Before I ramble, please check out my game. It's greatly apprecated!

Ludum Dare 39 was my fourth (and a half, since we don't really count LD36) Ludum Dare. I've done compo for every one I've participated in, since that's how I roll. The first game I made was a simple puzzle maze game, which was followed by a puzzle-platformer which defined my artstyle. After that was a non-character based puzzle game (noticing a theme?) which placed 41st out of all Compo entries over all.

This is the first time I've ever strayed from my puzzle design, and went for a genre I don't play that often: RPG. I liked the idea of a faux-3D approach with 2D sprites, similar to Pokemon. So that's where I decided to lead my art down.

I got bored and frustratred in the middle of developing and that's where I recorded my audio. It came out fantastic in my opinion.

Choosing an idea for the theme was not easy, since Running out of Power was one of my least favourites on the list. Funnily enough, the more I detest the theme, the better my games seem to come out. Regardless, I chose to follow an idea I've had brewing for a while, which is a modular power weapon that uses cartridges to swap out its abilities.

Problems

I had a lot of daunting tasks that I had to come up with unique (yet somewhat dodgy) solutions to. How will inventory system work?, What is the story/reason this game is happening?, What is the fighting like?, How the heck am I gonna program a store and all this other stuff in time?!?.

The inventory system was something I was dreading and it almost kept me from finishing my game. I was afraid of moving data around tables consistently and luckily my weird system decided to just... work.

I actually developed a completely modular Animation, Texture, Timer, Object, and Item system that I will definitely be using in future projects. I also had to heavily modify a library I was using to not only make functional but also make functional for my game.

Takeaways

Overall, I learned that giving up is almost never worth it. The rewards of making a (in my eyes) good game with great graphics and great audio is totally worth it. So if you're ever giving up on something, take a break, and come back. Your problems will most likely not look as bad as they used to!

Thanks for reading through my ramble. It'd be greatly appreciated if you play and rate my game. I play and rate all of my commenter's games as well. :)

Happy Ludum Dare!