First time participating, just two devs. We’ll be using the following:

Unity or Flash, depending on the theme/core mechanics.

Photoshop/Illustrator for art.

Good luck everyone!

We still got a lot to hash out to make this game fun to play.  Any who, here’s a teaser:

Hi Everyone, our take on the theme was an action/arcade game based on a randomly generated grid that was filled with colors and mines. The player could select one color to reveal at a time, thus showing the safe cells. This game came out much harder than we expected since there was little skilled involved. We ended up creating special abilities to balance it out: such as armor, reveal, jump, etc. Also, we tied each ability/color to a positive character traits: courage, perseverance, resilience, and forgiveness. Here’s a run down of the good and the bad:

What went right:

• Polish. The game had logo, sound, artwork, and there were no bugs.
• Although difficult, the game was generally fun.
• The visual design was minimalistic, colorful, and most importantly, something we produced within our skill and time limitations.
• We experimented with a new creative process and the result was not too shabby. We plan to keep refining our approach.
• Easily published for Web, Windows, and OSX using Unity. We wanted the game available to as many people as possible.

What went wrong:

• The game was really challenging because we didn’t have enough gameplay elements to empower the player. We could have identified this sooner and planned accordingly.
• It was more based on luck than skill. It didn’t feel like you can improve skill and overcome the challenge.
• We aimed for 5 minute game session, it averaged 30-45 seconds.
• The introduction story was conceptualized after the core mechanics. It was trying to provide purpose via a “spiritual elements” concept, which was too abstract for such a literal game.
• There was no tutorial or instructions. We just tossed the player into deep waters without teaching them how to swim.

Even though our creation is essentially a “glorified minesweeper variant’, we are very happy with the game. We are continuing to work on it and making it the best it can be.

Full Article with Behind the Scenes

Play our Ludum Dare submission: Trial!

Tags: action, colors, grid, LD28, postmortem, random, unity, unity3d