Overall I’m happy with how LD37 went! I made a virtual pet sim, What Have I Done? Here are some thoughts on the process.

What went well: Art

The graphics pipeline I used for LD37 was simple, outlined vector art in Inkscape, created in layers which are rasterized individually by a Python script and sent to Spine where they’re animated. I used a similar pipeline for my LD29 entry Hide-n-Stab, but this time there were a couple improvements: I made more (but judicious) use of gradients instead of all flat colors, and I utilized mesh deformation in Spine, which was added since LD29 and which I recently added support for in HaxePunk. This gave the animation a pseudo-3D quality that has received a lot of positive feedback. I think the main character being a small round blob really accented this effect.

Mixed bag: Scope

Throughout the whole thing I had in mind something that I could reasonably implement in two days (or in fact one day if I’d pushed myself more.) This was a benefit because I wasn’t rushing in new (probably buggy) features at the last minute as I was with LD29, and had no known bugs in the final version. I didn’t have to rush home from work Friday night (used that time to brainstorm), got plenty of sleep, ate good meals, and even fit in a trip to Ikea. I also wanted to keep the playtime to about 5 minutes or less and succeeded in that.

However, I probably erred on the side of being a bit too simple. One idea I had post-compo was a “play” button which launches a ball into the room for your pet to play with, fillings its happiness hearts. As it stands there is a bit of a sense of waiting between feedings.

Mixed bag: Planning

I started out with a specific plan in mind: art and graphics Friday night, gameplay Saturday, polish Sunday. In fact this was a terrible plan for a couple reasons. With 10 individual monster forms in the game, the graphics (and animation!) took up the bulk of my time, so knocking it out the first night would’ve been a fool’s errand. In fact, I came up with the idea for the spider-like animation on the last day and threw it in right before submitting. Beyond that, I found that my productivity was best when I allowed myself to flit between different topics: start to get a little burned out on graphics, put them down and start doing music instead. Get sick of that, put it away and start writing code. This seems like my optimal way to work, rather than trying to over-plan. So while the initial plan wasn’t good, the flexibility in scrapping it and doing what worked was.

What could’ve gone better: Clarity

I find that the gameplay is very clear if you’ve ever played with a Tamagotchi. Tamagotchi and its many knockoffs were a formative part of my own childhood, so this is where my own state of mind was. But if you’ve never seen a Tamagotchi, the connection between a yellow duck and flushing the toilet isn’t really obvious. Some tooltips for the buttons, and most of all (spoiler alert) a message when using the sword at the wrong time, would’ve helped more players see the point and make it through to the ending.

Conclusion

Compared to my LD27 entry there were mostly improvements:

• Graphics were improved, and more efficient to create
• Scope was better contained, resulting in many fewer bugs
• Gameplay may have been less clear for some, and there were fewer instructions