Hi.

This was my first Ludum Dare, and I dare (get it?) say it went fairly well!

I made Polygonal Expansion, a strange rhythm-based game pre-loaded with a single royalty free song that hardly manages to maintain tempo.

Anyway, I had so much fun coming up with an appealing concept while also figuring out how on Earth I was going to program that. I feel like this was a worthwhile experience, and will probably take part in the next one as well. Enough babbling, though. Let’s reflect.

I hated the Two button controls theme. It’s really more of a restriction than something to build off of. The first thing I did in my Post Jam Update was remove that restriction as far as I could. Growing, on the other hand, led to the conception of so many great games. Okay. Let’s continue.

Development

I came up with the concept within about half an hour of the theme announcement, and started working on the game that night. It was in working order, which is a foreign experience to me. After some sleep, I continued my work and had a full-blown engine on my hands that was — and is — more versatile and complex than anything I’ve made in the past. (Am I disappointed that some of my best programming came from 40-ish hours of work and sleep deprivation? No. Okay, maybe.) I honestly don’t know how I came up with it, but whatever. It works. Mostly.

Anyway, It was Sunday night by now, and I had school the next day. Instead of stressing myself out, I figured out how many hours I had and needed to finish up this game and submit it, then did the school thing. I got back from school, did all the things I knew I needed to do, and submitted. And got scared, as expected. The people who have played it so far seem to be enjoying it, barring a few things. I fixed a majority of them in the Post Jam Update. (Again? Really?)

The Good and the Bad

First, the good: It appears my inability to let my work fall below a threshold of quality has really helped my game stand out a little bit. I usually strive to at least make my games enjoyable to play, if nothing else. (Frankly, I can’t stand when games have awful controls or just don’t feel good to play.) I got everything I wanted to get done done in time for the jam, and ran into no real major issues at all.

The bad: Uhm… I lost some sleep? Honestly, this went surprisingly well for being my first strictly timed attempt at making a game. No real problems came up.

Finally, the Future

I feel like this game has some potential to be somewhat entertaining, but I am wary of the bias I have toward my own work. I will be waiting until after judging is over to continue with potentially developing this into a full project.

Until then, I can’t wait to see which games win what categories and if any of my top games so far will make it! Good luck and good work, everyone. It’s been so much fun playing ~1/28th of the games everyone made, and I can’t wait to play more. Truly inspiring stuff.

Happy Holidays, everybody.

-GogglesKitty <3 (Scandalous Twitter Link)