Phew! Last weekend was very intense! I was starting to get a bit worried about if I have enough time to finish the game, but luckily I managed to submit the game two hours before the deadline. Here’s my game’s page: www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=rate&uid=11391

In my game, you control a small creature who must swim or jump around levels and eat creatures smaller than himself. After eating enough, level exit unlocks and entering it the creature evolves into a new form he will use in the next level. The look and gameplay is highly inspired by excellent platformr EVO: Search for Eden for SNES.

I think I spend over half of the first day just drawing most of the graphics. I’m a graphics artist mainly, so I wanted to make sure the game will look good! I might have spend slightly bit too much time drawing, because I didn’t end up using everything and extra time could have been used to polish the game.

What Went Right:

-The game was finished on time! This was my biggest worry because I used so much time with the graphics. I think I finally finished the game when there was still 2 hours left before the deadline. I also managed to create 3 big and highly different levels, ending and credits scene and all that. I was aiming to make the game very pretty and I think I succeeded with that quite well. I am overally pretty content how the game turned out. Also the cgMusic program that composed the songs heard in the game turned out much, much better than I initially expected, I think they really fit and add a lot to the finished game.

What Went Wrong:

- What could have been: There were some ideas I was planning to make, like 4th level where you could fly around, but the deadline was closing in so I decided to just end the game after level 3. Also the game was supposed to have much darker downer ending, but decided against it after all. It would have been a fun shocker for the player, but would have taken too long to create and might have clashed with the overall sunny and cheery feel of the other parts of the game.

- Rough around the edges: I was running out of time so I had to rush the game a bit near the end, the 3rd level is alright but not as good I would have wanted it to be, for example the parallax graphics of forest don’t look so good in motion, they are too fast, and there are small annoyances like very small bite detection area and weird dashing movement when biting. I should have tested the game more, but hurry and tiredness was taking their toll. The game is also quite difficult with no checkpoints. I couldn’t figure out how to keep eaten critters dead when stage reloads.

What Else:

This was probably my biggest project I’ve ever accomplished on such a short time limit. It’s not perfect, but I am proud of what I managed to create. I would really like to give a try for some bigger, more refined sequel sometime, with more levels and forms with big gameplay differences. Perhaps someday when I finish my current projects.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 1:33 pm and is filed under LD #24. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.