So here’s how CRUNCH!!! An Intergalactic Meal Trip did:

Coolness 71% #39 Fun(Jam) 3.98 #152 Overall(Jam) 3.72 #203 Theme(Jam) 3.86 #257 Innovation(Jam) 3.37 #266 Mood(Jam) 3.48 #307 Humor(Jam) 3.20 #331 Audio(Jam) 3.24 #505 Graphics(Jam) 3.43

A bit disappointed I didn’t manage to break into the top 100 overall, but check it out – #39 for Fun, with nearly a four-out-of-five average! (Woulda thought I’d have ranked higher for Humor, though – had a lot of positive feedback about my Space Police. They do get a bit annoying when there’s too many of them in play, though…)

In fact, I just checked, and this is the single highest average I’ve had for any category in any Ludum Dare so far (and again, this makes my seventh!) Thanks for the ratings, all! Hopefully this isn’t the last we’ll see of the Big Crunch and his planet-eating antics. Or the Space Police.

HiVE interactive, sharing Post-Jam Aliensche!

So voting is over! I’d like to thank everyone who voted and took time to play my entry into LD#33.

Here is how I went for my first ever Ludum Dare – I was very happy to place in the top 100 for ‘Fun’ and in the top 200 for ‘Overall’!

I have been hard at work on a new post-jam version of the game – it’s done!
Check it out here.

I could not have made all the improvements without the constructive criticism I received from you guys, so thank you very much!

Here is a short list of things I did for this new version…

ALIENSCHE v0.1.1 CHANGELOG:

       – GAMEJOLT API LOGIN WITH ONLINE HIGH SCORE LEADERBOARD
        – CONTROLLER SUPPORT WITH FORCE FEEDBACK
        – NEW DIFFICULTY CURVE
        – NEW THROWN MISSILE ATTACK
        – NEW MISSILE SHIELDING TECHNIQUES
        – PROJECTILE CHANGES
        – HEALTH AND SHIELD PICKUPS ADDED
        – IMPROVED SCORING SYSTEM WITH COWMBO METER
        – OPTIONS MENU
        – ENVIRONMENT AND LAYOUT CHANGES
        – NEW SOUND EFFECTS
        – VARIOUS BUG FIXES

This past weekend I took Aliensche! to a local playtesting event to get feedback and document reactions, people seemed to have a lot of fun catching cows:

Thanks to the LD community for this amazing experience!

I plan on taking part next time and using what I have learned to improve upon what I can achieve!

Please, if you haven’t already – Play Aliensche!

Thank you! Love from HiVE

So, it’s first time I’m participating in Ludum Dare. And I want to say thank you everyone, my scores are way higher than I expect.

Yeah, I know, nothing too special, but I wasn’t even sure if I can do something in 48 hours. But I made it and people found it’s pretty fun! I really proud of taking #45 at Fun category.

See ya in the next LD!

Trying to see if I will be the lowest ranked game to post results ☺

Happy to finish the marathon though!

Still looking for more feedback

Ratings

Coolness 53% #483 Audio 2.67 #817 Graphics 2.32 #868 Mood 1.74 #886 Theme 2.35 #910 Innovation 1.85 #936 Fun 1.73 #954 Overall 2.00

My game had the (IMO!) awesomely executed possession system, but not much in the way of an actual system to play in, and so it lost the simplistic value the mechanic had.

Also, I figured I was going to be disappointed with anything, considering my first LD, LD27, I scored #40th most fun game, which was awesome. No top 100s for individual categories that year, though

But yep, I’m not disheartened, not at all. If I rework the graphics into something a bit more minimalist, then maybe add more enemies, I can easily turn it into an arcade-y single screen murder-them-up, with even a set of stealth based levels down the line. Going to need to rework everything though, this is just a proof of concept.

Thanks for the awesome time, hopefully see you in December, if I’m not drowned in work.

