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Goal and Explanation

The theme was delivery. But between me and my group of 8 friends, that theme felt too boring. Delivering... what? Mail? Pizza? Newspapers? Everyone was going to create games about that. The first few hours of the 53rd Ludum Dare game jam was spent thinking of creative spins and takes on the delivery theme.

Then, it hit us.

Instead of delivering any goods or services, we set out to create a game where you de-liver people in an endless hospital. And thus, Liver Die (a pun on "live or die") was born.

Liver Die takes a lighthearted approach by incorporating a simple low-poly theme and heavy use of our group's humor. This helped the game achieve an enjoyable experience from an otherwise crazy (not to mention gruesome) take on the jam's theme.

Problems and Growing Pains

The biggest challenge in any time-sensitive game jam is exactly that: Time. Ludum Dare usually gives you a total of 3 days to make a game; the jam starts on a Friday afternoon, then ends on the same time Monday. Needing to balance expectations and goals to match a short time-frame is no easy task.

Thankfully, I've had a little bit of experience with game jams. Our previous Ludum Dare entry, Lunaculture, was my first time participating in a game jam. However, with a larger team working on Liver Die, a healthy dose of project management was also required.

Managing a game jam project among a larger team was a challenging yet ultimately fun experience. We all knew each other well, so there was no problems with getting along and working together. The biggest project management challenge was coordinating which team members were working on what part of the project, and making sure no one was stepping on each others' toes while we were all working as asynchronously as possible.

Lessons Learned

Liver Die was the most game development fun I've had in a while.

Not only was Liver Die a blast to create, it was also a healthy learning experience on time-sensitive projects and project management with a larger (8+) team.

Our game jam results were impressive for our 2nd submission. Among 2310 submissions to Ludum Dare 53, Liver Die placed 140th overall, roughly the top 6%. In specific categories, Liver Die placed 55th in Fun, 24th in Theme, and an impressive 11th in Humor.

Let's collaborate.

Feel free to reach out to ask questions, connect, or if you want to work with me.