April 26, 2010

Postmortem: Beebop The Island Hopper

So I participated in the Ludum Dare for the first time and this is a postmortem of my game Beebop The Island Hopper for the theme Islands.

About Ludum Dare

Ludum Dare is a competition which runs maybe two times a year and the competition is 24 hours long with a specific theme. After the 48 hours are over everyone who submitted a game can rate the other games in different categories such as graphics, fun, theme and overall. More info here.

The other entries

View all 205 Ludum Dare 17 entries

Holy hell they look absolutely fantastic! Taking part in a competition like this is so humbling, I can't even begin to compare myself to the best games out there. But that's good, I have games and creators to look up to and so I know how I can improve. Which by the way I can do with everything.

Stats

This time I didn't log my hours and so I don't have a good enough graph to show you. Thinking back I worked about 8 hours during this 48 hour challenge, two of them on Saturday and the remaining six late on Sunday. I didn't work many hours on this game but the hours I did work were really productive.

Pressure

Once again I think I've proven that pressure is the best motivator. The game feels as finished as any other game I've made. Sure it's not the biggest game and it has very limited features but it was made in less than a third of the time. Actually even less if you count the hours and not the days!

The Game

Even despite it being extremely simple it did suck up a bit of my time when I tried to beat it (which will take you a minute or two). I kinda liked playing it.

The graphics are pretty good, I have a pretty special style and I personally think it's not half-bad and hopefully you like it too. The music and sound are... well there is no music and I have like three sound effects in total - two of them are different kinds of clicks!

Overall I like it, but it's nothing really special. If I would try to give it an unbiased score (we all think our children are fantastic after all) it would probably be a 3 of 5.

Conclusion

The pressure of a deadline is a powerful motivator and now I've found that no more than a week, or even a weekend, is enough to make a game. And it might even end up being enjoyable.