 

Taha

I ranked 13th Overall, 5th in “Fun” and 11th in “Humor” categories! that’s nicee

 

 

Overall in all my Ludum Dares I had the luck of being in the top 11 in all categories, apart from Innovation. That’s gonna be my goal in the next LD!

I ranked 13th Overall, 5th in “Fun” and 11th in “Humor” categories! that’s nicee

 

 

Overall in all my Ludum Dares I had the luck of being in the top 11 in all categories, apart from Innovation. That’s gonna be my goal in the next LD!

Thanks for the awesome jam good LD friends! 😀 Thanks for voting and the cool chats and feedback and votes!

 

Had a wonderful #LDJAM this time around, I felt much better about this one than my previous one, both during and after the jam. And that definitely showed in the score

So now that I’ve done four LDs (sorry #30, I couldn’t get to you), I can put some kind of data together and see if I can make sense of my performance. And to be honest, it’s baffling.

 

LD32 vs LD33

First, comparing this one to the previous shows a definite improvement, and that I’m really happy about. The previous one was really quite uninspired and rushed, and I’m glad that my approach to this one (not pre-determining what to make before the jam) has yielded far more creative and interesting results.

LD 31 vs LD33

In comparison to my best LD so far, I couldn’t beat it. But hey, that’s really not a major issue. But that feels like an anomaly to me… my LD31 was a purely multiplayer game which meant it was impossible to test, with no Audio to speak of so it scored 0 there, and it was a platformer which was like 80% of other games. Why did it do so well?? Was it genuinely a great game, and I really should work on that one further, or was it an anomaly? WHICH IS IT?? D:

Theme?

PokEscape placing 437th on theme makes me feel kinda sad, because the very first line of the description said “You are the (Poke)Monster!”, which I thought was a great fit for the theme. Which meant that 90% of people who rated the game either missed that line or never read it, or didn’t agree with it. Sigh.

Comment count

I went through my games and roughly counted up how many comments I had on each game, and this last one was a lot higher than the rest by about 50%, which is possibly significant. Was it because this game referenced Pokemon? Or was it due to other factors? I really would like to know how many ratings my past games has. Don’t know where to find that. Sigh.

Adios LD!

It’s been a rad Ludum Dare as usual 😀 After this analysis I think I’ve decided that data analysis is not useful without a sample size of a billion So just keep jamming and having fun, making cool shit is the best you can do! Until next time amigos!

 

Tags: analysis, data, pokemon, PokEscape, stealth, tuism

We’re Cosmic Adventure Squad, and we made Super Sea Serpent Simulator during LD 33!

Click above to play!

This part 2 of the post-mortem will be from the point of view of one of the regulars on the team: Tenlki! If you want to hear from Rosypenguin and Stregawolf, part 1 is here.

—————————————————————————-

Hi, I’m Tenlki (or as some will know me from elsewhere – just Tenki). I’ve been casually helping out with Ludum Dare and Global Game Jam for a while, not really keeping count anymore, haha. This was pretty much my first full Unity project.

Role(s): 

This time around, pretty much everything audio-related went to me – I was originally tasked with making the music (and implied, the SFX), but as time went on, I had to pick up and code the audio system.

 

What went well:

I’m actually pretty happy with how everything turned out!

I spent Friday night/Saturday morning listening to different sea shanties from games and other sources, to get a better feel of what kind of instruments and well, how to write a song with the feel we want. Threw in a first draft on Saturday night, got feedback (“it sounds piratey- can we make it sound more ‘monster’?”) and added parts in to make it fit. Sunday night, came up with the idea to split the title motif and create the peace theme and a layered battle theme (my personal favorite ‘variation’ of the soundtrack).

I got (or had) to do a lot of things for the first time: I…

– Updated FL Studio the first night in – the interface is kind of different!
– Recorded a lot more “live-played” music with keyboard instead of clicking in notes the whole time as I’d previously done. That’s me actually playing piano! (..and kind of the other instruments, just reskinned the sounds lol)
– Accidentally upgraded to Windows 10 a few days before
– Never wrote music quite in the style/genre that we ended with
– Didn’t have significant experience with Unity and Github

…but all things considered (…and more on the “all things considered” later), I think it all came together really well!

