Schrodinger's Kitten Postmortem

My Ludum Dare 28 entry was a game-show style game involving kittens. As usual, here is the postmortem for that game.

What went right

Kittens. What? That's not a good enough explanation? When the theme was announced my first thought was "great, another theme that almost any game could meet with only minor changes." Then I started thinking of all the possible games and not only were there too many options to choose from but most of the ideas were too big for a weekend. With a need to narrow things down I went to One Game A Month and picked one of their three December themes. Kittens lead me to thinking about Schrödinger's cat which lead me to zombie kittens. Not entirely sure how this led to a Bayesian logic game but that is what came into my mind.

Mixed blessings

One of my biggest weaknesses is sound. Having a Gameshow theme allowed me to at least have sounds that I could actually handle. The results were not what I would call good, but neither was it overly bad. I did learn the importance of having a decent mike as my headset clearly does not qualify. The biggest issue was as I moved there would be clicking sounds caused by head-motions. I tried using audacity to remove the clicks but there were still some clicks that snuck through. Considering I had to use myself as voice talent, I don't think I did too bad. I tend to speak in a monotone so had to put effort into making sure that wasn't the case. I didn't quite get the Gameshow voice I wanted but I am not entirely sure what is wrong. I am thinking it is an issue with my delivery speed but I am not a sound guy so that is just a guess.

What went wrong

Time management was by far the biggest issue this time. Part of this was my fault as I really had a hard time getting into my programming groove so spent far too much time with distractions. Part of my time loss was the result of interruptions. Phone calls, relatives with computer problems, and neighbours that can't comprehend what a game jam is took up a good chunk of my time.  Considering the time of year, I suppose this is to be expected.

Overall, this was not too bad of a game but could have used a bit more graphical polish and a theme song. One of these days I am going to have to start playing with some of the music software I own. Then again, considering my sound skills, the world may be better off if I don't.