This was first LD experience. I have had many game ideas in the past, but save for some little games, such as a Breakout clone, in high school I made, I’ve always had trouble starting AND finishing games. I participated in LD in part hoping to actually finish something for once.  It was a mix of fun, interesting, nerve-wracking, why-isn’t-working. Here is what I learned from this:

What Went Wrong

• LD30 was held right before the new semester and classes started. I did not plan ahead for this as thoroughly as I should have. As a result, my post-submission porting and support/maintenance has been lacking. Time-management for this project in general was kind of bad. The fact that I indicated this post-mortem would come up soon after I posted the game, and am only now getting to it shows how bad time management for this game was. Another example would be…
• I wanted to do something different from what all the other participants were going to do was probably going do. So many of my initial ideas were scrapped. I eventually settled on…maneuvering a love letter though space. Wait, that doesn’t sound like my game? That’s because I scrapped the idea I settled on Saturday afternoon! Even after I already made a graphic for it. So “development” of UnThread didn’t technically start until the night of Day 1. Speaking of art…
• While my game did not have that many assets (and those assets are incredibly unpolished), I was still coding and doing vector images at the same time. I was incredibly concerned with “game feel” when I should have gotten the system down it was supporting first.

What Went Right

• Once I figured out and nigh completed the core of game (“unthreading, or unwrapping the dimensional thread holding the gates together”), the rest of development the next day was mostly a breeze.
• There were very few nasty bugs during development. And those bugs did not consume a huge chunk of development time.

Overall, I ended up enjoying the experience and will probably participate again.  I wish I supported the game better after I posted it. I got several comments about bugs and issues that I need to attempt to fix now. I am proud of my work (though in hindsight I would make it the game little easier/clearer what’s going on). Though, it probably won’t rank high compared to other participants’ great games. Finishing the game felt amazing, and I’m glad I participated. Now I have bugs to fix, awesome LD games to play, and studying to do.