I’ve been a big fan of Ludum Dare for a few years, but this is only my 2nd time entering.  Here’s what I ended up with:

Play/Rate it

What went right:

• The Tool – I used Construct2, just like my first entry.  Both times, I considered using GameMaker/GML, but I wanted an easy way to post to the web, and more so, Construct2 lets you rapidly produce something that’s playable.
• The Story – I thought the “you are the villain” theme could really make an interesting story arc in the game.  I spent a good amount of time the first day just thinking of how to implement the theme into the story.  I’m happy with how it turned out.
• The Music – With only about 45 minutes left, I finally turned my attention to sounds/music.  There wasn’t enough time for me to create anything that wouldn’t have been boring or repetitive, so I turned to the Wolfram Tones to generate some background music for me.  Out of the 60 or so tracks I listened to, I had found 3 that I thought would add to the ambiance of the game.
• The Gameplay – It ended up being a simplified zelda dungeon.  You acquire 4 powers along the way, and use them to open doors to get farther into the dungeon.  The powers were fun to create, and worked reasonably well.  Unfortunately, there were also a number of problems with the gameplay (see what went wrong).
• The game felt complete – By “complete”, I  mean there is a definitive beginning and end, assuming you could make it to the end (see “bugs”).

What went wrong:

• I tried to do WAY too much – I chose a relatively complex game to make in 48 hours.  A number of  gameplay aspects suffered to have something complete by the deadline.  Also, virtually nothing felt polished, and there are a number of bugs.  Fortunately, there was only 1 bug that stopped the player from finishing the game, and that’s been fixed.
• The text speed – There are a few “cut scenes” in the game where all controls are suspended to show dialog important to the controls or story.  This wouldn’t be so bad, but I made this dialog unskippable, which left the player frustrated, having to wait for the dialog to finish before they could resume playing.  I had planned to add the ability to move through the dialog via a keyboard button, but ran out of time.
• Lack of planning – I had a conceptual idea, and just went with it, making many things up as I went along.  This ended up being a very poor choice.  If I had planned things out a bit more in the beginning, I would have had more time in the end to polish the game.

For next time:

• Plan as much as possible before creating.
• Start with a simple gameplay mechanic, and expand if there is time.
• Wrap it up with a definitive beginning and end.

See you all in LD26.