I don't usually do postmortems, but this LD was a special one for few reasons, to begin with I always work alone yet now, for the first time, I had a partner in crime.
One week before LD48, a message on my phone:
"Are you taking part in this LD?"
It was from, well let's call him Orb, one of my two kindergarten / elementary school friends I still kind of stay in touch with.
So what is this now? Enthusiasm? A cry for help? Has at least one of them finally discovered that life in which they don't take part in a video game production process is meaningless?
I have offered them both a chance to jam together back during LD47, and their refusal, although polite, made me feel like what I asked them was "Hey guys, how about we spend this weekend hanging by our balls?".
So I phoned him, and yes, he was interested in taking part in any way he can, most notably with his graphical and design skills. Maybe even our mutual friend joins as well, though chances were slim, he has two kids and is pretending to be a programmer in a cable/internet provider company.
So to cut story short, by the time the theme was announced it was clear that the 3rd guy will be out of the picture and the two of us, me and, let's call him Orb again (although we never call him that, nor does anyone call me Kr4ft3r) will have to manage by ourselves. And things weren't moving anywhere until his announced visit at..
SATURDAY NIGHT
That's when the fun started. The fun of sitting side by side wearing face masks, pulling them down only to spit and cough at each other, and discussing how the theme is not really inspiring us at the moment.
As we concluded, one particularly annoying thing about the "deeper and deeper" theme was that I have covered the damn thing perfectly well in several previous LD entries.
- LD39, Deep Raider, where you are inside a submarine, literally sinking deeper than any man into an underwater trench https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/deep-raider
- LD42, Quicksand, a ragdoll game where you are sinking deeper and deeper into quicksand https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/quicksand
- LD47, The Word, a textual game where you start at the cosmic web screen, then go deeper into a chosen galaxy cluster, then pick a galaxy, a star system, landing on a planet with random life forms where you have a procedurally generated short experience https://krafter.itch.io/the-word
- The 3rd guy sends us a message "How about a game where you enter a human body and fight the...", thanks a lot, I've done that damn thing as well, LD38, Natural Killer Prototype https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/natural-killer-prototype
Not that we didn't had ideas. Most notably, Orb proposed fracking. "What the frack is fracking?" I asked, proving myself uninformed in the cutting edge ways in which humans destroy their environment. In case you don't know, fracking is when they shove a pipe deep underground and fracture stones with high pressure and chemicals in order to harness natural gas. And also sometimes cause unrepairable damage to a water supply, turning it into cancerous substance.
So while the game of being a fracking fracker is actually a good idea, and would serve the purpose of letting the people of the Earth know of this nasty blight brought on by our greed, I knew from experience that we won't have time to implement it, considering the number of phases and gameplay elements this game would require. Also, while he loved it, it was a bit too down to earth for my taste.
Orb also proposed a game where the player is or takes care of a stone sinking deeper and deeper underground to become a diamond, but as far as I can remember we were failing to come up with a gameplay that would fit this otherwise excellent proposal. I think he had some idea, using Gimp to scribble with black paintbrush, drawing a diamond and a whole lot of things happening to it and pressuring it into becoming what it is meant to become, but by the time he was done I swear all we ended up with was a picture of what looked like a vagina.
Not that I did any better, my contribution can be summarized as a sideways drawing of a hole, and an arrow pointing downwards, with the word "depth" written next to it.
So as it was getting late, it was time for him to go home, I patted him on the back and lied that I will give some serious thought to the whole fracking idea. Also we concluded that maybe the meeting would have been more productive if he remembered to bring some beer.
EVEN LATER SATURDAY NIGHT
Finding myself alone, deep into the night, the time has come for what happens every single LD, I summon the dark forces of inspiration and finally squeeze out a game idea. This time, it won't even be a game, it'll be... An art thing, or however you want to call it, it will be something that we can finish in what little time we had left, it will be...
I opened Google Documents and wrote down the title:
* ~ THE FALL OF ALICE ~ *
Frantically I was writing it down, the game that is not going to have any real gameplay, the Alice that is going to be an adult pinup girl, the experience that will paint a picture of today's society - information overload, polarity of opinions, existential wondering, shallowness, obsession with physical and with self.
"Down the rabbit hole." The whole "game" will be just that.
But I felt there is a major problem ahead. I sent message to Orb - "Do you know how to draw girls?"