 

 

What could be improved:

Well, I think everyone else was actually around the same area and meeting up locally, but I live across the country, so everything together, I was kind of kept out of the loop most of the time. Up until around Sunday evening when we submitted, all I had to work with were some screenshots, some minor descriptions of the game and what mood or assets we needed, so I was kind of shooting in the dark as far as how the game itself was looking and feeling.

On Sunday night, I found out we didn’t actually have an audio system and I was needed to code it in and hook in all the sounds. I hadn’t really gotten my hands too dirty in Unity before so I kinda drove straight into it with the time limit coming up (after forcing myself through an ugh video tutorial). I did a bunch of improvisation in that last bit and came up with having an audio mixer, battle/peace theme, figured out some nice places to trigger sounds (and improvised the sounds themselves) and got everything in. If anything, I kinda wanted a different theme in-game than the title screen (though, title “screen” was more of a misunderstanding on my part), but ended up running variations instead. I think it worked out ok.

I did actually write a game over theme but I think silence did the job better.

 

What you will do different next time:

Really, I kinda liked having that bit of pressure forcing me to learn. I actually ended up having to do some emergency fixes and builds the day after on request while everyone else in PDT was still at work (aw yeah, unsupervised builds!)

If anything, I’d like to be more familiar with Unity (or whatever tool we’ll end up using) before it starts. In previous Ludum Dare jams where I’d done coding, I had treated them as learning experiences, but I at least had some decent familiarity with the platforms (flash/flixel). This time, I went into it completely cold and kind of not expecting to really do more than create assets. I had left working in the game industry a while ago but sometimes the pang of wanting to code a game hits me again. Unity was still kind of weird (coming from someone who’s more used to coding everything from scratch), but maybe because of new insight from working with other things, the whole components thing doesn’t feel as foreign and unwelcoming as it used to. Maybe I’ll get to do some more coding next time.

I’m not complaining about how it turned out though – I’m the kind to enjoy the chaos of unplanned moments, and hey, the learning experience was awesome >:)

edit:

woo, 64th out of > 1.5k jam entries in Audio and 50th overall!

The first thing I’ve checked today morning were LD ratings. I’m so glad to see that my game got into the Top-100 Innovation rating (as #100)!

I’ll definitely follow valuable feedback I’ve got from other LD participants and continue my work.

I hope my video reviews were useful for the game developers too.

And now I’d like to use the occasion and invite you to the FGL game Jam, which will take place 25th-28th Sep. You’ll have 72 hours to make a mobile game (.apk or .ipa).

FGL Game Jam 32 thread – you are welcome!

Tags: contest, review

Hi all, I’ve posted the postmortem for my game, Patient Zer0.

 

Click to read!

Hey guys. Seeing that this is my (Taro’s) fourth Ludum Dare (and first for John), I figured it might be a good idea to look into how I’ve been doing for the past few entries. First with the latest: how did Can I Haz Monsters? do?

Not bad at all! Certainly got my innovation groove back, which I’m really proud of. As mentioned to some Let’s Players, John Ceceri III was the one who pitched the game idea about adopting in an alien world, so kudos to him. I simply helped out simplifying that idea to something that can be implemented into the game.

In comparison, this is how I did in the previous Compos & Jams:

The Sentient Cube (Ludum Dare 26)

Tragically, the first Ludum Dare I participated in was the first game I had to put down due to legal reasons. So no ratings, here. Even then, I was well-practiced with Unity and game jams in general, so it was pretty clear from the comments I was doing pretty well for a first-timer.

