Worlds Collide – Post Mortem

*Our LD30 entry is World’s Collide, where the player goes
out into space and hoards stars, asteroids and planets.*

What Went Wrong

• Lack of time. We realized the Ludum Dare Game Jam was happening a week before it started so we had work and other responsibilities that we could not avoid. This severely cut down the amount of time we had to work. In total we had about two days for the programmer and a day and a half for the artist.
• Main mechanic was time consuming. There were many different parts to the main mechanic which all had to be done for it to look and feel correct. The player needed to pick up objects, those objects needed to rotate/move as the player moved and pick up other objects as well. An indicator was also needed for objects that were too large. All of this took about a day to finish which was half of the programmer’s time.
• Game Maker: Studio Free As we were getting close to completion we started running into limitations on the free edition. The limitations started popping up left and right, 20 sprites, 15 objects, 10 scripts. We were able to trim things down a bit and get it done with the limitations but it took more time which we were severely lacking.

What Went Right

• Art was done in a day. Our artist finished the majority of the art on Saturday. Then after work the next day made a few other assets like the space ship, menu art and the music.
• Tight controls. Our initial idea for movement was to have a left and right ship engine controlled by left and right click. So players would have to use one engine to turn or both to go straight. After play testing it, it just felt clunky and unsatisfying. Thus, we changed it so that W made you go forward, while A/D turned the ship. With these controls you had much more precise movement so you could navigate through multiple planets to grab that one asteroid you really wanted.
• Fun gameplay. Our game was easy to pickup and learn. During judging, we noticed on streams and in comments, players were saying “Just one more time” as they tried to get bigger and bigger, and beat our high scores.

Conclusion

This was our first Jam, and we really enjoyed it. We learned a lot during the competition and look forward to the next Jam. We are planning on doing a post-comp version of this game, where we hope to accomplish the following:

Post-Comp Goals

• Mobile (iOS / Android)
• Longer play time
• More planets / collectibles
• Better indicator for hazards (large objects)
• Better sounds / music
• Optimizing / Polish