{"author_name":"Nuclear Napalm","cat":"LD #30","comments":[],"epoch":1409502660,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"26336","p_author":"Nuclear Napalm","p_authorkey":"38866","p_urlkey":"61763","p_title":"The Beginning \u2013 Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #30","p_event":"LD30","p_time":"1409502660","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"38866","us_name":"Nuclear Napalm","us_username":"nuclearnapalm","event_start":"1408665600","event_key":"24","event_name":"LD30"},"text":"

ORIGINAL BLOG-POST (with fancy quotes)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Greeting my dear friends! Nice to see you again. One week has passed after Ludum Dare 30 deadline. I had enough sleep, played a lot of (300 actually) LD’s entries and also I’ve got a lot of feedbacks about my game\u00a0“the Beginning”<\/a><\/strong>. I think it’s a good time to write a\u00a0postmortem and share some thoughts about competition. Here we go!<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

ATTENTION!<\/strong>
\n Following post contains spoilers!<\/strong>
\n PLAY THE GAME BEFORE READING!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Pre-conditions<\/h2>\n

First of all I would like to tell you about some circumstances\u00a0that preceded the competition. A couple weeks before LD weekend my boss told me that I will have a short business trip exactly the same weekend. I was pissed off. But then I checked flight tickets and realised that I will come back Saturday evening. So I would\u00a0have a couple hours on Saturday and whole Sunday to participate in competition.<\/p>\n

Another thing that should be mentioned is that I’m living in Shanghai and the competition started at 9am Saturday morning and deadline was at 9am Monday morning in my time-zone. This circumstance\u00a0gave me some advantage in my situation.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/h2>\n

Theme<\/h2>\n

So, Saturday 9am, theme has been announced and the competition officially has been started.<\/p>\n

Honestly, I don’t like the theme. I believe that there were some more original and more interesting themes, but… whatever. When I read the theme\u00a0first time\u00a0it was like “Oh, there will be a lot of games about literally connecting planets, controlling twins and swapping dimensions… boring<\/em>“. And after several hundreds of entries been played and watched I can say that I was right. Anyway, I had no choice. I started thinking about my\u00a0game and how I can stand out from\u00a0crowd.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/h2>\n

Idea and concept<\/h2>\n

I spend about an hour thinking about an idea. I rejected 4 ideas that came to my head and then I ended up with “the Beginning”. This is the game about baby who lives in 2 worlds at the same time – our world and a world inside his mother’s womb. These two worlds are obviously connected – mother can feel when baby moves and baby can hear and feel what happens in “outer” world.<\/p>\n

I decided it should be a \u00a0journey from the moment of conceiving to the moment of birth. My initial idea was to make 9 levels, each represents 1 month of life inside the womb. I also wanted to show how baby growth – appearance changes each level, the character obtains new abilities (eating, grabbing things, rotating, etc.). I made some short\u00a0research regarding a\u00a0process of growing inside the womb. After all this activities I was able to plot basic storyline and key-milestones.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/h2>\n

Art style &\u00a0mood<\/h2>\n

There are 2 main reasons why I picked minimalism as a visual style for my game:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I didn’t have enough\u00a0time to produce quality pixel-art.<\/li>\n
  2. I wanted to keep things abstract to maintain mystery about what happens in the game.<\/li>\n <\/ol>\n

    I really wanted to show process of growing but keep it as abstract as possible so player won’t be able to figure out who is the main character and where he is until the very end of the game. Since game supposed to contain only 9 levels I’ve made 9 “stages of growth” of main character:<\/p>\n

    \"the<\/p>\n

    To set up some tension I came with the idea that there won’t be any music. Player can hear only heartbeat (of main character’s mother) and each level it becomes louder and faster. Players who have managed to complete the game say that it’s really cool and contribute to the mood very well.<\/p>\n

    Speaking about mystery it worth to mention that it\u00a0became the best and the worst feature of the game at the same time. This is the game about story. About mysterious story. A lot of players mentioned that they really liked the mood of the game. Another feature that helps to set up mysterious mood is the dialog between a mother and a father of the main character. At the very beginning players don’t know who are these\u00a0MAN<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0WOMAN<\/em>, and why they’re watching him. Some player wrote in comments that he was convinced that he was playing some creature in lab.<\/p>\n

    So, players get hooked from the very beginning and its really cool. But to figure out what this game is about, to experience this “Wow!” moment and understand why it’s\u00a0about connected worlds players must complete the game… And this is the worst thing because\u00a0the game appeared to be so difficult and hard to complete for most of the players. I managed to fix it only in post-compo version of the game.<\/p>\n

    \n

    <\/h2>\n

    Post-compo<\/h2>\n

    In a first day after deadline some players complained about difficulty of the game. Levels are very long and there are no checkpoints. A first solution was to make a\u00a0walkthrough video<\/strong><\/a>. It was better than nothing, but still not enough. I started to think about simplified version of the game. I decided that making checkpoints logic from scratch would be time consuming so it was better to fix the existing levels without changing gameplay.<\/p>\n

    I started working on\u00a0this version Tuesday afternoon. I uploaded\u00a0simplified version<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Tuesday evening and it was\u00a0really\u00a0worth it. I’ve got a lot of positive feedbacks, because most of the players were able to complete\u00a0new simplified version.\u00a0Since that moment I could spend all my time playing other entries and working on promotion of my entry (twitter, twitch, postmortem, etc.).<\/p>\n

    \n

    <\/h2>\n

    What went right<\/h2>\n