In lieu of a full Post Mortem, which I definitely want to put together later, here's some thoughts on the visual design from our LD44 game, Signal. (Also, if you'd like to play it, you can do so right here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/signal)

The game features an Earth abandoned by most humans, where Robots and AI Systems inherited the world they left behind. And in this new robot society, some of the robots have run amok and need to be disabled and repaired! Since we didn't have much time left for dedicated story-writing, I wanted to do what I could to convey some of these setting ideas through the visuals.

For one, I wanted to make NPC robots be "normal" models of the enemy robots, with different monitor colors and expressions, to help convey the "buggy robots" problem. Since we also wanted enemies with different behaviors (walking, jumping, flying, chasing, stationary, and so on), I tried to design different models, to communicate a little bit of what they were all about! Dogs chase, rabbits hop, etc. Really enjoyed the challenge of figuring out their designs, and making them each look unique, but similar.

(P.S. I love all my chunky lads, but the expression on the croco-dog Chase Robot is perhaps my favorite)

The setting was an abandoned Earth inherited by machines, which was a big idea we really didn't get much time to play with... especially since we had bitten off a big challenge, in making a metroidvania in a weekend! We had a lot of design notes about the setting and story behind each zone planned, so I tried to at least keep the story in mind while designing some of the environment tiles too.

Each zone was designed to have it's own theme and core mechanics; a blend of tech and natural areas for an old ai-managed arboretum run wild, junk-heaps and shiny metal facilities around an abandoned factory, caves with ice from a faulty climate control system, and various bioengineered slimes run amok, etc.

I'd have loved more time to polish the aesthetics, and play around with the tiles as I worked before we started building levels with them... but we didn't really have the time to put off level design until the graphics were done. There were places where things were visually busy or visually samey, and I'd have loved to have some more time to fill out areas with details and variation too... but I was pretty happy with how everything came out, all in all.

If you've played Signal, I hope you enjoyed it, and it's visual design, too! And if you haven't and think you'd like to, feel free to head on over to our LD Page here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/signal