Nine Panels Post Mortem / Analysis

Hello! I am a thirteen-year-old, and this is my first Ludum Dare. For this Ludum Dare, I created Nine Panels, a simple puzzle game.

Nine Panels was inspired by The Legend of Zelda’s Ocarina. In the game, you insert different combos to do certain things, for example moving, teleporting, and blasting the tiles around you. Your goal is to simply move to the end of the level, which can be easy or difficult. Also, you only have a certain amount of combos, and you can unlock more in each level. There are 10 different levels and 1 bonus level. The bonus level has almost no difficulty, and was only added for fun.

My original idea was much different than the result. The combo system stayed roughly the same, but the goal was different. The game was initially inspired by Doodle God, and rather than trying to complete many levels, you were in one large map and tried and unlock as many combos as possible. For instance, you may have moved to the right to unlock a warp combo, which would then allow you to warp over to a place where you would unlock a blast combo. This would continue until you had collected every combo possible, and the game would have been completed. I strayed from this idea, noticing that it would have taken much longer.

What Went Right:

– The Concept: After viewing the comments of my game, most people seemed to enjoy the concept of the combo system! While using more than two buttons (maybe all 4 arrow keys) could have been more straightforward, for this Ludum Dare, it felt the theme fairly well.

– The Graphics: While they may have not been perfect, being a programmer, I felt that the simplistic graphics worked well for the game, especially the varied texturing between each tile.

– The SFX: There were sound effects almost all created by an individual sound from Maschine, created into a small jingle. I think it fit the game nicely.

– The Levels: While there weren’t too many, the levels were laid out according to my vision. They were fairly easy, and left lots of room for expansion.

What Went Wrong:

– The Dictionary: As shown above, there was a “dictionary” that you could use to see all of your unlocked combos. The problem was that whenever you received a new combo, you had to click to the last page in order to see it. What would have worked the best would have taken about 2 more minutes, and it would have been to simply reverse the pages, showing the newest combo first. I received multiple complaints about this.

– Music: What I would have preferred to have included was MUSIC. Sadly, I wasn’t sure how to implement this properly, and therefore wasn’t able to include it.

– Levels and Combos: I didn’t have enough time to implement more combos. With more types of combos, I could have implemented more difficult levels. At some point, my levels seemed to be fairly easy.

Overall, I’m fairly happy with how my game turned out, and will trying my best to participate in many Ludum Dares in the future!

Please check out and rate Nine Panels. I hope you enjoy!