Compo debrief & the making of GLITCHLOOP

A mini post-mortem of GLITCH LOOP!

🎲 Finding a concept:

The theme was revealed at midnight where I live. I quickly looked at it and went for a good night of sleep. 7h later, I started brainstorming. I usually spend at least 1/3 of the jam thinking about game concepts and making paper prototypes. But for LD47 I settled very quickly on a simple idea: a circular clock with beats that trigger actions.

From there 2 ideas emerged:
- An audio/music sequencer toy: an interactive scene which record what you click on and loop to create a beat.
- A puzzle game about finding the right sequence & using your previous loops to solve the puzzle.

I picked the puzzle game because I feared I would just end up with some limited, half finished toy (and not game) with the other one. Deciding on the concept early, about 2h after I started, gave me plenty of time later for polish.

💻 Development:

DAY1

My schedule was simple and I managed to stick to it:
- 1st day: have the main game loop and all the mechanics implemented + a first world (6 levels) done.
- 2nd day: make the music, sounds, polish & debug + add 1 or 2 more worlds.

Very early on I had this idea of a goofy time traveller/astronaut:

I started with the basic controls and game feel:

Then I added the clock/loop mechanic:

At the end of the first day, I had 6 working levels & all the mechanics in, but I was lacking a lot of feedback & the menu flow wasn't implemented. Went to bed at midnight.

DAY2

I woke up fresh at 7am and immediatly started laying down ideas in Ableton for the main music. I had an edm/dubstep/chiptune vibe in my head and I quickly pinned down a melody/base riff. I made 2 loops:
- one for the levels
- one for the main menu (which is just the drop of the main track looping)

I used BFXR to create all the audio feedback and by noon the game had functioning audio!

While I was working on audio I decided to juice the game up by adding a looping background, screen transitions and a dabbing character:

Most important thing afterward was to have some proper menu/level selection. I reused most of the main game code to do the level select:

I spent a couple hours fixing the most annoying bugs and took a break from the screen to do some level design for World-2 (which was originally world 3 but I quickly realized I wouldn't have the time to make 3 worlds, so I picked the more interesting one). I wanted a twist to the puzzle so I thought about having the ghost mirror your input every loop.

Obviously I didn't make any level design tool so it was tedious to build the levels, but I managed to make 11 of them (level 2-6 didn't make the cut unfortunately):

As I usually do, I spent the last couple hours of the jam slapping together a title screen and testing web builds of the game to spot some bugs.

💡 Key Takeaways:

I'm happy with my entry. I was lucky to be able to spend a good 12-15h a day uninterrupted on the game and I found myself with a lot of time to polish this. Here is what I'll keep doing for the next Ludum Dare:

- Sleep is everything. The more jams I do, the more I sleep and I feel I'm just more effective than when pulling an all-nighter
- Having a functional game by the end of the first day. This frees so much time for the polish, debug and audio part that makes all the difference. If the game is too complex to achieve this, I'd simplify the concept.
- Thinking about the title earlier than 10min before the end, and check for the typos in the title, otherwise (original title screen):

You can play the GLITCH LOOP here.
Sorry for the long post! I hope you'll enjoy the game. Congrats to everyone who took part in the jam!