THIS POST IS HUGE! You’ve been warned! 😛
Hi! I’m Fabio, the developer of Look Into The Mirror, and this is my post-mortem. It might be a bit long (actually, might be WAY TOO LONG) and poorly written, but here’s how my last LD went. :3
This is a story about how I came from a “lasagna monster” type of game into my own abstract/narrative platformer.
Ludum Dare started on Friday at 22pm (I’m from São Paulo, Brazil ;P).
From the moment the theme was announced, I knew I’d have to go for the jam. The theme wasn’t the one I wanted the most so I also knew I’d struggle to brainstorm one idea for my game. I also had a lot of (real life) work to do, so I’d have to juggle between webdev and gamedev.
Between work, I spent the whole first day trying to think about an idea. The first concepts were humorous in nature, and kind of childish. They both involved lasagnas:
- cute lasagna monsters playing catch with monster dad;
- an infinite runner with a huge lasagna monster hunting people to make’em fat;
I started sketching ideas, but my sketches sucked, and I struggled to develop this idea on my first day. Work also didn’t help much, as I’ve been behind schedule for it, so I was a bit desperate and nervous. Also, my lasagna monster sketches looked like a sliced up version of Spongebob with cheese and meat, dripping lots of tomato sauce while running.
That’s right, a lasagna.
While the idea could turn into a funny game, I didn’t like it much, so I discarded it (might work on it later, but for this LD it didn’t feel right :P).
Later, still on the first day, I went to the supermarket with my parents and that’s where the idea came in, just after receiving a message from my GF on Whatsapp. She gave me the idea of using a “mirror”, just right after this message, I saw two things happen at the supermarket:
- A mother slapping her daughter after she lost her temper;
- Some parents not minding the fact that their daughter was using a plastic bag over her head;
Liking or not, unfortunately, sometimes we stumbled upon this kind of people. That’s when the idea of monster parents came to my mind. But after thinking a little bit, I decided to expand upon the monster I believe that lives within us.
Coming home from the market, I wrote the basic idea on paper and recorded a few song fragments on guitar (both of which I shared on soundcloud).
The whole second day I tried to build and work over this idea and build some basic mechanics, all of this while still juggling work. I kinda ended up with a base storyline and some basic mechanics for the game.
The engine I chose for the game was ClickTeam Fusion 2.5, because I wouldn’t have much time to code and I wanted to try doing something with it, since I bought it. 
The last day started with me working on a few abstract guitar pieces, recording on an iPad with AmpKit. It was just some guitar lines and sounds with delay, which I thought would build up a nice mood.
Most of this last day I spent working on the blueprint level and how transitions would work, while drawing the main character and some objects for the game.
To draw and animate, I chose to use Inchworm, on my Nintendo DSi, since it would be faster, and also because I wouldn’t have to switch windows on my PC. I exported the basic animations to PyxelEdit, so I could build the sprite sheets to use in the game, while trying the animations.
The pink color in the game came as I was too lazy to think about colors, so I just picked up whatever color came from the base color palette in PyxelEdit and used it for most of the art.
Jam version of the “work” level, quick and poor level design.
The last few hours of the last day I spent building the five levels, “animating” the text on the cutscenes and inserting sounds and music to export the project for LD.
And I made it in time! Whew!
Having said all this, some good and bad points of this LD and things I might do next time. Might be missing some points, though.
The Good:
- I made my first game using CF2.5 and survived another LD!;
- The art style, although minimalistic, felt quite nice, and I think my OST helps build up some mood into the game;
- This time I made something I feel it’s more like a “proper” game than my first LD;
The Bad:
- I didn’t have enough practice with ClickTeam Fusion in the last months, so I learnt most of what I needed while building the game;
- Bad time management, again, didn’t help much while development was on;
- I shouldn’t have mixed up work with LD, because it made me nervous and desperate for the fact that I wouldn’t be able to do any of both;
- I did everything at the last minute, so hitboxes, collisions and controls lack a lot of refinement;
- Level design was the last thing I did and, although I wanted the difficulty level to be a bit high, I didn’t expect it would be THIS hard, even more because of the bugs and bad collisions/controls;
Things I plan to do next LD, based on my current experience:
- To avoid having to look at tutorials and learning things from the ground up, I should practice more, whatever I want to use on games, on my spare time;
- NEVER do work and games at the same time, again;
- Try to manage my own time in a better way, and sleep well enough before I start working on my ideas;
- Brainstorm like the world is going to end, because waiting for ideas might come at the price of a whole day :(;
- Don’t rework everything from the ground up 2x, do it once and fix i;
- Don’t leave level design and controls as the last thing;
- Proper test the games to see if controls are good enough for the casual player;
And, here’s the basic outline of the game (SPOILER ALERT):
We’re all some kind of monster, but the majority of us (I believe) keep this monster under control and tamed deep down inside of us, so it won’t cause harm. But some people just don’t have enough strength to hold it and it takes over.
The monster in my game is just an ordinary person, he’s married, he’s got a daughter, he works at a nice company and he has friends. But not everything is perfect:
- The new manager at work doesn’t like him and thinks about firing him, even though he gives his blood for work (extra hours and stuff);
- He doesn’t give attention to his daughter and sometimes locks her in the closet when she upsets him;
- He doesn’t talk nicely with his wife and constantly argues with her;
- He evades every friend he’s had and bails on every meeting they hold;
These factors start to stress him up, feeding his inner monster, and he starts to drink, smoke and things get worse for everyone around him.
The game, though, doesn’t follow this story in a linear way, taking on an abstract form based on some inspiration I had from some religions and beliefs I hold.
The game would start without giving an insight on the story, having the player collect fragments of his memory to remember the things he did, and looking into the mirror inside his soul to repent and ask for redemption.
As the game progresses, the dream would start to end (if you notice, the sound when you touch the mirror gets more distorted) and the cutscenes would guide you to darker/sad dialogues, until the last scene, where the fragments are some drink bottles, a cigar, keys and a car tire.
Then you would get to the “hospital” cutscene, where you would have the whole explanation for the story: for the whole game you were hospitalized, because of an accident provoked by drunk driving.
Those memories and the whole adventure happened inside your head, as you wished not to have done everything you did and were asking for forgiveness and redemption for being a monster in life.
In the last scene, the wife would start a monologue, not noticing the player could still hear everything, telling that they could’ve just talked to solve everything, and things didn’t have to go that way.
Telling the player what he did was too hard on himself, and wouldn’t even be able to properly live, she unplugs him, ending the game.
Basically, that’s it.
I might work and refine this game further, while making it more player friendly, as soon as I finish work and judging ends.
I already did a post-jam version of the game, reworked from the ground-up, with better controls, collisions and design, but I plan on going further with this. 😉
Same level as above, on the post-jam version, more refinement, better hitboxes.
Overall, I’m quite happy with the results this time too, as it feels more like a proper game that my first LD entry, it feels more “complette”.
Thanks for reading this! Thanks for playing, if you played!
See ya in the next LD/Mini-LD or whatever game jams we might go for in the near future!
Cheers!
P.s.: If, after reading, you still want to play this game for judging, please do so here! The post-jam version isn’t for judging, so if you’re not doing it, you can just go for post-jam. 😉
