With all that wonderful feedback in mind and while stil in development of the post compo version, I want to write a little post mortem of our Ludum Dare entry Pumpi.

First, if you don’t want to read the full text and want to watch yourself what we’ve done, here is the link: Pumpi

And here is a little picture to make you want to play it:

Finding an idea

That was the fastest ideafinding we’ve ever had in an LD. We made a short list with seven points while we played Diablo 3 and killed a bag of chips. Three of the points were: Halloween, stealing sweets and Jump’n’Run.
So it was decided that we wanted to make a Jump’N’Run game, where a monster steals sweets from children at Halloween.

First Works

At that point we began to do some creative work which should help us later. My wife drew the first concepts of the monster and the children and I made the soundtrack and after that we both fell asleep because it was 6 o’clock in the morning.

Next Day

So it begins! Our first task was, bringing the pumpkin to life! So I looked at the drawing my wife had done and made a copy of it in Photoshop, colored it and showed it to my wife. She had said yes and so I started to animate the pumpkin. 8 animations were on my list: stand, walk, jump, scare, pick up, hide, shield and die. While animating the pumpkin we were talking about how we wanted the game to be! There were so many ideas and so many things to do, that we decided to make something possible and concentrated on scaring the children and make funny animations and sounds. After completing the pumpkin animations, please take a look at the spritesheet:

we started pixelating the witch-girl. We scanned the drawing of my wife, drew the outlines and filled them with colors and shadows and light spots. The first day was done! And so were we!

The Second Day

I opened my eyes and was so tired… It was hard to hold my eyes open. But what a luck I’ve got a little motivating machine next to me that was saying: Wake up! We’ve got a game to make!
So I jumped out of bed and began to draw the animations of the witch-girl. When I was finished with that task, the coding begins. I hacked all together what I thought we could use. Some animating techniques and some camera movement that took me a lot of time, because I wanted to use some mariolike camera movement, but then decided to use a more simple one.
The day went on and after the animations and the first scare were build in bed was calling!

The Third Day

At this day we started with the background. We drew the first concepts and choosed the colors. But the first draft was… not so good… hm… So we added more colors and made some additions like the door and the window and it looked a lot better and we stayed with this.
After the background was implemented we started our funniest part of the development. The audio recordings. Screamings, Booohhhs and a bunch of other sounds and loughts were made during this time.
But we needed some more content. We needed a vampire-boy! Scanned, drawed, animated and voice added in a rush. (With shocking my wife at night, because of not warning her befor screaming).
Here is the spritesheet for the kids:

All had to be build together, a tutorial had to be included, the position of the kids had to be decided and a finish and restart had to be made. And then we had no more time for a start screen and no brain capacity for a better name… But hey, we have made a game in 72 hours and we are damn proud of it!

After the Jam

The first feedback came in and our proudness growed and we decided to make a bigger game out of it. With more kids, more scaring moves, more sounds and a start screen! But until it is done, we hope you enjoy playing the Jam Version of: Pumpi

So we wish you a big bunch of fun and hope you enjoy our little game,
ruerob.