Laundry Day (Ludum Dare 31)

Laundry Day was our first attempt at organizing a real-world meeting at Tech Valley Game Space. As a consequence, nearly the entire group participated in this jam, including dreamlogician and Brightstar. It was also our first time learning Construct 2! Ultimately, a lot of raters figured out our game was making fun of the free-to-play style games with pointlessly addictive gameplay, leading to high marks on humor.

Star Driller Ultra (Ludum Dare 32)

Star Driller Ultra was well-praised for its graphics and overall presentation. It didn’t do nearly as well on fun, which I extensively wrote a post-mortem about. Either way, it definitely was an improvement from the last two projects I’ve worked on. It certainly showed my talent on creating well-polished games.

Unconventional Stick Swinging Simulator (Ludum Dare 32)

And of course, the curveball: the joke entry, Unconventional Stick Swinging Simulator! This was just a fun exercise of getting a game done in 12 hours, so I figured I’d get low rankings here. And I was not disappointed!

---

Plotting everything together, here’s how I did (Audio and Graphics are assumed to be 0s if opted out):

Overall and Innovation categories looks like a slow but progressive improvements, and I couldn’t be happier with that. Fun and Mood, on the other hand, are rocky. It looks like I might need to focus on these two categories a little more. Other than that, looks like things are improving smoothly!

I did better than last year on every category ! Still not on any top 100, but I’m close to it Surprisingly, I got a rather good grade on “Humor”, I am not sure what was so funny in my game but thank you ^^

Thanks to everyone who played my game (No Pictures Please) and for all the comments, I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Good things

• I was really not sure that my idea would work in practice and I spent all the weekend worrying about it until I finally got some levels. After all the votes, it seems that it was actually a good idea and I might develop it further, I already have some ideas of improvements.
• Innovation was my main weakness last year I think, I’m happy that this time I found something more original.
• I had never really done animations like this for my games (with drawings), it was a good experience.
• I received much more comments this year than last year, that was really enjoyable.

Bad things

• Despite all my efforts the graphics are not as good as I wanted, I should probably try to improve that for next year.
• As many people told me, the game is too difficult. I think it would not have been that hard to improve that during the weekend. I should probably let people test it before I release in order to adjust that kind of things before I release the game.
• Even though it took enough time to find a more original idea than last year, I feel like I should still spend more time in the beginning to find more ideas instead of keeping the first good idea I find, but it’s really hard to control myself.

See you next year !

When I uploaded my entry I knew that the game has a poor graphics, but I was really exited because I could make the game working in the time for compo and the game includes all what I wanted to. This made me a winner in my own eyes. While I was working on the game, I have realized of how much I have learnt and how much I will have to learn. Here you can look at my rating.

My game

AUDIO
It is actually really funny/sad that my entry has the best rating in audio class. This was the first time I was making audio for a game so I had to look for a right software to help me with it. Because audio class is closely connected to mood class, I now my audio is not good for being good but for being funny.

HUMOR
I didn not add any texts or something what should increase humor aspect and I dont even know why I obtained so much points in this class. Maybe the right timing of sounds and backround music made it possible.

THEME
What is more “being a monster” than eating people? Here I think I lost points because the graphics design of the under-bridge monster.

INNOVATION
When I was working on the game, I did not know anything about about categories which I will be rated in, so I dont have in my sights. I must admit, my game is no innovative.

FUN
My game should have more points in FUN than in the HUMOR category. It is fun to eat people, dodge the bad thoughts and dont die by starving.

MOOD
Here I lost again because of my graphics. Time to learn pixel art style.

GRAPHICS
This is the main problem of my game. I did not even want to be good in graphics, I was so glad to have a working game. In my opinion, graphics is the key in LD and here i have so much to get better.(Maybe chose a lower resolution will help next time)

I m so happy for being a part of Ludum Dare 33 and I promise this isnt my last try. I want to thank you for playing my game and writing comments. Next time I will get better. It also took some time to build Rome.

