Last weekend was the 27th edition of the game development jam Ludum Dare. The theme for this competition was “10 seconds”. As usual, I contributed with a game of my own – something called Hijack Humans Hastily. It was an AS3 game (made with Nape and Starling) in which the objective was to use a UFO to capture 10 humans using less than 10 seconds of thruster fuel. It was also mostly developed with the OUYA as a target platform, although there’s a web version of it. Here’s a gameplay video (sorry about the accidental music):

I managed to do real-time broadcasting and recording of the entire development, something of a tradition for Ludum Dare games. The whole set – around 20 hours of it – is available at Twitch.TV. Here’s the usual time-lapse, having the whole process condensed into 2 minutes:

I have a full post mortem posted on Ludum Dare’s website. However, I’d like to repeat the conclusion of it here.

I think this was probably my most well-rounded Ludum Dare entry so far. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, and I spent plenty of time watching my own time-lapse video of the development process. It’s great seeing it slowly transform before your eyes.

Still, the relative smoothness of this Ludum Dare made me realize something. Ludum Dare is a lot more about the content, and I’m not sure I’m very happy with it.

Because of the limited time, it’s better to have a great idea, create a lot of content and gameplay, and test it out until you have something fun. Some of the compo and jam entries I’ve tested were really fun to play, more than just being an interesting concept that couldbecome a game.

In my mind, I like to use Ludum Dares to explore new mechanics – mostly in the form of new code – and almost as an excuse for learning something. And to be sure, I’ve done a lot of that; all Ludum Dares have been a great experience, even the ones where I didn’t have anything very playable in the end. I learned a lot in a short period of time.

Still, having to be forced to spend more time with content and gameplay is something bums me out. Having to ignore bugs unless they’re showstopping, and having to get things to work fast (as opposed to right) is something that, over time, I’ve almost forgot how to do. Nowadays, I like to get a cool system to work as a stepping stone. In a way, it’s almost as if gameplay is secondary to that (in that it comes after that, not that it isn’t important).

Something else made me realize that. Over the past few months, I’ve been slowly developing a game prototype on my free time. It makes me really, really happy. I take my time to get some things right – be it gameplay, animation, or lower-level systems – and it’s very rewarding. I do one thing at a time. Putting a pause in developing that to do Ludum Dare #27 was good in technical terms – I ended up learning several features I plan on adding to my game, such as ray casting in Nape – but I also realized I wanted to get some things right rather than just getting them done. For example, my starling shape utility classes – to transform imported Flash Sprites and MovieClip into Starling textures – is a mess. It works, but there’s a lot of edge cases where it doesn’t work as intended, or where there’s a lot of redundant code. And I’ve used it in 3 projects already, with no actual time for refactoring them and making them elegant.

I know the usual solution for Ludum Dares it to use an engine. Some might say I should have used Flashpunk, Citrus, or any other engine. And they would be right. But the reality is that it wouldn’t have been as much fun for me. As weird as it sounds, to me, Ludum Dare is an excuse to write something from the ground up. Not just to get something done, but to appreciate the journey of development. And I’m sure that, for many people, seeing something done is what motivates them over everything else. It surely motivates me. But I’m starting to realize that I care too much about getting systems right. Maybe it’s an annoying developer thing. My own professional work is always done on tight deadlines, make no mistake, but over time I’ve learned to balance it all and use time well to get something that’s mostly right from the get go. It normally means a better, more stable project in the long run.

I’m very grateful for everything I’ve done and learned. Ludum Dare is an awesome idea. But I’m not sure what I’ll do with the next Ludum Dares. I might do them, but maybe as part of a team, or maybe without submitting anything. I may use it as an excuse to build a “demo” of a system – e.g. my game controller classes, which need a few additional features – rather than an actual game to be played. We’ll see.