Bad Puppy by Chris Sanyk for Ludum Dare 25: You are the villain

I think this one ended up coming together ok.  It’s not much of a game, but I was able to turn it into something at least playable in the last couple hours.

This was originally going to be called Puppy Hitler, but I ended up changing course, and spent most of Saturday in a reflective headspace, thinking about the decision, and as a result I was not very creative or productive on Saturday.

What worked:

1. Humor: I think I had decent humor in this game.  The title screen and endgame are good.
2. Animation: I really like the animation for the petting and wagging dog.  I like the color effect I pulled off on the score.
3. Sounds: I used Audacity and a bit crusher filter to do voice samples that hopefully sound like 8-bit voice chip synthesis.  This was used for the bark and the “Baaad Puppyyyyyyy!” and the panting and the “Good boy!” sounds.  I think the only sound I created with bfxr was for the Start screen when you press Enter to start the game.

What didn’t:

1. Humor: I thought my original “Puppy Hitler” concept was funny, and I still kindof do, but I can appreciate that it’s not the sort of humor that everyone would like, understand, or appreciate.
2. Animation: The walk animation for the person character is passable, but I’m not happy with it.  I had a very hard time creating an even halfway decent walk animation, and worked on this a ridiculous number of hours that I don’t even want to think about on Saturday, and scrapped.
3. Music: I was going to try to do some kind of music, but I had no idea what kind of music would create the right mood.  It feels like something is missing, just a little, without any music, but I think the other elements still work to create a silly mood.
4. Gameplay:  It’s a pretty shallow game with not a lot of replayvalue.  Still, it was pretty fun to make it, and once I got past the point of having a test level, and actually implemented the (admittedly quite rudimentary) AI, it became fun pretty quickly.

Tags: Bad Puppy, Chris Sanyk, csanyk.com, GameMaker Studio, ld25, puppy hitler, You are the villain