Mine Sneaker – the Post Mortem

Hello everyone! Here is my first LD game, Mine Sneaker:

Play Here

Mine Sneaker is a reverse version of classic Minesweeper(and their names almost rhyme!) You act as an imp who moves mines sneakily to trap the cursor, a.k.a. minesweeper. The different colored cursors have different vulnerabilities, so you have to be smart, lucky, and of course villainous to beat them all.

After the theme was announced, several ideas appeared in my mind, and I chose conservatively. It’s an idea I can implement confidently. However until I completed basic AI, I hadn’t been sure whether it’s playable or not. Thank God it works well (enough) finally.

As my first LD and my second game(first one), its workflow is still very armature. I started to create sound effects in the last 2 hours, and made a lot of mistakes while drawing graphics. I learnt many precious experiences, though , in this 48 hours.

-What went right-

• Made a playable game. After all, it’s the meaning of LD.
• Practiced making graphics. My drawing skill is poor, and I eagerly wanna improve it.
• Introduce few bugs. I’m a CS student so that’s what I should do… but in fact I usually write buggy code.
• Chose an interesting, based on theme idea.

-What went wrong-

• Code is messy. It may be inevitable for a short game jam, but I really hope I could have written more structured code.
• Didn’t polish enough. No splash screen or ending.
• Used a strange tool. Making 2D game with Unity is like eating jelly with fork and knife. It works, but strangely.(It’s not really wrong, I think)
• Steep difficult curve. As everyone said, the game is too hard.

Conclusion

LD is just fun. I wanna enter a real world game jam, but there are few jams in my country(I’m a Taiwanese). I really appreciate the work people did to hold LD. And I saw many great ideas from others’ entries. See you in LD26!

Oh one last thing… I’m looking for an opportunity to work with others. If you’re a small team or an artist who needs a Unity programmer(and accept communication via Skype/IM), please consider me.