After an incredibly long night of arting and idea-ing… I’ve come up with my idea.

Presenting: AB-ALONE

So what is it? I’m not sure, yet… but I have a dang good idea. The main character is partially animated, and the set pieces are partially drawn. The code is partially started, and my mind is partially blown. It’s late. I’m tired. SEE YOU ALL TOMORROW!

Tags: first screenshot, progress update

I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished very much today… so I’m going to take the time to list what I’ve done. Maybe that will remind me.

1. Finished the zoom feature (in and out via mouse wheel)
2. Added HUD
3. Added health / health bar
4. Added health regeneration via pickups
5. Added 5 additional inventory items along with HUD/counters
6. Added important set piece
7. Created Day/Night system (10 RL minutes = 24 hrs in game)
8. Created dynamic lighting for night
9. Constructed particle system
10. Changed tree / rock sprites to be more cohesive with the rest of the tiles / objects
11. Converted resource-hogging objects to static tiles
12. Tweaked player collision system
13. Adjusted layering system

I still have a LONG way to go if I’m going to implement all of the features on my design doc… especially if I’m going to make time for music/sfx… which is a MUST, imo. So here’s what I have left to do on the design doc…

1. Create at LEAST 12 more inventory objects (code + sprite + counters + player variables)
2. Create stamina system
3. Create tool system (hammer, axe, fishing pole, etc)
4. Create crafting system
5.  Create randomly respawning resources for DAY+1 events
6. Create title screen
7. Create death/lose scenario
8. Create winning scenario
9. Draw a very crucial set piece
10. Create SFX / Music
11. Tie it all together with a story sequence?

Yeah… that ain’t happenin’. I need to find out what features to cut and FAST. Tomorrow needs to be an incredibly productive day if I’m actually going to pull this off. I’ve never really ‘finished’ a Ludum Dare before… all of my games end up as tech demos or incomplete nothingness with no end / purpose. I want this to be different.

I will leave you with the latest screenshot from my game, AB-ALONE

Tags: progress update, saturday, screenshot

Ludum Dare 22 marks my fifth entry into the 48 hour game design competition of the GODS. My most critically successful competition thus far … was my first. Way back with LD 16 and the “EXPLORATION” theme, I created a Wall-e meets Fallout sidescrolling adventure that didn’t even have 75% of my planned features. Maybe it was because there were only 121 entries that time, but my game somehow ranked 8th in graphics and 20th overall. I was pleased with the warm reception, but I knew I could do better.

Fast forward to NOW… with Ludum Dare 22 and over 800 entries… wow. There are some AMAZING games floating around out there, and I can’t wait to dive in and try them out.

So what happened during this LD? The most important thing that happened is… I LOST MY MIND. I have never really been able to take a game from idea to completion in 48 hours. It haunts me. Even when I scaled back my idea for the “ISLANDS” theme with Savory Sea Hoss, I still ended up with a game that just felt incomplete. I decided that I would do whatever it took to release a ‘finished’ game this time, and it nearly killed me. I didn’t sleep during LD22.

Did it work? Sort of. I ended up with a much more ‘complete’ game, but I felt horrible throughout the entire competition. I flooded my body with worthless snacks and energy drinks to stay awake, and I made some stupid errors that wouldn’t have existed with a WELL RESTED perk.

I was desperately hoping that the theme would include an actual GAME MECHANIC and not a setting or ‘idea’ theme like before. I wanted RANDOM GENERATION, as that’s one area that I don’t have much experience in. I wanted to learn how to do that. I certainly could’ve incorporated that into the “ALONE” theme, but I ultimately decided against it.

WHAT IS AB-ALONE
Ab-Alone is a hybrid adventure/survival/crafting/puzzle game that combines BEING ALONE with BEING IN A STRANGE/NEW PLACE.

From the official page:
“An alien creature crash lands on an unknown planet and ends up on a remote island. With no way to repair the spacecraft and no way to call for help, the stranded alien is forced to survive while attempting to find a way home. The small island is covered with sand, grass, rocks, and trees… but no other life forms can be found. A startling discovery reveals that there may be more to this world than originally thought…”

FORMING THE IDEA
The “ALONE” theme immediately made me think of a deserted island. I knew right away that there would probably be MANY, MANY games based on this basic idea, but I decided to go ahead with the brainstorming phase. I knew that the core of my game would be based around being trapped on an island, and the overall goal would be to escape. I decided very early on that I would take the theme literally. I didn’t want there to be any other characters in the story, and I wanted to create a sense of desperation by making the player as clueless as possible without creating a complete TRIAL AND ERROR experience. That’s when I decided that the main character should not only be alone… but alone on an unknown planet. Instead of a space marine with guns and gadgets… it’s an alien with NOTHING. The player is just as clueless as the alien, as there is no tutorial or extensive explanations/labels. This is a design decision that I made early on, and I stuck through with it even after realizing that it had the potential to create an incredibly frustrating game.

WHAT WENT RIGHT
• A Beginning / Middle / End – I wanted the game to start and end with a story sequence to frame the action. I did it, and I’m happy with how it turned out.
• SOUND – Thanks to the beauty of SFXR, I was able to create a large amount of custom sounds in a very short time. I even had time to make two songs that really add to the feel of the game. The ‘main theme’ that plays during gameplay is a mixture of island ambience and breezy melodies that work with one another without feeling too repetitive.
• Pretty Lights – I wanted a day/night system. I also wanted the ability to make a fire. I knew that this would require lighting, so I spent a large portion of my Saturday designing the day cycle/fire lighting. This eventually led me to experiment with particle creation for the fire. I decided against the particle fire, but I kept working with the particles for other effects.
• HUD Creation – I knew that I had to come up with an inventory/crafting HUD system that wasn’t too invasive. I didn’t want there to be any sort of PAUSE or pop up menu, so I decided to design a HUD along the bottom of the game window. The HUD can be switched between an INVENTORY and a CRAFT view. It isn’t the most intuitive or beautiful system, but it does what I wanted it to do, and that’s a victory in my book.
• Crafting/Building – I wasn’t convinced at first, but I really dig the ability to craft ‘structures’ and such. It isn’t much, but I think that it really adds a nice touch to the game.
• Water / Waves / Tide – I knew that I wouldn’t be able to create a fully-functional tide system in this amount of time. I designed the island as if it only had one beach… with the rest of the coasts being covered in rocks. The beach features a wave that carries in new collectibles every morning. I originally toyed with the idea of a moving sun that creates a reflection in the water but I stopped being stupid and immediately stopped thinking about it.

WHAT WENT WRONG
• Sprite / Color Cohesion – I never really stayed true with any specific art style or color palette, and I deeply regret it. The shades of yellow and green that I used to form the island tiles are just plain UGLY. There are some sprites, like the crashed space craft, that are very well done. Then there are others, like the rocks and trees, that just look out of place in comparison.
• Forgotten Features – I wanted too much. I wanted more items, more crafting combinations, more food, more EVERYTHING. I have a very small collection of items that can be found/crafted, but there just wasn’t enough time to do more. I have an entire document drawn up that shows fish, a fishing pole, and a way to grill fish over a fire. None of this was included in the final game.
  Bad art – Some stuff is just badly/sloppily drawn. The rocks are ugly. The dried leaves look like bananas. The seashell look like a jelly fish. The axe, which is made out of a seashell tied to a rock and a stick… looks like a jelly fish tied to a rock and a stick. ETC. Not too thrilled with a lot of the aesthetics this time around.
• Controls – I’m not too happy with the way the character moves, and some of the ways that you have to interract with the cursor are confusing/nonsensical. I just didn’t have enough time to iron out these details to perfect the interface.
• Delivery – I was so tired after not sleeping that I completely bombed the LD 22 entry page process. I posted a link to my game site without making the page public. I could see the page, but nobody else could. I lost several plays because people couldn’t get to my game. With over 800 entries, I may NEVER get those plays back, and that sucks.

CONCLUSION
In the end, I feel as though this is my greatest LD triumph. It may not be reflected in the voting, but I think that this is the best ‘overall’ game I have made since I started these crazy things. I took an idea that has been played to death (crafting / survival) in recent years, but I was able to put a new spin on it. The game includes a bit of humor, which is always good, IMO. It’s very hard for me to be SUPER SERIOUS in life, and this should be reflected in the games that I make.

I’m working on a guide/walkthrough for the game… as I’m sure that there will be questions. The game is meant to be a bit of a puzzle, so you won’t be able to plow through it without some experimentation and careful studying of the slight clues.

SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? GO PLAY AB-ALONE!

