Hello everyone !

So I’ve finished working on my project for today (it’s 3 A.M. here).

This is my first Ludum Dare. I’m using Flash. I’ve never programmed a game in such a short time so this is a great experience !

The game is looking good so far, I hope I’ll be able to finish it before the end of the 48 hours.

It’s a game where you have to develop despite natural disasters which happen every now and then. The world is procedurally generated and the disasters are random.

You can manipulate the terrain and build things, but the disasters can also change the terrain, and they can destroy your buildings.

I have a lot of screens of the game at various stages of development, so I’ll probably write a more detailled article in the next days. But right now I’m a little tired

Here’s a screen of the game :

Each color of tile corresponds to a type of terrain (brown = woods, green = grassland, blue = lakes, grey = mountains and yellow = deserts). I’ll try to make the tiles look better tomorrow if I have time.

I’m very happy I’ve finished my game Tinysasters on time ! (Tinysasters > Tiny disasters)

You can find the game here : Tinysasters

This was the first time I participated in the Ludum Dare and I’m very glad I did it

The post-mortem will probably be for tomorrow, as I’m very very very tired right now. It’s 5 AM and I worked until the last minute.

Here’s a screen of the finished game :

See you soon !

Hello everyone !

 

So this is my post-mortem for Tinysasters, my LD# 23 48h entry made in Flash.

 

 

Play and rate Tinysasters

 

As I said before this was my very first participation. I hadn’t planned to enter the event until about one week ago, and I didn’t prepare. But I work on flash games every day, so this must count as some kind of preparation

I was a little anxious, because I had never developped a game in such a short amount of time, and I didn’t know if I could do it. But everything went very smoothly.

 

The game

Tinysasters is a puzzle/simulation/gestion game. You play on a 8*8 randomly generated tile map and have to build workplaces, shrines and cities in order to collect ressources. The goal is to build a level 4 shrine. Natural disasters happen every now and then. They reconfigure the ground and make your life harder !

 

Build the level 4 shrine to heal the ground and spare the world from disasters like earthquake !

 

The idea was to make something between the boardgames Settlers of Catan and Labyrinth ; basically a Settlers of Catan where the tiles move and change of nature.

At first, I was absolutely not happy with the theme. I rated it -1. I liked “Artificial Life” and “Castles in the Sky” a lot better, but I don’t know if I could have made something good out of them. The theme doesn’t matter a lot actually.

 

As for the nature of the game, to be honest, when it comes to play, my heart usually goes to platformers and adventure games with a good story. But programming is my strongest point, so I thought I should rely on it a lot for my entry.

 

What went right

– (almost) no time wasted on debugging ! That was a good surprise. I’m used to spending a lot of my time fixing problems that seem to come out from nowhere and make absolutely no sense although they usually end up being all my fault after all. That’s one tremendous benefit of working on a very small project : I just had to see a bug to know where it came from because the entire code of the game was so fresh in my mind.

 

– I was a little scared at first when I started programming the tile animating sequence that happens when there’s an earthquake or the player generates a land. But it went smoothly and the TweenLite library was very handy.

 

– I hate building / coding menus and interfaces with so many buttons, and so many textfields, and tabs, and they all have to update, show the right information, show a red color when there aren’t enough ressources, etc., and it’s so overwhelming… It was very tedious but it went ok. There are a lot of ugly duplicates in my code but I guess I can live with that.

 

One of the many possible states of this interface box…

 

– About 40 minutes before the deadline, there still were no sounds, and the tiles were still rough colored cubes. I rushed on as3sfxr to generate some sound effects (very useful tool), made a quick music arrangement, added an underground effect to the tiles, some texture and some decorations.

Despite the fatigue (it was about 2 AM and I had worked all day), I found myself inspired so everything went quickly and I finished on time.

 

– I’m very happy with the result. I enjoy just watching the game playing disasters and reconfigure the map into wild deserts, forests and lakes. The mountains always prevail, eventually.

 

Invasion of the mountains !

 

What went wrong

– The firsts hours of coding were the hard part. Sometimes I’d finish coding a new fonctionnality, like the map generation, and had some kind of a mental blockage : I just couldn’t figure out what to do next. What I had in front of me was so far from being a game… it was a little overwhelming.

 

a depressing early stage of the game

 

– Like I said, I only had 40 minutes to polish the sounds and graphics. I had great expectations for the animations, I wanted to use beautiful particles effects… I wanted the tiles to explode in a thousand of pixels when they reach the borders of the map instead of those mere alpha fade outs… I wanted the volcanic eruptions to set the map on fire… I wanted the flooded tiles covered with shiny swinging blue water drops… I wanted a little flying god inpersonating the player’s actions react to the disasters and constructions…

Nothing of that was done. I am so sad. Maybe in the enhanced version

Also, more types of disasters were initially planned. Disasters that only affect the constructions : plague, civil war, etc.

