My submission.

I wanted to try figuring out how to do some social media buttons and stuff but got too distracted making the actual game.

I think it turned out ok. Didn’t have time to really test it.

I almost didn't do anything this time, after just thinking some ideas at the start I ended up not doing anything for over a day and when I once again remembered LD exists and was like I guess I didn't do anything this time but then I saw that there was 18 hours left and thought that it might be just enough time to do something relatively simple and so I did!

I was kind of inspired by the way gases work in Oxygen Not Included when I made the system for how the mana moves around the locations but didn't really figure out a way to make anything that interesting with it.

Got my internet back just in time to for this.

Theme makes me think of Subterrain and Dungeon of the Endless. I'll probably do something like the DotE where you have bunch of rooms that you can power and monsters only spawn in unpowered rooms or something, to fit better with theme I guess I'll have you start off with all rooms and enough energy to power them all and slowly reduce your energy instead of adding rooms faster than you probably get more dust/energy like Dungeon of the Endless does.

Not sure how I'll do the actually dealing with the monsters that spawn.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/cursed-princess I tried to combine Survival game with a Dating-Sim though I'm not sure if it counts as either. Also the setting is based on a story I've been meaning to write. It's about adventures of a cursed princess while she tries to find a way to cure her curse.

I think my game Cursed Princess turned out pretty well, graphics are kind of nice despite how simple they are, I finally got around to using firebase to track stats and such and I'm somewhat proud of how funny the text for some of the recruiting events is but sadly those are the only part where the writing gets sort of interesting rest of it is just telling you the current state of the things in a boring way.

For the post-LD version main thing I'm planning to add is speech bubbles and varying facial expressions for characters so they can comment on stuff without it making the main text overly long and tiring to read. Other than that I'm going to try add some combat that's probably going to be way more complex than it seems, I want it to mainly involve you just cheering your party members on without it bothering you about details the princess wouldn't have real understanding of. I also want to add a bunch more party member options but for them to work nicely I'll probably need to add some ways to kick or refuse party members to keep party size reasonable, though it shouldn't be too direct so something like if you choose not to pick someone for anything too many times while their to be added general mood stat is too low they'll leave. For refusing people I think your party members should vote on if they want the new member and then depending on how you greet the person if he's accepted those that voted against him would like you more or less. Also I want to completely rework the way removing the curse works currently I'm thinking the curse strength should start at 1% and increase somewhat inevitably as you travel with the only way to reduce it being to find special locations that let you do that, that way you can't easily just spend forever doing whatever.

But yeah after thinking about it for a while I decided that I do want to keep developing this quite a bit since I could use it to tie together 2 of my long term projects.

I kind of wanted to try learning/using Phaser or Godot this time around but before I got really anywhere in figuring out how to use either of them during this week I ended up making a sort of one handed keyboard layout with most of the important symbols are easily accessible.

So far it looks something like this(yur being qaz normally) ```

= ! ? ← ⏎ < > / \ @ y ö ä e h { } $ § ¤ u a o i j [ ] _ *

r s v l f ( ) - +

and holding space will get these € ' " & ^ ~ ¨ 『 』 ※ n k p t z 7 8 9 「 〇 m g b d x 4 5 6 」 ∎ | q w c , . 1 2 3 0 ≈ ```

It's still not finished and anyway won't be using it just yet since no time to get really used to it though doing some typing practice with it felt promising. Anyway since I didn't end up actually figuring out enough about either Phaser or Godot I'll just stick to using Construct 2 this time.

Idea is to make enemies slowly block off areas of the map while you avoid them or something. I thought about making the map connect locations automatically but then I realized it's probably faster to just do it by hand.

Next I should make actually blocking off locations work and then add some sort of combat.

Everything seems to be working fine, not sure what to do next other than add some way to win the game. I was kind of hoping to do a more complex combat system but dunno if I'll have the time.

Will try to focus somewhat on having an actual plot instead of using mostly just the game name to explain what's supposed to be happening

Going to try using Solarus Engine, I briefly tried it out nearly a year ago but got frustrated with how annoying it's level editor could be but I think that was mainly due to me trying to do maps with bunch of verticality. https://www.solarus-games.org/

Looking at the remaining theme options I feel like I can do something for each of them though for some them theme would just be story and setting based. I probably should figure out how to do cutscenes or something in Solarus.

