Whew, this Ludum Dare was much more intensive than usual for us! Having less team members than usual didn’t help, but what really did us in was our over ambition. More info below, and please check out the game. Ratings and feedback are much appreciated!
As you can see, the game is the screen in a movie theater. For some reason the artist added Mickey Mouse, Batman, and Baymax to the crowd. Then, just for good measure, made it so you could see the butts of most of the audience. Thanks for that Paul.
The Idea
To be honest, no one on the team really liked the theme. We tried to get around this by discussing alternative interpretations of it. Eventually we came to the idea of using screen to refer to a movie screen. From there, we decided to create a comedic take on modern action movies. All of the levels in the game are based off of scenes commonly found in action movies.
Scene 1: The Car Chase
Inspired by the game Spy Hunter, we created a level in which the player, on a motorcycle, had to blow up incoming enemy cars. Technically not much of a chase, this scene caused some issues when the game sometimes failed to advance to the next level after cleared. Luckily this issue was resolved.
Scene 2: Romance Scene
What action movie is complete without a romance scene that has no bearing on the overall plot. That’s exactly what this fully voiced scene is. Although it offers the player a choice at the end, nothing in this scene really matters and there’s no way to lose. You may enjoy the voice acting though. Kudos to Josh for voicing both the male lead and his love interest.
Scene 3: Shootout on the Train
The actual train battle scene in game.
Based on another common movie scene, in this level the player must dodge enemy bullets and incoming obstacles while on a train. This level utilizes Spine skeletal animation, allowing us to make some very nice ducking animations. The game play for this level changed several times during development. For example, originally the player was going to be able to jump. Unfortunately this was scrapped because it made the game play rather boring. There was also going to be a scrolling background, but this was cut due to time constraints and bugs.
A picture from one of the scenes that inspired the train shootout level. James Bond certainly isn’t the only movie character to fight on a train though!
Scene 4: Rooftop Battle Rhythm Game
Although we knew we wanted some sort of climactic battle with the main antogonist, the idea for the game play on this level was not decided until late into development. A team member first proposed the idea of a Rhythm game, where the player must press the specified buttons, and it turned into this. Although it was my first time trying to make something like this, I think it came outpretty well, and gets pretty intense and hectic near the end of the battle. The animation is a bit choppy, but that’s because the art for this was made around 1:00 in the morning.
The Insanity that is Voice Acting
What movie is complete without dialogue and speaking? After hastily throwing together a text box system, I began writing humorous dialogue for every scene. I also decided to give the player a choice at the end of each level to say one of three “victory boasts”, which were usually some kind of joke about the situation or the enemies. Unfortunately we ran out of time to add voice acting to a few of the scenes. Luckily, in our timezone we still had a school day and several hours after until the deadline for the Jam. Since we all went to the same school, we were able to record all of the remaining dialogue on my phone while walking to Subway. If some of the audio quality is bad, that’s probably why. I’m glad we were able to do voice acting though, because it helped add a lot to the humor we were trying to go for.
So far feedback on the game has been good and we are looking forward to the results. If you want to check out the game and leave us some feedback. Enjoy and thanks for reading!
