https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/a-miner-inconvenience

Background:

Game synopsis

You're a mining robot and your asteroid mining facility has suffered damage from a catastrophic gamma ray burst. All the humans are dead, and the asteroid’s outer shields won’t hold up forever. It’s up to you, with a little help(?) from your egotistical mainframe master, to figure out a way to reestablish power and save the facility!

Me

This was my first LD game (or any game jam for that matter) and I'm so happy I participated. I'm a programmer by trade, so I know the game is not much to look at, and it has no sfx or music, but I'm proud of finishing something that feels (reasonably) complete.

Here are my thoughts on the jam:

• Drank way too much coffee Friday night. Was so excited to get to work after the theme announcement (9PM my time) that I brewed and drank a whole pot by 1am. Stayed up till 4am, then got 4 restless hours of sleep before starting Saturday. Not a great feeling..
• I really came to enjoy the theme. I took the most obvious interpretation, but playing other peoples games has been eye opening. Lots of different forms of "power"
• It was very liberating to be held to such a time crunch. Anything that wasn't absolutely necessary for a complete game was cut. This made decision making pretty easy.
• I got hung up on level generation. Literally. I wrote an infinite loop in a flood fill algorithm that hung Unity. It was necessary to prevent unreachable holes in the first 2 levels, but I probably should have restructured the story instead of wasting hours on it.
• I wished I'd incorporated, at the very least, basic sfx. I'vs used bsfxr before and could have thrown some in if I'd budgeted 2-3 hours for it, but I got sidetracked.

Closing

Overall, for all its faults, I'm proud of the game I made. I can't wait to have another open weekend that coincides with LD so I can do it again!