I started out with an idea that I thought could work and wouldn’t be too difficult to finish in time, but ended up falling at the first hurdle and giving up after a few hours of frustration. I’m not sure I’m cut out for rapid game development, as I’m so fussy about the details that I need time to polish and tweak my games.

If anyone else wants to grab my idea at the last minute, it was going to involve you being in a helicopter crash in remote wilderness with one other survivor. The other guy is seriously injured and you have to keep him warm over the course of one day and night with nothing more than a single match with which to start a fire. The game was going to involve balancing keeping the fire going with exploring the surrounding area to gather wood for fuel. If you strayed too far from the fire for a period of time you’d start to freeze, but as the day goes on you need to venture further and further to find resources as you deplete those closest to your camp. As night falls, you need to carry a torch with you, which takes a little fuel away from your fire and burns out after a short while. If you succeed in keeping your companion (and yourself) alive for the night, rescue arrives in the form of another helicopter.

The issue I had was trying to come up with a good way of handling multiple light sources in HaxeFlixel, as it seems it’s really not suited to doing this through masking. Next time I’ll make sure I choose a game set in the daytime.