I usually don't write these since people rarely read them anyway but I kinda feel like it. I decided to join compo the day Ludum Dare started so I didn't prepare whatsoever. Luckily I had an idea pretty quickly and immediately started coding. :thumbsup:

I used Java and a custom library which saved me from writing a lot of boilerplate code.
The first day I did most of the graphics and everything went also well until the end. Then I had to solve a quite mathematical problem. I needed to find a random path of fixed length through a 2D array. I was stuck with it for quite a while and tried multiple things but in the end I figured the best solution would be a depth-first tree search and it worked, surprisingly. :scream:

On the second day I added the major gameplay elements such as a timer and a score. Pretty simple stuff. I also remembered that a game doesn't consist of only code and graphics but there is also music and sounds. Unfortunately I have no idea how to quickly compose music and I didn't want to go for the 8-bit chiptune style. So I just hacked some sounds together with the help of JFXR and it already added some mood to the game.

In the end I just polished the game up a little, fixed a bug or two and added some more visuals. The compo went surprisingly well for me and I even finished ahead of time. This was my 4th (or 5th?) LD entry and I enjoyed it a lot! :heart: