I waited to get some feedback on my game before doing a post-mortem, and now that I got some, here it is.

This Ludum Dare, I entered UnderTheLibrary, a little platformer in which you play as a robot trying to navigate the basement of a library to get back to the surface. You can play/vote for the game here.

Making title screens out of the ingame tileset is becoming a habit…

The genesis

Last time, I struggled a lot with the collision code for my platformer, so this time, I decided to try and use a game engine so as to be able to focus more on the content and actual gameplay. I ended up going with Phaser, a HTML5/JavaScript game framework, because it meant that I would be able to play the result on my Surface RT (I will NOT justify myself for that one…); plus, I learned JavaScript last summer for fun and I wanted to do at least one significant project with it.

Where I live, the theme was revealed at 3 A.M. … which obviously means I went straight up to bed after seeing it. I would have prefered ‘Break the Rules’, but I thought I could manage to do something with it.

Fastforward to 9 A.M., I have been at it for an hour, and could not think of an original intrepretation of the theme. I supposed the most common ones were going to be underground/underwater/under the looks of something (it seems I was right, at least), and I wanted to do something else. Problem was, I could not think of anything I felt like coding; so I chose the most obvious one, the underground setting, and went with it. Same with the platformer: I realized that this is the only kind of game I am sure of being able to code (almost) ‘right’, and since my goal was to learn/use the Phaser game engine, it went right with it.

The whole library thing started as a basement with books. And where do you find books, lots and lots of books? BAM.

What went right

• Phaser is a nice engine, and thanks to some training during the previous two weeks I was able to set up something playable really quick.
• I made some graphics which I think are good; I especially like the wood texture of the shelf (yes, there are books protuding on the sides of it :p).
• While fiddling with the MIDI instruments available, I stumbled on one called ‘Rock Organ’, which I liked from the first note it played. In the end, the ingame music sounds really good and fitting (at least, I think so).
• Looking back,one of the thing I wished I had done better in my previous Ludum Dare (#27) was storytelling. Even if I raced against the clock in the end, I managed to do a little bit of it this time.
• Almost no bugs in the dialogBox thingy, which is somewhat cool, I guess. I liked it!

The tileset I made for UnderTheLibrary

What went wrong

• Content! I spent a good amount of time on each level, and could only do two of them within the time limit (the third one took some time, but was not a level as much as an ending/credit screen). I also cut two ideas I had for others enemies, a second environment based on the sewers (the original idea was to travel far away while still staying just below the surface), powerups, et cetera.
• Browser compatibility! I had to ‘port’ the game to IE/Safari/Opera because the Math.sign() function I used (once) was not available, thus crashing the entire game. I knew it was a risk with JavaScript, but as I only playtested with Firefox/Chrome, I did not see that one coming.
• Although it is nice to have a game engine at hand, it is not as flexible as doing all your code from the ground up.
• I am not very satisfied of the player’s sprite. I actually had no idea what the player could be, so I ended up going for some generic (again) robot.
• The title screen music is bad. I started to do it, but could not get enough inspiration to do something pleasing to the ear. At least, I got something out of it for the ingame music.

Will anyone get to this area (without cheating)? I hope so.

As a conclusion…

I am not as satisfied with this game as I was with my LD27 entry. While I feel UnderTheLibrary is more complete (which I think is because it actually told a story), I must admit that I prefer Ephemeral‘s setting, ‘characters’, gameplay, et cetera. That is something I felt while making the game, and maybe that is why I could not get as inspired as I was last time.

I will try to do my best next time though!

Bonus: Game Highlights

I rated 30 or so games so far, and some of them were really good. Here are the ones I think are worth a shot:

Compo

• Scratch (bentosmile): the first game I played, I actually tried it before rating was available. A bit partial, but I love visual novels, so…
• Beneath The Surface Of Scratch Ticket (dejant): try to win at scratching ticket by scratching it a little to see what is under the surface of the ticket. A nice concept, and very well executed.
• Lights (Seyroth): the description says ‘meticulous level design’. Try to get the three endings and you will understand why.
• Frictionless (Matthew Brown): a well-designed puzzle game, which may remind you of Pokémon’s ice-sliding puzzles.

Jam

• Ghostlord Depths (HelixFox): you are a floating skeleton fighting flaming and giant skulls. Very pleasant game, with polished graphics and audio.
• Necronomicon (lowcade): as a hipster cat, you have to collect four rings to gain more abilities and try to defeat the ultimate evil overlord.