 

– 7 hours before the end I was like “Great, 7 hours left, I have PLENTY of time to do everything I want !”. But 7 hours in the end are not like 7 hours in the beginning, especially with the timezone I’m in. I was so tired I was like a zombie and sometimes found myself spending half my time just starring at the disasters do their thing. It’s a good thing the game was already well-advanced at this point.

 

What went terribly wrong

– But the biggest problem I encountered came from the nature of the game itself.

“Do the game mechanics even work ?”

I couldn’t answer this somewhat significant question before the game was ready to be tested. The disasters had to be coded, same goes for the ressources, the buildings, the upgrades and all the time-consuming interfaces that come with it.

The game was ready to be tested 2 hours before the end.

I had my fiancé test the game. He told me he was troubled by the game even though he knew what he had to do.

At first, I didn’t listen to what he said and continued to blindly code what I could. Coding more interfaces wouldn’t have bothered me that much at this point.

Then, I had to face the reality : the game mechanics didn’t work as they were.

I had to balance the costs and gains of ressources, add difficulty settings to avoid overwhelming the new player or boring the experienced one, write a “how to play”… For that, I had to test the game a lot which takes some time… And the game navigation (title screen, restart…) wasn’t done yet, nor the graphics and sounds, not to mention the fancy particle effects I still hadn’t given up on !

 

The last minute how to play screen

 

Damage control was done, but the game ended up being less challenging than I would have wanted. Hopefully a future enhanced version will correct that !

 

Final thoughts

I’m very glad I participated !

Thank you for reading and don’t forget to rate Tinysasters

Play and rate Tinysasters

Link to the to-be-enhanced version on Kongregate

I hope you’ll enjoy the game, I enjoyed making it a lot !

 

 

Tags: as3, flash, ld23, postmortem, procedural

If you are, I have some recommendations for you

I’ve rated about 200 games, and it’s high time I shared some favorites !

 

ONLY US by Datamosh – Jam Entry

This game has the greatest mood ! You play a cosmonaut, and you must explore a planet. But you must be careful not to run out of food or be too lonely. In order to do that, you can build buildings and interact with things. It feels like a sandbox because you can interact with what you want and build wherever you want. Besides, there are multiple endings. I really enjoyed this one, playing in this strange, creepy atmosphere.

 

 

Tiny Journey – Evil Sandwich Studios – Jam Entry

You play a little guy who dreams about building a rocket to escape his sad tiny planet and the not-so-great existence he had on it. It’s kind of a point and click where all the controls are with the keyboard. Don’t miss the checklist on the first room because it’s the guide of the story. You have to place the character up to get it because otherwise he wants to interact with the door.

This one too has a great mood. I really felt compelled to finish the story and I didn’t get stuck. I’m always stuck at some point in this kind of games… Everything is pretty straightforward in this one. It’s a very enjoyable game.

 

 

 

The World in a Bottle – Robotic – Jam Entry

This one is a very well thought take on the theme. You play an evil scientist that likes to torture tiny things. As he’d like to torture humans, he has to make them tiny. So in the first phase of the game, you have to miniaturize people with your laser to put them in a jar. But humans won’t let you do it that easily ! In the second phase, when you have enough humans, you can play with them in the jar.

A very fun entry !

 

 

 

There is a Picture – MortisGhost – Jam Entry

Some people have already talked about this game but it still doesn’t have a lot of ratings (40). You really should play it, that’s a very unique game with a very simple gameplay. You play a guy in a spaceship that wants to create a new world by uniting planets. To convince planets to join his project, he has to give them something. They all want objects, and the guy has a lot of objets in his spaceship. So you just have to walk between the rooms to find the objects they want to get them on board. Sometimes you have to merge objects together.

The screen doesn’t show it much, but this game is very immersive. The storytelling sequences are great and you want to follow the story. This game is very unique and has a great mood.

 

 

 

Disregard All Humans – Fireblend – 48 Hour Compo Entry

Another very fun game that fits well the theme. You play a dinosaur on a tiny planet. You destroy cities and eat humans, but they attack you too of course. As you eat more humans, the moon turns red and you grow so big that the earth seems tinier and tinier to you.

A very simple and dynamic gameplay and engaging graphics make this game a pleasure to play.

 

 

 

Corky – Gib – 48 Hour Compo Entry

I love the idea behind this game, and it fits very well the theme. You have a tiny world that looks like the one on the screen, but in grey and you can name and customize it. In your world, there are 3 NPC that you can name too and you can change their dialogs and then talk to them to see it. The corridors on the sides of the screen lead you to the customized worlds of the other players.

Unfortunately, not a lot of people seem to have played the game as I didn’t encountered any other customized world, but I would have loved to and I really enjoyed customizing mine.

It really was a great idea for this theme.

 

 

 

World Panic! – raarlac – 48 Hour Compo Entry

That’s one of the games I played the most. The execution is just perfect. That’s an avoider game where you play the earth. You battle against several planets of the solar system and ultimately the sun (not that I managed to get that far as the game is quite difficult ;)). Planet throw bullets at you and you just have to avoid them, you can’t fight back.

