It will be my first game jam ever, and I'm trying to go for the Compo. I can already feel the stress coming up, and I really hope I can do it!

I wish you all good luck, and a lot of fun!

A turn based / grid based shoot them up is what I got with the theme. It's not the greatest idea ever, but hey, I'm already quite proud of what I did so far. All core mechanics are here and working (most of the time), and I am starting to work on the graphics & SFX.

I have a lot more ideas, but I think I must focus on essential things for now.

I'm afraid I will not have time to finish everything I planned before the deadline, and I really need some sleep. So I'm publishing the game a little earlier than I expected. It may not be perfect, but I'm quite proud of what I just did, never thought I was gonna be able to finish my first attempt at the Ludum Dare.

It was a huge fun to participate! A really amazing experience - and that theme, I hated it so much, at first, but it forced me out of my comfort zone, and I learned many things during the development. You can count me in for the next ones - but better organized, and with a healthier sleep schedule... Daaamn I'm getting old! :)

Don't forget to come and check the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/roguespector

So. Here it is, I participated in my first jam and managed to publish something by the end of it. And now that I fully recovered from all the accumulated lack of sleep (I will get back to this later), it is time to rethink about it, trying to figure out what I did wrong, and what worked out.

What didn't work out?

I definitely didn't sleep enough. And I even think that this is the origin point of most of the issues I encountered during the process of developing Roguespector). Usually, I don't need much sleep, so I thought, "well, let's sleep even less, and make a few power naps, and it should work just fine." And it worked fine, for something like the first 30 hours, and then my brain started to melt, and I wasn't able to focus on anything. So I had to take a much longer nap, only to be able to finish the game on a hurry so I could get back in my bed as soon as possible. And that's a bit of a regret because, even if my game is playable and, I hope, enjoyable, it could have been better, and I would have had more time to polish the game, if only I slept more.

Not using the planning I made for the game in the early hours. I'm not a planning guy, and every time I work with written notes, I end up tossing them away and let my feelings drive the process of creation. Most of the time, it works great like that and I'm used to it. But in a Jam, time is a major constraint, and not having a plan is really hard to manage. I think I could have made a better, more balanced and constant game if I had followed my initial game design document. I'm going to try to work on that, but I'm not sure I can change that.

What did work out?

The brainstorming. It took me less than an hour to know where I was going. Yet I hated the theme we got! I used a method a teacher gave me when I was in high school, doing improvisational theater : "never say no to an idea, as an idea is always better than nothing at all, even if it looks somewhat clunky, go for it like it's the best idea you ever had.” The setup was nearly the same: we got a random theme, and 30 to 60 seconds to imagine a plot and perform something on stage. So I thought, why not doing the same here? And it turns out it works pretty well. Of course, I kept iterating over the core idea during the whole development, but I stopped thinking about "what" and started thinking about "how" very early in the jam.

Forcing myself to write "poor" code. Yeah, I know, it sounds weird. But I am one of these people finding beauty in code, and capable of spending hours refining his code, so it is as beautiful, and as efficient as possible. That was one of my major fears: getting stuck in a refactoring loop, and losing so much time on it I couldn't publish anything by the end of the jam. That extends in some ways to graphic design, where I could spend an hour getting a pixel perfectly aligned with another. And discovering that I am actually capable of doing so for the sake of productivity is a pretty good step for me and my other projects.

Actually finishing something. My god it feels great! I work on another video game, solo, for more than a year now, and I can't see the end of it. Being able to release a finished project is something I haven't experienced in a long time, and I really needed it. And it gave me a great motivation boost for my other projects, which is always nice.

Conclusion

In the end, I'm really happy with this first jam, and I'm already looking forward to participating in the next ones. Thank you all for making this kind of events, and thank you for your kindness! If you didn't already, feel free to check my game : Roguespector, an unbalanced (due to lack of sleep) turn-based shoot 'em up.