This was my first time to participate in Ludum Dare and I’ve enjoyed it way more than I thought possible.

Firstly, the experience of making a game was in itself a lot more fun than I’d anticipated. I’ve only worked on games as a writer in the past so getting stuck into the coding and art as well was a daunting task. But I found it really satisfying to have complete control over the game’s direction, even if it quickly headed off on something of a tangent…

My first inspiration was the title (taken from the film ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’) and my  initial plan was to do something of a straight car-theft simulation with the player viewing the dashboard from inside the car and clicking on various elements to steal it. However, I was never entirely sold on this. For one thing, I just don’t like the idea of glamourising car-theft. For another thing, the idea of a ‘master car-thief’ is inherently ridiculous. So after I had a dream in which Nicolas Cage, reprising his role from the film just for me, jumped in through the sun-roof of a car, I knew what I had to do. The result was a much more whimsical and story-based game with a willful disregard for the realities of automotive crime:

Gone in 10 Seconds

I had no idea how it was going to be received but I’ve been really pleased with the feedback so far, especially concerning the dialogue. I’ve even had some nice comments about the C64 styled art. In all, very encouraging!

I’ve also found the process of rating other peoples’ games to be very useful. Just considering and verbalising what makes a game work (or not work)  for me as a player gives me a much clearer idea of what I should be thinking about when making my own games. I’m resolving from now on to give much fuller feedback in comments when I rate games, breaking down exactly what I did and didn’t like about the experience. Hopefully this will be useful for everyone involved.

Finally, a shout out to the game which has most impressed me so far: Bomb Disposer. This one blew me away (pun intended). It has great atmosphere and a really wonderful mechanic which makes the story an integral part of the game. I think that with a few extra gameplay elements and perhaps a more complex system for randomly generating sentences, it could be turned into an awesome full game along the same lines as ‘Papers, Please.’