My first LD ended successfully with a game submission at 3.00 A.M.
(and today I had to sleep off my “hangover” caused by staying up so late, but I had a good time playing other people’s games!)

When I woke up on Saturday and saw the theme I decided it would be easiest to translate the evolution theme to a “nature” graphics theme and some kind of clever powerup scheme (which is what many people did, but it leaves a lot of room for creativity). I took my tablet while still in bed and sketched up a little game design, based on an idea I once had about jumping around from cave wall to another.

Nom’s Evolvathlon first sketch

Somehow I love caves in games, even more so if they are procedurally generated and have water in them.  And evolution is all about crawling out of the water and stuff, right?  I’ve had creative block when it comes to starting on a new game, but now I was getting really enthusiastic.  Most of the ideas I thought up during the first 20 or so minutes of the day I would implement in the next 20 hours.  Actually, the worst part was the pathfinder algorithm, which has some nasty singular cases, which resulted in more than 2 hours of work and a bug I decided not to fix within the time frame.  The second worst part was the control method, which I wanted to be touch screen compatible.  The third worst part was inventing a name for the game. I finally decided upon a name that is easy to Google.  And the best part is that it is actually a playable and interesting game that plays well on a tablet.  I’ve had too many experimental gameplay ideas fail miserably because they just weren’t any fun.

Nom’s Evolvathlon: final product

>> Play Nom’s Evolvathlon here. <<

I definitely want to make a more polished version.  Here are some postmortem thoughts:

• It is hard to balance a game with so many features.  Either create a simple game and balance it well, or create a complex one and accept that it won’t be well balanced.  Luckily the audience appears to be quite understanding.  Nevertheless I erred on the easy side, so as not to put off players who encounter a difficulty peak.  I also included the possibility to start at any level you like (I recommend this to all who submit a game to LD).  The final product is a bit too easy.  Health should decrease more quickly, generating much more suspense. It would help if the enemies were more aggressive and harder to kill.  There should be suspense to the very end, whereas in the current version, the end of the level is usually spent running around collecting things without any threat to the player whatsoever.
• I was taking a risk of putting players off with such complex controls, but again the audience appears understanding.  I didn’t manage to make them really user friendly within the time frame.  I think the worst part is that it’s hard to tell the game whether you want to move or shoot.  And maybe I should also try an Angry Birds type jump control (power + angle) instead.  I am happy I did come up with useable touch screen controls other than a “virtual joystick/keyboard” approach, which I really hate.
• At the end of the cycle, a to-do list is a must! Just hours before submission, dozens of last-minute fixes kept popping up, and I would have forgotten to do half of them if I hadn’t written them down.
• The method I used for creating graphics was fairly effective.   I spent around 20 minutes total on the 16×16 sprites during development of the game, focussing only on the colour schemes and distinguising different animation frames.  In the last hours I spent a spare 20 minutes improving and shading the graphics.  I think the result is reasonable for a non graphical artist, though the bird sprite definitely sucks!
• I would have liked to implement caves that get larger and larger, a zoomed playfield for the Android version, a Flash version of the game, animated water with bubbles and a nice splash when Nom hits the water, etc.  Maybe in the next version!
• Last but not least, I think it’s a pity warmup games get so little attention, I for one didn’t receive a single comment on the gameplay of my own warmup game. >> Play my warmup game here. <<