Hello Ludum Dare! This will be my first time participating, although I have been keeping track of the past couple of competitions. I’m pretty excited about getting close to last place! …No, seriously. I’ll probably do terribly, but I’m here to get experience and have fun. Maybe one day I’ll be in the top couple of spots for a Ludum Dare, but for now I’ll be happy with anything but last place. Good luck to everyone!

So, to clarify, I will be using Javascript, CSS, and HTML5. I’ve been working on a Javascript engine called JaffaCake, and I will use that, too. I built it from scratch, and I’ll be happy to share it if anyone wants. (I mean, it isn’t the best, but it gives a good headstart.)

So this was my first Ludum Dare to participate in, although I have known about it for a year or so now. Some of the games that get churned out are incredible, such as, well… any of the top 10 in any LD, and others… not so much. Unfortunately for me although my work on my game is done, I now have to work on other people’s games to keep my coolness up. I only really trust games that are online, in fact I already suspect that a virus might have infiltrated my computer after I downloaded like six games, and so I stopped getting those at all. I think all entries should be available online, for the record, so anyone can play them without suspicion.

Aside from that, my actual experience of doing nothing but working on a video game program for 48 hours was not a pleasant one. It started out great; I actually predicted that “An Unconventional Weapon” was going to be the voted theme, and so I already had an idea in my head for what I was going to do. For the first night (8pm to 5am), I was solely concentrated on working on the game. But by 4 or so the next day, I was stinkin’ tired of it. It was like trying to play a whole game of golf without a golf cart (which I have done), but with any number of holes and it was 48 hours long. By the very end I just barely squeezed out the remaining art I needed, and I couldn’t even add a score counter. Yikes.

It was a very good experience, but I gotta say… unless I get a really solid, simple idea for a game for LD33, I might not participate. By the end I felt like a zombie, and I need to remember to rest properly next time. Bleck. That being said, I still am getting my coolness up, as well as trying to relax *ahem* I mean, work. Rating games can be just as hard as making games, too… a lot of the games I come across… kinda suck. No doubt a lot of work was put into them, but sometimes I wonder if that much work was put into them. I still try to rate them accordingly, pointing out the absolute worst and absolute best in the game, without making the developer feel bad AND without insinuating in some way that I want to say it’s a good game when it really isn’t. And that’s another thing. After putting so much work into my game, I have only 1 out of like 12 comments that don’t say my game is amazing in some form, and it hurts already. Right there. *points to cold heart*

LD is awesome, yet it brings so much pain!