Flower Picker Post Mortem

LD46 was one week ago, but I've been busy/tired with work all week so now's the time to write my post-mortem:

Saturday

I read the theme, "Keep it alive". I quickly set on my idea "Harvest Moon with flowers" and "keep the memory alive".

I fired up Unity, made some graphics and started making the tilemap and player movement.

I played some ditties on my guitar for placeholder music (they were fitting enough to keep).

I came up with ambitious subsystems: day and night cycle, day of the week, plant growing, and buying and selling. It would also have simple ARPG combat and a puzzle subsystem (almost none of these ideas would come to fruition 🙄).

I posted progress screenshots and gifs on Twitter, the Ludum Dare feed, and the Ludum Dare Discord. I downloaded ScreenToGif, which is a neat simple program.

Sunday

I decided SFXR sounds weren't good for my game, and instead recorded some tapping and scratching sounds with my phone, to use as stepping sounds in brick and grass. I didn't have enough time to implement them.

6 hours from the deadline, I was now worried. There was talk of incoming server load, so I hurried to make the title screen for my game and pre-published the itch.io and Ludum Dare pages.

On Sunday night, 3 hours from the deadline, I had no gameplay. I scrapped what I was working on and finalized the "talk to npc" system and the code for collecting flowers. I made the ending within the last half hour of the deadline. This was exciting, but dangerous (and nerve-wracking 😖) I play tested one last time and submitted.

Conclusion

What I did right:
- This time, I came up with the idea pretty quickly.
- Kept up with the community on Discord, which is good for inspiration and morale. 👍
- I made music right from the start, which helped keep a vision and motivation.
- I posted progress screenshots and gifs, which is always great for motivation and exposure.
- I had some starting graphics in the very beginning, which kept it grounded and shareable.
- I made a Trello board with tiered items to keep track of the work left.

What I did wrong:
- Overly ambitious gameplay ideas for my current Unity experience and existing codebase (within the timeframe).
- Focused on day/night cycle, weekday system and plant growth, before the more basic gameplay code.
- Didn't share progress on Sunday, because of lack of time and visible progress (too much under-the-hood work).
- Actual gameplay was created in the last 3 hours of the jam.

Overall, I'm very happy with the process and the result 🙂 This experience will definitely help me make games and promote them some more.

You can play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/flower-picker