Postmortem: Zeit

I participated in the 48h game jam Ludum Dare again last weekend. The theme was "Connected Worlds" and I started making a game called Zeit based on the multiple worlds interpretation, in which you are stuck in an endless time loop and have to fight off enemies and avoid a growing army of alternate versions of yourself. Sounds fun? Meh. I didn't really like it, so I stopped working on it after 14 hours and left it half-finished. You can still check it out if you're interested.

Zeit

The Good
So here's some of what went well this time.

- Livestreaming. I did that, and a couple of people actually watched it. It's great for two reasons:
Firstly, I was way more focused on the task and way faster than I would have been otherwise. You don't procrastinate when you know you're being watched. Secondly, I now have all of my 14 hours of work on tape and can revise my workflow and do cool things like this time-lapse. I'll probably keep doing that in the future, and I can only recommend it to anyone who does anything remotely interesting.

- Researching. I did that for the first time. I didn't have any idea what to make of the theme "Connected worlds" (at least none that would have been realistic given the time frame and my limited programming skills), so I googled anything related to "connected worlds", "multiple worlds", "other worlds", etc. Eventually I got stuck on the many worlds interpretation, which gave me some crazy gameplay ideas about alternate universes and time-loops. The stuff is actually really interesting, and you should totally do some research on it if you're looking for gameplay inspiration.


The Bad
Here's what didn't work out so well.

- Giving up. I did that way too early. In retrospect, I really regret not finishing the project. Even if in my eyes it wouldn't have been a good game in the end, someone else might have liked it. (And some people already do.) Game jams are not about making a great game, but about making a game. And the experience of that might be worth just as much. I guess I'll still have to learn to from time to time finish a game just for the sake of it.

- Not making sounds. Again. I remember last Ludum Dare I wrote something along the lines of "If everything works as planned, my next LD entry will have at least some sort of noise in it. Promise!" Well. It doesn't. It would have been a good exercise to implement audio into the game, too, but I didn't even get to that stage. I'll really try harder next time. Promise. For real now!


The Takeaway
- Don't give up next time. As one commenter accurately pointed out in response to my game: "Some ideas are just worth exploring, even if there is no fun at the end." Maybe next time explore it some more before abandoning it.