For me, LD28 was the best Ludum Dare I’ve had. Even though it was about 2 months ago, I’ve only just got round to putting the post-compo finishing touches onto my game. I ended up building a game, Glide, which I’d had the idea of for a while. Sadly I’m fairly unmotivated at the best of times, but Ludum Dare is always capable of getting me into action!
What is Glide?
The basic premise is that you use the single control (spacebar) to switch “gravity” on and off. Technically it’s not quite an implementation of gravity, but we’ll get to that. The game only has ten levels at the moment – this was partially due to timing constraints during LD28, and partly due to my inability to come up with new levels – but most of all, it seems that hardly anybody actually plays through to the end of the game anyway.
What went right?
- The aesthetic – I was incredibly happy with how the look and feel of the game turned out. Despite some lag issues on Firefox and on slow browsers, play seemed to be generally quite smooth. Feedback assures me that the way the game played was consistent and this helped it to stay fun.
- The idea – For once, I was actually able to reap the benefits of a Ludum Dare idea which was easy to implement. I cannot overstate how useful this was in enabling me to create what I feel is a “good” game during the short amount of time available. I knew I was in with a hope when the raw game was almost completely implemented by the end of Saturday night.
- The fun – I think this is without a doubt the only LD entry which I can confidently say was actually fun to play. For me at least. I think this was in part down to the learnability of the controls – After a few goes it is actually possible to complete some of the more difficult levels, and it doesn’t just feel like trial and error. (An exception to this being “TWITCH”.)
What went wrong?
- The curve – I have heard from quite a few people that the difficulty curve was way off. I think this can be put down to the fact that I have little experience in level design, almost all of my previous games having been arcade-style procedurally generated gameplay, rather than pre-built levels. More time would have enabled some more detailed level design and if I build more levels then this is certainly something that I will take into account.
- The assets – The lack of music in the game felt a little off and it’s possible this is one of the reasons many people didn’t stick around in the game. Since the compo has ended I’ve added some fantastic music from the equally fantastic Kevin McLeod, and it’s improved the aesthetic greatly.
- The name – I should have absolutely checked that the name Glide was available on my Flash portal of choice (Kongregate) before embarking. Sadly, it was taken, and so I’ve had to release under the name GraviGlide on Kongregate.
Overall
All in all, I’m really happy with how Glide turned out. If anybody feels like giving it a go (and I’m still incredibly open to constructive criticism), and/or giving it a fair rating, I’d be more than chuffed! You can find it here.
