Escape from Anathema Mines - Post-Mortem

This year I spent around 2 hours planning before I actually started writing my game. I also bounced ideas around with some friends to come up with a really good game concept. I believe spending this time planning before actually creating really helped out in the fun factor this year. Last year my fun score was fairly low.

I used pygame again this year to great success. It was easy to get my game up and running and working quite nicely by the time the contest came around. I also used my own level and tile editors, which helped save a good deal of time. I also was able to use my MR-8 for recording sound effects, ModPlug and n-track for creating the music. I was quite pleased with the quality of audio I was able to create in about 2 hours. I also utilized friends to do play testing. This also helped in the fun factor, as I was able to get some good feedback on what parts of the game were fun, what levels were too hard, etc. I was also pleased to have enough time to create 5 levels for the contest, giving my game a fairly complete feel.

For next time, I am interested in learning a 3-D kit so that I can do fancier graphics. My game would have still been a 2-D game, but with the added light effects, I think that would have helped my production.

The Good

* Prep: I made sure all my tools were installed and working before the contest

* Planning: gave me considrable direction and a better starting idea

* Tools: pygame, pgu (level and tile editors), ModPlug, n-track, Audacity

* Windows: knowing how to use py2exe

* Testing: Having lots of it. Game play came out good, and no critical bugs were in the contest edition.

* Time: Managing time from most important features to least

The Bad

* Tools: wish I had 3-D tool knowledge to do my lighting effects and hi-res graphics.

* Testing and Time: wish I had more time to do more to weed out the last few non-critical bugs, but you can only do so much in 48 hours.

I enjoyed this year's contest even more than last years. I am really enjoying trying out everyone's games, and I'm learning a lot on what I can do to improve my game making skills.

Special Thanks

* Lyn - for being my poster child, and some testing Tim - for being my primary tester Dan - for being my backup tester richard - for hosting the contest #ludumdare - I had a great time, special "hoo rahs" to those who participated in the 2.5 hour mini "Road Trip" contest.