Ludum Dare 35 was the second one for me, as a ludum and as a game jam. The last time I joined forces as a part of DarkLight Team, but this time half of the team had a real-life problem and we were only two coders on the team. Then we decide to join the compo and try what can we do all alone. Neon Level Switcher was child.

What went well

The game is finished

From the first hour I decided to go to a simpler project that I could potentially finish in time. And it was a good idea, because I needed to switch to the jam competition to have 24 hours more to have a nicer game. But in the end, the game was completed, maybe not the best gameplay (see more later), but is playable, graphics and sound complete. I had a lot of ideas, lets take a look:

• Rhythm game with shape change mechanic
• Local Multiplayer game with shape change mechanic (rock, paper scissors maybe?)
• Plattformer with a “shape” protagonist that needs to change to beat situations
• Pong like game where you can change your shape to change the ball direction
• Turn based game, every turn you can change your shape to define speed, like Formula D, the more sides, the more speed
• The enemies change shape every time you shoot them
• The side count matters
• Physics based mechanics, playing with the shape you “shoot”
• You can change your shape to hide from enemies
• Worms like game where the player can “paint” their bullet to adapt to the terrain
• Wall of death game, you need to change your shape to fit in the wall that’s coming
• The shape of the scenario changes, move wisely to not die
• Finding the most relaxing “shape” in the sofa

I wrote down every idea I had, no matter how hard or crazy it seemed to me, because some times an impossible idea leads to another one and luckily, it could be THE IDEA. I would love to do a rhythm game (I was very involved in the machine dance scene in Spain), but it will be very hard to do when you don’t have any idea of sound programming. Others involved too many mechanics to code them all alone and in the end, the winner was due to the fact the last game in the ludum dare used Tiled levels and it would be easier to me to develop something. I loved to see some of the ideas appeared as submissions :D.

I did the graphics

I love to draw, but loving something does not means that you will be able to do it correctly. The major fear I had when we decided to go solo were the graphics. They may seem simple, but it was a nightmare for me to generate such a simple tileset. In the end, going simple was the best option, sacrificing a “theme” behind the game and hoping you will not need to know why you are a rotating rhombus that moves through blue levels.

My main inspiration was Hexagon, I think it’s a great title graphic wise. But something I learned is that making something look simple implies a lot of work.

It was relaxing

Too many people tie a game jam to an stressful situation. I think is a great error. You are here to learn, to have fun, to go creating with boundaries. But you don’t really need to crunch in a game jam. I want to highlight the “need” verb I’ve used, it’s OK to stress yourself if you want, maybe you want to test how much you can do in 48/72h. In my case, I wanted to finish without wasting resting time, and it was a success. Saturday night I decided to go to play the Doom beta and leaving the Compo even when I had 3 more hours to finish the game. As a result, it was very fun to me, even when the engine failed to deploy the game with 1 hour left to do it.

Tags: ld35 Postmortem, post-mortem, postmortem