Link to SlapR, if you wanna play and review it :)

Hey!

I know I said I'd do this post-mortem few days after the end of the Ludum Dare but I end up working on some other things, doing some reviews, etc... and thus I didn't quite have the time to do it.

But anyway, here it is! :)

1 - The Gameplay

For the first thing that went right, I guess it would be the gameplay I chose, I'm quite happy how it turned out.

At first when I saw the theme, I had ideas like small planets and so on, so I tried to skip all of those to go a bit more original, as Rami Ismail said:

Your first three ideas don't count

cf: https://youtu.be/6sqcFNjE2Gw?t=30m10s, I actually recommend you to watch the entire talk which is really great and he has many other helpful advices like the 4:44 rule.

Then I thought about including the theme into an idea I had earlier that week, so I started to design the main character, I was looking for a cute animal to design, and once I did the penguin, another idea came up to my mind that I decided to stick with, and that's how SlapR was born!

The idea I wanted to do at first is now a game I'm doing as a personnal project and that I hope I'll be able to release as a full game, I'm quite excited about it!

2 - The Art Style

Then, for the art style I'm not really an artist, I've never been into that.

But for quite some times I tried to go into it a bit more, to become a more complete game developer.

And by reading the feedback I had about it, I'm really happy that people like it, it gives me some confidence boost and I guess I'll try to become better with voxels!

3 - "The Game Feel"

It has been something I've working on lately, and this Ludum Dare has been the chance for me to try things I learned and experimented to give a better feeling to the players.

And I read about this many times in the reviews I had, like how the slap feels, which is like the only thing you have to do, and it seems what I tried to make it feel good turned out pretty well. I guess it's mostly thanks to the sound design and to the screenshake.

Two other talks that I would like to link here, because it helped me to give better "game feel" in my games, and I think many of you will know which I'm talking about, and for the others I hope they'll help you too:

• "Juice it or lose it" by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho: https://youtu.be/Fy0aCDmgnxg
• "The Art of Screenshake" by Jan Willem Nijman: https://youtu.be/AJdEqssNZ-U

1 - Animations

So I wanted to animate the penguins by using Mixamo, which I only used once and that was for my previous Ludum Dare, but I don't know why this time I couldn't make it to work. I spent quite some time trying to figure it out, but I prefered to stop, and to focus on some other things, like the "game feel".

I have since got better with rigging/animating in Blender, so for the next time, I'll get myself some time to do on my own proper animations even just basic, but to have at least a little something that makes the game even more alive.

2 - Physics

This is the second thing I had trouble with and noticed too late. With the scale I used to export my models, I should have change the gravity force at the start, but didn't know it yet.

And that's after setting up various things, like the icefield, the slap effects (ejection, force, etc...), that I noticed it, and by changing it I'd have to look at everything again and adjust all the values. So I prefered to change just few things to make it a little bit less bad and focus on other stuff.

For those of you who might be wondering how the icefield is done, it is thanks to a character joint.

In the end I'm quite happy with the result, and moreover by looking at the feedbacks that all of you left (thanks again for that <3).

It has been my second Ludum Dare, and I feel I did better than the previous one, so by the time the next one comes up, I'll improve my skills and try to do even better! :)

Thansk for reading! :)

Cheers everyone!