The gameplay is as simple as it can get, the graphics are engaging, the particle effects are beautiful, and the music fits so perfectly : it really follows the rythm of the particles (or the other way around) and it gets more intense as the battle becomes more intense.

 

 

 

Niña Nueve – Jonathan Whiting – 48 Hour Compo Entry

That’s a great game. A first I thought I wouldn’t play it long because I wouldn’t manage to solve the puzzles. But it’s not really a puzzle game even if it looks like one. It’s part puzzle, part Zelda-like, part something else. It’s quite unique actually. Anyways, in this game you have to move through the different rooms by getting to the arrows. To get to the arrows, you’ll do various things : activate switches, play with a balloon, lure monsters into activating switches, kill monsters, avoid monsters, kill bosses.

What I really enjoy about this game is that there are fights, but you don’t have an attack control. You fight monsters by throwing at them a balloon that you find in some rooms. And it is so much fun ! I finished the game and I’d love to play more of it. That’s a very clever game.

 

 

 

The Traveler – Thotor – 48 Hour Compo Entry

Such a beautiful and poetic game… It’s a puzzle game where you play a little guy in a snow globe, and in each level the objective is to get to the blue checkpoint. But you can’t do it at first. You have to shake the snow globe : it makes the snow fall (pretty), but more importantly it makes some blocks falls. Some blocks will take several shakings of the globe to fall, according to their pattern. So it’s all about getting at the right place when you shake the snow ball.

I find that the snow globe idea is such a perfect take on the theme. This game has a wonderful mood, the snow-globe-levels are beautiful, and on top of that the concept of the game is very interesting. This is definetly my favorite entry on the compo.

 

 

****

 

 

What I enjoyed a lot when playing and rating games is seeing all the various interpretations that were made of the theme. I tried to list a few categories for fun. And put some entries in them, in case you have time to rate more games. A game can belong to serveral categories.

 

“Tiny World” as a tiny world in a bottle

World in a Bottle – very nice to play and watch evolve

The Traveler

The World in a Bottle

 

“Tiny World” as a small ecosystem you influence

Miniature Words – fun little game to play with

This Precious Land – very polished triple-town like game

Evolve – not much to do but awesome graphics

Atom Planet – Beautiful Minecraft-like game with a great mood

World in a Bottle – very nice to play and watch evolve

Sun Bringers – little puzzle game with nice mechanics

 

“Tiny World” as a small ecosystem with humans

Tinyvilization – a great well thought strategy game, you should check out this one

Tinyville Confidential – fun idea, great execution !

 

“Tiny World” as the world from tiny things’ point of view : insects

Ant Surf Hero : the surfening

ANtopia

Prince of leaves

Flea Circus – fun little game

 

“Tiny World” as the world from tiny things’ point of view : atoms and molecules

Atom grid – You really should try this one, it’s a very clever puzzle game. But don’t overlook the how-to-play or you’ll be lost !

Polarity – Very polished and interesting puzzle game

Microscopia – Amazing game with unique mechanics and super simple gameplay. Check it out, you won’t regret it !

 

“Tiny World” as a tiled world with a few tiles

Five by Five – a nice looking little puzzle game

This Precious Land – very polished triple-town like game

Scape – beautiful, clever and very polished puzzle game

Cracked – nice puzzle game with interesting mechanics

 

“Tiny World” as restricted space with boundaries that can be extended

Extensionism – Puzzle game with great visuals, mood, gameplay and concept

Recluse – a platform game with such a great twist

 

“Tiny World” as “I am on a little planet”

Scape – beautiful, clever and very polished puzzle game

Tiny Journey – talked about it earlier

Tiny Island Adventure – a platform game with great graphics

Quest^3 – an RPG on a rubik’s cube like world, very interesting mechanics

 

“Tiny World” as a restricted perspective on the world, psychological (or not) imprisonment

Memento XII – a highly polished game

Tiny Flat

Predicament

Asylum – Great mood, great graphics

 

“Tiny World” as tiny planet to protect

Tondie and Zupe

Aether – unique game with great graphics and mood

Astro Break – great graphics

Necro Gaia – incredibly polished defense game

Space Bear – very bizarre surrealistic game that deserves a look, collect cosmic stars to repair the earth !

 

“Tiny World” as in “I enter a world that gets tinier and tinier”

Fracuum – incredibly polished game with great mechanics

Soul Searchin’ - a great take on the theme, very innovative game !

 

And you, what categories did you find ?

 

***

 

As for my game if you want to check it out, its here : Tinysasters !

 

 

Hello, I’m Isabelle, and this is the second time I participate in the Ludum Dare !

I really enjoyed LD23 (maybe you remember my game Tinysasters), and I wanted to do it again.

Lucas’s Quest Backwards was supposed to be a compo entry (like Tinysasters). I worked alone on it during the two first days, but then, about 5 hours before the deadline I realised that I couldn’t make it on time, the project was too big.

So I decided to go for the Jam instead and I asked Ygwee to help me with the level design. He designed the 4 levels of the game and I really like what he did ! I used the 3rd day to finish the graphics and add some sounds. Like a compo entry, all assets were done during the Ludum Dare.

