This will be my second time participating in the insanity that is Ludum Dare.  I was here for LD11 – Minimalist before.  Since people are posting a few thoughts about lessons learned or at least things to be cognizant of during the competition I felt I’d add my own as well:

My personal quest this time will be to leave a LOT more time to actually make the game ‘fun’.  I didn’t do very well on pacing last time around and while I was really happy with the art, style and environmental aspects of my ‘game’ it really fell short on play testing time and game play.

As a practical example of what I mean, most of the negative feedback my ‘final’ deadline entry received over the week of voting / rating I had already resolved on my own within hours of the submission deadline.  This of course couldn’t be uploaded as the final entry being past the close of competition.  Point being, given time to play it (which I honestly hadn’t really had a chance to do very much of) a lot of issues become quite obvious. If I had paced even a few more hours of actual playing time into the competition schedule I believe that my entry would have been a lot more fun to play for others.

That is what I will be keeping in my mind for LD13.  Make sure to play your own game or have thought out the game play as early as possible.  I don’t want to get bogged down in all the polish of art, style, look and feel and forget that a game should have a game in it and actually be fun to play.

Good luck everyone, I can’t wait to see all the entries!