This Ludum Dare I wanted to make something simple and have a lot of time for polishing. So I was thinking about making a platformer since I've made a platformer a few times before and even won the Jimjam with one recently (https://itch.io/jam/jimjam-2/results).

* Day 1 *

Since in my part of the world Ludum Dare starts at saturday at 3:00 AM, I didn't wait for the theme announcement and went to bed early. I woke up about 7:30 AM, 4.5 hours after start. LD webpage was already full of promissing progress. I started thinking and after about 30 minutes I got the idea. I decided to make a platformer where you are able to possess your enemies. I was implementing similar idea in one of mine unpublished games so this wasn't entirely new for me as well.

I about 11:30 AM I got prototype of basic movement and possessing functionality:

After that I started with a music - at all my previous jams I made music few hours before deadline or I didn't make it at all. So I started with that early this time. Music set the atmosphere so I made some fitting graphic elements. Music is inspired by the Sin City theme which gave me direction for graphics.

4:00 AM - first version of character with animations, tiles and simple lighting effect.

7:00 PM - playing with postprocessing effects (it's never too early for polishing;) and created background and a sawblade. It looked like I have Limbo mixed with the Super meat boy instead of Sin City :)

I fixed light occluders, polished tiles and the character. So I had everything for making a tutorial level

https://youtu.be/dg_HXc4XpBY

It wasn't even midnight of the first day. I got an idea of flying bird which you could maybe possess as well if I got time for it.. And this is what I had about 1AM in sunday, 2 hours before the halftime of LD.

https://youtu.be/vecr0DU51Qk

I thought I'm just playing with stuff because I'm tired and not making important features (such as shooting!;) But later it turned out that possessing a bird is one of the most surprising and memorable moment in the game - just look at some twitch clips, it's priceless - Elysia Griffin https://clips.twitch.tv/SingleTangentialKumquatArsonNoSexy?ttcontent=chatcard&ttmedium=twitchchat , - Neilrankin1984 https://www.twitch.tv/neilrankin1984/clip/BitterSquareDragonfruitNomNom?filter=clips&range=7d&sort=time , - Tim Rusick https://clips.twitch.tv/AmorphousRudeThymeAMPEnergy

* Day 2 *

Next day I felt tired already but the coffee done it's job :) Nevertheless I was stuck in polishing frenzy and despite I had no real level I made reeealy pretty menuscreen :) And also decided that menu needs it's own music!

https://youtu.be/ayINtl1X4Jk

It was 2:30PM already! So after that I had no time for recording progress, it was too hectic.. bugfixing, polishing, bugfixing and oh a level design and polishing, bugfixing... oh I need a shooting mechanics.. you can imagine :) Long story short, I fixed the most bugs on the list (not all of them though), third level is a bit sloppy but I made it in time!

You can play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/soul-traveller

Enjoy!