Now about the game…

Lucas’s Quest Backwards is a platformer with many story inserts. The game is about a guy from a distant future who doesn’t like what humans have become and wishes he could go back in time to live with his ancestors. Trying to be more like them, he takes several steps backwards in mankind’s evolution.

But there’s a twist…

There are 2 endings to discover.

 

This game includes kittens. They actually play an important part in the story…

Now time for some screens !

 

 

I’ll probably write a postmortem in the next few days.

 

I hope you’ll enjoy the game. Looking forward to playing yours

 

 -> Play Lucas’s Quest Backwards <-

Just like last LD, here comes my last minute recommendation post !

I’ve rated a little more than 100 games. To be honest, I liked LD23’s theme a little better (Evolution was a bit too vague for my taste), but still there were many great entries !

Here are my favorites (no particular order) :

 

 

Darwinphony – philosophistry – 48 Hour Compo Entry

This is a very creative entry. It’s not very much of a game, more of a music experiment. You paint creatures on the map with the “reproduce” brush, then you put some turtles on the ground. As they swirl around, the creatures touch the turtles and make sounds. Sometimes you get different creatures, that make different sounds. You can remove some creatures with the bird brush to get the melody you like !

Finally, there are 4 different maps (click Darwin to see them) that can produce a different athmosphere for your music.

A nice little program to play around with, and the graphics are charming !

 

 

 

Parental Guidance – Maple – 48 Hour Compo Entry

I rated this one 5 on the mood category, because it is set perfectly. You play a little kid who’s left alone on his appartment. What happened to his parents ? This is what you’ll discover.  As you walk around the rooms of the appartment, switch the lights and read the comments of the boy, the situation evolves and everything gets scarier and scarier…

 

 

 

life, undeath – Zillix – 48 Hour Compo Entry

A very well executed little game. It only takes a few minutes, and it’s very fun ! Zombies have invaded the city. The rescue team will arrive in 3 days so you have to survive till then. Kill zombies, upgrade stuff with the money they drop and rush to your safeplace at sunset. But zombies evolve during the night, so don’t let the stronger ones live.

 

 

 

Super Clew Land – Team Clew – Jam Entry

It really looks like a NES game ! This is an amazingly well-polished entry. This is a platformer game where you play a little green creature that is not very powerful at first. But you eat stuff, and it gives you proteins to evolve. As you play, you try to match the proteins of the creatures you’ve eaten to the patterns you need on the little puzzle-game you find on the right. And when it’s done, you gain a new ability.

 

 

 

Coin-Operated Afternoon – Pierrec – Jam Entry

I rated 5 in innovation, because you won’t find two entries like this one ! This is a dialog game, and what makes it special is that it’s animated in stop-motion. It’s a huge download but it’s worth every minute of it. There are a lot of possibilities in the dialogs (15 different endings !), so there are a lot of animations to see. Highly recommend it !

 

 

 

Dawn – SteelRaven7 – 48 Hour Compo Entry

I discovered this entry thanks to the post-mortem posted earlier, and I’m glad I did, it’s a solid entry with a great ending, perfectly in the theme. This game is a lot about crafting stuff and discovering things for yourself. As it is quite easy to get stuck, I’ll give you a few tips. In the game, you collect things. When you don’t know what to do you can :

– think, with [Z]. Sometimes the character will combine some of the objects you carry.

– find the elements in the landscape that stand out (there aren’t many), and when you do, try to interact with them using the different objects you carry with [X]. Use [C] to select another object.

 

 

 

Martha Z. – Sachka – 48 Hour Compo Entry

This game has a quite unique graphic style, very immersive. What’s brilliant is that you never see the main character, only her shadow. Worth the look.

 

 

 

Death Death Evolution – Adhesion – Jam Entry

An amazingly polished game with unique mechanics. The music is great and the graphics are excellent.

It’s a puzzle platformer game. You play a little blue fox. To beat the levels, you’ll have to evolve. But how ? Each time you die, you evolve, and the way you die determines your evolution. For instance, if you die from a fall, you’ll have double jump. So it’s all about finding the right way to die…

 

 

 

Sidescroller Evolution – Kassoon – Jam Entry

Another game with a fox, but this one isn’t blue ! This game is more classic, it’s a game where you run, but what’s great about it is its atmosphere, very peaceful… Sweet graphics and nice music.

 

 

 

Psychiatric Evaluation – ConflictiveLabs – Jam Entry

A surprising game, where you evolve in the same place (a psychiatric hospital) switching between different perspectives. The more mad you get, the more you see the world through an old videogame graphics (the worst situation being a text-based game), the more sane you get, the more colors and details you get.

This is such a BRILLIANT idea to link stages of sanity to the stages of the evolution of video games, because when you switch to the text-based perspective from the color detailled one you really feel confused about your environement and limited in your options, you feel trapped in your head.

In other words, this game really succeeds in making you feel like the character you’re playing is supposed to feel. This is very rare and it’s done in such an elegant way.

 

 

 

***

Finally, if you’d like to try our game, here it is !