Coolness 100% #290 Mood(Jam) 3.43 #386 Audio(Jam) 3.11 #393 Theme(Jam) 3.62 #549 Graphics(Jam) 3.35 #616 Overall(Jam) 3.11 #627 Fun(Jam) 2.92 #773 Humor(Jam) 2.29 #835 Innovation(Jam) 2.60

Hey guys,this was my first LD entry and my second game in general,it had a lot of problems and wasnt the most fun to play but i hope you enjoyed it,thank you very much,cheers!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=54789

As I said, this year was the first time that I decided to participate in the compo. 48 hours: a game, with all the code, art and music by myself and donated to the public. Yesterday, the voting period ended, and I admit that I was expecting a much lower score on the criteria that interested me.

Scale: 1 to 5

Despite bugs and problems in the early days of the compo, the worst days for that to happen, the game had a relatively good reception.

Mood / Theme:

I learned that gritty atmosphere can even be attained with a naïve aesthetic seen in voxels without generating a negative reaction; nonlinear writing however confused several users, but many got by far uncomfortable sensations, which it was my goal; The proof of concept where the player is a psychopath, but without clarifying who is truly the monster or victim, was extremely well received and many believe that I should expand the concept to a full game; something that interests me the most.

The main reason to the average score is mainly the story was lost; which I owe to the lack of more time to be polish it, it just wasn’t well delivered. My mistake was to deepen the unessential story.

Graphics:

Many pondered the visual style and the work of shaders. Especially the technical work; as in the case, I used a single texture that was a RGB palette rendered into tiny PNG. The shader used to divide the screen into a pixelated grid; was also highly welcomed. As well the use of chromatic aberration and noise, to emulate a feeling of loss of sense of reality was highly appreciated.

Several mentioned that the artistic aspect was lost mostly to the shader pixelating the game world. An error on my part was too not adding more variety in vegetation for the courtyard.

 Audio:

I’m a terrible musician, but I have less musical talent than a fish. I admit it’s not my forte, and I expected that low score. However, most criticism was the lack of variety in the music, which I will consider for the next competition. My mistake was also unable to provide sound effects, but I did not have time to create sounds like crying or injuries of the victim.

Innovation:

The main reason for the low score is the same as I expected, given the clone of the game of cat and mouse that I implemented. Although I wanted to do a much more complex game of stealth, with executions and elements alike, creating the AI ​​for the game, consumed me a good couple of hours I could not use for anything else.

However, many admitted that expanding the concept to more elements of gameplay would be welcoming, something that attracts me to do if I expand this concept to a big game.

Overall:

With all the aforementioned elements, the graphics and gameplay limited factor, affecting a higher score. Things to keep in mind the next time. The good thing is that this AI can be used in any other project, which will give me another occasion greater creative freedom and attention to the gameplay.

Humor / Fun:

The game at no time sought to be hilarious and fun. On the contrary, looking for something to bother and generate similar experiences. You’re a murderer at the end of the day, without precisely defined emotions, the mood was reached, and my objective accomplished. The fun score, shows me clearly that the elements of cat and mouse, are already very common for this kind of games, and that the opportunity for the victim to defend itself undoubtedly was tempting and would have scored me several more points, but time was lacking.

Conclusion:

In TL;DR. I learned a lot, I did an AI using Environment Query Systems, a system damage and a lot of feedback to the idea of a game like I aforementioned before: it is indeed good, and maybe if things improve: I’ll expand the AI, improve the art, make a new aesthetic and above all things, not limit it to one house and do it as a full game

Tags: final post mortem, the empty

I won’t deny that I’m quite disappointed with my results, this time. I usually try not to care all that much about the ratings, I simply check how my game did and that’s it. But this time I aimed at getting a good score in graphics, putting pretty much everything else aside (well, except audio… somewhat). I focused more on polishing the graphics than on making a playable/balanced game… When the compo was ending, I simply designed a simple level, added some screens for the menu, the intro, the win/lose “scenes” and called it done.

