I decided to do a post mortem for my game Dead Land. If you haven’t played it you should definitely give it a go. Plus there’s MAC LINUX AND WINDOWS versions so you have no excuses!

THE GOOD

• Low poly graphics turned out extremely well and almost as easy as my usual pixel art.
• The characters were quite interesting.
• I have a base that I could use to make a longer game in the same style.
• The phasing mechanic worked well (eventually).
• The music changed nicely between worlds.
• The game was my most polished so far.
• There are Windows Mac and Linux versions.

THE BAD

• I wasted much of day one trying to create my own first person controller in unity because it was originally going to be more of a platformer. I settled with the basic unity one in the end and resigned to do a puzzle game.
• I also wasted much time on the first day trying to switch between two levels keeping the players velocity etc… but ended up just switching between two places in the same world.
• Unitys mouse look script is a pain to work with and I’m becoming increasingly aware that some people find the default sensitivity to be too high. I have to make an option screen for that in case of future use.
• I wasted time making my own font and used it for the instructions screen, it was hard to read so some people didn’t know quite what to do.
• Other problems with the font.
• music was slightly repetitive
• Puzzles were simple give character A item A , Give character B item B etc.. But I’m proud of what I managed. An inventory/ item combos would be cool and more items/ things to use items on. Also a few items that have no use to add an extra level of thought to the game too.
• There were no sound effects.
• The cursor displayed on screen at the same as a cross hair causing confusion over which one to use.
• You can solve a puzzle without hearing the problem. Groove man suggested: maybe let the player click through their request until you can give them the item.
• The name was poopy. 

IN CONCLUSION

I learned so much this time and one year on from my first ludum dare I’m only beginning to come to grips with time management and scope on ludum dare projects. In future I must improve my user interfaces and find someone to test it near the end to give me an idea what might be problematic for them. I hope I can participate again but by the looks of things this year is going to be pretty study filled (I hope) and the only hope I have is if the next one is during my Christmas holidays which based on the dates last year it has a good chance of being.

LUDUM DARE! I LOVE YOU ALL!!!