Not gonna lie, it took me a VERY long time to figure out how to do those posts on the main feed...

Regardless, if you all have some time, I would appreciate if some people can check out my very first Ludume Dare Game Jam title: Hunger Pains!

It has been a blast and a little stressful making the deadline for the game, and while there are some nuances, I really liked the end product. Thanks to all of the folks who already took a look at it and game me feedback! I am definitely going to be back for future game jams here!

Come check it out here: https://kaabiikaze.itch.io/hunger-pains

Comments are welcome either on that page or on the Ludume Dare page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/hunger-pains! Or here too!

Now that I know how to publish stuff to the main feed, I figured I might as well talk about my game jam's post mortem here, since I received a lot of nice feedback and comments from folks here (thanks again everyone! I really appreciate it! It makes me happy to see how welcoming this community is :) )

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's dive into this!

Things that went well

• Trimming the scope: From all of the feedback that I received so far, I think for being my first game jam, this is something that I am really glad turned out well. While I did have a lot of ideas for my game, as the jam went on, I realized there were just some things that I unfortunately could not get to. As such, it allowed me to really focus on the aspects of the game that are already in the game (i.e. difficulty increases over time)
• Sticking with the theme: I was a little worried that my game would be a little too simple for the theme, but from what I been hearing, people really like the theme I went for! That makes me really happy since I honestly had a bunch of ideas for taking on the theme, but to hear this one stuck like gum gave me a lot of confidence.
• Persistence: I did have some moments during the weekend where I was getting burned out since there was so much that had to be done still for the game. However, what really kept me going is realizing that this will be one of the rare moments where I can actually complete an entire game over the weekend. That as well as the feeling of accomplishment helped me realize that this is only temporary, the satisfaction of the end result will make the time well spent.

Things that didn't go well

• Coding Style: While this could be seen as a benefit since I was on a huge time crunch, as a programmer first, seeing the code I written for scripts makes me really sad ahaha! I know I could do MUCH better with it, but because I knew I would be pressed for time, I had to take some shortcuts. While in the end, the product works, I knew if I spent my time a little more wisely, I could have had more time under my belt to do some clean up work.
• Time Management: Ahh the old classic for a game jam. This honestly boils down to spending a lot of time on work that wouldn't have made it in the end as well as not sticking to one task until it is complete. For working alone on this, I had my time divied up on multiple aspects (art, music, programming, game design), which really pushed my limits on how much I can do in one sitting. While it is a lesson that I found very valuable, I know that I need to be more organized with my ideas and execution for any future game jam.
• Feature Creep: This kind of goes along with the last point, but I want to address that there was more things that I really wanted to do for the game (more challenges, scene transitions, random level layouts, etc), but I unfortunately learned the hard way right before the halfway point of the challenge. So in the end, I am happy on the end result. I wanted to improve the initial thinking process that I had for the game, since that would helped my stress levels a LOT.

Future Goals

• Cleaning up the code. Did I mention that already?
• Adding in the second challenge. I did have some of it done, but it is not fully implemented yet.

Next Steps?

• Going to mark on my calendar the next Ludume Dare and any other game jams since I LOVED my time here!

And that's about it for my post mortem! Apologies for the long duration, but I had a fun time overall on the challenge. I wish everyone luck on their projects and I look forward to trying other people's games as this month goes on! If you haven't already, come try out my game here. You can even play it in the browser!

Here's to starting my second Ludum Dare game jam! Super stoked!

I haven't been posting much here, since I'd just been hammering away at the Compo deadline, but I'm REALLY happy with what I got so far! Besides some polishing and getting in some music/sfx, I'm really pleased with the progress I got today!

And here's a sneak peak of what the game I made looks like!

Funny enough, the hardest part is always getting the GIF posted to social media...

And with time to spare for the Compo entries!

Super stoked on getting this game published and out for others to see, it's been a really fun time to be making another game for this jam. :smile:

Come check it out on Itch.io: https://kaabiikaze.itch.io/sky-plummet Or on the page here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/sky-plummet-my-compo-ludum-dare-48-entry

Looking forward to seeing everyone's work on this Game Jam! Post Mortem will be coming soon, but first, to enjoy the rest of today!

Since I like doing game blogs and postmortems, I just wanted to share the postmortem of my entry for Ludum Dare 48, Sky Plummet! I found Ludum Dare 48 to be one of my better Game Jam experiences, since I took what I learned from previous jams and applied them here. However, there are still some things that I know I can be better at, especially when competing in the Compo entries this time.

So what better time than the present to go over these thoughts!

What went well?

1. scope creep I banish, ye!: This was something I am REALLY proud of, since there was not a lot of cut content in this game. While there were some cool ideas I had, I realized early that it is better to focus on what works and what needs extra polishing.

2. Animations: I was really proud of this one particular animaion where after the player presses the space bar, they do a small jump and the platform below them dissapears. I used a combination of Unity animations and scripting to get it just right and I am really happy that part of the game was able to be made into a reality in such a short time frame. 3. Getting a Minimum Viable Product in 0.5 days: This surprised me a lot since in other game jams, I was able to not get the entire game done the night of the jam going live. This game me 1.5 days of getting the art and polish into the game, which paired off a lot.

Bonus: The player art: I love how it looks! I wasn't sure if I wanted to do a robot drill, or even something like this at all, but looking at the sprite work for it, which I cranked out in 6 hrs, I am really happy with how crisp it looked! Especially coming from a programmer haha!

What could have gone better?

1. The music: I was a bit concerned about making music for my game since that is something I never dabbled into in all of my game projects and that fear struck in me on the last day. While I did get some nice tunes for a few seconds, most of the music can get a bit irritating at times. I guess it's either the inexperience of making my own music or I'm secretly tone deaf. Maybe both?

2. A little lacking: Even though I am happy on the end product in the end, after hearing some friend feedback, I did wish I implemented one more gimmick into the game, since it is a little bare bones, admittingly. Nevertheless, that is always a to do item for the future!

3. The art direction: The art of the game is not exactly something home to write to (besides the player sprite imo), and part of it is because I wasn't exactly sure what to do! I ended up just thinking about that one theory where if you dig straight down into the Earth, you'd plop out on the opposite side, so that is why the themes are sky, caves and lava. There could be more imagination in them admittingly, and maybe it might even be time to look into some external help on art or just spend more time concepting.

What can we do in the near future

1. Clean up the code! I always say this in every game jam post mortem I ddo, but it's the honest truth haha. I really am a programmer deep down and writing clean scripts makes me really happy. While this project is not spaghetti code by any means, I do want to at least put in some comments and clean up any repeating code so that on future revisits, it will be easier to understand what is going on.
2. Implement those lost features! One feature I removed due to not really seeing how it would work is a mechanic where you can bounce off of specific ores in order to navigate a specific chain of danger blocks. I wasn't sure if that would mesh with the current game design, so I omitted it, but I do feel like it has some nice potential. Another idea one of my friends shot to me was making a progression system in the game to where every run matters (like a rouge like). While not ALL games have to have this, I think this has merit because I can definitely see this game being like that to a small extent. More ores, moves, maybe even powerups?

Closing

As I mentioned at the beginning, I am really proud of what I cranked out this game jam, even if some things are a bit simplistic. If you want to check out this game yourself, come visit it on the Ludum Dare page here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/sky-plummet-my-compo-ludum-dare-48-entry!