Finally managed to get all the bugs and tweaks sorted out and submitted. In short, it's a top-down action-esque game about going into a trance to fight your inner shadows.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/the-rite-of-shadows

We managed to finish on time with something we're quite happy with: No Matter the Cost, a narrative travel adventure game. It can be thought of as Oregon Trail meets Lord of the Rings.

I spent way too long drawing that horse, but so it goes.

Some initial thoughts on how it went: - We split the work up by having one person do design, art, and writing, and the other coding and sound design. Unfortunately, we massively underestimated the amount of content and graphics the game would need, which resulted in one person being done with the coding and sound, and the other still having loads of work left. - Because of the slightly over-scoped content, we didn't really have time to do a lot of testing outside of the two of us, because the game was only in a fully playable state (for a viable experience of how the game will feel) halfway into Day 3. So I'm a bit worried that people will run into confusing parts that we couldn't foresee. - I also had to rush a lot of the graphics, again due to the over-scoped content. While I'm fairly happy with most of it, a lot of the environment images in particular could use a healthy dose of polish. I also had to reduce the number of images I had originally planned. (My initial, naïve plan was to have a separate image for each event, but I ended up with one for each "area".) - We spent a few hours upfront just ironing out the concept, which gave us a really strong concept to work off. Knowing exactly what you're making before you start is great, despite the few reactionary changes we had to make during development. I would highly recommend spending more time than you think you have on figuring out what you want to do; I think it saves time in the long run.