It’s been more than a week since Ludum Dare ended (at least the “making a game” part) and though I made a postmortem I’ve decided to do it again. Quick reminder, English is not my native language and I’m translating and adapting a text I previously wrote in Spanish for my personal blog.

This is an auto-review, I tried to be fair and honest.

First of all, I must say I’m not happy at all with my game, in fact I haven’t opened it since I finished. This is the kind of things you shouldn’t say about your project, you should be encouraging people to play it and give it a high rating instead of saying that you don’t really believe in your own game; the thing is that I care more about having fun and learning that I do about obtaining a better rating.
I’m very proud of participating on my first Ludum Dare and finishing in time, it was quite hard, but I feel like I didn’t accomplish my basic objectives.

I really like to ponder about game designing theory, I keep track of every speech Jonathan Blow and other people like him post on Youtube, I find them very inspiring and interesting, I also think they are a must-watch for developers because they try to make you think out of the box and create things that matter. I wanted to achieve something with my entry and I ended up with a couple of half-baked ideas glued together; I don’t know if I wasn’t ready, it was the pressure or what, it doesn’t really matter, but my idea and planning had many mistakes from the beginning.

When I try to analyze my own game what I do is breaking it into parts. The graphics are just acceptable (taking into account that the theme was minimalism), the music is unexisting and the only sound you hear is when you jump and when you discover a new block (which is kind of irritating after a while). So, what we have left are the gameplay/core mechanics and how you affect the player.

• The core mechanic is pretty simple. The stage is invisible and you have to discover it walking from one corner to the other. Ok, it’s a bit original, but nothing great. It’s a totally unfair system without any type of challenge. You are given two paths, you don’t know which is the right one, the one that looks shorter is probably going to be blocked, sometimes the developer will block the long path so you don’t always skip the short one; but that’s all, choose one randomly and if it doesn’t work go back and choose the other. That mechanic is OK for one level, it gets boring with many levels and it makes no sense to use it on a full game. This is the kind of things I wish I had realized before.
• In the game there is also a “being” who writes messages, in the beginning it was gonna be something that gave the player inspiring messages about life and tried to encourage the player, it turned itself into a jerk who messes with the player, I think that was a good decision. It’s kind of funny, makes a few jokes and hopefully made someone smile while playing the game. But then again it’s a half-baked idea of unclear purpose and glued to the rest of the game.

I’ve failed to communicate with the player and make the experience worthy, maybe because I wasn’t sure about what I wanted to express. My entry is kind of soulless and distanced from the original theme. I spent a lot of time trying to design new levels thinking that it was gonna fix it without realizing that it wasn’t the solution. Some friends told me that they wanted me to keep on developing the game and making new levels because they enjoyed the current version, but I don’t think I could, maybe I’m being a bit tough but I really think I’m just being realistic and honest.

The fact that I kind of hate my entry doesn’t mean I’m giving up, probably it’s the opposite, I’m more motivated to keep making games. I already started a new project, nothing big right now, I just have some basic graphics (I’m keeping the guy I designed for the compo) and some pages full of ideas, I’ll see where it takes me.

This is what I’m working on right now

My friends liked my entry, I’m really glad they had a good time with it because I worked hard but I want to make something I can be proud of. I won’t be participating on the next Ludum Dare ( exams ) but I won’t miss the one after that. I had a lot of fun participating and I think I learnt a few things. Thank everyone for this!

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Tags: postmortem