The game I made for this LD was called Friendship in a Post-Apocalyptic World and can be found here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=12107

I finished and uploaded the game last night at around 2:45 AM my time. In general working on it was a lot of fun and the whole process through which I came to the finished product was a very interesting one. I, first, started off wanting to make an “art game”, after playing a lot of the games in Newgrounds “art games” collection, with a original and simple story based around the role of friends and friendship in our lives and their importance. I brainstormed ideas and had a basic story and concept but I couldn’t decide on anything concrete. I felt as though everything I was coming up with wouldn’t work or wasn’t good enough. I realize now that next time I should disregard these doubts and just go ahead, do my best and make the game I want to.

So, I decided to try and keep the same theme of friendship (a theme that came about from an inside joke with my friends), as my own subtheme and try to come up with a new game. And so after brainstorming a few ideas and even drawing some art for them I finally settled on my current idea.  I tackled most of the art first as it was simple and then started coding. I coded most of Saturday night and Sunday, except for a short break I had to take to study. Despite, my hard work I didn’t finish the game in time for the compo so I instead brought my friend aboard to do the music and set out to finish the game for the jam.

What Went Right

• Art: I really liked the simple art I made for the game. As a non-artist I usually go for simple pixel art and this time the theme allowed me to try to make the game’s art as simple as possible while still keeping it understandable and nice-looking.
• Code: I’m a self-taught coder who has been coding for a little over a year now. My first game was for LD 22, which I made in python and pygame. I didn’t end up finishing the game in time but making the game taught me so much about coding games. For example, I learnt the hard way how to properly implement Vector math and trigonometry and I spent a large amount of my time learning that. But, now I’ve been coding for a while and I’m much more comfortable doing so and thus it wasn’t as big a challenge this time round. That doesn’t mean I didn’t learn anything new. Every time I participate in a jam I seem to do something new and learn something new. This was the first time I added a preloader to one of my games and so learning how to do that was very valuable.
• Music: I have a friend who makes music and is aspiring to be a professional producer and artist. He actually made the one song together in around ten minutes at around 5 hours from the deadline. I really love the song he made and he even tried tying it to the game and its theme. Although I wish he had more time to work on the song longer or make more.
• School and My friends: Because I ended up doing the jam I was able to take my laptop to school on Monday and get some of my friends to play test the game. Watching people play the game and getting feedback from them was an extremely fruitful experience. It helped me balance the game and make it much more fun. Without my friends play testing the game would’ve been an extremely different experience.

What Went Wrong

• Homework: Luckily for me this was one of the few LD weekends where I found myself completely free so naturally I joined. The one problem was that I had a physics Lab Report due on Sunday night. I put off doing it all Saturday and most of Sunday until I was forced, by the deadline, to stop working on the game and dedicate three hours to finishing the lab report, although I missed the deadline by around an hour, at least I was able to finish the lab report and the game. If it weren’t for my homework I might’ve been able to finish the game in time for the compo albeit without the awesome music and feedback from playtesting.
  
• Music: I never really thought about how I would end up doing the music, while I was still aiming to do the compo. I kept on thinking that I’ll think about it when I get to it. Obviously, I didn’t get to it in time for the compo and so I just had my good friend take care of the music. This was also problematic because he was travelling and thus spent most of Monday on an airplane. Although he did eventually find time to make a quick song.

So, I think I can conclude that I had a lot of fun making the game, I learnt a lot in the process and am looking forward to participating in another LD.