Hi there! We’re No Wand Studios, a Spanish indie video game development studio. The Jonbar Point had been the game we created on our first Ludum Dare participation. It was sort of a challenge for us because it was our first time in a jam and we only had less than 60 hours instead of 72, but still wanted to make a game as good as if we would dedicate the full 72 hours to it. Finally, we made it and we could upload a fully playable version for the jam in time. And that’s one of the things we’re proud of.
What went right?
+ “Making the games we want to play”: That’s one of our main goals when we created this studio, so our first jam video game had to accomplish this requirement. We think The Jonbar Point has a very interesting starting point and concept. In fact, we would like to make the full game one day if people are really interested in it.
+ No Wanders assemble!: This Ludum Dare was a real test for our teamwork. Until now, we know about our individual skills and we have worked with no time pressures making a video game, but we had never need to work together at this levels. With the final result we can say that we have a perfect team composition.
+ Time management: One of our concernings before getting to work was how to deal with time and work distribution. In the brainstorming we came up with a lot of great ideas for the game (more holograms and upgrades, enemies outside the library, a bigger map…). But there wasn’t time for all that! We know very well our limits for this Ludum Dare and we can say that we nailed it at this point!
What went wrong?
Mostly nothing! But if we have to say something…
– Bugs (obviously): They are always here. But in this particular case we have no time for many test… Nevertheless, they are not very annoying bugs or at least people haven’t complained very much about this.
–A broken programmer: And an underslept art designer as well. We reach the uploading deadline quite tired. But happy. Maybe it was caffeine or maybe it was the feeling about see your little game working and being finished in time. Maybe next time we have to put some sleeping time in our schedule… or maybe not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
– You always can do better!: We have to close our eyes with some issues and put it in the final version because we didn’t have enough time (#nollegamos, a Spanish translation for #WeDon’tArrive). Music could be better fitted and less repetitive, pixel art has some scope for improving and other stuff like that. We’re quite self-demanding with our work and maybe this makes a bit influence in this feeling.
Conclusion
We are very happy with the result of this first Ludum Dare for us. People who had played and commented the game says nice things about it and that’s what we want to create: a little prologue for a possible bigger story, if enough people are interested in this concept. The experience in this jam was very enriching for us, and we can’t wait until the next edition of Ludum Dare comes.
Stay tunned!
Tags: first jam, No Wand Studios, post-mortem, The Jonbar Point
