Hello, my name is Alberto de la Mora, I’m a computer science engineer and indie game developer from Mexico.

I’d like to share with you some of the game design lessons I’ve learnt from participating in game jams.

My game design triforce: simplicity, fun, originality.

When designing a jam game I try to keep in mind the next qualities:

1. Simplicity

Having limited time and workforce for your game makes simplicity a must. You know your own strengths and weaknesses and you should know what you can finish and what not so be realistic when designing features. Once you have an idea you like, it will grow and you’ll want to add more and more stuff but try to stick to the core of the game and make it playable before adding “extra” features. Polishing is important but if you make a very complex game I’m pretty sure you won’t have time for it.

2. Fun

I want people to enjoy my game so this factor is very important. At the end you can have a very raw game with a black background and squares of a single color but if the mechanic is fun, the game will be (my attempt at LD 26). Also it’s always better to polish a fun raw game than a bad one. You can polish a diamond to make it shine but you can’t do the same with coal.

3. Originality

It’s a game jam, you are free to make whatever you want so experiment a lot. Try new mechanics, new art styles and anything you have never seen before, get creative.

See the theme as an inspiration or a focus to narrow your ideas, not a limitation.

If you fail at the end You can never fail in a game jam because every idea that came to your mind at the game design stage and every line of code you wrote for your game is experience gained, which eventually level you up, preparing you for the next challenge.

Take all of this as a personal opinion and I hope I didn’t make too many grammatical and orthographic mistakes 😛

Thanks for reading

Ludum Dare is a great place to know more tools for game development, so I’d like to share the tools I used to make Micro World.

Programming:

Flixel – Open source game-making library for ActionScript 3.

FlashDevelop – Open source code editor. Supports ActionScript (2 and 3) and haXe .

Graphics:

GraphicsGale – Animation graphic editor. Good for pixel art.

Music:

Guitar Pro. Tabulature editor software. I used it to write the song and export it to MIDI.

GXSCC – Automatically converts a MIDI to 8-bit chiptune. Just drag and drop your MIDI to this window, then click Authoring to export it.

Sound:

Bfxr – Generates manipulable sound effects with 8-bit style.

Free Audio Converter – I used it to convert WAV to MP3.