

Plans: I have a list of fixes and improvements based on feedback. Maybe will do a mobile version. Will replace all audio, I expect.

Tools used: Unity, Inkscape, Gimp, Audacity, Sfxr.

*** Check out Jupi Plays Indie Games: Ludum Dare 31 [Part 2]!! ***