Our game: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=22050

What Went Wrong:
– We started with 3 people and good ideas, but the ideas proved to ambitious and 1 person quit, so we only really started after about half the time had already passed.

– A lot of people thought our game was too hard. We can both beat it easily, along with a few other people, but most people struggled with it.

– The game is pretty short, which is partly why we wanted to make it so challenging. We didn’t end up with enough time to make the entire game that we had planned, so we had to settle for limiting the game to one area, instead of implementing a whole story with multiple areas.

– We didn’t have time to make custom audio. The sound effects actually turned out pretty well (we didn’t make them ourselves), but there was no music. For our game from the last competition we had time to make an entire custom soundtrack with multiple tracks. Here is our last game if you’re interested:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=22050

What Went Well:

– The game is pretty well polished. Despite not being able to complete our entire idea, when we realized that we wouldn’t have time to add much more, we dedicated the last few hours to polishing what we already had.

– The mood turned out very well. We added flickering lights and eerie sound effects that really contributed to the creepy mood of the game. People have said our game is scary, and we’re glad to have been able to achieve that with simple looking enemies (shadows) and without adding any gore.

– Despite many people thinking it was too hard, we think the game mechanics themselves were actually pretty innovative. Many people did games with the idea of pressing a button to go into another world, but our game has a bar that shows how far into the other world you are and if it fills up you lose. This, along with the flashlight mechanic that drives the shadows away, makes for very interesting and unique game-play.

– There is a Nick Cage Easter egg somewhere in the game.

The Future

We had a good idea for this game and it turned well, but we would like to release a post-compo version sometime in the future. This would include many more areas and possibly some of the story that we didn’t add. The difficulty level would also be changed. Many people thought that the flashlight didn’t do much to stop the shadows even though it actually slows them down considerably. Therefore, we’ll try to make it FEEL as if the flashlight does more and possibly make it actually do a little more. With a bigger game we could also have more progressive difficulty, so that people would get used to using the flashlight in easy areas before it got to difficult. We’re also planning to add many other features like lit-up areas that would act as safe-zones and a lantern with limited uses that would drive away shadows if you are surrounded.

Praise the Sun!

Tags: LD30, post mortem postmortem, post-mortem