 

Lucas’s Quest Backwards – Volute – Jam Entry

It’s a story about a guy from the future who tries to find self-fulfillment in going back in time to live with his ancestors. How hard can that be ? It has platformer sequences.

 

Thanks for reading

I will be participating in the Ludum Dare for the 3rd time. I’m a little anxious as always, I hope I’ll end up making a game I’m happy with !

 

Here are my main tools :

 

For sound, I’ll probably be using SFXR

For music, I’m not sure yet, maybe GarabeBand (iPad) or Figure (iPad)

 

This time I have to declare a basecode

On my first LD I spent the last few hours adding a title screen, an instructions screens, buttons to let the user restart, etc. This was pretty boring stuff ! I would rather have spent this time polishing the game. This base code is a quick ‘n dirty wrapper for a game. It has a preloader, a main menu, an instruction screen, basic sound control and basic save control. Feel free to use it if you like it !

 

Here’s my battlestation :

 

And here are the last entries I’ve participated in or made :

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good luck to all !

 

I wanted to write a post-mortem today for my compo entry, but I am still very tired so I’ll do it another day

I’ll just present the game instead. So let me introduce you to…

Crime in the City

Crime in the City lets you play a villain whose dream is to control the city. Hire a team of baddies and send them sow chaos in the city !

The game plays like an asymetrical card game, it works like Netrunner. You build a deck of bad guys, launch raids and the other side will try to stop you. The other side is mainly cops and a super hero, “The Dark Cape”.

This was a big project, probably too big. I didn’t have time to work on the graphics at all, so the art stayed prototype art. I only had 20 minutes to do the music. And no goats ! I had a nice idea on how to add one though… I’ll tell you about it on the post-mortem.

The bright side of things is that the game is fully functional and actually quite fun once you get it I hope you’ll like it anyway !

As for me, I’m going to get some more sleep, so that I’ll be in good shape to play your games tomorrow !

 

 

For this LD25 I came up with the game “Crime in the City“. This is a cardgame where you compose a deck of baddies and send them on raids throughout the city to raise the crime level in the city and, ultimately, take control of it.

 

What went wrong

The theme
I wasn’t very fond of this theme, “You are the villain”. Partly because with my partner we had just finished a game that let you play as the villain (Demons vs Fairyland). It made the theme feel somewhat old to me, and made me feel uninspired. All I could think of was the villains in super hero stories.

During these last two weeks, I played and rated about 80 games. I was really impressed by the ones that put the player in the opposite of the role he usually has. I wish I could think of something like that.

Bugs
I used AS3. As soon I do my second compilation, everything is all broken ! My little base code doesn’t work anymore and it’s an error message I never had before. The compiler enumerates all my classes and says they’re undefined or something like that… It wasn’t a good start !
Turns out I had given a class the same name as a package, which was a very bad thing to do. I was lucky it only took me a few minutes to figure it out.

I also made my usual mistakes a few times :
– write “lenght” instead of “length”. Where is auto-completion when you need it !
– write “i < array" instead of "i < array.length" in a for loop…
– instructions happening in a bad order, but at this point the code is too tricky for it to be obvious so you have to go through the long debug session to spot the problem.

What about you, do you have "usual mistakes" ?

The plan
I thought I would have a full day to work on the graphics and the sounds. I had big plans. I wanted to do an interface inspired by Inspector Gadget, with the hand of the villain moving when you push the buttons (It was actually done in a LD game ! Villain OS 8). And instead of a cat, I would have drawn a goat.
But it was highly unrealistic given the amount of options in the game. The number of game design pages should have given me a hint.

What was disturbing was that the features felt almost finished at the end of the first day, only one was missing. But I had worked too much and without breaks on the first day, I was very tired at the beginning of the second. And when I saw it was late and I wouldn’t be able to work on the graphics, I stressed out and it made things worse.

 

 

What went right

Game complete
I finished the game in the 48 hours, which is better than last LD when the game I started as a compo became a jam game (Lucas’s Quest Backwards).

Game complete (bis) !
When I look at the game… it actually has a lot of options ! I’m very happy I could do it in only two days. It’s amazing how jams make you surpass yourself.

Bugs
They weren’t that many. Considering how the code was rushed and how tired I was, it could have been a lot worse.

 

***

 

A second jam

With my partner we decided to participate to Folis’ New Year Game Jam. The result was another cardgame : a team for the job.

 

On paper, it looked a lot simpler. A few different cards, a few interactions, very little procedural content. The game design documents were nothing more than a few notes.
Once again, things didn’t go as expected, and we couldn’t complete the game for the jam, we only released it 2 days later.

 

What went wrong

Bugs
The code was done the first day, but there was two or three very nasty bugs which took a lot of time to fix during the second day. As the IA needs to temporize for the player to understand what’s happening, there are a lot of callbacks in the code, which made debug sessions a lot more painful.

Time
We didn’t have a lot of time to work on the game (the jam was december 31 and january 1st). And anyway, as far as I’m concerned, I didn’t have the motivation to work 16 hours a day like I did for LD25.
In the end, it’s not very surprising that a project that seemed simpler than “Crime in the City” took more days to finish.