Well, let’s take a look at my score before moving on:

Only taking into consideration that I focused a lot on graphics and that there were 1199 compo entries, I didn’t do all that bad. I score above ~88% of entries in graphics and ~83% in audio.

But if I were to compare my latest entry with my previous ones…

Scores per entry (per category)

Percentage of how close I’ve got to first in any category

Yeah… still not all that bad. It’s in fourth place, when sorting by graphics. So, why am I so butthurt annoyed that I’m even ignoring conclusive (and absolute) data?

I thought it deserved a better score. During the voting, I really thought that a game with graphics as good as mine deserved at least a 4.0. C’mon, look at that parallax, those leafs on the background, the smooth animations… How could all those, even considering the lame gameplay, score less than a 4.0?

So, I replayed my LD#31 entry Cold Remembrance. It got 20th place in graphics, even without any gameplay; you simply hold left! I wanted to compare both and try to understand what that “game” had that this game didn’t.

Well, that “game” felt complete, and there was nothing unnecessary. But the experience looks and feels great. The audio merges with the graphics and the story; each aspect of the game make the other better.

On this entry, on the other hand, there’s an element that really takes it charm away. Although the graphics and the audio do merge well, the first impression the players has is with that ugly title screen. It’s not even functional, as the text goes through really fast and fills all of the screen…

I could probably had gotten away with telling the story on the entry page and removing the title screen. I didn’t even need a win/lose screen… I could had simply displayed a message (in front of the “playstate”) after you got to the end/died and then I could had restarted the game…

Yeah… it was probably just that… =/

Well, lesson learned!

I’ll still probably work on a post-compo version, but I want to first work on a post-compo for my LD#32 entry… XD

Thanks for reading! Until next time! o/

#321 Audio 3.04 #502 Graphics 3.02

were my scores for Audio and Graphics, my highest placings. I will admin, I’m suprised. A lot of people said that its great, showing maybe a 4 star. However, the there was a 3 star average. Suprising. Also, Graphics seemed to be better than Audio, but it wasn’t. Audio got almost 200 places higher than graphics. Whew.

Now to Ludum Dare 32.

#579 Graphics 3.00

#463 Audio 2.86

 

Here, these are pretty bad results. I guess i did improve.

I got lucky that LD. Here are the top 2 results.

#33 Theme 4.23 #92 Humor 3.76

 

Whew. What a long post. Well, thats that. I’m not pissed or disappointed or anything. Just, a little lost. Still proud to compete in Ludum Dare. Would rather do Ludum dare and get 1200th place than miss it.

So, my game Within suffered a lot due to real life experiences I had to deal with during this event. I almost opted out of the event completely, but thanks to a few good friends and, what I’m guessing to be, luck, I actually made my first game and I was able to submit it to Ludum Dare 33. Pretty surreal!

My ratings weren’t too bad:

My highest score was Mood (which is cool, because I was definitely going for that with my take on the theme) but out of all the other ratings, Audio is technically the highest as I placed pretty well. What’s interesting, too, is that I only spent an hour on my music (including writing and editing it). What’s even more interesting is how this reflects who I am as a person; I studied music and music composition in college. It’s very uplifting to see that education playing a vital role in my game’s success.

Unfortunately, I was going through a big move during this event. I was actually couch surfing during the creation of the game, and after I moved in and judging was commencing I was unable to rate and play as effectively as I wanted due to lack of internet. I was able to get a couple of games in here and there with my terrible laptop and a connection provided by a coffee shop, but these were mostly restricted to web games.

Things I realized that need significant more focus in my coming games:

1. Level design

My game has very simple controls, so the level design is simple as well. However, if you have played it, you realize that the switches or buttons in each level can be cryptic and their effect can be lost on the player because of poor implementation. I’m sure if I had more time, I would have been able to make a better system.

