Ludum Dare was a blast once again and I’v already played so many great games!
So here’s a short post mortem writeup of my crazy game dev experience this time around:

Since I’m in Germany the contest started at 3 am. for me, so I just stayed awake for the theme release, immediately got the idea for the game and went to sleep for a few short hours.
Waking up I rushed into developing the basic game features (movement & collision) and made some sprites. Great!
However, once I started working on game-specific mechanics I kind of feared my game would be too ambitious (I was both proven right and wrong later on).
At the end of day one I had the enemy spawn system and hero attacks working, as well as most of the graphical work done.
Day 1 went pretty nicely altogether, although I didn’t even start making the particle system or the traps – at least one of which I had on my todo list for day1.
Waking up I organized everything I had to do … and almost gave up the whole thing. It was simply too much work for me to handle in one day – but I stuck with it and continued working in some form of delirious meditation. At around 2 pm. I realized that I managed to get a lot done … and not have eaten anything the whole day.
After coming back from raiding the fridge I felt pretty down and had not a lot of fun working on the game any longer, so I made a title screen instead. At around 8 pm. I finished everything but sound & music. Music generators like autotracker-c are really amazing for exactly these situations I must say.
I wanted to do a lot of additional stuff for the game and there’s quite a lot of polishing left to do – but I was simply burned out. I couldn’t even test the game by playing through it, so I sent it to my girlfriend and once she reported back to have beaten the game I kind of collapsed and simply submitted what I had.
Now, a couple of days later, I really wish I would have taken longer pauses so I would have enjoyed the whole thing more. I might have continued working until the 3 am. deadline that way.
While I’m quite happy with my work, I also know that I reached my limits somewhat.
Maybe I’ll make a post-compo version, but don’t hold your breath.
so right now I’m grabbing a beer (or equivalent) and play a few nice games you guys made!
