{"author_name":"Leebo86","cat":"LD #26","comments":[],"epoch":1367426400,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"42867","p_author":"Leebo86","p_authorkey":"13975","p_urlkey":"78502","p_title":"A brief postmortem for Mix","p_cat":"LD #26","p_event":"LD26","p_time":"1367426400","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"13975","us_name":"Leebo86","us_username":"leebo86","event_start":"1366934400","event_key":"16","event_name":"LD26"},"text":"<p>Just wanted to take some time to think about how my second Ludum Dare game came out.<\/p>\n <p><strong>What went right<br \/>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Playable build very early: The game was playable with almost all features by about noon on Saturday. Some pesky things took until Sunday to add, but this gave me a lot of time to playtest the game and make little tweaks to the flow.<\/li>\n <li>Simple controls: I like mouse-only controls to begin with, but the theme of minimalism solidified my desire to keep the controls simple. This in turn kept the game&#8217;s focus in check and prevented it from expanding beyond the 48 hour scope.<\/li>\n <li>Preparation helps: I devoted Wednesday and Thursday of that week to making a small game with the tools I planned to use in the compo. Having confidence that everything was working and ready for use took some of the usual stress away.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What went wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Getting sick: I woke up on Sunday with a bad cold. I stopped working because of it at about 1:30 in the afternoon and went back to bed. Thanks to some of the stuff that went right, this meant the game still turned out okay, since I was already on a good start. But it robbed me of a good amount of polish and playtesting time.<\/li>\n <li>Bugs: The game has several bugs with the drag and drop mechanics that I couldn&#8217;t iron out in time. They don&#8217;t render the game unplayable, but they can be really annoying when you are in the middle of a heated play session.<\/li>\n <li>No music: Music was one of those things I decided to leave until Sunday. Oh well. I was in no state to come up with anything that would have helped the game rather than hurt it.<\/li>\n <li>Color blindness unfriendly: I forgot to check if the game was color blindness friendly before submitting. It&#8217;s probably not. Can&#8217;t forget to do this when color is a mechanic!<\/li>\n <li>The name?: I have&#8230; ahem&#8230; &#8220;mixed&#8221; feelings about the name. It&#8217;s short. Minimal. It also does describe the mechanics. But I can&#8217;t shake this feeling that it&#8217;s not a good name, for whatever reason.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Overall, I think the weekend was a success, and I&#8217;m proud of the game I made. I&#8217;m disappointed that the amount of time I had was cut short, but this just gives me something to look forward to next time.<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-26\/?action=preview&amp;uid=13975\">Play and rate Mix<\/a> if you are so inclined <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"May 1st, 2013 11:40 am","title":"A brief postmortem for Mix"}