So, I have recovered from my first LD, during which I slept a total of 4 hours.  I am very proud to say that I finished my game, and although it needs some work on the player controls system, it is a relatively complete game.

My submission:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=35774

This contest was pretty important to me, as I’ve spent the last two years bouncing from project to project trying to find what fits best for me and my dev style.  Because of this, I had not completed a game yet.  Now I can finally say that I have, and one with story, audio, custom characters, a custom game-mechanic, and a lot more.  I’m still debating on whether I will persue releasing a finalized version of the game in the future, but for now I’m returning to my previous project with a lot more confidence.

I would have preferred a 24 hour recovery period before being expected to vote on games, but other than that it was a completely positive experience.  The community is friendly, the deadline provides a great challenge, and the reward at the finish line really cannot be compared to.  If life permits the time to commit, you can count me in for the next LD; whether I’ll fly solo again is still undecided.  I’ve met some great people in the indie dev community these last few days, and I may step outside my comfort zone for LD once again and team up with another dev or two.

In-so-far as advice to any newcomers to the challenge: get a good night’s sleep before the contest starts.  I pull all-nighters about once a week, so the lack of sleep (although still more than I am used to) wasn’t a huge factor for me… except at the end.  The thing that I did not prepare for was that I was working harder and faster the closer the deadline came.  I can honestly say that although I work crazy shifts constantly, I have never produced this amount of work in such a short period of time.   So, if this is your first battle with the unrelenting timer that sits atop the LD website, then I would suggest you show it respect.  When you’re planning what you’ll be working on the last 6 hours, if you’ve been cranking away with little sleep, you will not be in charge of all your faculties.  Save the simple stuff for the end.. the kind of stuff that you can do “in your sleep”; ‘cuz that’s exactly what you’ll be doing.

Thank you to staff at LD for the opportunity to compete, and to the the community here for being so awesome.  If you participated, whether you finished or not, I think we can all say that we walked away better game devs.  And all we had to do was give the community our time.  I can’t speak for everyone, but I got back what I put in ten-times over.