This was my first Ludum Dare and it was amazing.
Being an Australian the comp started midday on the Saturday. I got up relatively early, had a big breakfast and a coffee, prepared my workspace and waited in the irc.
The theme was literally the only theme I didn’t want. I felt it was more a style than a theme. A lot of my game experiments in the past can easily be classed as minimalistic as I never made graphics for them. So the theme was announced, I cried for half an hour then ate lunch. I then opened my dictionary, looked up minimalism, and read the following.
minimalism
…blah blah blah…
b. one which reduces government functions and intervention to a minimum.
That gave me my character, Minimalist. That was foolishly all the planning I did. I just started putting stuff on the screen and my game became a platformer.
So what went right:
I made a game, hoorah, I actually doubted whether I would finish at all before I started so this made me happy.
I managed to make assets rather quickly that I liked.
Music and sounds were literally just me using audacity, my voice and a piano, so that was rather fast.
I managed to keep motivated the whole weekend.
I didn’t overdose on coffee.
What went wrong:
Lack of planning.
The mechanics and controls.
No play testing.
Efficiently portraying my take on the theme.
All in all I had a blast over the 48 hours and I can’t wait for the next Ludum Dare.
