THE STORY: Imagine it’s the morning of that big job interview or business presentation. You were up ’til 3 a.m. preparing, but you forgot to set your alarm clock and you’ve overslept. Your train leaves in 10 minutes, so you only have a few precious moments to shave…

THE PITCH: Since the dawn of time, mankind has yearned for a realistic beard shaving simulation.  The dream of virtual beard maintenance has sadly, to this day, proved elusive.  Today, however, I am pleased to announce that the most anticipated shaving game of all time is some other game which, quite possibly, doesn’t yet exist.  Until that game exists, until our collective grooming vision is realized, I humbly submit… Shaving Quest: The Razor’s Edge!

Let your creativity soar to new bearded heights as you nimbly create the perfect Fu Manchu, a razor thin pencil mustache, or perhaps the venerable Van Dyke.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=3609

… And the reviews are in!

Thank you to everyone who has commented on Shaving Quest!  You have all provided tons of encouragement and I thank you all sincerely!  Below is a sampling of the reviews (taken completely out of context).

You made SOMETHING.
this is pure nonsense
I almost didn’t play this game because the thumbnail reminds me of “Un Chien Andalou”
I very badly wanted to shave his nose off.
I enjoyed this a lot more with debug mode on!
It is a shame there is no actual goal
it’s not really a game
What the…
Ho ho, I guess it’s something.
more of a toy than a game
It’s definitely minimalism.
The character haven’t nose in my version.

What went right?

Mission Accomplished!  If the goal of LD is to create a game, and if the definition of “game” is relaxed to include such activities as erasing pixels from a bitmap image, then SQ is technically a game that was completed before the Jam deadline.  This was my first LD, so I was pretty much in over my head from the get-go.

Phun with Physics!  Box2DWeb was successfully incorporated into the game with humorous effect.  If you poke a man in the eye, does he not blink?  I think he does!  His nose also twitches in a totally unrealistic manner.

What went wrong?

Know thy tools.  I had never used Box2D and hadn’t spent much time with CreateJS.  I wasted several hours figuring out the API’s.  I should have invested some time during the week  leading up to LD26 to familiarize myself with both libraries.

The enthusiasm gap.  As the code got uglier and more convoluted, my enthusiasm crashed through the floor.  I slept in on Sunday.  I lost several perfectly good hours to the History Channel’s Vikings season one marathon.  As the compo deadline passed, so too had my will to continue.  However, the jam still had one more day to go, so I tinkered with it a bit on Monday and submitted what I had (sans shaving).  I was so completely overwhelmed by the amount of encouragement I received shortly after submitting that I decided to take a few hours Monday evening to add a crude shaving mechanic just before the jam deadline.  Feedback helps.  A lot.

You wanted to make a game about what?  So, the original idea was to make a crude version of Surgeon Simulator 2013, but with shaving.  Yep.  Shaving.  Somehow, late Friday night, that seemed like a good idea.  I imagined with glee that players would end up cutting, bludgeoning, or otherwise mutilating their cartoon selves.  I envisioned Dexteresque blood splatters, Gwar-tastic fountains of gore… but sometime Saturday evening I was regretting my game choice.  There was supposed to be a timer counting down and a blood loss meter that, if emptied, would cause you to black out.  You would be able to stanch the flow with toilet paper, and… and… as the hours wore on, it just seemed like there was too much to do and I found I had lost interest.

Conclusion

1. Know your tools.
2. Solicit feedback early and often.  It helps to maintain your enthusiasm.
3. Don’t bite off more than you can chew in 48 hours.
4. Keep your code clean and well organized.  You have plenty of time to comment and refactor, so there’s no excuse for messy code.
5. Maintain a good supply of Oreo’s and milk.  Seriously.

Happy shaving!