Hello and welcome to the postmortem for my second LD entry, Worm War.

I live where LD starts at very early morning, and as many others have pointed out, that’s not a fortunate time to begin. I was quite satisfied when I saw what the theme was, and I started thinking about the concept of my game. I thought about existing games which can be definitely called minimal. Then I came up with snake, which was the main inspiration for Worm War.

I thought that addition of guns would spice up the gameplay and make the game a bit more original. Allowing the player to customize their snake with different guns and armor was the idea that almost immediately came to my mind.

At first, I wanted my game to mimic classic snake as closely as possible – it would essentially be snake with guns. Shortly after I realized that it could be too slow-paced to be fun to play. I recalled a snake spin-off I played on my phone, where player wasn’t restricted to making 90º turns and thought that it would make a better base for a shooter.

What went right:

• Concept. Some people have praised it in comments, and I’m satisfied with it as well.
• Tools. I picked tools I’m familiar with, though I really need to learn how to make better music.
• Following a plan. I aimed low, and I managed to include everything I planned at the beginning.
• Programming. At this point, I can easily expand the list of equipment available or change properties of spawned enemies.

What went wrong:

• Programming. The method I use to spawn enemies could be improved, as could be the AI (all or nearly all enemies seem to follow the same movement pattern now).
• Graphics. That’s the thing which didn’t improve from my last LD.
• Polish. In particular, the lack of background. People really complained about it.

Thanks for reading!