Postmortem: Lessons Learned Making "Unicorn Rescue" for Ludum Dare #43

Hi everyone! Welcome to the first, and quite likely last, itch.io dev blog post for Unicorn Rescue! This game was created in a single weekend for Ludum Dare #43 -- it was my second ever submission for a game jam, as well as my first time using Godot Engine. I wrote up a super-detailed postmortem on my main blog not too long ago, but figured I would post a TL;DR version here for easy reference. 

Quick backstory: I had already decided ahead of time that I wanted to try Godot Engine for this game jam. I had heard lots of good things about Godot, and most importantly, it seemed like a good choice for quickly making a well-polished game that could be played directly in the browser. But since it would be a new and unfamiliar engine for me, I decided to aim for creating something simple that my daughters (ages 4 and 7) would be able to easily play and enjoy. I thought that would help keep the scope small, and resist the temptation to put in the kinds of RPG mechanics and progression systems that I seem to gravitate toward.

As for how it actually went? Here were some of my main takeaways and lessons learned:

• Developing it in "phases" - Rather than starting with an ambitious idea and then trying to figure out how to scale it down if needed, I tried to start with the absolute minimum playable game and then build it up. This was helpful for keeping the development process focused, and I think it also helped create a more relaxed atmosphere, since it lowered the chance of completely not finishing anything.

• Using Godot Engine - Everything about this went amazingly well, and I have nothing but warm fuzzy feelings about this engine. I’m pretty much 100% sold on continuing to use it for any future jams I participate in. (As well as possibly other projects!)

• Making all of my own graphics - This was fun, and I think it resulted in a really distinctive visual style that paid off based on the ratings and comments... But it was an enormous time sink, taking up almost half of the total time spent on the jam. For future jams, I might try to figure out ways to be faster or more efficient about it.

• Keeping the scope in check - This mostly went well due to the iterative approach and intentionally simple kid-friendly design... The only piece that seemed a bit excessive mechanics-wise was the inventory system. It all worked out this time in terms of finishing it, but in future jams I should be wary of including features like this.

• The overly simplistic game design - This is probably the part of the whole submission that I feel most ambivalent about... As fun as it was watching my kids play and enjoy this little game, I ended up feeling like it was just too simple. Next time, I think I would want to focus first on making something that’s mechanically interesting enough to be enjoyed by an older audience... And then consider ways to make it more accessible to younger kids (if possible) as a secondary concern.

Those were the main takeaways, but for a much longer and more detailed version (including day-by-day development progress, breakdown of time spent, analysis of the feedback received, and lots more), feel free to check out the full blog post. Thanks for reading!