My first Ludum Dare. Barely slept and I couldnt do the entire weekend. But I made the most of it and I am happy with the game I made.

Binding of Isaac fans, we have Gamer Girl Rowanite playing our Ludum Dare entry keeper!

Binding of Isaac fans will find it easy, otherwise it might be a little tough

Play for yourself here: 
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=40397

This is my second Ludum Dare, and my first attending a Ludum Dare venue. I’ve just brain dumped a few lessons Ive learned (mainly to server as reminder to myself). These are probably either common sense or strictly my opinion, but here it goes.

Setting Priorities
Working with a team is a lot of fun, sharing experiences and advice from a variety of jamming events sets your priorities in order throughout the event, and the long hours through the nights.
From my first experiences and lessons learned with the LD jam, was to keep things simple. 2-3 game features maximum (or 1 per day). Be that jump, shoot, upgrades, magic, shop or enemies then highly polish these few features. Working in a team doesn’t necessarily allow you to make bigger games, but more polished games. You also spent more time talking and playing together, so dont expect x3 people to do x3 more work (the old saying that 9 pregnant women cant produce a baby in 1 month).

Start middle and an end
I felt that an intro page and a simple finished game page makes a lot of difference. The attention span of the reviewers from what I can tell is less than 5 minutes, any glitch bug or fall through platform and its an instant rage quit. Better to chop something out the game completely than leave a buggy game breaker in.

Also people love to beat games and feel rewarded for winning. Endless puzzle games are also great.

Clear goals and player movement
Moving on to my second LD event I realised the importance of having the controls on the screen at all time. I think the only game that people universally understand are runners with just the space key to jump.

Make it easy to the point whereby the player can give a fair review
Whatever health you have given the player, double or triple it. Double it because you are the creator and know all the tricks of the game. Triple it because you want 80%+ to hopefully get to the point whereby you feel they can review it correctly.

Letting go
Good job, you released a game. Dont get emotionally attached. All the best games have some harsh critics, and mostly people are supportive or can relate from experience. Fix some bugs. Learn some constructive lessons for next time and avoid some of the unusual negative comments that serve no constructive purpose.

If only there was a genre field so that we can attract the type of reviewers we want to our game, say rpg, runner, platform.