What a ride.

This was my first Ludum Dare, I did the 48 hour competition, and WOW did it feel challenging. I am so glad I finally finished something from start to finish with all my own assets. I can truely call this MY game.

So it seems people are posting post mortems, so how about I throw some thoughts in.

What went well:

1. Audio – This is something I normally don’t do when I’m prototyping games, but I really should because on the grand scheme of things its something I only spent about an hour on it, and I think it made a world of difference.
2. Gore/Particles – Although this might have been a cheap trick, I really like how the level of gore and splashing particles made a difference to the fun factor of the game.
3. Pixel Art – I suck at graphics, and resorted to pixel art. Strangely, I had no complaints about this, and I actually think its one of my favorite aspects of the game.

What didn’t go well:

1. Controls – I easily spent 9+ hours on the rotation of the shark. A lot of it was rewriting the system 3 times. First, I adjusted the position directly, then I translated the positions, finally I ended up applying forces to a rigid body. In the first two cases, I was rotating the entire game object instead of just the art, so all my controls were backwards if the shark was going right or left. Even after all that work, it still felt it could feel better. Also, I feel the shark should be able to go diagonal.
2. Difficulty – Gaining health from munching on enemies instead of when killing them resulting in an overly simple game once the player understands the controls. There are a lot of different ways I can fix this, and have the hooks in place, but I simply ran out of time.

Closing thoughts:

Ludum Dare was a challenging blast and I am going to try to start to try to attend all of them. Thanks to all the people who have already commented on my game. I’m having a blast playing everyone’s entries. What a talented community!

If you want to play my game its over here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=35743

Also here is a time lapse of me making (including my music);