I made it! Not beautifully, but I made it! – Round toe postpartum

Looks familiar?

I’ve made a game in 72 hours! Isn’t that awesome?

Oh boy! Now I feel SO motivated to make another game!

My game is called Round toe, and it’s basically tic-tac-toe, but you only get circles, forcing you to memorize where you placed stuff (you can play it here).

This was my third LD, and the first where I actually finished something.

Again, my main problem was getting confident on an idea. I switched ideas and started from scratch two or three times during this 72h period.

I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to have an idea of a game that would fit the theme, be fun to play, fit the theme and at the same time wouldn’t require many art skills.

When I had an idea I was confident about, I hadn’t much problem implementing it.

Based on my experiences in this LD, I’ve made a list of things to keep in mind on future LDs and other game jams:

• Think about the themes in the final round when it pops up, so you can have some idea of what you’re going to do.
• Participate on the warmup weekend, even if you’re writing everything from scratch. Helps to keep your inner programmer happy.
• Dedicate more time to music. Music really helps in the mood, which really helps in the overall rating.
• Working on teams can be more productive. Even if it isn’t, it’s way more fun, for sure.
• Next time, use TweenJS (or some other tween library). Tween movements looks cool, but they take a lot of time to implement, specially if you’re doing some DRY code.
• Next time, use PixiJS or Three.js. Even if you’re making a simple 2D game, they allow you to use shaders and materials, which make the game look way more interesting.
• Procedural level generation rules!
• Don’t be afraid of making a crappy game. Making a crappy on is way better than making no one.
• Rate other games soon as possible!
• Git can be kinda time expensive to setup, but it will save your life sometimes.
• Functional coding rules!
• Once you have an idea that sounds at least decent, stick to it! Even if it’s bad, it can almost look good if you still have time to polish it.
• Trig. Love it! Use it! Everywhere!
• Figure out what’s wrong with the way you’re getting mouse coordinates and why it doesn’t work on Firefox.
• Be more social. Post about progress in your game. Comment on people’s posts about their game’s progress.
• Have more fun!

I think that’s all! See ya in the next LD (or Mini LD, or whatever).