Ludum Dare Entry Page
Direct Download (Windows)
Direct Download Mirror (Windows)
Official Game Page (under construction)

For those that get stuck, can’t play the game, or just don’t have the patience to experiment… I’ve created a game guide / mini walkthrough for my Ludum Dare 22 game, Ab-Alone.

You can check it out and rate the game HERE.

I’m also working on compiling a list of some of my favorite LD22 games for a future post.

Tags: game guide, LD22, post-compo, screenshot

SEE YOU ON THE DAMN HELL ASS BATTLEFIELD

Also, don’t vote for exploration. Please. We already did that in LD 16.

So… I fell asleep and woke up 2 hours after the theme was revealed. Whoops. Didn’t plan that.
I’ve been working on the game ever since, and now it’s 10 AM. Didn’t plan that, either.

So here’s what I have so far…

I spent most of my time developing the world tiles and the … un … way that the tiles ‘work’.
The environment is destructible, and the world will reform itself after tiles are destroyed.
The core gameplay will be focused around the destruction and regeneration of these tiles.
Basic character movement is working, and the main character has a walking animation for all 4 directions.

My next move is to create the special abilities of the main character, then I’ll work on the enemies and the overall structure and flow of the game that will lead to some sort of endgame.

Then… SFX and MUSIC.

HOPEFULLY.

See ya’ll suckaz when I wake up… ugh.

Tags: first screenshot, ld23, progress update, screenshot, zunzanda

Here’s a comparison shot of an example of the terrain before and after destruction in ZUNZANDA.

LOTS OF WORK TO DO TODAY! Slept for waaaay too long and now I’m gonna be in a rush to finish this… although I’m still sorta torn on a few things. Not sure where to take it because I have 2 great ideas, but they both contain serious challenges. LUDUM DARE!!!

Tags: destructible terrain, engine test, phantom green, progress update, screenshot, zunzanda

Well, I spent a lot of time working on the core mechanic, and now I have to find a way to make it FUN. Right now, it just feels like a tech demo.

I added two enemy types… they will hunt down the player and occasionally pause to destruct the terrain.

They basically work the same, but one is faster than the other. I will add another of the same type that is even faster AND has a larger destruction radius.

So this is what I spent most of my time on… THE TERRAIN GRID SYSTEM of ZUNZANDA:

The white blocks represent negative space. If you step into these areas, you will fall into the unknown. The other tiles change dynamically based on the neighboring tiles. If a section of ground is destroyed, then the tiles surrounding the new negative space will change form.

The white areas will obviously be invisible in the final game, as seen in the first screen that I posted.

Now I just have to figure out how to handle game progression and make it fun… then add SFX and music. I think I’m gonna have to cut a lot of features out, as usual. I had so many rad ideas and the terrain system just took too long.

AH WELL.

I ain’t goin to sleep, yet. I’ll be up for the next 10 hours or so… then I’ll get about 4 hours of sleep and finish it all up tomorrow afternoon/evening.

Tags: destructible terrain, dynamic tiles, progress update, screenshot, terrain, zunzanda

I’ve managed to add an energy pickup to the game. I had plans to do several versions and sizes, but time is short and this is all I can do. They are randomly generated somewhere in the sky and randomly find a home on the ground. If they fall into a hole or miss the terrain entirely, they’re lost forever!

CODING ERROR!!! SPAWN RATE TOO HIGH!
ABORT ABORT ABORT

Tags: phantom green, powerup, progress update, screenshot, zunanda

This will be my last progress update, as I didn’t get any sleep last night and I need to finish this game SOON or I’m going to collapse. The game is pretty much done… just gotta add the sounds. Got the HUD working… the player can now be damaged by enemies… the ZUNZANDA effect is in full force… and waves flow like melted butter. It’s kinda fun but needs some tweaking. The randomness of the starshines can make some waves REALLY HARD. Gotta find the sweet spot. Probably won’t have time to tweak unless the music and SFX creation goes smoothly.

When it’s done, I’m gonna submit the game and then crash. I’ll do a post mortem or whatever some other day… lol

Tags: final progress update, hud, phantom green, screenshot, zunzanda

ZUNZANDA!!!
PLAY IT HERE

This weekend was crazy. Ludum Dare 23, the 10th anniversary of the best dang game jam around, was number one on my list of priorities. I wanted to go all out for the 10th anniversary, and I did. I altered my sleep schedule so I could work during the night, which is my most productive time. I started working on the game after midnight on Friday… then I went to sleep sometime the next morning. I then stayed up ALL night on Saturday… and stayed up all the way until submission time.

