This was a solo effort and my first time participating in a game jam. The theme of Ludum Dare 45 was "start with nothing". In Letterout, you use the letter tiles that you draw to form words and move around the level. You start with NOTHING. The goal is to get to the exit, and to win, you need to reach the exit on the 10th level. Score as many points as you can along the way!

Created in under 72 hours!

Challenges

It took several hours to come up with an idea that utilized the theme in a way I enjoyed, but after several hours of brainstorming and sketching, eventually I landed on the idea of a roguelike word game.

What Went Wrong

Due to the time constraints, the sound effects are harsh and there is no music at all.

What Went Right

Using a pre-existing open source wordlist for validation of words played saved a lot of time. While the 300,000+ entries in this list are questionable when compared to a game like Scrabble, it worked well for a prototype made so quickly. Targeting a web-based release through the WebGL build option that Unity3D provides allowed more players to easily play and evaluate the game. This tight feedback loop enabled me to make quick changes before I submitted the final build. Creating a map editor that perform read/write operations on JSON files enabled me to create levels quickly and opened up the possibility of allowing community-generated content.

Lessons Learned

The source code for a game jam project created in a hurry does not make for the best presentation of developer's ability to write thoughtful, well-organized, maintainable code. Especially if it's the only source code repository listed in their portfolio.

Additional Media

You can view the brief blog posts I had posted while developing the game during the jam.

If you are on a desktop computer, you can play the game in a web browser.