I missed the deadline by a wide margin. If I didn’t have to work today, I would be making my entry entry-able.

Postmortem: What went right:

• Timezones: Being UCT+2 is pretty cool, but I would say that UCT-1 would be best. It means that the theme comes in around midnight, you can get a full night’s sleep while your unconscious  mind is working on ideas, and then still get two days (8am – 12pm) to work on the entry.
• Paid attention during voting: Especially during the final round, listening to the chatter on IRC gives you insight into what the theme is likely to be. Although my favorite didn’t win (Vote Alchemy in LD #24!), I still had a couple proto-ideas for the top contenders

What went wrong:

• No actual planning: I didn’t actually sit down with a pen and paper until 12 hours before the deadline. This was my fatal mistake. Simply jotting down what systems and objects I would need for the idea gave me a much better idea of the scope of the project; if I had done that on day 1, my time management would have been much improved.
• Library bug: I got bitten by a bug in Pygame. This shouldn’t have cost me more than an hour or two, but I tend to obsess about these things. Once I found the workaround, I should have just done it and got on with the project.
• Waited to long to get things *moving*: Nothing beats that moment when you start to get some actual movement and feedback from your game. Working on a game is one thing, seeing it in motion is something completely different. The morale boost it gives is astounding. Next time, I will get something up and running as soon as possible, instead of getting bogged down in the internals or producing art.