I finished my first game in 3 days for Ludum dare 40. Here's what I learned.

I participated in ludum dare for the first time. Naturally, my submission was a half baked prototype that's barely playable. However,I do think that the experience was worth it. I learned a lot of things that I would've ignored just by sticking to a project to the very end . Here's why I think you should participate in a Ludum dare if you haven't done so previously:

• It'll teach you to polish your game. A lot of us tend to neglect visual effects and SFX in our games. I was in that group as well.My game had some minimal visual effects and and no sfx at all. After the first release, I added sfx and BGM and it almost feels like a different game already. And it took only 1.5 hours to do that. Prior to that I didn't even know how to implement audio in Unity. So please, don't put off sound till the very end.The effort is minimal and it is always worth it. Also, if you haven't already done so, watch the 30 min GDC Talk about adding juice to your game. 
• You get feedback.Yes, the number of players will probably be in the single digits for your first game. Itch.io tells me that my game has been downloaded 8 times so far. Sure, it's a minuscule number but 3 of them commented to tell me that they liked it .That's enough for me. Actually receiving feedback from people is very motivating and that's not going to happen if you never share your games with others or if you never finish a game. Game jams deadlines give you that last mental push to finish your prototype for once.
• Themes tend to be restrictive and that is a great game design challenge. They challenge you to evaluate what's so special about your game. The theme this time was-"the more you have, the worse it is ". A lot of people complained about the theme in twitter but I think that it was an interesting theme. For example, you get some sort of currency by defeating enemies and it increases your damage. At the same time,you'll take a lot more damage as well (this is how I decided to interpret it for my game). It's a good creative exercise and it'll get you out of a creativity block.
• The short deadline makes you consider what's truly important to your idea and make you acutely aware of your own shortcomings. I knew that the UI in my game did not match the rest of my game at all. The title screen and the custom font looks good but they don't match the game's pixel art artstyle. You can't just throw in a bunch of different assets together and expect it to look good. The individual assets may look nice separately but they'll turn into a mess together if they all don't follow the same style.
• Actually making a playable build teaches you a lot of things. Unity makes it easier but even then you have a lot more to do. I'm ashamed to admit that it took me ten minutes of fumbling around before realizing that I needed a zip file because you can't upload folders.
• The stress is real but you need to realize that you have to do your best regardless. After 3 grueling days, I've realized how much I'm capable of doing in three days. By playing other people's games I can know how capable they are compared to me and that I still have a long way to go. Also,I don't know how people actually survive the 2 day compo. I'm still burnt out from the 3 day one.
• Surprisingly, I didn't rely on google as much as I thought I'd need to. I already had enough knowledge from my various failed prototypes.The only time I relied on google was when I implemented audio.

Also, here's some general advice for game jams:

• Keep your weekend free. I had to do university paper work and I lost 8 hours for that. I could have done a lot in that time.
• Sleep and take regular breaks. Generally, I began work after eating breakfast.Every day, I had 4x three hour sessions per day with breaks. The breaks will help you plan and manage your trello. I generally went to sleep at 10 and woke up at 8 o' clock.This continued for three days.
• Don't neglect audio and visual polish till the very end.
• Be prepared for the worst. My wi-fi went down on the last day of the jam and I had to upload the game using my phone's hotspot feature.
• Always upload screenshots in your game description. Include gifs if you can.
• Play and rate other people's games. You'll learn about their thought process and what they did differently. In ludum dare this also gives your game additional visibility.

Overall, I'm happy that I managed to finish something this time.It's far from perfect but I learned a lot on the way. I'll definitely participate in the next Ludum Dare.

Thank you for reading this wall of text!

*This is an old postmortem of an old game. This was originally published on Reddit. You can check the original post here.