Well, voting is over for the 25th Ludum Dare 48-hour competition and my game “Apathy” came in a solidly in the middle of the pack.
No ratings under 2.3, and I even had 1 rating over 3! Definitely better than my previous entries.
The selected theme this time around was “You are the enemy.”
I used Haxe/NME + HaxePunk to write a Flash game. If you’re interested, the source is hosted on github.
What went wrong?
- The subject matter of my game came to life for me. I was definitely struggling with some depressive and apathetic feelings. Never a good place to be. This sucked up a lot of my time and energy, which, I think, led to a stunted experience.
- What the win condition represented was, perhaps, a little to abstract or vague for many of the players to understand. The player was a manifestation of apathy – if the player moved around and tried to “play”, they would be engaged, and not apathetic. Since the player is a manifestation of apathy, though, this means the player is losing. The win condition was not to care, and to simply not play. After a time, apathy wins out because the player didn’t care.
- Not enough shiny.
- Sound and music could have been improved.
What went right?
- I came up with a pretty simple concept fairly quickly
- I used some pretty spiffy libs that I had some prior experience with
- Good sleep + good food + good communication with the people in my life
What can I do better?
- I need to learn how to make some music, or find a better source for music. The tool I’m using (autotracker-bu) is starting to sound the same and get a little old. It’s output also doesn’t really fit with the concept of some of the games I want to make. However, I do have to say it is an awesome little utility none-the-less.
- On a personal level, I need to develop some mental tools to help push through the feeling of apathy myself. It can be a tough enemy.