Alright, having played some other games a little, I think I can write that thing somewhat menacingly called “post mortem”. For the reference, the game I made was Collision. The tools I used were GameMaker: Studio for general engine (along with earlier declared PARADIGMOSIS framework in progress thing), OpenMPT for soundtrack and Audacity for OGG conversion, SFXR for sound effects (I admit, it really *is* an awesome tool, especially in such short jams). It was for the 48 hours competition, but in the end I feel it ended up better than my earlier games for other 72-hours competitions.

What went right:

• first of all, I guess the preparations; I ended up using pretty much all features I made beforehand, one of them very much so, and I feel it really sped things up or allowed details that I probably couldn’t bother with otherwise; it seems the system I came up with works and is worth further development
• I decided not to bother with the interface too much, knowing that this beast takes too long to make compared to results (especially when time is much needed); instead, I focused on creating the core mechanics and ended up having them done by the end of the first day. The fact that these mechanics didn’t require elements like pop-up windows or anything similar helped a lot, too
• I managed to throw in some music (that people apparently like) and sounds, as well as their respective mute buttons; also, I even succeeded in making the twist with soundtrack changing, even though it kept desyncing for me (interestingly, no one else reported it so far; perhaps it’s something local? O.o”)
• I actually made a game that can be completed; sure, it’s very lacking and most areas are pretty empty, but still; I hope I made the ending screen rewarding enough ^^”

What went wrong:

• my sleeping patterns… u_u”
• game’s source code (as expected for quick application coding)
• wasted some time trying to get audio right
• didn’t add other characters to talk to, or maybe obstacles to avoid
• ran out of time to add proper abilities rather than barrier keys; though I didn’t really had high hopes about that
• possibly the game doesn’t explain things properly, though reports about that aren’t very often so far? O.o”

What I’ve learned:

• all ideas are equal, but some are more equal; and they might be faster to execution
• game development can be insanely quick indeed, especially with proper tools ^^”
• I really am a coder… I can’t do graphics nor music… I really am a coder… I can’t do graphics nor music…

Overall, it was quite fun participating in that compo, though I guess the next time I’ll prefer to participate in the Jam instead; I’m not overly fond of sharing my entire general codebase with everyone else, and 72 hours is still longer than 48. Plus, I don’t like coding the same functionality over and over again. ^^”

I’m curious about what the results will be… I guess I’ll need to wait quite a bit. Still, I probably will do some additional voting every now and then…
(on a side note, whoever came up with the coolness rating and it affecting the order of suggested games to play was a genius; it really seems to work!)

I guess that’s it. Need to work in fixing my sleeping patterns… probably won’t touch the development itself for a little while… ^^”