Hey everyone, it’s Brandon from Shatter Point Studios.

I keep seeing people post these to discuss their game and overall Ludum Dare experience, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to talk a little bit about ours.

What went wrong:

• The theme: Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with Ancient Technology as a theme, but it wasn’t something any of us found particularly appealing, and we had a lot of trouble forming ideas. Blame our lack of imagination for this one.
• Trying too hard: The first concept we came up with that we really all jumped on sounded really great, but once we started putting it together, we realized we had made the mistake of being overly ambitious (again!!), and also were working on something we just weren’t that interested in, just to be able to say we were making something. This was a costly mistake, in terms of time and morale.
• Junk food: This was a rookie mistake. We’re not as young as we once were, so stocking up on junk food and staying up all night on Friday did not make for a pleasant Saturday morning…

What went right:

• Keep it simple, stupid: When we finally did get our s**t together, it was because we agreed to make something stupid and simple: an endless runner. Once we got the basic mechanics working (which didn’t take long), we started thinking about what we could do to make things more interesting… Which leads me to my next point.
• Make something personal: All of at Shatter Point grew up through the 90’s (except those of us that still haven’t really grown up, but whatever), with game consoles that by today’s standards could be considered “ancient technology”. We thought back to our experiences playing the original Gameboy, and how so often it felt like losing was inevitable, thanks to those damn batteries… So why not attempt to replicate that? Focus on selling an experience, rather than “fun”.
• What a twist! While this may not be something that worked in everyone’s opinion, I personally really enjoyed promoting the “game-within-a-game”, to surprise everyone with a Gameboy (childhood?) simulator. So take that, everyone!
• So what did we learn? Keeping it simple is a must, at least for us. Our team works better when we focus on basic mechanics first, rather than trying to create something huge based on an ambiguous “ancient technology”. Next time, we’re going to approach the timeline a little differently. Maybe instead of all night Friday, we’ll brainstorm for a few hours, then do 12 hours on Saturday, and 12 hours Sunday, then polish on Monday (and maybe we’ll eat slightly healthier). Also, we’re gonna hope for a theme that we don’t hate. But whatever.

Anyway, you can play our game Wheel Warrior by clicking here, or on any one of these other fine words. Enjoy!