First time participating in Ludum Dare and entering a bit late. But here’s the very first look at my attempt at a minimalist game. As you can see I’m working with Unity and I’ll be using Gimp and Blender a little as needed. Still not quite sure where this is headed, but it’ll be some sort of first person puzzler with graphics somewhat inspired by Kazimir Malevich’s suprematist paintings.
Since it’s my first game I’ll be happy just to finish something playable! 
Something resembling a plan. Random shapes spawn, but there are too many! The challenge of the game is to select shapes according to some simple rules within a time limit so only a minimal group of shapes is left. Still working on spawning shapes in a random, but fitting way. This will look a lot better with some small animations, but that will be the last thing I add if I have the time.
So, now there’s an actual game. It has controls, and an objective! And high brow quotes I don’t understand, from artists I never heard of before I googled “minimalism” 😉
There’s still a lot of work to do, though, and it’s already getting a little late…
Argh. I have weird bugs and it’s 1am and I have work tomorrow. This has just turned into a jam submission instead. Check out the minimalist main menu 😉
Hopefully this means I’ll have time for sounds as well.
So I made my first LD game!
It turned out alright in the end I suppose, it works as intended even if it doesn’t have all the features I would have liked. And sorry to any colorblind players! If I ever make an updated version with more of everything I’ll be sure to include a colorblind mode. But I blame the painters I ripped off for the graphics style 😛
The only major thing missing from my original idea is for the game to showcase the individual “suprema” the player collects, the whole point was to show how some of these minimal shapes look better when paired according to the game rules. Oh well. I’ll definitely see if I can’t give it a touch up and turn it into something that’s fun for more than a few moments. Perhaps more shapes and game modes.
I’ll be back for LD27
It took a lot longer to settle on an idea than I expected. Not much resembling a game yet, but the foundation feels rather solid. I’m feeling groggy so I better stop coding for now.
The game will be a sort of whodunit, find the murderer sort of thing. Every ten seconds the lights go out and the murderer kills another in the congregation. The murderer can only kill some of them (in this prototype only those with less arms than himself…). So by watching who dies every round the player has to guess who the murderer is before everyone is dead. Accusing someone of being the murderer reveals their true leaning and executes them no matter if they’re innocent or not.
I want to work out some sort of way to make it really tough on the player to choose wrong, so basically each round you have to decide if you have the nerve to choose or let the killer take another and thereby give you another clue.
I have no idea if this is too easy or hard… much less if it’s fun. We’ll see!
Here’s a meaningless screenshot. I’ll attempt to draw some new characters before I sleep
Alright. Some super quick pseudodrawing* and I better head to bed. Here’s a new version of The Lamb and his sidekick/possible killer the… cherub like antelope guy…
* I can’t draw to save my life, so these are made by sticking together bits of drawings/photos scrounged on the web, printing out a faint outline, drawing on top of them and scanning them back in 😛
Although there are still some hours left I really doubt I’ll make it in time for a Compo entry. It’ll be a jam instead… again. On the plus side it’s almost a real game now. Point out the culprit before it murders everyone!
I really can’t think of a good name so feel free to suggest something! I’ll head to bed in an hour or so and hopefully finish the last couple of things after work tomorrow.
Have a look:
The Lamb needs your help! There’s a wicked culprit hiding among his children, killing them off one by one. Can you figure out who it is before it’s too late?
Quick! Test it and tell me if there are any bugs 😛
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.
-Arthur C. Clarke
Bed time! But I’ve gotten some more life into my little pond of a game. It was a bit of a struggle to get Unity 2D and iTween to play nice together… but I seem to have gotten the hang of it and have little koi like fish swimming along paths. Tomorrow I’ll add the player… and hopefully by then I’ve figured out exactly what the point will be.
The game almost has a better look with the gif distortions and color limitations…
At the risk of drowning in the flood (ha!) of posts near the deadline… Fathoms is done. Go tag those fish.
Not quite sure which theme I’m hoping for or what sort of game it’ll be, but I’ve been watching a lot of Twilight Zone lately… that might work. I was thinking I’d try to do a Twine game this time, I’ve never done any interactive fiction.
If I can get it up and running I plan to throw the Unity web player at it some how and see if I can get them to stick together. That should do it for the “Connected Worlds” theme at least 😛
Using:
I spent all saturday at a housewarming, so I fear there wont be much more than a proof of concept for my submission this time around. Still I managed to get Unity webplayer and Twine to play together. Connecting their worlds! (or something…) I hope I can throw together a little story to make the theme make more sense
BFFs
Give it a try! But there is only the one train car so far. Not a game yet!
Well it’s getting past my bedtime, I was hoping I’d have a little something to submit to the compo, but I’ll rather polish what I have tomorrow evening and submit it to the Jam instead. You can check out my progress here
Twine and Unity, friends with possible benefits.
It’s a simple little thing connecting Twine and Unity, think of it as a twine game with interactive illustrations… or something. Once you open the second door, there’s no more in this edition. Hopefully I can wrap this one up and add a chapter or two more tomorrow. Now that all the code is in place it’s just a matter of how much story I can think up in one evening
I put my little game up on Google Play. It’s a post-compo version with improved physics and graphics. And a hi-score!