Then … I crashed.

I crashed hard.

And on Monday… I was met with some terrible news. My aunt had just passed away.

Normally by this time, I’ve already played 15 – 20 LD games. But due to my sleep schedule, I couldn’t follow through. I was gonna start on Monday morning. Then I got the news about my aunt and things obviously changed. So here I am… on Tuesday morning… and I still haven’t played a single LD game. I spent some time adding a dedication to my aunt in ZUNZANDA’s credits, which I hope the judges are OK with. I then ironed out some bugs that I discovered while playtesting and getting feedback from others… but only game killing bugs. One glitch even caused the player input to stop completely, so I had to deal with that ASAP. Dropbox also borked my upload link… but I didn’t know because the site was so jammed up that I couldn’t even get to my own entry page. I said “SCREW IT!” and passed out.

But I did find a horrible bug. Well… less of a bug and more of an I’M AN IDIOT AND FORGOT TO ADD THIS VERY IMPORTANT FEATURE TO THE GAME issue. I won’t reveal what it is. Maybe you won’t notice. *cringe*

ZUNZANDA
What the hell is Zunzanda?

Well… it’s a game about a tiny world. But the twist is that the world is getting smaller by the minute… and you gotta stop it! How?

With this totally rad terrain sculpting system, of course!

Well, that was going to be the primary focus of the game, but the dynamic tiles and terrain destruction features sort of fell out of the spotlight when I realized that what I had in my head would not be possible in 48 hours. I originally wanted the player character to have two forms… one that could attack but was forced to stand on solid ground, and a form that could not attack, but could float between platforms. The terrain was originally going to change drastically over the course of a ‘stage’, but now you’ll find that it’s much more gradual.

It took me a long time to get the dynamic tile system working, but it turned out MOSTLY alright. It’s kinda fugly and it’s not incredibly seamless, but it does what I wanted it to… and HEY… for 48 hours… it’s GREAT.

So what else can this game do?

SHINY STUFF!!!

The game is broken down into waves… with each wave throwing more enemies at you. Your goal is to kill those star jellies as quickly as you can before they eat your world. The only way to kill ’em is to collect those starshines that fall from they sky. Get enough of ’em and you’ll unleash a burst of light that fries ’em dead. Then you get a bit of a break so you can ‘cash in’ your dead jellies for new terrain tiles to rebuild your world. It’s a constant battle of dodging holes while racing for those precious starshines… and staying away from those jellies while they try to gobble up your land. It gets pretty intense… even if it did end up being a bit unforgiving with ‘deaths’.

If you wanna keep reading… follow me after the jump and we’ll keep it going.

I decided that Sunday would be audio and polish day. That’s why I had to stay up all night on Saturday… because I was behind. I ended up pulling an all-nighter to finish up the wave system and get the foundation in place for the intro and the voiceovers.

Yeah, voiceovers.

I basically ripped off Bastion. If you haven’t played Bastion, then just pretend that I came up with the narration style that you find in ZUNZANDA. I was expecting the voiceovers to take the longest, but it actually went smoothly. I had a system, I stuck to it, and everything turned out better than I had imagined. I wrote a quick ‘script’, did two takes, and then started piecing it all together.

After the voiceovers, I wrote two pieces of music: One for the title/story sequences, and the other for gameplay. I’m pretty DANG happy with how they turned out.

HEY… I even had time to make some quick and dirty SFX before the deadline. I’m not too thrilled about using SFXR again, but it always comes through in a pinch. I wanted the SFX to be a bit more natural for this, but OH WELL.

So what did I learn this time?

I learned that I think I’ll skip the next Ludum Dare.
I had SO MUCH FUN but this one really drained me, and now I just wanna play some games.

I’d love to be able to just sit back and WATCH LD24, so that’s what I’m gonna do.

THANKS FOR READING!

You can play and rate ZUNZANDA right HERE

Tags: animated gif, animations, bugs, coding error, glitch, lost sleep, post comp, post-mortem, screenshot

Be an artist. Be unique. Be rad.

Don’t set out to reach the largest audience just because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do.

Set out to make something great, and those that CAN play it… WILL play it.

If making a cross-platform game is what you WANT to do, then do that.

If making a game that only 1 person can play is what you WANT to do, then do that.

