Hello people of the world,

Here’s my pseudo-postmortem of my Ludum Dare 30 experience. My game Black Box Bandit can be found here http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=34255

First things first, here’s my start screen art featuring Jack the Muffin Man as well as the Black Box Bandit.

Here’s what the game itself actually looks like. It’s a turn-based puzzle game that has been described as a sort of turn-based Pacman.

Now, for the postmortem itself, the questionaire format  provided to me by the great 43iscoding. Check his amazing game, Salvation, out here http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=35110.

Developer’s questionnaire

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1.  How many Ludum Dares you participated in so far? 

I participated in LD29 with my entry called Billguk the Invasion Logistics Professional as well as LD30 with Black Box Bandit.

2. How did you choose the name for your game? 

From the very start I wanted to create a game about moving through computer systems. Computer systems contain black boxes and bandits are cool. Put them together and you get the Black Box Bandit.

3. What was the inspiration?

Pacman,  roguelikes/hacklikes, dungeon crawlers

4. What was the hardest to make?

AI for the drones. This might surprise you considering that the drones move around almost completely randomly. If they can destroy you in one move, they will do so, otherwise they will move around like headless chickens. The reason why this was the hardest to make is because I iterated over a lot of different possibilities for the drones on paper (like shooting lasers that could kill other drones, following the player sometimes), never quite finding something that I liked 100% so I stuck the randomized movement you see in the submitted version of the game.

5. What was the easiest to make?

I’d say the sound effects and the music because people have said it’s one of the best parts of the game. Especially, they’ve liked the transition music and the randomly pitched drone movement sound. All together, using Bfxr and the great Bosca Ceoil and Unity, I was able throw it together in around an 1h or 2h max. It was easy for me, it took barely any time and people liked it a lot which is good for an LD.

6. What was the greatest decision you made?

The backstory with Jack the Muffin Man.

7. What was the dumbest decision you made?

The backstory with Jack the Muffin Man.

8. What was the craziest decision you made?

The backstory with Jack the Muffin Man.

9. What is your impression of this Ludum Dare?

I really enjoyed making my game. It’s nice to see people playing it and enjoying it. It’s my dream to eventually be doing game development full-time and Ludum Dare gives me hope that I can achieve my dreams.

I’m also really enjoying playing other peoples’s games and giving them, hopefully, helpful feedback.  Guiding newer developers (eg. by pointing out music making tools they can use or pointing them towards pixel art communities)  is also very rewarding to me.

10. Lessons to learn or lessons learned?

• Figure out basic game mechanics before touching any code or art or music  –  this helped me a lot, I think.
• Prepare yourself  – learn the tools you’ll be using beforehand
• Find playtesters – ask people to test your game because they’ll see things you won’t

11. Plans for future?

• Work on game development for one hour a day – it took several false starts to get this going.  Just like it did when I wanted to start exercising one hour a day but I got through it and for the past three years I’ve been staying fit. I hope I can do the same with game development.
• LD31 – I’m going to be doing LD31 and it’s gonna be awesome.
• DDJV – After I get my university degree in software engineering diploma in April 2015, I’ll be pursuing a sort of Masters in video games at the University of Sherbrooke.

Thanks for your time,

Bill