Finished, let the Plugging Begin. Post-Mortem of a Social Life LD40

So this theme wasn't good at first. It took a few hours to have an idea. But I am happy with what I came up with.

This game is infuriating, it takes time, that most people don't have. By that I mean that you will not complete the game within 5 minutes. In fact, it is a good in the background game for a Ludum Dare player. Mainly because there is not much to do. except come back and see that there are more people following you. Which in my opinion fits the theme. The more followers you have, the worse you feel about the game.

Regardless, I have a post-mortem to write, there are 4 days of the Compo for me!

Day 1 - Friday the 1st December (52 - 50 hours to go)

By the time I managed to sit down and look at the themes I was dreading this LD. Mainly because no ideas sprung to mind. Especially knowing I had to code 90% of it without base code. I wasn't hoping for the theme we got but I couldn't plan that. I sat down with flashcards with all possible options, due to the Theme not being announced and not wanting to sleep for 2 hours to wait for the theme.

Day 2 - Saturday the 2nd December (50- 26 hours to go)

Saturday started early and finished late. I was still working on possible ideas when the clock struck 2am. The announcement was made and...
I was still stumped. I had no ideas other than something simple. So I thought simple. I looked on Facebook and Twitter at Memes, to get inspiration. Until I realised that the thing I defaulted to was Social Media. Why don't I do a game based on that, the number of followers and the tediousness of it. So I did. That is the idea I went with. I started by working on tile assets. I had to create the effect of being within a room in a simple 2.5d Engine. So I focussed on the essentials. A desk, bed, chair, window, table and a painting (Not of happy trees). By this point I was introduced to #LavaLampsLD40. So of course there are many Lava Lamp references in my game. Once I was happy with the room, I decided to work on the GUI for the laptop. I had to make it fun and enjoyable, with Memes and references and yes, even a Donald Trump tweet. Unfortunately it zapped up a lot of my time. Leaving me only just over a day to implement all the mechanics and finalise the art and details. Luckily though the last thing I did on Day 2 was to create some music to be in the background of the game.

Day 3 - Sunday the 3nd December (26 - 2 hours to go)

Sunday was hectic. I woke up later than I wanted, however only by an hour. I first added the mechanic of the increasing number of followers on an exponential(-ish) curve. This allowed me to start on the Phone GUI, a form of displaying notifications and also allowed me to add the cutscenes for humour. I also at this point added the Day Counter increasing quite quickly. Most things were finished and ready for final testing.

Day 4 - Monday the 4th December (2 - 0 hours to go)

For some reason I decided to recreate some systems so they were more efficient and also animation to the Lava Lamp on the desk, it gave me something to do. However there was an issue exporting my game but it was fixed after a couple of minutes of stress. And here we are now.

My thought of the game

I think it is one of my best graphical games and suits the theme quite well, but there could have been more. Regardless this game is the closest I have been to being extremely happy with the game overall.

And Finally...

Please rate my game, I want people's genuine opinions, you can find it at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/a-social-life! Anyway, congrats to all who took part in LD 40, I look forward to playing everyone's games!