"Only ugly ones" he replied. Well that didn't stop me from pondering how to solve the problem. I looked into various resources, even porn websites, but was finding nothing suitable to provide with what was needed - two or three poses of a pinup Alice in a falling state, along with animated dress.
In a creative rage I even tried to draw her myself using the old fashioned pencil and paper approach - one pose turned out OK, but I couldn't repeat the same success with other two. And animating the dress would be hell of a task. I ended up disposing of the evidence, reasoning that if I happen to randomly drop dead, then in a few days, next to a corpse half eaten by my dog, they would find a paper with drawings of a woman dressed up as Alice showing her butt, and would conclude that this was how I was spending my days.
SUNDAY
I woke up, sent the design document to Orb, and started chilling in a blissful state of presumption that my proposal will be rejected, he will call me mad, he will refuse to take part in that pointless thing, and I will be able to use the weekend to actually relax and perhaps do some work that pays for my bills.
But then around 2PM CET, a surprise message - "This Alice idea is good, what do you need?"
Well, something in those lines. So, I turned to the only solution that remained, pixel art! I quickly sketched her up in 64x64 pixels using piskelapp, animated the dress, even managed to do two poses, two very similar poses but what the hell, you have to work with what you got, and all I had was just enough time to do the butt angle that was about to enter the history in all its naked glory.
Ladies and gentlemen, and everyone in between or outside of it all, I present to you, the Alice:
Now, I wasn't aware of it at the time, but there was a potential problem with this Alice.
As you read my self defense in paragraph below, I advice you to play this music which matches the occasion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPrd8FoClAA
As one of commenters noted, there was something "icky" about showing a butt of a "little girl". Oh, damn. Here we go:
- "To our defense, the design document did state that Alice is to be a realistically drawn adult girl, however it turned out neither of us is able to realistically draw an adult girl well enough, let alone animate it, so I turned to pixel art to save the day. And well, the problem with 64x64 pixel characters is you can’t really tell the character age (I guess high heels weren’t much of a cue), so that turned out to be awkward. It doesn’t help either that we ended up with a scaling problem between Alice and shelf items, making her look smaller."
So while that one particular commenter who brought it up was well meaning, I started to wonder how many people will pass by and end up perceiving nothing else but an underaged girl showing her butt. Suspiciously we have already received a considerably higher number of ratings than written comments. And my guess is the thinking process of these anonymous raters was either one of these two:
A) Hey, these guys are pedos, eww, I'ma rate them 1 in all categories
B) Hey, these guys are pedos, nice, I'ma rate them 5 in all categories
And none of the two options sit well with me, I assure you. There is nothing cool about sexualizing kids (so long undeserved 5 star ratings once they read this).
THE REST OF THE STORY*
So, I believe there are no more fun things to write about, the rest was all grinding, so I'll start wrapping it up:
- I managed to implement next to nothing when it comes to messages about today's society that were mentioned in the design document.
- With this being Orb's first LD Jam, and my first jam where I worked with someone else, along with the fact that for some reason we mostly communicated via sms messages, making our communication as efficient as a wire between WW1 trenches and general's headquarters, we couldn't really deploy Orb's graphical assets to full extent. Still, he has done a wonderful job drawing lots of items for shelves, which improved the atmosphere to something that would be beyond my capabilities if I was working alone, and I would never be able to create this experience without him.
- Half a day before deadline I decided to add some gameplay elements in the form of Alice being able to catch letters of the chapter in the book where she is falling down the rabbit hole, and I spent quite some energy and time trying to make 1d Perlin noise work which would make these letters spawn in a smoothly animated location, with limited success. Not to mention the scoring system was a fail, as I don't think any player is able to achieve higher than lowest of five ranks - the "Clamp".
- Afterwards, with willpower already next to shattered, I moved on to implement dynamically generated sound for catching of these letters, which was a partial success, however unless one is using Chrome browser the "music" will sound like a noise coming from the 90s 56k modem.
- All in all, although not a game, nor really the experience I wanted to create, we ended up making something unique and not quite ugly, and I even allow myself to feel some pride. We certainly had some fun making it, and nothing else matters.
Here are some more butts. Of an adult girl dressed as Alice. You can play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/the-fall-of-alice
I really liked the result!
A wonderful addition! And to my amazement it was sent to Compo!
Nacho Bats wander the twisting paths of Burrito Burrow, waiting to strike down, or be struck down by any foe that comes in the way of their Cheesy Nectar spots. The Guaca-mole will have a tough time getting past these beasties...