2. Coding

I used Game Maker to make this game, and thanks to Shaun Spalding’s tutorials on YouTube I was able to have a quickly working platformer engine for my game that I was also able to tweak. Still, in the future I would like to have more experience writing code from scratch for an event like this.

3. Graphics

Several commenters pointed out that my game looks and even feels a bit like “Thomas Was Alone” by Mike Bithell. The square based sprites was really all I had time for and, naturally, I see the resemblance, but rest assured that I didn’t even have that beautiful game in mind when I was crafting my own. This area is probably my weakest point with game creation. If I pursue games, this will be the area I will need to work the most on. That, or work with a team.

All in all, though, I had a blast participating in this event. I learned a lot, gained a ton of experience, and enjoyed all the games I played (while I was able to). I’m looking forward to participating in Ludum Dare 34 in December. Hope to see you all there! 😀

Ludum Dare 33 was a little rough for me, as I had to stop my game early for illness. However, I did a fair amount of streaming and played some great games! Here were my favorites, followed by a postmortem for my own entry at the end.

Cruelty Free

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=38961

My favorite thing about this game is how the team focused the polish on all the bits that totally sold the fantasy of running around as a rat. The camera angle made me feel anxious about what was above. The animations on the rat were adorable and believable. The animations on the scientists were elegantly done – the same animation over a counter looked like “working” while out in the open looked like “searching for rat.” All the details that they pushed compelled me to hide in nooks and scurry around corners and believe that I was a rat. The payoff at the end was also nicely done – a simple solution with big impact.

Tenebrous Expanse

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=54258

This was a game built on mechanics (essentially a cross between minigolf and billiards with a rubber band attached) but did an excellent job of layering compelling mood and atmosphere on top of that. It very simply made the game feel like a complete whole while sticking with minimalist visuals and effects. The ramp-up in levels and how they slowly constrained elements until it became about making perfect shots was nicely done (and the spiraling level select menu was certainly something I’d never seen before!)

Beast of the Woods

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=12468

It looks like a common theme with my favorites this Ludum Dare is “elegance” and completeness of the package, and here’s another one that does a great job of that. There are so many wonderful touches that totally make me buy into this world – how the music intensifies with proximity to your prey, how your monster hands creep onto screen when you get within lunging range, how your victim whips around to see you just before you strike. Every effort spent in this entry works together towards a common experience, and that is no easy feat in the compo!

Sick Sick Solitaire Postmortem

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=22452

Now for my sickly little entry. I had never made a digital card game before, so that’s the idea I decided to tackle. In the game, the black cards are “bad” but you are forced to use them to advance play, so the result is a tricky, brain-stretchy sort of solitaire.

It was inspired by a few things:

1. Four Seasons Solitaire, which was always my favorite type growing up
2. Cooperative games where you have to play for “the game’s” turn, like Eldritch Horror (which I have been playing a ton of lately). I wanted to see if there was a way of getting that feel of you having to play “for” the bad deck in a simple card game.
3. Once Upon A Time, my favorite card game, specifically for its elements of being cooperative and competitive at the same time. I liked that tension of having to use the “bad” cards to advance play. I also had plans to incorporate this more into the theme, but was unable to finish.

For the curious, my plan to theme this game was to make it about two monsters that had made a mess of the knight’s prized plate collection, and were trying to clean it up before he showed up. You played little sister monster and big brother monster was trying to pin the blame on you. You were trying to finish cleaning up your stack before him, so you could accuse HIM of being the monster who made the mess when the night showed up. I had some pretty cute monster sketches all planned out, but alas, it was not meant to be.

When I woke up on Sunday and realized I was too ill to finish, I was pretty disappointed.  I mulled about scoping down and pushing through it, but health woes have been stacking up on me and I knew I had to choose to take it easy. I’m glad I at least had something playable to put up, but it was hard to have my first Ludum Dare where I wasn’t able to properly finish.

However, the ability to choose not to finish something is a life skill all the same! There is always next Ludum Dare

Tags: ld33 postmortem