Greetings all.  This is a postmortem for my first LD entry, the game I Should Go Back.

Linky:   http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=842

It’s a really weird puzzle/adventure game where you make a choice to not die at the time you were supposed to.  Why?  Beat the game to find out. (Hint: It has to do with the theme.)

THE GOOD

Graphics – I was able to make simplistic, retro-style graphics without spending too much time or generating much stress.  I might not have been pushing any artistic boundaries, but everything flowed together pretty well visually, and I ended up making more art than I thought I would.  I especially like the main character sprite.

Music – Again, this was something that I spent very little time on, but which gave me a pretty large payoff.   I was simply able to record myself improvising on my parents’ piano.  I do not expect my game to do well in any category, for reasons I will get to in a second, but if it had one area where it had a chance of success, it would probably be audio.

Everything worked – I was scared to make an adventure/puzzle game, especially since all my projects before now had been platformers, but everything came together into a functional game with a high amount of content and five different endings.

I volunteered at a homeless shelter during the 48 hours of the competition – That’s pretty cool, right?

THE BAD

The Puzzles – Unfortunately, the main core of this game, which was ten distinct number puzzles, was wildly inconsistent in its difficulty.  I knew I wanted ten puzzles because of how well it fit with using the numbers 0 to 9, but I simply could not come up with enough good ones.  Some are too easy, some are too difficult, and some are simply uninteresting.  The high difficulty of the puzzles combined with the long introduction cutscenes makes the game very inaccessible, which is exactly the opposite of what I want for a game to be noticed and played by many people.

The Plot/Mood – I set out trying to make a really deep, interesting game that explored the notion of loneliness and how far people are willing to go to avoid it.  Unfortunately, everything seems really deep when you are sleep-deprived, and looking back I can see the game for what it really is:  ARTFAG.  The game just seems kinda weird, preachy, and very, very serious.  In addition, the jokes that made me crack up as I was implementing them now simply seem out of touch with the serious mood of the game.

THE UGLY

Fun – The game is just not fun at all.  I took mostly uninteresting puzzles, combined them with a forgettable plot and forgettable characters, and had very little area to explore.  Only a very small portion of the game is spent actually solving puzzles (compared to talking and watching cutscenes), and that should just not be the case for such a short game.

And finally, most importantly:  THIS WAS A BLAST.  I am DEFINITELY participating in the next competition, and maybe bringing some friends along as well (people to keep me grounded and tell me my ideas are stupid, or else I’ll end up with another game like this).  Thanks for reading and best of luck in the voting period!