Working on my second LD entry with Phaser and Adobe Illustrator. Not sure if I should add color or leave it black and white.

It’s maybe too late but I feel like I’m missing something if I don’t write a post mortem for my first LD entry – Tough. Post mortem is a kind of new term for me when I join this community, hope that I can make it correctly. I will prepare timelapse for my next LD entry too.

Joining this LD was an awesome experience for me. I didn’t like this theme. I think it’s too wide because most games can be explained that they fit the theme. But in the end, I think this theme worked out pretty well. A lot of games did take on this theme with their very innovative ways.

What went well:
– Finished the game in time. It’s the best thing since making this game was a new challenge for me.
– Picked a simple idea and built a game around it: a platformer with unexpected ending. Everything was in a reasonable scope for my first game jam.
– Did follow the theme and made a good twist: You only get one life, but the goal is not to keep it.
– Had a fun first day making the game. Even though I were working on the game until 6am of the next day, I felt no stress.
– Learned the first game framework engine (Phaser). I’m just a web developer and a gamer. This was a very motivative way to help me become a game maker too :).

What went wrong:
– Too much time lost on making assets. But in the end, it’s still completely not as I imagined on my head. I intended to make a Franstenken-like character and some brutal wolves.
– Did not use the remaining time to polish up the game.
– The fun was hidden because of the vague gameplay.
– No sounds or music either.
– Did not pay enough attention to the rules. I were using assets of Phaser framework for some background of the game. I felt really bad about this and replaced them all one week later.
– With the lack of experience with basic game design and game framework usage, I got some troubles with the camera, didn’t know how to use tile map, failed to make an endless map generation and made a lot of hacky things.
– The source code of the game was really bad base on my own standards.

What is next:
I’m satisfied with this game. I hope it will be a good starting point for me. I will stay with this idea and make it a clearer goal and a smaller map. The mechanic will be the simplest one for platformer so I can try to create a same game with a lot of game frameworks quickly. And of course, this game is an open source project.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=30146

The game is quite confused. Combining with poor graphics, it has high chance that people will just ignore it. Maybe I have to add spoiler right on its github page.

Please take your time to try it:

http://anvoz.github.io/tough/

I’m going to submit this game now

Here is my game so far. Need to add more monsters, generate endless map and then try to make better sprites.

I’m working on the game now. The main idea is “you only get one life”. I will try my best to learn Phaser as fast as possible.