Play and rate

Tinyville Confidential is my submission for LD 23. It’s supposed to be a puzzle game in which you have to optimize the arrangements of houses in this small town, but with the dynamic element that the residents keep changing who they want and don’t want to live next to. Somehow this game ended up both less finished and less fun than my LD 22 game, even though I had more time to work on it. Here’s what I think went wrong, and what I learned.

Probably my biggest mistake was trying to make a complicated game (to create, not to play.) Ludum Dare is a good chance to try weird games, but only if you can actually finish them in time. For my next LD I’m going to try my hardest to pick a super-simple concept so that I can submit a complete game in 48 hours, instead of an incomplete game in 72!

I also spent a long time on the wrong things. I wasted a lot of time trying to make a complicated method for the people to walk around town, but choosing a direction randomly ended up working fine. The graphics also sucked up too much of my time, and I didn’t even get a chance to add flowers and other scenery. Instead of making each element look as good as possible, I should have made them all look pretty good and moved on.

I really learned a lesson about getting enough sleep. I stayed up most of Saturday night, since I wanted those extra 6 hours for my game. This might be a viable strategy for something that’s due in the morning, but the result in this case was that I spent all Sunday sleepy and grumpy, which made working on my game seem more like a chore than fun. So, I’m definitely getting enough sleep next during the next LD!

What went right? Well, watching the people in the game interact and reading the newspaper is pretty fun! If I do have a chance to refine the puzzle aspect (maybe give unlimited time for the puzzle part, and make it more clear where there are conflicts) and add multiple levels, etc, I think this could be a good game.