Ludum Dare 30 - Bacon Installer

Bacon Installer Post Mortem

A few weeks ago, I entered Ludum Dare 30. The theme was Connected Worlds. My entry was a retro sidescroller called Bacon Installer. It was, admittedly, based on a rather loose interpretation of the theme, but it was most certainly inspired by the theme.

Click this link to play Bacon Installer on GameJolt.

What went well?

The theme. Originally I wasn't enamoured with the theme, as Connected Worlds seemed a little too generic. However, I sat down with a trusty pen and notepad and scribbled out a few ideas. One of the ideas was Beacon Installer, in which the protagonist would install intergalactic communications beacons on different worlds. Clearly my scribble was worse than usual, as my wife misread it as Bacon Installer and asked what it was about. At that point imagination took over and the game you see before you today was born.

Choice of engine. I cannot claim to be a JavaScript expert, but I've found over the years that a good way to learn a language is to dive in and make a game with it. In the run up to Ludum Dare 30 I was doing exactly this, and had used the Phaser engine to write a simple game called Uncle Michael Bursts Bubbles  As a result, everything to do with Phaser was still fresh in my mind so it was  only natural to continue with it.

Graphics. Bacon Installer, much like Uncle Michael, has a low resolution, 4 colour retro art style, reminiscent of the original GameBoy. Creating sprites to match this style was well within my programmer art capabilities.

Polish. It may seem like a crazy idea, but if you're going to write a game in which pigs might be killed accidentally then you've got to make sure that you cater for the different types of death. In Bacon Installer there are several ways in which pigs can die, all of which are (hopefully) amusing.

Tools. A few months ago I was at a node.js workshop where the recommended IDE was JetBrains WebStorm. I found that I rather liked WebStorm and ended up buying a personal licence. So the choice IDE was a no-brainer. As for graphics, I've long been a fan of Paint.NET, and of course I used Audacity and bfxr for most of the sounds. In short, I was familiar with all of the tools and had no learning curve.

What went badly?

Music. I would very much have liked this game to have had some funky chiptune music, and I had Pulseboy all lined up ready to go. However, I chose to spend the last couple of hours adding polish in other areas, such as making sure that the game had a solid menu.

How did I do?

Reasonably. My highest placing was 48th for humour, but my daughter's entry Cat Planet beat me in all categories except fun. Clearly she has a career in game dev ahead of her, whereas I should stick to the day job, which does at least bring home the bacon.

What would I do differently?

Write more games. I think this was one of my stronger entries, but I need to do more than just enter the occasional Ludum Dare if I want my games to get better.