The games industry would be much better off if the artists could focus more on what they wanted to do rather than what they were told to do or persuaded to do… and that includes trying to reach the largest audience possible.

Just a quick message to anyone that may feel pressured into making a browser game for the next Ludum Dare, even if you don’t really want to.

Make the game you want… the way you want to make it.

Tags: encouragement

GREAT THEME! I’m in the middle of setting up my new office and am without an internet connection, so I’m out.

HAVE FUN, EVERYONE! Can’t wait to check out the games!

See you… next time?

Tags: participation, sadness

As my first session draws to a close, I’m more frustrated than ever. 8 crashes thus far and I don’t know what the problem is. And it’s not my game, it’s my computer. Wonderful. I’m already way behind, but what else is new? I guess I’ll just work on getting this into a VERY VERY VERY simplified state, then I guess I’ll call it quits. No way I can do what I wanted with all of these interruptions. Just not enough time. Here’s my first screenshot. I was hoping to have enemies implemented already, but so far I just have tiles and a movable main character with animations.

Tags: computer crashes, first screenshot, screenshot, status update

A little inspiration for all of you nefarious and villainous ne’er-do-wells!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKEL4cUTOI4

Tags: comedy, funny, inspirational video

Took longer than expected to get the attack animations done. OH I’LL JUST HAVE ONE WAY TO ATTACK. IT’LL BE A BIT BORING BUT QUICK AND EASY! Ummmm… no. You still need to animate it in all 4 directions and you have to create individual hit masks / hitboxes for each case. Dummy! So yeah now I have attacking down. Just gotta make a few enemies, the AI, and then the GUI / entire purpose of the game. NO PRESSURE!

Tags: attack animation, screenshot, second screenshot, status update

I settled on a name and now I’m in the final stretch of development. I have the basics in place and the HUD is ready to be finalized. Now I just gotta piece it all together with a story and add some sweeeeet, sweeeeeet audio. Will I have time? Probably. But I’m trying for HTML 5 deployment this time and I have no clue what I’m doing. The final hour will probably be full of headaches, but I wanted a challenge… so yeah. Now I got one, I guess.

Tags: final day, final stretch, screenshot, status update

I finished early! WOW! Now I’m gonna spend the rest of my prep time getting a web/HTML5 version ready before submitting. Then… some MUCH NEEDED SLEEP. Been up for nearly 24 hours. UGH.

GOOD LUCK, EVERYONE!

Tags: complete, finally done, finished, html5, screenshot

Ludum Dare 23 was a huge success for me with Zunzanda, and I said that I would not return to do another LD until my commercial game is done. But I guess I lied. It’s just too much fun to pass up! This marks my 7th LD (I think) and I think I did OK.

With the list of available themes, I picked the top three that I thought would win and began to brainstorm. I had some great ideas for END OF THE WORLD, and I was sure that it would win. Then, when the theme was announced, I just kind of stared at the screen in amazement. I honestly did not even think about YOU ARE THE VILLAIN. I should have, but for some reason it just didn’t pop up. I immediately stood up and began doing random things around the house while my mind raced with ideas. I usually go through this process. Instead of sitting down at the computer and drawing sketches, I just do some mindless task so my brain can sling crazy ideas around.

After enough thought, I decided to do something that I said I’d never do. I made a ‘Zelda clone’ with unoriginal slime creatures as the main enemy. This style of game is very unoriginal and the enemy is ‘easy’ to draw and is a total copy of about a million other games… but in that familiarity I crafted my overall design purpose: to use the player’s own history and tendencies against them. I will explain more about this design approach in the “THEME ANALYSIS” section. Reading that before playing the game will basically spoil the entire purpose of the game… SO GO PLAY IT!

CURE 48

Time, as usual, was the main enemy.

Features that got dropped after day one:

Features / tweaks that got dropped on the last day:

WHAT WENT RIGHT?

