I had a really good time working with Prankard and Oddcase on this game jam. Unfortunately, I joined the team several weeks after the initial start date. I had a lot of great ideas and not enough time to implement them all. I would like to try this concept again in the future. I think I could have made a more polished art direction for the game if I made templates or tilemaps to work with. I will definitely give this type of game jam another try. 

What I liked:

• Prankard did an amazing job with the Corgi Engine and writing working on implementations to add features to our game. 
• Everyone step in and helped with the artwork which I thought was really cool. This was a great team to work with. 
• Oddcase did all the sounds and music in the game. I am still very impressed with the audio produced for this project. 

What I would change:

• I think I would like to try a metroidvainia again from scratch instead of using the Corgi Engine. I personally found it hard to navigate. 
• The scope felt too big for the project and timeframe. I think we should have toned down the map size to allow time for story and meaning. It is easy to build worlds in tile map blocks but requires many hours per scene to properly turn those blocks into attractive worlds that draw you in. 

Working on the artwork was fun in the beginning. I really enjoyed it. I discovered my favorite form of design is character, enemies, and animation. I am not a fan of level design. Especially without a proper story to give the game a feel. I started my level design by taking the blocked-out scenes. 

I would take this scene and paint it in photoshop. Then I add detail to sections of the painted scene trying not to paint the same things twice. This was my best way to save time. When I had the main features painted I did a lot of copy and paste until I had something that felt decent enough for a game jam. Last I did some quick polish work. Turning the block stage into this. 

This turned out to be very time-consuming for me. This one scene took approximately four hours and I still am not happy with it. With a full-time job and a large family to take care of I definitely did not have 4 to 5 hours to give on each scene. Especially when the game was nearing 40 scenes. So I made a switch in my artwork. I went from painting to vector art in Corel Draw. I am very familiar with Corel and work very fast and efficiently with it. So I tried a test scene. 

Results:

Even with these new changes I just could not complete all the levels for LadyBug Infestation. This was a big disappointment to me. I am still very happy I joined this team and would love to maybe one day work on another game jam together again. I did learn a lot from this game jam. Assets are very useful and can save a lot of time. Also, I realized that planning a project is great, but it is very important to know how much time you can allow for the project. If you add how much time you expect each piece to take then you know what can and can't be done with the time given. I will not make this mistake again. Well, I will try not to.

To wrap this up by stating the obvious. This was just a game jam. I did this to enjoy and have fun. My whole purpose for these jams is to develop my skills, meet new people that share my passion, and learn and have fun with this wonderful community. 

If you would like to try this game please do here:

Ladybug Infestation by prankard, Oddcase, Cracked Dome (itch.io)

Have Fun, Learn, and Make Games