Grimelios

I finished my first Ludum Dare yesterday. This is my post-mortem copied from the main LD site.

My game is called The Pen Is Mightier Than The Laser. The concept is that you use enemy dialogue as a weapon by absorbing text characters and firing them back. That's the unconventional weapon.

I didn't end up submitting to the compo or jam because I ran out of time, but I'm still happy with the progress I made. Here's a screenshot of the final product.

What went well:

• This was my first Ludum Dare, and I made it all the way through, even if I didn't finish the game. I didn't give up, and I'm pretty proud of that.
• My art was better than I've done in the past. I'm especially happy with the flapping books and the player.
• I think my core concept was interesting and unique. I felt excited to make progress, not just because I felt I had to.
• I used XNA and Visual Studio 2010. I made textures in Paint/Paint.net. I'm very familiar with all of those things, so I felt I had control over what I was doing.
• Throughout the event, I posted a handful of things to this site and Twitter, and looked at other people's stuff and left some comments. Decent social media involvement, I guess.
• More than anything, I think I paced myself well, mentally and physically. There were times I could have worked longer or slept less, but in the end, I finished and didn't feel like jumping into a big hole. The game isn't finished, but I feel good.

What went badly:

• Although my core idea was good, I didn't plan out what would make the game an actual game. As is, I have some neat mechanics, but you can't win or lose. There is no good start or end state.
• There's no music or sound at all. That was intentional because I haven't practiced making music and sound very much, but that's exactly the problem. For future games, I need to do music and sound.
• My level design needs a lot of work. That was partially the time constraints of Ludum Dare, but I still need to practice.
• I need to get better at animation too. In this game, I avoided traditional animation by having the player be a ball with a top hat and monocle. Rotating sprites is easier than animating them.
• Although I came out of the jam feeling good, I probably could have pushed myself harder. For something like a jam, maybe I'm not supposed to feel amazing at the end, but feel proud later of what I accomplished.

What I have is available from Dropbox here. The C# source code is available on GitHub here.

Congrats to everyone who participated! I think my first Ludum Dare was a success, and I'm looking forward to the next one.