{"author_name":"Aur\u00e9lien Defossez","cat":"LD #26","comments":[{"author_name":"Osgeld","time":"May 27, 2013 8:11 pm","epoch":1369703460,"text":"aww pumpkin, cry me a river","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"","time":"May 28, 2013 1:54 pm","epoch":1369767240,"text":"Any theme can be misinterpreted to make the game you want to make. Don’t get too literal and have fun. Minimalism is about removing extraneous elements not crappy programmer art. Granted some Minimalist artwork does look like crappy programmer art, but that is no reason why you can’t use great art and remove extraneous elements from other parts of your game.","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1369647780,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"42481","p_author":"Aur\u00e9lien Defossez","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"78116","p_title":"Why I didn\u2019t like the last Ludum Dare theme","p_cat":"LD #26","p_event":"LD26","p_time":"1369647780","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"2","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1366934400","event_key":"16","event_name":"LD26"},"text":"

\"Fran\u00e7ais\"<\/a> Lire cet article en fran\u00e7ais<\/a><\/p>\n

So yeah, I disliked the last Ludum Dare theme, \u201cMinimalism\u201d. But why? This theme has been up-voted by hundreds of people (actually 1888)!<\/p>\n

Why people up-voted it<\/h2>\n
\"An

An example of my amazing capacity to make sprites<\/p><\/div>\n

Ludum Dare is primarily a unipersonal competition. The \u201cJam\u201d competition, in which you can compete with friends on the same game, is less represented, with around one third of the games coming from Jam teams. So my guess is that single developpers liked this theme because it allowed them to make simplistic graphics and sounds to focus on the gameplay and the development (or simplistic gameplay with a focus on the graphics).<\/p>\n

If I was to compete alone, I may have upvoted this theme. Being a crappy graphist, it would have removed me a lot of work.<\/p>\n

So why didn\u2019t I like it?<\/h2>\n

Because I was not alone.<\/p>\n

For the 26th Ludum Dare event, I built a team to work on a game. We were 5, a cool graphist (K\u00e9vin Kerisit, please check his website<\/a>), a cool sound designer (Vincent Govindin, check his website<\/a> too!), and 3 developers (Adrian Gaudebert<\/a> , Alex Fr\u00eane<\/a> and myself, Aur\u00e9lien Defossez<\/a>). Usually, I am the game designer and project manager during game jams, and I attach a lot of importance to making everyone happy.<\/p>\n

With \u201cMinimalism\u201d, it was hard. I was obviously going to make someone\u2019s work crappy. Either K\u00e9vin, the graphist should escape the colorful cartoonesque style that defines him and draw basic plain shapes, or Vincent, the sound designer should drop his musical universe and create simplistic music, or us, the 3 developers, should create a game with basic controls or gameplay. In all these three ways, I sensed a problem, someone was going to work on something not interesting.<\/p>\n

\"Our

Our dealer reaching his goal: The night club<\/p><\/div>\n

So we searched for ideas during hours (starting at 4 a.m. because our parents had the wonderful idea to breed us in France) without finding something pleasant. After 6 or 7 hours, we just decided to stick to the idea that seemed to be the best at the time and continued with it. This idea was to control a drug dealer trying to deliver his dope to a night club (easily localized thanks to the electro music it plays) while escaping the cops. This dealer can consume some of his drug, and by doing se he sees the world in a minimalistic way, and this new dimension permits him to see hidden passages and interactions. But we dropped this idea of a dual-universe because we didn\u2019t feel like the game experience would be that interesting. So finally, we threw away what was related to the theme and kept the other part of the game.<\/p>\n

Is the problem the theme or myself?<\/h2>\n

I didn\u2019t like this theme, because I saw it as a limitation to creativity. But after some time, I think I could have seen this theme from another point of view. Instead of trying to create a minimalistic game, we could have created a game about minimalism. For example, we could have created a game in which a graphic-rich universe has to defend himself against minimalistic shapes. Or we could have continued with our idea of switching between dimensions, but we were so tired after 8 hours of thinking about this concept (from 4 a.m. to 12 \u00a0p.m.) that we started the development right away.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m still angry at the theme, but I\u2019m also angry at myself, because I focused on trying to find a minimalistic game idea while it was not mandatory to do a minimalistic game, the restriction was to do a game in the minimalism theme.<\/p>\n

The game, “Sniff”<\/h2>\n
\"I

I think he took too much drugs<\/p><\/div>\n

If you\u2019d like to play the game, you can do so here:<\/p>\n

Play the game<\/a><\/p>\n

The Ludum Dare post<\/a><\/p>\n

The Ludum Dare Entry<\/a><\/p>\n

Ratings<\/strong><\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n
#110<\/td>\n Audio(Jam)<\/td>\n 3.47<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
#176<\/td>\n Fun(Jam)<\/td>\n 3.14<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
#216<\/td>\n Mood(Jam)<\/td>\n 3.13<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
#225<\/td>\n Graphics(Jam)<\/td>\n 3.38<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
#251<\/td>\n Overall(Jam)<\/td>\n 3.19<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
#259<\/td>\n Innovation(Jam)<\/td>\n 3.00<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
#548<\/td>\n Theme(Jam)<\/td>\n 2.14<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
#1828<\/td>\n Coolness<\/td>\n 22%<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n <\/tbody>\n <\/table>","time":"May 27th, 2013 4:43 am","title":"Why I didn\u2019t like the last Ludum Dare theme"}