The Vole Beneath and Pixel Bat Attack Post Mortems…

(some of this is copied from my blog article here)

My son (9 year old Oscar) and I participated in our second Ludum Dare Game Jam, #29, and it was, once again, a really rewarding and insightful experience.

Oscar used Scratch for developing his game (the new web-based version) and I used Flash, FDT, Citrus Engine, Illustrator, Photoshop, Audition, GarageBand, and Dragon Bones.

First, Take Aways

As with the last game jam, we learned a ton!

Oscar learned that you aren’t really done when you think you are done. This is especially true I think in any art of programming endeavor. There are bugs, refinements, and ways to make things smoother and more efficient. It’s a good lesson.

I also noticed Oscar having a bigger awareness of the things needed for a game to be playable – like a story, a clear goal, instructions. I love seeing how his knowledge is growing just from seeing others play his creation.

For me, I learned that it’s good to let go of the desire to have a unique idea, and instead focus on having a good idea. This may not be the case all the time, but starting with a good idea, and flushing it out seemed to lead to something pretty unique anyway.

This second gam jam continued to reinforce how awesome I think this approach to anything is: given a ridiculously short amount of time, we were able to create things that would probably feel much more daunting if we had wanted to make them over weeks or months of time. When you don’t have time to really think too much or second-guess design ideas, approaches to problems, or adding extra features or details, you just plow through and your mind seems to automatically prioritize the right things and in a pretty good order.

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