Tightrope Theatre Post-Mortem

Check out the game’s Ludum page here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=11391

This was pretty fun Ludum Dare disregard that it started a bit grim for me. Fortunately I managed to find the spark to finish a game on time. It turned out much better than I expected.

I think I spend the first 12 hours mostly just sleeping and brainstorming for ideas. At first I was thinking of doing a top down shooter on a once screen arena, with bad guys trying to rush you, and you would have to fend them off with various weapons as long as you can. I scrapped the idea because I thought there would probably be dozens of games like these coming out for this LD, and I wanted to go with something that used the theme in gameplay.

I came up with the theatre concept after some more brainstorming, I tried to use the theater aesthetics/curtain to simulate all levels being on the same screen. Single show stage, only props change. I come up with a clown character and the game was originally supposed to be pretty basic platformer where you just need to survive through the stages. This wasn’t interesting enough in my opinion, and I was struggling through lots of motivation problems through the beginning of development, but then I came up with the idea of unicycle. What if the character had to navigate the levels while trying to balance on ropes? It would fit the theatre/circus theme well too. After some testing and making the character purposefully very slippery, I got the inspiration to finish the game.

Some of my earliest platformers got criticism for the characters slippery controls. Now I ended up making a game where the character is purposefully very slippery. And it works, making the game more challenging and fun to play. Go figure.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

– Disregard the late start, I managed to finish my game on time, and with whopping 24 levels too. It might be my biggest Ludum entry yet. For the sheer amount of levels alone. Feedback has been very good and people have really liked the unicycle riding, it’s hard, but works well.

– Build the game straight to mobile resolution, the game can be played on mobile by just slapping on-screen buttons on it. Works like charm on all my devices. I’m planning on continuing the game with bigger version with more polish, improved and new levels, and new music, after I’m done with my ongoing, bigger projects first.

WHAT WENT WRONG:

– Too much moping, not enough deving. I had huge problems with motivation because I didn’t want to create anything half finished or too generic. I almost considering skipping this LD before I came up with the unicycle idea. I need to stop trying to tell myself to give up early. I’ve had huge self-confidence issues lately.

– Time management, had I just focused on working right away instead of moping around, there could have perhaps been bit more polish, levels, new objects and traps. Fortunately I can save those for the improved version.

– Theme: The theater aesthetics have shared some opinions, some think it’s brilliant, some thinks it’s really stretching it. I should have perhaps added more effects to the transitions, have some dust to fly from beneath the curtain with sounds of construction happening for example, to simulate better the idea that things are changing behind the curtain.

Lessons learned: Don’t give up too early, even if you start late to the LD. Even with tight schedule you can still finish something pretty good when you are just dedicated enough and manage your time well.