This was my 8th time participating in the Ludum Dare and I have to admit I love doing it! I really liked the theme this time around and locked in on an idea pretty quick. I had never made an rpg style game before but felt it was the best way for me to get my theme across. RPG’s and Strategy are my staple games I love to play so I tried to imitate the turn based battle style of the earlier final fantasy games. I got it done, for the most part but I digress, on with the Post-Mortem.

What Went Right:

1. Theme and Idea Connection. Like I said I loved the theme and had an awesome idea for it. The really cool thing about the theme was how open ended it was. There were so many ways to interpret it, which will make for some really interesting games. I went with a straight forward literal interpretation. Worlds which are connected by warp gates.

2. Pixel Art. I have to say, this is my best pixel art out of all the LD’s I’d done. I’m really astounded by how great I made everything. Now I might sound like I’m boasting but honestly I’m not, well maybe just a little ;). I’m no artist as is evident by my other games I’m just really proud of the job I did.

3. Sounds. Normally I spend a little over an hour getting just the right sounds for my game. This time though getting my sounds was quick and easy.

4. Battle Feedback HUD. Originally my battle HUD was either black or white, depending on which world you were in. I had jotted down that I wanted to put in some way for the player to know when they could attack and when they couldn’t. An hour before the deadline I decided to put in the battle feedback HUD. So now when you get into battle the players weapons with be green if you can attack and red if you cannot attack.

5. Knowing My Tools. Every LD game I’ve made has been made with Flash using the Flixel Framework. I had learned to use it back in 2011 and felt proficient enough with it by LD 22, or so I thought. But that was 3 years and 7 LD’s ago, a lot has changed as has my ability with Flixel. Earlier this year I started to learn Unity but do not feel I am ready to start creating games with it just yet. So I will stick with Flixel at least for one more LD but we will see. My art is made in Photoshop and I’ve been using it for several years now. If memory serves me correctly I started using version 5 back in the early 2000’s. I’ve used other programs but I always come back to Photoshop. I want to learn how to use Blender as it seem like a really cool program. Perhaps I will as I learn more and more about Unity.

What Went Wrong:

1. Pixel Art: Yes I know I put it down above, but let me explain why. While it was some of the best art I’ve made to date it took me entirely too long to make. Normally I spend Friday making all the art for my game. This time around not only did I spend all of Friday but most of Saturday morning too. To make matters worse, some of the art I made had to be remade on Sunday. All of this probably happened because of the…

2. Scope Of The Project. While I love the idea I came up with I do feel it was a little too big for an LD game. Days before the event I kept telling myself “the game needs to be small” and “I need to finish all the programming on Saturday”. Because of the scope of the game certain elements weren’t up to par. Which leads me to…

3. The Battle System. Oh what a clunky mess this was I really tried to mimic the Final Fantasy turn based combat. Its kinda there, which the exception that the boss attacks as your moving back. In my defense, it was the first time I tried implementing this type of system in a game. It looks so easy when I was playing Final Fantasy Now let’s talk about…

4. A Weak Story. It was really cliche and kinda hacked together. Besides not being an artist, I’m also not a story teller So it is what it is. HAHA! This would be the number one reason people lose interest in the game. Now what do all of these issues have in common, well I’ll tell you. Its me getting…

5. Flustered Before The LD Starts. It never failed. I vote for the themes I want, when the final round starts I jot down all the themes and try to come up with at least 3 different ideas for each theme, sometimes I can and sometimes I only get one or two idea. More often than not I can’t think of anything or the one idea I do get it really weak and I have a hard time understanding how I’m going to make it. To make matters worse, when the theme is announced I freeze up and my mind goes blank. I look over the ideas I came up with, if there are any and instantly hate them all I believe my problem stems from my lack of creativity and under used imagination. Another one of my problems is once I come up with an idea I get overwhelmed by the grand scope of what I need to do to complete the project, rather than taking it in small manageable chunks. I’m not much of a planner, but I’m really trying to learn to be one. as I feel it would greatly help me with my game development.

A little about the game:

I wanted to take some time here to kind of explain why I created the game in the style I did. I’m an old school gamer and I have a fondness for retro style games. My game Arcaena reflects some of the old school styles used in other games. The battle system, as I’ve said before, tries to imitate the turned based battle system of Final Fantasy. The movement on the maps is in the style of the original Wasteland game from 1988. Having read some of the comments I’ve gotten for this game and some of my previous entries I’m beginning to believe a lot of these concepts have no place in games today. Perhaps I need to rethink my approach to game development. Seems I have some thinking to do before the next LD.