– The music. Cure 48 features two songs… the main theme and the ‘escape’ theme. I used the same instruments for both songs and kept them similar so the change wasn’t jarring. I think it works very well and the main theme is pretty rad.
– The spriting. I was able to get a fully animated main character that’s generic but somehow not generic at the same time. Enemies are decently animated and have three palette variations. The world tiles are also pretty snazzy except for the walls.
– The overall ‘purpose’ of the game seems to have been a great success based on the comments I’m getting. More on this will be revealed in the “THEME ANALYSIS” section below.
– Graphical overlays and special filters. These make the game feel like it’s being viewed inside of an old, crappy monitor. Scan lines and static included.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

– CRASHES! My computer kept crashing on the first night and it put me behind by a considerable amount. It ended up being a hardware conflict related to my audio setup. BARF.
– Much of the mood that I wanted to set got scrapped due to time. This included detailed intro and outro sequences with voice acting to help frame the actual game.
– Screen transitions are harsh.
– The sound effects are pretty standard. I wanted to do more unique sounds but I guess it fits.
– Porting to HTML5. I was hoping this would be simpler but there were just far too many tiny errors that kept piling up. Things like world tiles flickering, audio not being triggered on time, objects and sprites changing at random, and AI not behaving correctly. It just wasn’t worth ironing out all of these bugs, especially when there are just so many other games to play and rate.

THEME ANALYSIS

So here’s the part that you shouldn’t read unless you want to be spoiled. If you haven’t played the game… GO PLAY IT NOW! If you’ve already played it, don’t want to, or CAN’T… then feel free to keep reading —->

The theme “You Are The Villain” immediately painted an image in my head of playing as the bad guy. Role reversals start popping into my head. What would be the most interesting to attempt? I thought about it for a while but eventually decided I was thinking about it all wrong. The YOU in YOU ARE THE VILLAIN is the player, not the character. This means that the player has to play the game in a villainous way. That is, if the game is designed to lock the player into a role, then the player will obviously have to act within those rules. With my game, I wanted to make the player the villain without actually telling them to be the villain. I wanted them to be the villain by default while also giving them plenty of chances to be the hero. By using a familiar type of gameplay and introducing a familiar game enemy, I was able to manipulate the player into acting a certain way without ever asking or forcing them.

Cure 48 puts the player in the role of a ‘spaceman’ of sorts that is tasked with saving Earth. A plague has swept across the globe and the only cure is found on another planet far away. This cure grows on a plant, and the player is asked to harvest as much of the cure as possible… and that’s it. The gameplay is very similar to The Legend of Zelda, in that you have a sword (in this case, a light saber kind of thing) and can swing it in four directions. The first screen consists of the player and his ship. You can only go right. Once you go right, you start to see some plant life. These plants do not contain any cure but can be cut down. Curious players may test swiping these plants just like the grass in many of the Zelda games. Going on the next screen presents the player with an interesting grass layout that draws the attention to the plant in the center. This plant has a white ball on top of it. Cutting this plant makes the ‘cure’ drop to the ground. Picking this up makes a sound and the cure count goes up by one. The player now knows to look out for these plants. So right away the player is used to moving around and using the sword to cut plants and gather the cure. In these first two screens, the player has already learned everything they need to know to ‘complete’ the game.

The next area introduces the mini slimes. These green creates are familiar to most gamers. You’ve seen this guy before in other games. He’s a grunt. He’s an easy to kill enemy. But in Cure 48, he can’t hurt you. He doesn’t even follow you or try to get in your way. Up until now, the game hasn’t mentioned anything about being a villain. The game has never asked you to kill anything. Killing these slimes gives you nothing, but maybe it’s satisfying to be able to cut down something other than a plant. Maybe gamers are just curious to see what happens. My guess was that a combination of the game genre and the slime itself would immediately prompt a violent response from the player. In this moment, the player becomes the villain, not the character in the game. A creature from Earth that is trying to save his species from an attacker (the plague/virus) is now on another planet acting AS the plague/virus to another species. And this is all done voluntarily by the player.

Continuing forward, a large slime is introduced. Again, this green slime will not hurt you or try to attack you. UNLESS you attack it first. It then becomes red and starts to defend itself. Hitting it twice more will kill it, and it will drop a cure. The player has just learned that the cure can be found in two places: on plants and in large slimes. This causes the player to now seek out the large slimes in order to get more cure. So now the player is committed to being a villain without even knowing it. Killing a green slime out of curiosity is bad enough, but now the player is slaughtering a peaceful creature in order to obtain something that is easily obtainable in a non-violent way. The next screen is much larger and has a mixture of large and small slimes and plenty of plants that contain the cure. Many of these plants contain two or three ‘cures’, whereas the large slimes only hold one cure each.

