I’ve made a slightly different post at my blog talking about this experience but I’ll present a more technical and less philosophical post mortem here.

How did it go? I don’t actually know. I seem to have blanked a large portion of my memory of those 48 hours. I made a game about mazes and pathfinding.

What didn’t work:

• Tweaking movement and fighting  while writing them from scratch. This was definitely too much time doing a lot of things I could have had done for me. Too much last minute thinking.
• Theme communication. I wished I had presented the 10 second mechanic better. I chalk this up to being a rookie. I coddle myself that way.
• Not making a browser game from the get go. It’s just a better delivery mechanism.
• Ambushes and sneaking. I really wanted cool ambushes and sneaking things to happen I just didn’t get there.

Here’s what did work:

• Feedback and rating the other games. I really learned a lot playing the other entries and getting feedback on my own entry. That’s not just pandering.
• Writing my own collisions and nav. This was time doing things I could have had done for me. But I was able to work the nav into the game mechanic in a way I wouldn’t have thought of if I were using it as a library.
• Processing. I played around with a few frameworks but Friday morning I realized I should stick with something I know at least this time. I kept things simple enough and I like Processing for playing around and so it worked for me.
• Processing.js – sort of. Processing has this capability to produce javascript and play in browser. It’s not seamless, I didn’t start out intending to stay compatible with it. But I was able to make it work (outside of the 48 hours though).
• Debugging. I was able to keep bug load low enough to power through at the end.