Hey everyone,

This is my post-mortem for our Ludum Dare game this time around, Robo Phone Home! You can still play and rate it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/robo-phone-home
Also take a look at the post of @pastry-chef if you are curious about the game-design side of things :)

Like last time, I teamed up with @pastry-chef. This was our second Ludum Dare together and I do feel like our teamwork was again very smooth. This time we also met IRL for most of the jam, which definitely made the teamwork more efficient and also just a lot more fun. Whenever either of us ran into a small problem or into a decision that needed to be made, we could just quickly chat about it and move on. This just worked very well I feel.

As for the game itself, we had the idea of sending movement instructions as 'signals' pretty quickly and it became our 'safe' option. We also had some other ideas that were more ambitious afterwards, so we asked ourselves whether we wanted to make a simple but polished game, or a more ambitious but rough game. We went for for the simple but polished option and I think we made the right call! We had a basic version of the game up and running that same day. While it was still very rough, it already felt very unique and it made for fun gameplay. The rest of the jam we essentially used to polish the experience and add additional mechanics on top :) I hope you agree that the polish is definitely noticeable when you play the game. Not only did I have a lot of time for the art, so that I could put more time into 'unnecessary' level-intro animations, but also the gameplay feels very smooth and there are not that many bugs. Overall, the game came out really well and I am super proud of what we managed to make.

Like last time, I was mostly in charge of the art side of things, so let me talk about a couple decisions on that front. I started by drawing Robo itself. The first version turned out pretty cute, so I decided to lean into that and make all its animations extra cute. This was mainly possible because of the two antennas on its head, which I could make bouncy for a kind of rabbit-like feel. A little jump on collecting items also drove the vibe home nicely I think ^_^ From the very beginning I wanted to also included some cutesy aliens. These were originally inspired by the little green plant characters in a game Death's Door, which I am still playing through at the moment. In that game they dont seem to do much, but just the fact that they curiously follow you around for a bit made me fall in love with them. Unfortunately we did not have time to implement the aliens following Robo around, but I still think that their presence added to the vibe of the game. They at least do a little jump sometimes :D

We also agreed I would be in charge of the music again. Not because I am particularly skilled at making music, but just because I really enjoy doing it and I would love to slowly get better at it. For out last game, Mailbox Mania, I think I hit the mark pretty well. This time around I am not so sure. It does not not fit I guess, but I was aiming for a bit more spacey/cute/whimsical vibe. I also run into the problem where all my game music kind of sounds similar in a way. My hypothesis is that it is because I used BeepBox for all of them, which only has a limited set of instruments and options, such that you unavoidably get some overlap. I really want to try out FL studio at some point, but for this jam it was still too daunting of a software >_< If you have some advice for a beginner in music making, I would love to hear it!

Well, that is all for the moment! I want to thank @pastry-chef for being a wonderfull LD partner and friend, as well as for the amazing hospitality. I had a great time ^_^ If you are curious about our cute puzzle/dextery game, please take a look here!