I am writing this up about 48 hours later than I intended to, but nevertheless, congratulations to all those who finished their game within the time frame! I've seen some really great games so far (I currently have about 15 tabs open for different games that have caught my eye) and some really innovative takes on the theme. I finished my game, "Vermin", too late for the Compo it was originally intended for but in time to submit for the jam, and I gotta say, while this isn't my first LD, it's the one I am by far the happiest with in terms of my own achievements and the first one that feels like a completed, "real" submission (Okay, first out of two, but still counts right?). So, in line with that feeling of completion, I want to fully round that off with an in-depth analysis of what I did right this time in comparison with what I did wrong in previous jams that I didn't make in time or wasn't happy with.

About the game

Vermin is I guess, loosely speaking, an infinite runner? Infinite scurrier? Scamperer? Yes, anyway, you get the point. You play as a rat king, in charge of leading a growing horde of rat-followers through an infinite farmscape. Your followers will get hungry as their journey takes its toll on them, and they will need to be guided towards food to keep them alive. But the more followers you have, the quicker they will decimate the farms that they encounter...

Thoughts on the Theme

The chosen theme was actually one of the ones I was least hoping for, partly because I felt that it didn't lend itself too much to creativity (boy was I wrong). I was kinda rooting for "you control the scenario" because I had a vaguely, formed idea bouncing around that I was hoping to test-run, but in hindsight I think I wouldn't have been able to implement it correctly. Nevertheless, the theme of "the more you have, the worse it gets", definitely gave me some trouble, because while I had plenty of idea, none felt good enough.

Planning stages

This is where my approach most deviated from my previous approaches to game jams, and I think this is what contributed the most to me delivering a finished entry that I was happy with. I took an entire day to brainstorm concept ideas, analyse them for potential obstacles in development, and approve or discard them accordingly. I hadn't originally planned to take so long (I had allocated about 6 hours of "thinking time" to be able to stick to compo deadlines but I wasn't happy after 6 so decided to spend longer. A lot longer. I started by approaching the theme directly, not focusing on game genre or content in the slightest - just concepts that would fit. My immediate first thought was money, and I actually spent a long time drafting out an idea on it. The concept had the working title of Squandary, and would have been a top-down shooter based around a king trapped in a nightmare in which everything he touched turned to gold, pursued by ghoulish monstrosities drawn to the shiny trail that the king left on the ground. Admittedly I really loved the idea, and was so convinced it would be my final choice that I even drew up some graphics for it:

Recognise him? Yep, he was broken down and recycled for Vermin, although his social standing has decreased somewhat.

I ended up dropping the idea of Squandary precisely because I liked it so much. I ended up creating such an intricate web of different enemies, upgrades, progression, even cutscenes, and I immediately recognised the inherent danger in that. So I sadly parted ways with what I quickly recognised would have ended up being a perfect example of scope creep. That said, I will probably explore the idea further outside of LD, because I am still really taken by the concept.

After canning Squandary, I wrestled with a few more ideas, but none really stuck. I bounced around a lot of ideas involving turning what would normally be essentials for human existence (oxygen, food, etc) into undesireable or harmful elements. And it was while doing some mental research on the basics of human existence that I stumbled onto the concept of reproduction. That quickly led to a thought chain of "what multiplies quickly?", which I immediately answered with "weeds and pests" (yep, I talk to myself when brainstorming. I make no apologies). It wasn't long before I discarded weeds (not before sketching out a puzzle game involving an overgrown garden, which I have actually seen as an entry somewhere for this jam. I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but shout-out to weed-garden guy!

After discarding weeds I began to explore the idea of pests more. I wanted to find an idea which would reflect the theme in two ways: Both through mechanics and through the general idea that being infested by lots of vermin sucks. My initial idea was gonna be called "Swarm", involving locusts ravaging a village's crops, but I changed to rats because they have more personality. You can't put a crown on a swarm of insects. It wasn't long before I fleshed out the idea of a sidescrolling infinite runner involving decimating crops with an ever-growing horde of rats.