 

Next ?

So far, our projects have always taken more time as we thought they would. Jams are a good training to help us get better at evaluating the time needed by a project. That’s why we decided to participate to One Game a Month. You can find us there as StormAlligator. Aside from our regular projects, we’ll try to do a game in jam conditions each month. We publish regular updates on our facebook.

 

Reading back this article, bugs seems to be part of the problem. Bugs are a big time consumer and cannot be planned. A good thing before choosing a game idea for a jam would be to evaluate if it’s likely to attract bugs and if the code will make this bugs easy or hard to remove.

Thanks for reading !

 

Play Crime in the City
Play a team for the job

Hello,

It was my fourth participation to the Ludum Dare, and it’s a great experience every time ! Here’s the game I did for the compo :

This is not a minimalist game

 

About the game
It’s a platformer – adventure game. You play a warrior in a medieval fantastic universe who does quests for various NPC. Suddenly the world changes. It has no more colors, no more details, and the people are talking rectangles.

The theme
At first, I had minimum inspiration for “Minimalism”…
It made me think of Mondrian, but also of Magritte (“This is not a pipe”, “This is not an apple”). I like Magritte’s work, so I wanted to put a reference to it in the game, but I didn’t know how.

Then I had this idea of a basic character from a medieval fantastic game who finds himself in a minimalist world. I tried to imagine what a minimal NPC would be like, then I thought of this rectangle who wants squares and tries to use the minimum of words to interact with the player. And I started from there.

The development
I roughly had the whole story in mind when I started to code. In my timezone, you discover the theme at 4 a.m., so you can really sleep on it.
I was convinced I’d had to make cuts because there were so many scenes. In my previous LD, I was never able to do everything I wanted. For Tinysasters (LD23 – Tiny World), I had to rush the graphics and the sound during the last hour, and the gameplay was not working. For Lucas’s Quest Backwards (LD24 – Evolution), I had to abandon the compo and go for the jam. And for Crime in the City (LD25 – You are the villain), I couldn’t work on the graphics at all.

When the first day was over, I had 6 scenes left. No work had been done on the graphics or the sounds. Although, what was very convenient about this theme was that all my prototype-looking graphics for the minimalist world could almost be considered as final
Fortunately, it only took me 1 hour by scene, so I had plenty of time to finish when he gameplay was done.

Tools
For the code, I used As3 (flash) with the framework Flixel. I never use Flixel or heavy frameworks outside the Ludum Dare, because I like to code more freely. But it was great for this LD and it saved me a lot of time.

For the level design, I used DAME. It works great with Flixel. It’s nice to be able to draw the maps so easily with a set of tile.

For the graphics I used Photoshop CS2. It’s not the best tool for pixel art but it’s the one I’m comfortable with. It’s also good enough for animations, although not very handy.

For the music, I used ThumbJam (iOS). This is a fantastic app that lets you compose music like you were playing an instrument. And the interface is so simple !

 

Things that went (a little) wrong

Flatland
A lot of people on the comments of Kongregate and Newgrounds said that the game was inspired by Flatland. It’s not, I’ve never read this book and I hadn’t heard of it before I released the game. But I will probably read it now, sounds interesting !

The puzzle aspect
The game looks like a puzzle game, but it wasn’t supposed to be one. Actually, there are only two puzzles in the game… The mirror one wasn’t even planned, it came to me when I was developing the scene.

The idea is that the character brought the change with him to the minimal world. He doesn’t make the change happen, the change is already there (the red squares, etc.). The character is only the spark that lights things up, he’s not really active in this. That’s why things can feel a little random to people used to puzzle games, This is not a minimalist game is a story before everything. If I had more time, I would have made more dialogs, NPC, choices and alternate storylines.

 

What went right

Time is on my side
This is the first time in a Ludum Dare that I didn’t run out of time. I had 7 hours to do the graphics, the music and some polish. It was very comfortable. I’d definetly like to do it again ! But I wonder how much it had to do with the theme…

Lots of plays
The game is currently featured on Kongregate and Newgrounds. I’m very happy so many people get to play the game !

 

Thanks for taking the time to read my post-mortem.
Here’s the link to the game : This is not a minimalist game
I hope you’ll enjoy it

 

I’ll make a post in a few days about my favorite games. I’ve rated 60 so far and saw some great entries !

Only 1 day left to rate games ! I’ve rated about 160 games. I didn’t really like “Minimalism” at first, but seeing how many great concepts people came up with, I guess it was a good theme after all

Here are some highlights, in no particular order.

[placeholder] – mtrc – 48 Hour Compo Entry

It’s a puzzle game for programmers, which is a great idea, as the audience here (us, participants) mostly is. Lines of commented code help you figure out what to do, and you have to deal with nasty bugs. Very cool !

Unst – Milo – 48 Hour Compo Entry

A very challenging puzzle game with a concept I’ve never seen before.

