Raging Snowman (Post-Mortem)

Play Raging Snowman!

In previous Ludum Dares, I’ve put off writing a post-mortem for a few days, then a few more days, over and over until I realize the next LD is just a few weeks away. That’s why this time, I’m writing my post-mortem in the first week.

My Weekend

Friday:
Early in the day, I rate on the themes. I dislike “No Enemies” and “You Are the Monster”, but the rest are decent, and most of these seem like pretty good choices. I spend the rest of the day half working on another project of mine, and half thinking of ideas for (five or six of) the themes. (Although I come up with some pretty great ones for Beyond the Wall and Day & Night.)

When the theme is announced at 9:00 PM EST, for a minute I’m in disbelief. “That CANNOT be the theme we chose. This must be a joke.” After I get over the shock, I start to look for an idea. My younger brother proposes this: A snow-goon army has to destroy all of humanity until they find the weather-controlling machine, so that they can permanently live in winter! I like this suggestion, but decide it will take too long to create an entire human habitat, so I settle on a similar but simpler idea.

The original animation for the snowman, cut because there was too much time between throws.

Saturday:
I get to work as soon as I can. The ground takes shape first, then the snowman. I get basic controls for the snowman working, including the snowball-throwing. Most of the time is spent on art. By the end of the day, I have a working prototype, but it’s not much fun without enemies, score, or a time limit.

Sunday:
The kid is the first thing on my list of things to do. Designing him takes most of the morning. In the afternoon, I have to travel to an event with my family, but I work on my laptop in the car. I finish up a few more animations and add in a timer and scoring system. I realize I haven’t implemented growing/shrinking yet, so I quickly add that in.

When we arrive home at 9:30, my game is a mess. The game doesn’t end at the timer, there’s a slew of glitches with the growing and shrinking, and there’s no music or sound effects. I decide to enter the game in the Jam so I can have an extra 24 hours. (Great decision!)

Life was so much easier after I realized Inkscape had movable origin points. (Excuse the pixel glitches.)

Monday:
I spend pretty much the whole day on improving the gameplay. The glitches are fixed, the timer starts to work, and some buttons appear at the end of the game. By 9 PM, I have a Newgrounds leaderboard integrated, but still no music or SFX. I throw in a pause function at the last minute for easier screenshots.

During submission hour, I spend my time taking screenshots, creating an icon, uploading the game to NG, and writing a description. Then, at 9:57 PM on Monday, August 24, I press the “Submit” button. Boy, what a satisfying feeling! :)

Tuesday onward:
Everyone knows that Ludum Dare does not end as soon as you submit your game. No! The fun has only begun! On Tuesday, I play and rate almost 20 games, making sure to spend at least 10 minutes (but no more than 20) and comment on each. I will repeat this process several more times in the next few weeks. My goal is to rate 100 games this time, but I’ll be satisfied with 50. (My high so far is 37 in my first LD, #31.)

“I’m king of the world! There’s no one who can st-OH SHOOT”

What went right

Theme: I like my take on the theme because it’s the opposite of the “friendly monster” that a lot of games have integrated. Instead of being friendly but feared, my snow goon is trying to destroy the humans, while they think it’s a fun snowball fight.

Graphics: I spent a lot of time on the graphics, and in return, they decided to look good. :)

Gameplay: The gameplay was the other item I spent the most time on. The growing-shrinking mechanic is probably one of the coolest things I’ve used in an LD entry.

Humor and Fun: My main goal was to make a fun game that makes people smile. Looking at the comments I have received so far, it appears that this is the case. 😀

What went left

Time management: I can’t stress this enough. If you want to have a good Compo entry, you need to plan to get the game done early. Last time, my entry was done for the compo, but was missing SFX and had very rough gameplay. From now on, I am going to plan to get my entry done in eight hours, so that I can actually have a polished game by Submission Hour.

Audio: As a result of the above, I ended up without music or SFX. Oh, well; the opt-out checkboxes are useful in this situation. Like I always say, “save it for the post-jam version!” 😉

Variety: Spending so much time on art and gameplay also gave me less time to add in variety. I was planning to add in a few more kids (at the very least, one girl), but decided that the gameplay was more important. This is one of the things I will focus on post-jam.

Thanks for reading!

If you haven’t checked out Raging Snowman yet, try it over here! I’d love some feedback on how I could improve it. If you leave a comment on that page, then in return, I’ll take the time to rate and comment on your game!

Signing off,
ETHproductions