Overview
Ludum Dare Submission Page
Mailure to Launch is a first-person arena shooter where the player battles an army of rogue delivery drones in order to get a signature for a package.
The game revolves around a unique 'Catch' mechanic, where players must catch packages launched by enemies and throw them back in order to defeat them. Different enemies utilize different packages that all carry unique effects, and packages can synergize with each other for special combos. |
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Development Role
Mailure to Launch was created in 72 hours for the Ludum Dare 53 game jam by a team of 2 people.
During the game jam, I accomplished the following:
During the game jam, I accomplished the following:
- Designed & implemented all gameplay features
- Created an adjustable AI system that allowed for unique enemy behaviors without modifying code
- Created a component & data-based projectile system that allowed us to quickly implement new packages with minimal dependency
- Whiteboxed a 5-10 minute linear level consisting of multiple arena-style encounters, introducing & combining different enemies to gradually ramp intensity
- Created all Menus, UI, and Music
Post-Mortem
Given the time constraints - which was more around 48 hours for us, despite the 72 hour deadline - I'm very pleased with what I accomplished and what we as a team ended up creating, especially for our first game jam. However, while some things went well, there were still pitfalls we fell into and areas where we could have improved.
Things that went well
Things that went well
- The game was designed with a simple core mechanic that was heavily expandable - the concept of catching & throwing different packages with different effects. The flexibility afforded by this allowed us to scale our workload as necessary, as content & gameplay behaviors were not interdependent on each other
- Work Balance was kept in check, despite heavy time constraints. Both of us were successful in pacing ourselves in order to not burn out before submission, taking frequent breaks and proper sleep - this resulted in us working for longer & at a higher quality, and allowed us to save energy for the final submission push
- Putting effort into robust systems on the front-end allowed us to create more content than we had originally planned, with more varied AI and package types that were a result of easily tunable data-based architecture
- Not enough time was afforded for the main level itself - and while I'm still proud of what I created in just 2-3 hours, there are areas & encounters that are rough due to a lack of time and testing. If I were to revisit the game in the future, this would be the biggest area of improvement
- More effort was spent on creating content & systems than polish & quality-of-life features, which ended up hurting the game overall. While this was largely a constraint of our team size, committing to even a slightly smaller scope would have given us more time to improve the feel of the game immensely