Everybody knows where the Post mortem is

It was my second ludum dare, but my first alone.

I live in France, so the beginning of the competition was at 3 am. I woke up, see the theme and returned to sleep.

The morning (I woke up early) I had a super idea, perfect fit to the theme, make a space paperboy where papers were weapons too! (to see what is paperboy ) (amstrad version because I had an amstrad). After two hours, I had a revelation: I don’t know make cool space ship. I returned to bed.

After that I was sad. I decided to make a point n click and made some sketch. But new problem: I don’t know write in english (a friend was agree to correct some text, but a point n’ click is a lot of text…). Sad again.

But there was a sketch I liked: an inspector and a lot of suspects aligned (as in the poster of Usual suspects). And it was, finally, the good start…

What went right:

– the idea: it isn’t perfect, but I played with some friends and always had fun.

– good warm up: I use two things I had never used. phaser (because gre was used it) and sunVox (because jsmars was used it). I only had 3 days to warm up, but I don’t had problems with it.

– I had time: I finish the game early and take time to add some suspects. No stresse. Cool.

– animations: I have a lot of fun with animations: try to make different ways of walking was fun. And suspects are really differents.

– the music: it isn’t good, but it was my first try so I’m just happy to have try.

– it’s a two players game: I like two players game.

What went wrong:

– the theme: Connecting worlds made me think about the mafia: different people from differents “worlds” (I don’t know if it works in english, in french we can call social class “world”) but secretly connected. After that I stopped worrying about it. Finally, it wasn’t a good idea…

– focus problem: I try to correct a difficulty of the game (the focus of the inspector was changing too fast), and I made it more difficult (now it’s more hard to change it).

– rules: I don’t know write rules. The game is simple why my rule explanations are so long?

– settings menu: I had time, but I prefered make more characters than polish my game. So the settings menu is bad (nobody understood that we can choose the number of suspects…)

– it’s a two players game: it’s hard to have a friend near to you when you play at ludum dare games (and I already make the mistake in my previous LD with the copain team); I made an AI so you can play the inspector. But this isn’t the same (and the better (most stressful) is to play the Godfather)…

If I made a post-compo it will be:

– with more suspects!

– with a complice (simple idea to make the game harder for the inspector: a second character lies, but is idiot: he just say the opposite of what he should say)

– with a better focus system.

– with a better menu.

– with asking someone a good music.

play Everybody knows where the Godfather is.

(and sorry for the bad english…)