I was running along for the main contest but unfortunately I was unable to make it. On Saturday I decided to check out the meet-up in London and the travel cost me 3 hours each way. I did manage some programming during all the moving around but assets-wise it was a nightmare as I couldn’t sprite all that well.

My friend and I spent only like an hour or two at the meet-up before we headed off to check out the Science Museum; it was much more time-consuming than I anticipated! Basically I didn’t achieve a lot during Saturday.

Anyway I haven’t been able to work much again today as I made plans to see The Hobbit and now I have work so the deadline is cut short for me. Overall I finished a game in Java which is my first since moving on from Game Maker since the last jam, so I’m fairly happy and this feels like a nice accomplishment for me.

My game’s located here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=4626

Most of my graphics were rushed (mainly the tileset for the landscape) and I said that I would come back to tidy it up later but my time has ran dry.
The game idea was based on JRPGs and instead of saving the world – you rule it. Keeping your towns happy (low tax) makes population grow faster resulting in faster growth, however, higher the taxes and the villages will start getting unhappy. If the villages are unhappy then they’ll send out ‘heroes’ to overthrow you and this is where you can improve your defences by adding bosses to your castle.

I wanted to work more on the idea but my goal was to get basic functionality and game play done – which I did. The game turned out to be more economical than I planned but I had no choice as I didn’t have time to add in the features I really wanted to add.

I would love to continue working on this game post-jam, but we’ll see.