It’s my third time participating in Ludum Dare, and I got second overall! I’m ECSTATIC! Thanks so much everyone who played and rated my game, your kind comments mean a lot. ^^

Clockwork Cat has 40,000 views on Newgrounds, and a bunch more views and comments on a bunch of sites that rehosted it. I never would have thought the game would become so popular. Watching videos of people playing the game and hearing their reactions was heart-melting. And it was great playing other people’s amazing games too. Thank you guys so much for your support, I’ll definitely be back next time!

What went right:

Using tools I’m familiar with – I was already very familiar with AS3 and FlashPunk, which really helped me work quickly. I’ve also programmed tile-based collisions before many times before, so a pretty big chunk of the code I wrote was very familiar to me. I had also worked with Ogmo Editor before. And also Paint.NET and FlashDevelop on that note. I did have to learn the basics of Linux MultiMedia Studio very quickly at the end to make the music, but fortunately that went really smoothly.

Picking a style I’m confident with – I’ve made many small games in the past, and almost all of them have been pixel-art-style 2D platformers. I stuck with what I know and love. I do have ideas for future games that aren’t 2D platformers, so that will help me branch out and hopefully be refreshing.

Great working environment – I feel this is worth noting. I’m staying at my parent’s house over the summer, and everything was quiet and relaxed, so I had nothing to worry about except working on the game.

What could have been better:

Level length, mabye – I made the level really short because I couldn’t think up any interesting puzzles without having to introduce more gameplay elements, and didn’t want to put in any filler to drag the game out. Originally I had planned for a bunch more elements, like picking up and moving gears to connect certain machines, but I ran out of time and decided to keep it simple. But I think the game could stand to be a bit longer.

Jumping leeway, mute button – The blocks have 16×16 px hitboxes, but the graphics are a bit wider than that. This resulted in players jumping when they still looked like they were standing on the edge of a block, but had just fallen off. I played the game so much that I must have gotten used to it. Adding in a bit of leeway would have been nice. Also, I didn’t think to include a mute button. Things to do next time!

Thanks for all the love! <3

P.S. I tried to draw the cat rocking out on the wrench like a guitar, but I couldn’t get it just right.