Floating Point – 7Soul – 48 Hour Compo Entry

A very uncommon entry. You have to have two browser windows opened side by side to play. On one side, there’s the detailed world, on the other, there’s the abstract world. It’s a point and click game, and your actions on one world have an effect on the other. The graphics and mood are excellent.

The Road – GeorgeBroussard – 48 Hour Compo Entry

This one nailed the theme in my opinion. The graphics are very minimal. You play a red square, you have to go forward and avoid stuff. The whole thing represents real life. When you die by hitting a black triangle for instance, the game tells what it represents, how you died in real life. Some deaths are very funny.

Street of Rave – TinyDrakkarStudio – Jam Entry

So much fun in this game ! You dance, and you have to run around people in the street to make them dance too. You have to avoid the walls and the cops that will chase you will make your life harder.

Minimal Annihilation – Zener – 48 Hour Compo Entry

A Starcraft in 2D with minimal graphics. I think it’s perfectly done, and the UI is very intuitive.

MONO – timtipgames – 48 Hour Compo Entry

A highly polished and professional looking entry. An amazing work in 48 hours.

CLRS – acatcalledfrank – 48 Hour Compo Entry

Another great looking entry with a very cool concept. Evil color circles are attacking you and you have to defend yourself by drawing lines of the right colors around you. It’s a “draw-em-up”, as the author says

Zip – Chronodrax – 48 Hour Compo Entry

A fun puzzle game with cool graphics and a very nice concept. The little character can absorb the color of the platform he’s on, and then he’ll be able to pass through any block of that color. You have to do things in the right order, or you’ll fall !

Schrodinger – myachin – 48 Hour Compo Entry

A very interesting experience where you play a wave function. You have to change state to go through obstacles, gain speed, and avoid the black hole that chases you. I really like how the graphics twist when you start to lose.

nadir – Zillix – 48 Hour Compo Entry

This game tells a story in such an interesting way. Your character (a pink square) is falling and she’s trying to remember what happened to her by reliving her dialogs with her fellow adventurers. While progressing through the memories, you have to avoid the dark walls around you, and it really adds something to the immersion.

Lunar Rain – LeafThief – 48 Hour Compo Entry

A point and click with fantastic graphics and mood.

L’Hypnose – Wan & Almudys – Jam Entry

A very artsy, oniric experience.

Reich 18 – jerombd – Jam Entry

A Game & Watch like looking game with awesome visuals. Really worth a look !

Dragon Drop – Tom 7 – 48 Hour Compo Entry

A game with a great twist that made me smile

 

LOOP – vandriver – 48 Hour Compo Entry

You play as a crow in this entry with a fantastic mood and very cool graphics.

 

Escape Shaft – Zathalos – 48 Hour Compo Entry

It’s a very cool puzzle action game with a concept that works very well. You have to optimize your shots and be patient to kill all the monsters in the room.
 

… for the 5th time.

I won’t have much time but I hope I’ll still end up making a game I like

My tools :
Still working with AS3. I’ll have to code in Flash Pro because this time I’m on a Mac. I’ll miss FlashDevelop a lot.

I’ll probably use Flash for graphics too.

ThumbJam or PixiTraker for music.

And here’s a picture of my workstation :

Hope you all have a great Ludum Dare !

10 seconds to save the day is an adventure game where you play as a ghost.

You died in a terrible accident that made dozens of victims. You remember that for 10 seconds, you knew you were going to die… In the clouds, such moments are called “extra time”.
There’s a rule that if you have unfinished business on Earth you can give this “extra time” to another person. But who to give it to and can 10 seconds be enough to prevent the accident ?

Here’s the link :
Entry page of 10 seconds to save the day

I hope you enjoy the game !
I’ll probably write a post-mortem in the next few days. Meanwhile, it’s time to play some games

Here’s the link to my entry : 10 seconds to save the day.

 

 

Before Ludum Dare begins
This Ludum Dare, I wanted to make an adventure game. Not one like Lucas’ Quest Backwards (LD 24) with platform sequences or This is not a minimalist game (LD 26) with puzzles. I wanted to make an adventure game where you only advance through dialogs. I like writing stories, and I thought that such a game wouldn’t be long to code and that it would give me plenty of time to polish the story, the graphics and add music.

Like many, I was convinced that the theme would be 10 seconds. This is the first time in a Ludum Dare that the theme is not a surprise for me. But I hadn’t given much thought to it. I didn’t like it, it felt exactly like “Minimalism” : more of an additional constraint than a theme, and I hoped it wouldn’t be chosen despite its very high score during the first round of votes.

 

The theme
But it was announced : 10 seconds.
I didn’t know what to do. I tried to find gameplay ideas with 10 seconds, but nothing very inspiring. All 10 seconds based gameplay seemed so frustrating. So I came back to my initial idea of making a story, and I let my mind wander in many directions. I wanted the 10 seconds to be an important part of the story, and not just be the equivalent of “a short moment”.

