Hi everyone,

I’m Illuminist, and this is my first competition for ludum dare event. I’m so excite so I couldn’t get a well sleep in the morning of the theme announce day. I live in GMT+7 time zone so I will refer to the current time in where I live.

For people who don’t like a long read, here is the game.

PLAY Can an Man

On the first day where the theme was announced. The theme is “You Get Only One”. I was thinking that theme is more likely the player will have only one ‘something’, to beat a game. But it is too common. So, I continue to think if player got only one thing to protect until he can beat the game. That less common. More thought, if player get only one friend, “hmm.. seem to be nice”, I thought.

I have one cat at my home. He sometimes sleep beside me while I’m using a computer. And this time he does. And I was like “Ohhh! a cat game. You Get Only One Cat!!!”. Then ideas spread up to my brain, along with game concept.

I design a game to be like a Tamagochi, a Japanese mini handheld pet game where player must take care of it regularly, but I add some features to make game more complex, such as, player avatar which I call “Man”.

Man is likely to be a name of player avatar. In my country, some males are named “Man” for is nickname. Also Cat is the cat’s name. But I usually didn’t capitalize Man and Cat name, so in game tips you will be found me type cat for Cat’s name.

On the first day of Ludum Dare, I mainly mess around Cat ai, to simulate cat behavior by trying to make him satisfy his need by himself. You only see need status of Cat and Man only 5 statuses, but there are likely to be more than 10 statuses included hidden statuses for cat. Can cat will randomly go to satisfy his need according to which need need to refill the most, such as if Cat very hungry, he will go to food bowl to eat first.

As I refer before, I have one cat at home. So, I can observe his behaviors and make it into the game. The behaviors such as grooming himself, scratch his nail at somethings, and stretching. All of this behaviors also implement into Cat’s need. But it is hidden, because Cat’s can satisfy these need by himself without help from Man. Also some action that satisfy some need will deplete some other need, e.g, while cat eat, we will get dirty, so after his meal, he will likely to groom himself to replenish hygiene need. All cat actions have priorities, but doesn’t mean that he will always do somethings higher priority before other things. I’ve implement randomness by refer to priority of action, that’s mean he will most likely to do things with lower priority and urgently need to be replenish before the higher priority action that nearly full.

On the second day, I got into Man status. Man don’t have an AI because he will be control by player. But he still have need status to satisfy. Man gameplay is the like The Sims that player will control Man to do action and satisfy his need. Man’s most important action in the game is going to work. Working will increase money for game. Money is essential to feed Man and Cat, also use to fix Cat’s furniture. Wage earn from working is according to Man’s job satisfication, so called job performance. The highest wage per day is $5 at max job performance, while the lowest wage is $1 when job performance is depleted. Job performance will decrease when Man missing work on weekday, or working while having low on hunger and sleep.

Two more important status for Cat and Man is mental status and health status. Both statuses can’t be directly replenish or deplete. They will change only if other certain need statuses depleted or not. For mental status, it will go deplete when Can and Man don’t interact with each other in very long time. Thus this will deplete socialize need status. And when socialize need status depleted, it will lower mental status. There are other status which will going to deplete mental status. So as of health status. It is more vulnerable than mental status. Health status will be lower if physical need depleted, and it will lower faster if mental status depleted. And lastly if health status depleted, Cat or Man will die and game end.

It is very long entry here and I’m not good at English. My brain status already depleted and I can’t continue writing this. >_> But I will continue the idea of my game in other day. Lastly I have upload timelapse video of development live stream. Check out on this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTfw4gGvT04