Ludum Dare #59 Post Mortem

This Ludum Dare's theme was 'Signal' and I made a puzzle game about sending signals through circuits with logic gates in them. It is called Signal Circuits and can be played on itch:

The results are out now and I'm happy to report that I did pretty well in most categories, scoring above average for most of them and getting 129th overall. Better than that and coming as a complete surprise I got 17th(!) in the theme category :D Seeing as I did so well this time I thought my entry deserved to have a post mortem.

Brief description of gameplay

The game is purely mouse driven with the player placing circuit elements on a grid. Elements include wire, gates, splitters and crossings. Once a circuit has been built the player presses the run button to watch the signals in the circuit move from element to element in update ticks. 

With these simple elements any kind of logic gate can be constructed as the base gate is a NOR gate and can be used to compose all other elementary gates. And because of the tick based system dynamic elements can also be designed like flip flops, pulse generators and clocks.

If that seems a little complex don't worry because I made a sequence of levels that gently introduce each element and have a goal state for a given input and output. I was very much inspired by the Zach-like genre in terms of  having levels where you create a solution and then let tests play out on it.

Origin of idea

Out of all the potential themes in the last round of voting I hadn't actually spent much time thinking about 'Signal' but as soon as I heard it I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I had a very old project, like over ten years old old, which implemented logic gates in a cellular automata based on Von Neumann's universal constructor. It struck me that I could take those rules and make a game out of them.

To make it fair I didn't refer back to that project and coded everything from scratch again. I felt like the game rules were generic enough that anyone could come up with them. Because I had a goal in mind I could immediately get into coding it.

What went right

On the whole the entire experience went really well and has to be one of my favourite Ludum Dare experiences. In particular:

• Having a well scoped idea which I didn't need to sacrifice parts of for time.

• Going for level based gameplay which I hadn't done before but meant I could simply make as many levels as I had time to develop.

• Procedural graphics which I'm much more comfortable working with rather than trying to draw my own. It also gave it a retro aesthetic which I, and others, found appealing.

• Having a whole weekend to work on it but not pushing myself too hard. Early mornings but not late nights and a bit of exercise thrown in there too.

• Getting interactivity in early so I could mess around with it and see how it felt. Only then did I work on graphics, interface, sounds and description text.

• Reusing the program structure from my previous Ludum Dare entries. It is steadily growing and makes getting all the functionality working a breeze.

What was difficult

It's actually difficult to come up with things for this part as the process of making the game went so smoothly. Of what I can think of:

• Not having music. I've never done music composition and even my sound effects were just simple tones. It was a comment on the game that it would be great with some ambient music and I have to agree.

• Knowing my own system too well. I'm as guilty as anyone else who spends too much time with their own game so that they lose sight of how difficult it might be for a new player.

• Not having enough puzzles. I was very worried at this because to me they seemed so simple and I only came up with a few tricky ones. I didn't even have time to test the final few.

• Bit of a meta point but I feel like my game was a bit lacking because I was working on my own. Only once have I worked on a team as part of the jam instead of the compo and I kind of miss it.

Feedback

The feedback as always was phenomenal. I love how kind everyone is and it is a treat to have dozens of people play your game. The community is one of my favourite parts of Ludum Dare and it is a joy to get to see what other people did with the theme in their entries.

As for my game's feedback, the game was well received with lots of positive comments. People did find it of reasonable difficulty with most not even getting to the final puzzle. The graphics were seen as pleasantly retro and I even got a compliment on the level complete sound. 

Other people noticed it was like a Zach-like and suggested that having stats to compete on each level would be nice. I also got a comment approving of the fact that progress on each level was saved which was a functionality which I was pleased to have managed to implement.

My most dedicated commentator has to be @mikan who completed the final hardest level that even I hadn't had time to complete myself. Three hours they spent on it and made a video recording all of it. Hats off to them, it's amazing when people become properly engaged with your project.

Conclusion

This might be the best Ludum Dare I've ever taken part in and I'm really proud of what I was able to produce in a weekend. It really makes me think that I'm not too bad at hobby game development and programming in general. Thank you for everyone who took the time to play and rate my entry and thanks for sharing your submissions too :)