Let me jump ahead a bit and talk about some of the comments I got about the enemies. Several players felt as though the large slimes are frustrating because they attack from an angle that can’t be hit by the sword. This was done on purpose. For one, it makes it more challenging as a game, but the most important reason is that it further supports the idea that attacking the slimes is not only a villainous thing, but it’s a stupid and dangerous thing. The game can be complete without ever attacking a single slime. There is literally no reason to ever have to deal with this ‘frustrating’ aspect of fighting the slimes. The player has personally chosen to pick a fight with an innocent creature and now the player is complaining that the angle at which the slime defends itself is less than optimal. WHAT A VILLAIN! “How dare you attack my weak spot!” I was hoping that somebody would fall into this trap that I set, and it seems like more than a few did. I couldn’t be happier. By acting like a villain, the player is making the game exceptionally harder than it has to be.

So back to the game progression… you go to the next area and large blue slimes are introduced. These slimes don’t immediately defend themselves if you attack them. Instead, they will bounce backwards a bit. This is yet another test for the player. These creatures won’t even come after you if you accidentally swipe them while trying to get the cure. But if you hit them enough, which means you WANT to kill them, then they break into two small red slimes. These slimes will drop one cure each, yielding two cures for each blue slime killed. Introducing yet another reason for the greed of the player to kick in. This room also contains plenty of plants that contain cures.
The next room is the final area. This room contains no enemies. This area has a TON of plants with many cures to collect, but it also has a curious object in the middle of the screen that looks like it may be the source of the cure. In fact, it is. I was unable to really describe this area in full detail because I ran out of time, but the idea is that the plants feed off of this power source and the slimes feed off of the plants. If you let a mini slime grab a fallen cure, then it will grow into a large slime. This was to show that the cure you are seeking is also the source of life for these slimes. This also explains why cures fall out of large slimes when you kill them. This object in the middle of the room flashes red when you hit it to show the player that it can, in fact, be damaged. Striking it five times will result in your light sword breaking (which was unfortunately not described as well as I had wanted due to time). The music stops and the ‘escape’ theme begins to play as slimes start to flood out of the back of the room toward the player. These slimes are red just like the defending slimes from earlier. You cannot attack them because your sword is broken, so you can only flee. They are simply defending the power source that gives them life, so their response can be seen as defensive and not aggressive. They will chase you all the way back to the start of the game, where you get into your ship and leave with the cures that you have collected. If the player attacks any slimes, then there will be aggression. If the player does not attack any slimes, then the only time a red slime is seen is after the player has already lost the ability to attack. So there is literally no way for a non-villainous player to kill any slimes as a method of “defense”. This ensures that all slimes killed are because of VILLAINY.

At this point, the game rates your performance and gives you an overall rank and awards you with medals. By killing just ONE of the slimes on this planet, you are branded as the villain. To reach the rank of a hero, you have to collect a certain number of cures and kill zero slimes. To get the rank of a perfect hero , you have to get the Collector medal, the Defender medal, and the Feeder medal, and of course not kill any slimes. There is an award for killing a large amount of slimes, but that’s to show that bad behavior can also be rewarded in our society. You may also notice that when the ship is shown flying away, a green slime crawls around the back of the ship and sticks his little face up on the left side. This only happens when you get the villain rank. This is to show that the slimes follow the player back to Earth. I was unfortunately unable to create the ending sequence that I wanted, which would’ve shown the spaceship returning safely. Upon opening the ship, slimes flood out of it and attack everyone waiting to greet the spaceman. The slimes prevent the cure from being delivered and all life on Earth ceases to exist. The hero ending would’ve shown the spaceman step out and deliver the cure to save Earth. So here once again we see that by being a villain, the player not only made the game much harder, but they actually sabotaged their own mission. The humans see the plague as the villain so they send a hero to get the cure. Upon reaching the planet, a majority of players see the slimes as enemies(villains) keeping them from obtaining the cure. The slimes see the human as the villain trying to destroy their life source so they send slimes back to earth to prevent any more spacemen from endangering their planet. And of course the humans then view the slimes as the villains that are invading Earth. It’s a cycle of perceived villainy.

So there you have it. That’s how my game approached the theme, and I’m so very glad that 99 % of players have proven that we are all very capable of being the villain without even realizing it. The difference between a hero and a villain often depends on what side of the battle you’re on, and I think that’s what has really stuck with me the most after this Ludum Dare. Thanks for reading!

Tags: post morem, post-compo, post-mortem, postmortem, theme analysis

I just compiled all of the songs from my various Ludum Dare entries into a single soundtrack. You can download it for free HERE !

Tags: download, soundtrack