Mindblocked - Were the minds really blocked? A Short Post Mortem

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First things first - thank you all for all the super positive comments and the 60+ ratings on Mindblocked! Please do give it a shot if puzzle games are your thing!

This is my 20+something-eth game jam, so at this point most of the common jamming things to learn - we're generally aware of (time management, teamwork issues, working in different timezones, scoping etc.).
I mostly want to talk about the things which went right for us with this jam.

• The idea - We use the theme in both a negative and a positive manner. Running out of space here is not entirely a bad thing, because in the end - the reduced space (created by your own movement) helps you navigate to your target and is a core part of the mechanic.

• Number of Mechanics. Generally not a good idea to have a bunch of mechanics in a jam game - but these were largely easy to implement considering how the base code was implemented - which kept the game fresh over the levels. (And we had more options to make things!)

- The Difficulty Curve. A general rule of thumb when introducing mechanics and ramping difficulty we followed here was (Simple mechanic intro) -> (Level utilizing that mechanic better) -> (Level utilizing that mechanic in conjunction with other mechanics better) -> (Simple mechanic intro) -> ... (and so on till all the mechanics have been introduced, then you just keep making harder levels).
The curve somehow accidentally worked out pretty well too (the artist made a few levels, which I didn't get to test before submitting - I just told him to make those "middle of the road post-intro levels" for some of them). It also helped that we had a lot of mechanics to follow this curve properly.

• Resolution and scaling. The actual game is tiny, and in pixel art. This means we could do integer scaling properly, because it would mostly fit in any window size. I start the game by scaling it up an integer number of times to the max amount possible at first - but let the player switch to fullscreen and smaller windows too - whatever works for them. This gives more flexibility on how the player wants to view and play the game.

• Something that did not go right was a few timing issues. A lot of the game uses delta timing for movement - but some parts uses step timing, which means a lag (sometimes in HTML5) can potentially screw up the synchronization of movement (happens very rarely, but still). That was oversight on my part when programming.

• No original music. The composer who usually jams with us was busy on the weekend, so we ended up creating a few SFX, but had to find background music - which took out some of our time from other things (A huge props to Ozzed for having a wonderful collection of music up there).

That's it for LD42 folks! See you next jam!

Also, shameless plug - we made a game for the GMTK Jam this weekend too (because we clearly want to burn ourselves out): Check it out!
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