Harvest is a cool theme. I kind of was hoping to make a simple action game I wouldn't be so interested in working on afterwards(got enough stuff to do already) but that clearly won't be the case with the idea I settled on. Also had some trouble deciding what to use with the idea, I think I'll go with Twine.

Didn't quite make it in time to submit to compo but at least I finally have something that almost could be played for more than a few seconds without running into something that doesn't work. Not sure how thematic I'll manage to make things, the game is set in a Harvest Moon inspired town so that's something but you don't really harvest or farm anything.

Actually very happy with how my game turned out, it's pretty unique I think and I really liked making it's ending. Really need to sleep but I think I fixed the most glaring issues with the game. The actions you have available are kind of super weird at times and the game does very little to communicate many things(and does some things in way too much detail without letting you know about it) but everything seems to work and you should be able to do everything even if sometimes it'll require choosing a thing just so you'll trigger another thing.

My birthday might be a distraction but I think I'll try to get something done. Recently used a loom to weave a bit of fabric and that made me think a minigame about using a loom efficiently could be neat but who knows if the theme will be one where I can fit that into.

Decided to do something like sokoban but you're a group trying to defend a tiny area from attackers so far just got two characters pushing blocks around. Next need to figure out stuff to defend and enemies.

https://mauno.itch.io/ld54 Everything seems to work and there isn't anything that I feel like I absolutely need to get done anymore. Going to sleep now and then I'll figure out what to focus on tomorrow.

Just woke up and though of how to nicely handle actually attacking enemies, you still probably don't want to do that if you can avoid it but at least you'll no longer be stuck just looking at an enemy about to end the game. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/boxes-and-webs

Next up I guess I'll try to make things prettier and maybe shrink the play area since it feels a bit too large at the moment.

Added a win condition and polished things up a bit I think it turned out pretty well considering I did basically zero warming up and was busy playing Shiren 5 until the theme was announced after which I had to figure out what tools to use and to actually install them to my new laptop that I hadn't used for any gamedev before this. https://mauno.itch.io/ld54

This'll be my 8th LD I believe.

Thinking of either using js or godot, probably js.

I wanted to be more prepared for this in some ways, haven't really done any gamedev since last year's LD#54 so feeling a bit rusty but hoping to get something done. I was originally hoping to incorporate history of clothing in some way in whatever I'd be doing but I'll probably end up just making something that in some way works as a prototype for something actually dealing with history of clothing.

Anyway trying to keep my goals relatively simple so main thing I'd like to do is have a structure of a location and list of actions you can do in that location that I'll then present in some theme dependent way.

This might be a bad idea(could end up really liking some and be quite disappointed when something that really doesn't fit any of them is chosen) but decided to think about the current theme options:

• Reflection - Mirror World, "There's a mirror in the room, you can see yourself and the room in it but something's off about it."
• Absorb - "Absorb the energies of world and cultivate your magical core"
• You are not supposed to be here - Literally, there's a fancy party but your presence there needs to be hidden.
• Playing with fire - ...yeah I'm already thinking of how can I just do all or any of the previous ideas but with this theme so will try to keep things simpler.
• Tiny creatures - Dolls or something, would prefer small creatures but I suppose I could just say anything smaller than a cat is tiny and be happy.
• Under pressure - nope, not going to bother forcing an idea for this when it sounds really meh... Actually a submarine game could be good and fun to do.
• Mutation - Could be interesting but not really feeling it atm.
• Side effects - Taking mysterious drugs? Mostly story? Kind of like Queen of the Seas maybe?
• Salvage - I love this but don't actually want to do it now since I probably wouldn't do it as well as I'd like to.
• Shelter - Could be something super weird, or it could just be something straightforward.
• Isolation - Just nobody else around feels too easy and simple, somehow have others clearly around but separated from you.
• Pathways - Intriguing and could fit some thoughts/ideas I've had but seems a bit tricky.
• Descend - Downhill journey? Experience of running down a hill/slope?
• Lost signal - What? So a signal is going somewhere and gets lost... how exactly? Could be a simple puzzle game where you need to get a message/signal to where it should go.
• Connections - How objects in a room relate to each other(ie. similar shape, made from same material, meant for same task) and uhh do something with that? Or maybe people or locations?
• Strange machines - Traps in a dungeon that are a bit more complicated.
• Ruins - You took a leveling up/cultivation nap for a few hundred years and now your homebase/country is in ruins.
• Break the cycle - Cycle of what and why? Some ritual that happens maybe?