The new site design doesn't seem to work well with lot's of text, so I'm gonna keep things brief!

What went well :smile:

1. Using a familiar engine :wrench:

I used Stencyl.com, which I used for most my 2D LDjam games so far. The scripting/coding is really easy & it allows to export the game to different platforms.

2. Combining photos with 2D drawings :camera:

I experimented with this concept before. It's a style not done so much recently and can be great to add something magical to a daily scene.

3. Taking my time with the concept :watch:

I spent almost all of the first day on the concept.
Here is one of my original concept artworks:
In this phase, I was able to use creative techniques I learned recently, such as the Clustering-method.

4. Taking breaks :shower:

This was probably the LDjam I spent the fewest hours on, next to my 4.8 hours entry one time.
I was surprised I still got a lot done, despite losing a lot of time to conception, resting and traveling.
All the resting helped me to have more energy and focus to tackle things.

What went wrong :neutral_face:

1. Working while sick :sneezing_face:

I had a pretty bad cold while I was working. This took away a lot of time and energy.

2. Traveling to team members :steam_locomotive:

I lost ~5 hours traveling to team members recording music & sound. Maybe next time jamming in the same room is quicker.

3. Using random numbers in game design :interrobang:

Seeds and branches spawn at a random time with random chance. This makes the game really hard to balance & player experience seems to differ a lot.

Summary

All in all I really enjoyed this Ludum Dare! The two monsters I created during the weekend grew very close to my heart and I can imagine doing something with them again. If you haven't yet, you can click this link to play the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/our-little-island