Well, my first comment is that it went well. This was my first LD, and to be honest it was as much about making a game as it was to discover whether I actually enjoyed that — that is, to work hard on a game.

I enjoyed it. There is a certain satisfaction in seeing the accomplished work (no matter how far it is from what we expected it to be at first, no matter what we had to scacrifice in order to get it delivered unto the audience ere the deadline) which I was lucky enough to experience and which I hope to experience many times again in the future.

Things that went well:

• When deciding to participate in LD, I had one goal in mind: finish a game, no matter what. That’s exactly what I did. I woke up at 3am (South Africa yay!) to look at the theme and start thinking about it. I had to decide what engine to use, and ended up choosing Twine precisely to be sure to finish my game (technical difficulties might have arisen with Phaser, given my relative inexperience in computer programming).
• By the end of the day I had written a big part of my game, or rather story, because it lacked any kind of real branching or player agency. My goal not being for the player to just click through masses of text, but actually be puzzled and perhaps try to understand what was at work, and what was questionned by the game. Given some of the comments I received, that goal is achieved.
• I made the good call ( I think) to scrap all the art that I drew Saturday morning, because it weakened any impression the game might have on the player. Though this meant throwing away a few precious hours of work, I am convinced the game would be ridiculous with it.

Things that could have gone better:

• Preparation: not enough sleep during the week, did not go shopping for food beforehand (though I have to admit that going for groceries at 7 in the morning while all my housemates are still passed out from too much partying gives one strange of empowerment).
• Ambition: Obviously, next time I must make a graphical game, not that a Twine game is not a real game, but simply because I have to get out of my comfort wone (writing). Get those sprites going!
• Player agency in the game: even though some people found it interestingm I wish I had had time to really give more possibilities for players to interact with the story, give more repercusions, more connection between the worlds…

Things I learned:

• About text games: just because it’s text does not mean it is easier, because to implement a new mechanic you have to write it in, which can be a problem if inspiration is not here.
• About games: for the first time I actually found myself realising that I had to think about how others would approach my work, and interact with it. This is totally new to me, and a great lesson learned.

And now, back to rating stuff!