I recently participated in my 6th Ludum Dare game jam and I want to share some reflections.

This time around we've built a simple dexterity-based game called Animal Arcade.

Prefer simpler ideas

During the initial brainstorming we came up with a list of three ideas and ended up choosing the one that was simplest to implement and iterate on. With games, there is a high chance that you will throw out the first few versions as unplayable garbage. And then you need to leave plenty of time to polish the final result. So I think going for simpler ideas is a good strategy if you want to ship something playable on a Game Jam with tight time constraints (72 hours).

Iterate without fear

It's surprising how easy it is to get attached to what you have already implemented and place yourself in the imaginary box preventing you from moving forward. You have to recognize this and be ready to discard what you've built and try a different path.

In our game, the animals were shrinking over time and that was a core mechanic to make the game difficult. It was also a tied to the jam theme "Tiny Creatures", which is why we felt that we can't remove it.

But there were a number of problems with this mechanic:

  • Hard to come up with an explanation why the creatures were shrinking
  • Creature sprites looked ineligible at small scale
  • Past some size it was nearly impossible to hit the creature

We ended up removing the shrinking altogether and making the game difficult through other means (shooting delay, interesting movement patterns), but it took us some time to actually realize that this was an option.

Leverage human perception

Finally, some game mechanics really benefit or even work only with visual and sound support.

When we introduced the delay between the user click and the shot landing on the screen, I was really surprised how disorienting even a seemingly small 0.3s delay felt. The game became too difficult but also didn't feel fun as my brain was really confused.

Before abandoning the idea, I decided to add simple sound and visual cues - it suddenly became both easier and much more fun to time the shots. We ended up investing a lot more effort into the feel of this mechanic and I think it is one of the main reasons I enjoy the game.

Final words

I'm sure these ideas are not new, but sometimes you can only really feel them through experience - that's one of the reasons I love game jams, they always present this concentrated learning opportunity.

If you have any similar reflections or comments, let me know on Mastodon.