10 seconds… 10 seconds… 10 seconds event… Give 10 seconds… Stop ! The “Give 10 seconds” trail seemed interesting.
I wanted the characters to be able to give 10 seconds, but how ? Then came this idea of ghosts being able to give away the last 10 seconds of their lives to other dead people in order to prevent a tragedy, and I liked it a lot. I was just worried about not being able to write good enough characters and a good enough tragic event for the story to work.

 

 

Day 1
I slept on it (in France, the theme is announced at 3 a.m.). I was still worried when I woke up, so I started writing, finished writing… and I was so relieved I finally came up with something that seemed to work that it didn’t even occurred to me that I could take a few moments to see if the characters and the rhythm of the story could be improved. I wrote everything in one go and never touched it again.

Then I started to write the dialogs. It was kind of confusing because I wrote everything in a plain text file, and after a while it became really hard to distinguish what dialog unlocked what, what dialog was unlocked by what… I started to become very anxious.

Moreover, more than 1h30 had passed, and I had only written what corresponded to 1/25e of my story, not even coded it ! It didn’t look good at all.

So I rushed. When the code was satisfying enough, I started to code the story. Then I realised than a feature was missing : I wanted the player to be able to unlock a list of topics, and be able to ask any character about these topics. So I coded it, and it bugged a lot, and I fixed all the bugs. It took me several hours.

Then I rushed writing the dialogs and the story.

When the first day was over, I had only coded the first point of my to-do list. There were 18 points ! I realised I could never finish unless I cut a lot of the planned investigation sequences. So I did it with regret…

 

The game at the end of day 1

 

Day 2
The second day, the hours were flying and the game was only progressing slowly. So I made even more cuts. When I finally got to the end of the story, there were only 4 hours left.

While re-testing the game, it occurred to me that my “topics” features only served once… So I deleted it and added manually the topic where it was needed. Which caused many bugs and dead ends ! Arggg !!!

I only had time left to polish the graphics. I focused on the characters. Drawing them took me all the remaining time because there are a lot of NPC and playable characters and I drew 4 frames by animation.

 

 

Almost no time was left for the music unfortunately, so I used abundant-music.com.

 

What went right
– I never thought I could finish the story, but I did it. Even if I had to cut a lot of interactions with the player, I consider it a win. There’s still a lot of content.
– This was the first time I drew animated non-pixel-art characters for a game, I enjoyed it and I was happy with the result.
– I’m still happy with the story.

 

 

What went wrong
– The river of bugs caused by a feature that wasn’t even implemented in the game. I should have taken more time to plan what I was going to do and what I would need.
– I had planned a lot more interactions with the player that I had no time to implement.
– I could have improved the story, but I was already so uncomfortable writing it in the first place that it seemed impossible to me to change it even a little bit, it was like written in stone.

 

Explain everything or not ?
– I thought that I could leave some things to the interpretation of the player. It was a deliberate choice not to explain why things happen like this in the end. I could have explained it, but it didn’t seemed necessary. On the contrary, it would have seemed kind of clumsy to me.
Unfortunately, it looks like it was necessary. Some players on Kong decided that the unexplained ending made no sense, and therefore was weak.
But some understood, so I don’t know what was the right choice after all.

 

 

Testing… my own patience
– Testing was horrible. I had to test the game so many times to fix problems that I became sick of my own game and it wasn’t even released. Seeing the same dialogs for the 100th time, discovering that something is still wrong and things don’t unlock correctly, grrr !!! In the end, I didn’t even read the dialogs anymore, I just pressed the keys in the right order.
Even if I had ways to start testing at a given point of the story, I spent an awful lot of time on testing, I’d say more than 50%.

Plus, the code was very tricky to organize. I like clean, readable code, and it wasn’t. It was very hard to tell what unlocked what and where. It was like being lost in a labyrinth or trying to unlock a complex web. And with more interactions with the player like I wanted initially, it would have been even worse.

When I made a post-compo version for Kongregate, I thought that adding a short animation at the end would make it less brutal, and wouldn’t take a lot of time. But I really didn’t have the courage to work on the game anymore, so I didn’t do it.

 

 

Conclusion
Even if I’m satisfied with the game I made, I didn’t really enjoy making it after the “imagine-the-story” part. Long dialog based story are tricky to make (at least for me) and painful to test in such a short amount of time.
I’m not saying “never again”, I’m just saying “definitely not next time”

 

You can play my entry here. I hope you like it !

 

I’m in for the 1-2-3-4-5…6th time !

I’ll use :

Code : Flash/Actionscript. I don’t work with it on a daily basis anymore so I’ll probably be a little rusty

Graphics : Flash/Photoshop

Music : GarageBand iOS or ThumbJam or Figure, whichever inspires me more when comes the time to rush and make some sound.

This was my 9th Ludum Dare in a row! I thought I wouldn’t make it this time because I really wasn’t inspired by the theme (I liked Snowman…), but fortunately an idea came to me anyway.

So here’s my game, Break the Limits!
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=11243

 

 

It’s an incremental game where you play someone who’s trapped in a room. The only thing you can do is think, but what will you think about?

As always, I had a very good time making it and I’m happy I participated