I feel I should share some thoughts, if only so I can read them some time in the future.

What went right:

• I came up with a game idea I really liked only about an hour into the competition. I was able to spend 95% of the time implementing/reworking that idea instead of trying to think of one from scratch.
• The level design and basic code and graphics were all finished halfway through. I was able to spend the rest of the time adding some polish, and doing the code that didn’t directly impact the gameplay, such as the ending scene. I wasn’t too rushed at the end.
• I made backups which alleviated a significant amount of frustration when I encountered a game-crashing bug. Gosh it’s annoying how Construct sometimes doesn’t tell you what caused the error!
• Being pretty experienced in Construct allowed me to glide through all the coding without having any serious problems. I pretty much knew exactly how to do everything from the get-go. There was no confusion with how to use the editor, etc.
• Real life didn’t get in the way! I was able to work the whole 2 days.
• No computer / internet problems.

What went wrong:

• Overall, Construct classic is a great program, but there are many small bugs, both in the editor and in the applications it exports. These caused small bits of frustration in development, but more importantly it prevented at least 1 person from being able to play the game due to a crash. When working in Java, I know that no matter what, the application is guaranteed to work everywhere if it works on my machine.
• I realized at the very end that some ambient music would have made the game feel a ton better to play. I just put off finding or making it because I knew it would be a tough job, and it just didn’t get done.
• There are a few bugs that I never discovered from playtesting, and I only found them when my friend told me. None are game-breaking, but they’re just kind of small annoyances.
• I procrastinated on the parts I didn’t want to do, such as making a title screen, screen transitions, ending cinematic, and saving progress. I ended up having to do them all in the last 7 hours, which was when I was the most rushed. I didn’t have much time to play through the whole game multiple times and find obscure bugs.
• I thought and thought, but wasn’t able to come up with a fitting title. I think this is one of the hardest things to do in making a game. No joke. I’ve had this problem on every single one of my projects.

Overall I’m very pleased because this is the first game I have finished ever that I am actually proud of and want people to play it and might even show it to my friends. Playing all the entries is so far very fun and pretty humbling.