disruption.ca

I entered the 11th Ludum Dare 48 hour game programming competition. The theme was minimalist, and I created a minimal sort of game named dots.

Download the Windows Version.
Download the Python Source.

This was approximately my seventh time participating in an ld48, and the fifth time I have completed a game.

What went right

• Simplicity. At one point I considered a more complex game concept where players had to minimize the junk in their house with platformer gameplay. I think sticking with the dots concept was the correct decision.
• Gameplay. Early on I focused on creating a good feel with the player movement. Then I spent a lot of time getting the physics of the bouncing dots working well. Finally I implimented the “power pellet” mechanic. I really focused on the details of the gameplay, and I think this is why such a simple game idea turned out to be reasonably fun.
• Completion. I’ve learned that with a 48 hour competition you very quickly reach a point where you need to stop thinking about adding missing gameplay features, and start working on pulling what you have together into a finished product. Simple things like intro screens go a long way to helping people play your game.
• SXFR. Creating some minimal sounds couldn’t have been easier. This really is a great tool. I kind of regret the high pitched power up sound that I put in, but no one else has complained about it, so maybe it isn’t so bad.

What went wrong

• Losing Motivation. I started strong on Friday, but for a good part of Saturday I wasn’t excited about my concept, and my productivity suffered. Fortunately on Sunday as the game started to come together my motivation picked up again.
• Lack of Polish. The final game took shape quite late into the competition. I got some nice elements into the game, but more polish is always better. This also meant that I didn’t have time for people to test it, and I wasn’t able to put much work into balancing the game play. Fortunately I think I did pretty well with the settings. It’s a bit on the difficult side, but it’s meant to be a quick game.
• Python Problems. I had major last minute headaches packaging the game with py2exe. As well, it seems that several people had problems running the game. This turned out to be the sort of game that would be perfectly suited to run in a web browser, and in retrospect I should have used flash.

Conclusion

I’m reasonably happy with the game. In the judging I recived very middle of the pack scores from the other participants. But what I was happy to see was positive feedback from several participants that are tallented game developers that I respect a great deal.

Here is a link to ratings and full details for dots.