The Intro

My first Ludum Dare – then suddenly my first Ludum Jam. Let’s be honest – this didn’t work out, but the end result was worthwhile, nonetheless. I’ve done a few jams before, but I’m basically still a baby programmer – still a lot to learn.

The Good

* Art – This came together fairly well and the submitted experience looks rather nice (folks other than me like it too!). Palette and colour temperature worked, lighting was fairly successful. I’m very happy with the combo of pixel art and PS1-level polygon modelling – I think this’ll be worth pursuing in the future.

* Particles – Shuriken, I could marry you. The others will say you should be filed under Art, but what do they know? You’re special. You have only to smile and suddenly there is Animation and atmosphere. *sigh*

* Programming – Again, nae bodder. No real programming challenges, but some good practice. Lots of animation-by-way-of-code, which is a fast way to give a scene a nice sense of life.

* Ludum Dares! Ludum Jams in disguise! – I’d given up after the first 48 hours, then read somebody’s post where they mentioned that they were switching to Ludum Jam rules. And suddenly I could see – THERE WAS TIME! Glorious, bounteous, forgiving gulfs of time!

All of which makes…

The Bad

…all the more bitter.

* Inspiration – Read the theme and thought oh, that’s fun, that reminds me of the Lars Von Triers movie ‘The Five Obstructions’, I wonder if I can make a game based around the first obstruction? No, that’s a mad idea. I’ll sleep on it and have millions of better ideas tomorrow.

Except I didn’t.

Normally I have hundreds of ideas for jams and this theme – Ten Seconds – was an especially good one! But – NOTHING. All I could think of was trying to build a multi-camera, multi-character adventure game where the player would have to layer and stack character interactions as control cycled between characters on a 3.3333333 second interval.

But, Rev, that’s a CRAZY idea for a gamejam!, you exclaim. What about the scope?

* Scope – And you’re right. It makes me angry that I’ve fallen for this again. Approaching Ten was clearly a two-artist/programmer man job. And I knew this going in. But damned if I could think of any other worthwhile ideas (at the start. Natch half-way-in, I could think of hundreds). Rrrrg.

* Design – So I didn’t even really like this idea and I was always trying to think of a way out of the problem… Which distracted me on design, which meant I lost time each day to just sitting down with a notepad and scribbling. That said, eventually I came up with a very slight story (GAH a story-led game for a gamejam, bad idea, bad idea) which I was reasonably happy with. By this time, things were pretty much doomed – I’d spent far too much time dawdling around with the art and fiddly little details and I was unlikely to get the gameplay in – hence the published version of Approaching Ten.

The Conclusion

The lessons learned here are: 1) BRAINSTORM HARDER at the start and only start on a game idea you’re really excited about.  2) If you have to go with an adventure game, don’t go to the computer until you have your story and puzzle design. 3) This art style is promising. 4) SCOPE HARDER.

…Still. Can’t wait for the next one. =)

Yours,

–Rev