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Ludum Dare 41 Retrospective - Office Daydream

· 3 min read
Erik Onarheim
Erik Onarheim
Maintainer of Excalibur
Jae Edeen
Jae Edeen
Maintainer of Excalibur
Kamran Ayub
Kamran Ayub
Maintainer of Excalibur
Alan Grgic
Alan Grgic
Excalibur Contributor
Sean Igo
Sean Igo
Excalibur Contributor

Play the Ludum Dare version of ‘Office Daydream’

screenshot showing the game: the lower half is various office mini games while the upper "daydrem" is a motorcycle platformer

What went well​

Shorter workdays​

We had the fortunate opportunity to get out of the city for a bit and take a vacation preceding the game jam. We wanted to take advantage of our time away from home, so we instituted regular work days (8 hours), rather than the 10-12 hour days we usually fall into the trap of doing . And surprise, it went great! Everyone was more relaxed, and we delivered a quality game in less time! It was easier for the team to focus on getting stuff done. We also managed to finish early, just ahead of the submission hour.

Art pipeline​

the arm that indicates your clicking actions, shown in various skin tones

We did most of our work in Aseprite, with a little bit of Photoshop thrown in. A lot of the art in this game is simple shapes, and we recycled many of the backgrounds across the mini-games.

Brainstorming​

the copy machine minigame, where the player matches the lit-up buttons to get the copy machine to work

The theme was announced at 8:00 pm in our time zone. We spent the evening hours brainstorming, picking a few to develop a little more, and then deciding on our favorite choice.

Scope pruning​

office posters on a wall that say "you should be working" and "synergy"

We were ruthless at eliminating extras that tried to sneak in to the game. We had less time than we usually do, so we had to work efficiently. The resulting game is about half of the scope it had the potential to become, and we kept it under control.

What could have gone better​

the stapling minigame, where you have to click on the various pages of a report in the correct order to staple and complete them

We had to spend some extra time ahead of the jam updating our game template and tools. We could have done this at any earlier point. It wasn’t too bad, but it did cut a bit into our relaxation time for the days preceding the jam.

We also struggled again with managing state in Excalibur. We’re working on incorporating this into the Excalibur engine to improve the development process.

timelapse of us working on our computers in a well-lit room with wood trim

Overall, this Ludum Dare went great. We look forward to playing all of the cool games that we’ve seen so far for LD41!