Graphics

I was intent on creating all the graphics from scratch myself (as I still held some delusions about being able to finish in time for the compo deadline), and overmore I was set on making good graphics. Or at least semi-decent. I have recently rekindled my love of pixel art and this felt like the perfect time to develop that. Plus, I'd been reading a lot of good things about the Dawnbringer color palette and wanted to give it a trial run (the game uses that palette entirely, although I cheated a little with transparency on shadows). I'm fairly sure the palette contributed heavily to the cohesive feel to the finished game, and I have had a lot of positive feedback about the polished feel, so I guess that's a point for Dawnbringer. I used aseprite exclusively for graphics (wonderful tool, highly recommend for pixel artists), and I surprised myself at how quickly I was able to churn out workable sprites for the game, especially since I was working without concepts. I drew up the main crucial elements, opting to leave the more superfluous stuff (the status symbols and the emotes), to do on the fly as needed.

Development ##

I was torn between using Unity and GM:S for development, and ended up settling on GM:S because a) I am more comfortable with the workflow in general, b) I have always preferred GM's handling of 2d, and c) Unity asset store is too much of a temptation to grab premade assets as placeholders that end up being final. Development went smoothly with the exception of 2 wasted hours trying to implement an over-engineered terrain generation system, and 2 hours spent staring at the same block of code trying to figure out why the game was spawning massive stretches of farmless wasteland and boring straight roads. A lot of time went into working on the movement behaviours for the rat swarm, which I am still not 100% happy with. Their current behaviour is close to what I wanted: They will gather in a narrow line behind you if you move faster, and spread out vertically if you slow down. But at times the movement feels less than ideal and especially the slowed-down behaviour is very clunky. Although it adds a bit of personality to the game - sometimes you have to use your king as a sheepdog to dress the ranks.

Audio and Music ##

This is normally my favourite part to address whenever I make a game, and I tend to leave it till last for when I am too mentally exhausted to focus on anything else. The downside to that is that I never get to spend as much time on audio as I would like, which is somewhat frustrating as my principle interest is soundtrack composition. I opted to use sfxr for sfx because it is an amazing tool that produces entirely workable results, quickly (speed was of the essence at this point - sound and music was started about 3 hours before the deadline). The pixelated style of the game meant that the sfxr sounds didn't seem out of place, and weren't entirely jarring.

For the soundtrack (all two tracks of it), I decided to take on a pseudo-chiptune style to complement the sfx and the pixel graphics. It's actually far from being "pure" chiptune but still has a retro feel that I am very happy with. I finally got to use a Casio VL-1 emulator to deliver some disgustingly cheap-sounding synths, and I was grinning like a child with a new toy (or I guess a very old toy) while using it. I cobbled together a main theme and a menu theme in about an hour or so, which was probably an hour too long for my poor neighbours who had to enjoy 60 minutes of squealing calculator noises (Thanks, Casio).

Time and Deadlines

My game was ready about an hour before the deadline, which was pretty much bang on time for when I'd intended. I like to leave a bit of extra time on top of the submission hour for unforeseen issues, which, aside from some issues uploading to itch.io, thankfully never occurred. In terms of completeness of the game, the current content is about 95% of what I originally planned, which I am very happy with. In case you are wondering - the final 5% was going to be cows that wandered around, similar to the villager except stuck inside fields, which your rats could kill and eat provided they had the "berserk" status effect. But I didn't have the time to draw and animate an entire cow, so I decided to leave it out. In general I am happy with how I balanced my workload, and even managed to get some hours of sleep and downtime. Although, that said, it's perhaps very telling that I still have to fight the urge to finish each of my sentences with a semicolon.

Final Thoughts

As mentioned in the intro, this is not my first completed jam, but it is the first where I truly feel satisfied with my submission. My game is playable, and I have received mostly positive feedback, some of which has been truly inspiring. I doubt I will pursue Vermin much further after LD as it feels very much like an arcadey game and I want to get my teeth into something a bit meatier, but completing this jam successfully has given me a huge confidence boost and a bunch of creative drive. I sincerely hope that others have benefited just as much as I have, and I look forward to continuing to play and review your submissions.

If you managed to battle your way through this titan of a post, thanks for reading, and I would love to hear your feedback on my game, if you can spare a few minutes: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/vermin