Wasin Thonkaew (haxpor) looks back on CatAstroFree, his Ludum Dare 27 entry: a 72-hour jam built by 4 people in two countries who had never worked together, in an engine (Unity) the lead was using for the first time. The theme was “10 Seconds,” which became a falling cat with nine lives and a slow-motion ghost trick.
The team finished 7 of 10 planned levels and scored best on humor — on purpose.
What went right:
- Built one level system, then reused it with different obstacles, spawn settings, textures, and music — the reuse is what made the deadline survivable
- Simplified the ghost-trick mechanic from a puzzle into one-at-a-time obstacle dragging, just to stay finishable
- Ran a public Tumblr blog and open Trello board; constant progress updates kept the distributed team honest and later became the postmortem’s raw material
- Chose humor and sound over innovation, and players laughed — the highest-scored category
What went wrong:
- Abstract inspirational references were never used — too conceptual for a 72-hour window
- Invited two members who were unsure they had time; both dropped out before the jam
- Camera control was rewritten 3-4 times and never felt right — “even the simple game, a camera control can become tedious”
- Nobody scheduled the rating period, so the team’s coolness score sank
The takeaway: in a jam, systems beat content, confirmed availability beats ambition, and public progress logs are the cheapest accountability tool a remote team has. A small, honest postmortem — 13 years old and still the right lessons. Good company for the other jam and scope posts in this section.