What went well
Except for some flixel hiccups the coding went very smoothly. Granted, this kind of game isn’t really rocket science.
Art was 80% done in the first hour but the good ole’ 80/20 rule applied big time. Spent way too long animating the characters. This is partly due to that it’s the first time I animated in this top-down perspective.
I am pleased with the end result.
What went worse
My initial idea didn’t work at all. It just wasn’t fun and didn’t convey the feeling I was going for.
So at the end of day 1 I kinda paniced, scrambling for ideas. I think my mind got a bit locked in due to the fact that I had put so much time in the art and basic gameplay. I wasn’t ready to ditch the multiple characters and mechanics. Maybe if I had prototyped using red and blue boxes this wouldn’t have happened…

In the end I turned it around and figured it out. If I had more time I could have put more stuff into the world that told the story and guided the player a bit more. I havn’t user tested this at all, I’m pretty sure that players will give up due to lack of clues.
I should have implemented a simple checkpoint system, playing the same parts over and over again in a game that already has quite a bit of backtracking is not fun at all.

Lessons learned
The combat in the final version is not super awesome but it’s a lot better than it was in the beginning. The turning point was really when I added the little particle effect. It made you feel the impact a lot more. Thinking about it now, I really should have added the same sort of thing when the player got hurt. Deaths kinda feel unfair and random, stronger feedback to when you get hurt would have made this better.
Next time I will try to NOT start with the art until I have a solid grasp on an idea and have basic prototypes. Having someone to bounce ideas off would have helped greatly.

Conclusion
After a weekend of almost non stop solitary game development I’m surprised how eager I am to get started on the next project.
While this was my first Ludum Dare, I have been making games for a while now and I can’t say that I’m getting tired of it in the least.

I love making games.

/Hannes