It has been a little more than two days that since the submission of my game NaMa Tek and I had enough time to contemplate about what went good, what went bad and what lessons I can derive from that.

The Good:

• Familiarity with Lua and LÖVE: At this point in time I have made quite number of games (or game like things) using LÖVE. I have solutions (both in the form libraries and as design patterns) for most of the basic issues that keeps you from making the actual game.
• Brainstorming and Design: Because my last two attempts at Ludum Dare did not result in a finished game, I decided to take more time for brainstorming and thinking about the game. In a previous compo I would probably have gone with some other idea. I really liked to do a Settlers like ant colony simulation game, but it’s needless to say that such a game is way out of scope for an 48 hour compo.
• The in game editor: Being able to quickly build and test levels is super important when time is of importance. For NaMa Tek the level format was simple enough to build a level editor in almost no time. Using a third party level editor (e.g. Tiled, GIMP) would have worked, too, but the ability to test levels instantly is priceless.
• Frequent updates: I forced myself to write a short post every time I took a break. This helped to monitor my own progress and made me think of what had to be done next.

The Bad:

• Time Management: Although the brainstorming and game design phase went pretty well, I did practically nothing for the first few hours. I eventually got myself together and did what I set out for the first day, but having more time would have helped spotting bugs. On the second day I spent too much time playing with the circuit editor instead of doing important things like graphics, sound and level design. Which brings me to the next point.
• Level Design: The difficulty curve of the game is far from being linear. The tutorial levels are relatively easy to solve, but the next levels are near impossible if you did not spent some time studying logic circuits and how to build higher level components like latches, adders and finite state machines.
• User Interface: The only thing I can say here is this “what is intuitive for you is not intuitive for the rest of the world”.

The Indifferent:

• Music and Sound: I would have liked to devote more time to this. I really enjoyed doing sound design last time (in fact this was one of the only things I was happy with in the end), so it’s a pity this didn’t work out this time. On the other hand, I got to add some simple (simple!) music, which adds a lot to the game. Making music is fun!
• Graphics: I am neither talented nor experienced at this front and I know it. That considered the game does not look that bad, but it could definitely look better. 😉
• Work environment: I had to work on a tiny 11.6” Laptop with no additional screen, keyboard or mouse. Compared to my usual setup this certainly was a downgrade, but turned out to be OK.

Lessons learned:

1. Spend more time planning stuff. Plan a lot of time for level design in particular.
2. Build an in game level editor for rapid testing.
3. Get more familiar with the non-programming side of things. In particular: Learn how to sprite and learn how to make music.

That’s about it. I would be delighted if you try and rate my game. You can get it here.