Post Mortem
Greetings, fellow humans. We are - like you - Genuine Earthmen. :alien: First I would like to introduce the members of the band:
- @daanvanyperen on the coding
- @meatmachine on the music and sound
- @troop on the writing and voice-over
- @flaterectomy on the graphics
Our game is Little Fortune Planet: a global physics emulating card game in which you can unlock achievements that allow you to edit the game world sandbox-style.
Theme
We adapted the A Small World theme in a pretty direct way: a cross section of a tiny planet including the core, lava tubes, bodies of water, and the planet’s surface with its inhabitants. After we brainstormed for a while, @daanvanyperen showed us a video of a tech demo he once made of a circular world with physics emulation. We figured we could have some cool emergent situations arise in that environment. Then we had to figure out how the player interacts with the world, and pretty quickly a card game came to mind.
Goals
First and foremost, our goal was to make a game with the four of us. In previous Ludum Dares, either @daanvanyperen worked alone or he and I teamed up. We had never been more than a duo, so just grouping up with the four of us and making a game was a goal in itself.
@meatmachine started venturing into making digital music about 6 months ago, and he was excited to be our audio man. @troop wanted to write and voice-over our introduction monologue.
Having practiced on (walking) animations some more after our LD37 entry (I Clean Toilet), I originally had the goal of making a game with improved animations. When our concept didn’t really allow for that, my graphical goals pretty quickly focused on the card game element. I am not really a card game player, but I do like the card designs of games like Magic: The Gathering or Hearthstone. We did not end up having a clear points system, so instead the cards differ in their illustrations and very brief descriptions (which were fun to write!).
Problems
Of course, directly after our brainstorm, our idea was too big. This is nearly always the case, and not a true problem in itself - there’s always a serration process where a large pool of ideas has to be simplified. Originally we wanted to have various tribes living on the planet, and have the cards affect the world in a way so that they could interact (i.e. go to war) with each other. The faction that survives or advances their technology enough to escape the planet in a spaceship would win, and start over on a new planet.
Another issue was that we had an ethereal concept, and we didn’t know exactly where it would lead us. This also meant that @meatmachine spent the first day making music and sound effects speculatively, not knowing exactly what we’d need.
Successes
Somewhere in the middle of the jam, we realized we had a physics emulation without a game. How are we going to make this fun to play? By introducing the achievements and adding some wacky cards (everyone turns into a dolphin!) the game grew a purpose and that turn-around was pretty cathartic.
@meatmachine’s sounds and music worked well, and add a lot of character to the game, as did @troop’s opening monologue - it made me nostalgic for classic god games.
Moving Forward
While Little Fortune Planet turned into a quirky little game that I personally am pretty happy with, it may fall a little short on polish and explaining itself to the player. A line that we repeated a few times among ourselves was: “next time we make a platformer.” A more traditional game format might not be much of an innovation, but a familiar concept with tried-and-tested controls would mean we get to put our effort into a more finished game.
Looking back, Little Fortune Planet is kind of the child of our LD36 entry Dynasty. You are presented with some options of affecting the game world, and your choice will lead you to victory or great shame. We didn’t realize this until later on in the jam. I’m not sure if we’ll revisit this mechanic any time soon, but I suppose we did encounter a concept we enjoy.
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