One of the things that I love about these events is that you learn so much, even more so from your failures than your successes.

Here are some notes from making my entry The Ghosts You Left Me.

What went well:

• I managed to achieve my goals of good mood, visuals and immersion
• No problems with deployment or submission
• When I was working on the game, none of the time was wasted. My work rate was fairly normal. It wasn’t too rushed, until the end, but it was solid production.
• I had a lot of fun making things from scratch – particularly the audio. You don’t really give much thought to this when you make something normally, using external sources. Grab a texture from CGTextures, grab some audio from Freesound, etc. Making it yourself is an entirely different process and it’s so much more exciting! I had to wander around my house, listening to noises, moving things and scraping things to see if they could produce the noises I was looking for. It was so much fun, and so much more real. Creating things from scratch makes you gain a new level of respect for things that you’d otherwise take for granted.
• I was incredibly happy to have created something, ANYTHING. It’s sometimes hard to push myself to work on personal projects, but when I do make something I’m usually quite proud of “levelling up” that small amount more.

What went badly:

• I should have gotten feedback earlier. The first person to play my game was my brother, who I showed it to just after I had submitted it. Watching someone play your game very quickly allows you to see its downfalls. He couldn’t understand the message audio clearly, and didn’t realise he had to click on Locker 3. To be fair though I didn’t have much gameplay to test until near the end, but I definitely need to get someone to play it BEFORE I submit, next time
• Computer crashed twice and lost a bit of progress… something might have got messed around when I installed a wireless adapter… not a huge issue
• Started to lose motivation after ~6 hours or so. There was a LAN party going on and I wanted to go, so after a bit of stalling I did go. I think it was more that I wanted some social interaction during that weekend, I felt like such a reclusive hermit staying at home. Because I didn’t really have much to show at that point besides some models, I didn’t feel like I had achieved much yet so it almost made it feel like if I continued that the entire weekend, it would be a waste of a weekend. I needed to get out.
• Didn’t give much thought to gameplay until about 10-12 hours in out of the 17 total, so it ended up being very simple (which I expected going in)

Playing the entries/ratings:

• I am absolutely inspired by the amount of talent here, and the quality and originality of some entries – makes me want to try a lot harder next time!
• It’s really exciting to get feedback on my entry. What I’ve received so far is generally very positive and there’s some constructive feedback as well which I agree with. I find myself checking my entry page numerous times a day to look for new comments (notifications system plis!).

Why I liked Ludum Dare:

• I needed the deadline that Ludum Dare imposed. I hate pressure, but I’m one of the people who need it in order to get anything done, otherwise I’m too “cruisey” with doing things.
• I also was motivated by the competition and the excitement of other people around the world doing it at the same time
• Getting feedback from fellow developers can be so different from getting feedback from others who have less or no experience in game development. They are both very capable of giving feedback regarding what they see, the content, what is bad and what could be better. They can both be impressed, or disappointed. But the difference is that one has a better understanding and appreciation what goes into making it, and how difficult it is to create something under such a short time frame. It’s much the same in different aspects of life really. I value feedback from both groups very much, but it’s very refreshing to get feedback from people who *know*.

Next Ludum Dare:

• I am DEFINITELY going to enter if I’m free that weekend
• Focus on more of a balance of nice aesthetics and gameplay, as the gameplay was lacking in my first entry
• I’d like to try and get more innovative gameplay rather than something that everyone’s already seen
• A bit more of a plan up-front, and maybe schedule my estimated time allocations
• Actually think more about the theme when it’s announced or in final voting stages, instead of thinking of an idea beforehand and then trying to fit in with the theme – the most innovative entries I’ve seen are ones which have a lot to do with the theme and creatively used it
• I’ll probably still do it solo, and alone, but I think taking a 1-2 hour break every 5 hours or so is important to keep my motivation levels up
• Get people to play it BEFORE I submit

Next steps for my entry?
I would ideally like to continue it. As I mentioned and many people agreed with, it was just an intro to a longer game, and wasn’t really a full game in itself. There’s so much more that could be done, and so much more that I want to do with it. I guess we’ll have to see how it goes with the motivation and setting aside time for it

And that’s all for now! Very excited for the next LD, and also excited to see the results of this one. Well done to everyone who put in a submission and best of luck.

Tags: postmortem