Well, that was certainly a fun ride full of unexpected things happening. I decided not to go with pixel art this time, and went with sketch-like pencil on paper art style, and it worked surprisingly well, even though I decided to go without hand-drawn animations.

Well, there's a first time for everything, and today is, sadly, my first time, when I don't finish the LD game. It feels really shitty, but I'm not feeling so great today, so I should probably just rest today.

So, here's a little post-mortem of my entry.

The initial idea was quite cool, but, perhaps, way beyond LD scope. You would play as a ghost and would have to go through the dungeon and kill a final boss. But to do so, you would need weapons, armor and body parts (so you would start with nothing, you see). Weapons and body parts would have different combat and puzzle uses. You would have to buy them with money you earn through combat or find them in a world.

And the combat would be this hybrid of a rythm game and standard turn-based combat

As for art style, I decided to go with pencil sketch look, instead of usual pixel art, and I think this can work really well in a game and might revisit it someday.

Anyway, good luck to the people still making stuff!

So, my last Ludum Dare didn't go too well, as I couldn't even finish the game due to health related issues, I hope this time theme would allow me to experiment with style and genre. I kinda want to try and make a PS1 low poly 3D game, but we'll see what work better

Tools - Unity - Aseprite - sfxr - No idea what would I do with the music, but if there will be any then it's probably Bosca Ceoil - Blender

I've missed previous LD due to health related issues and now this. Really hope I'd get better and manage to make something decent, but I'm not sure. Well, let's hope it's just cold, as the alternative is a bit y'know

I've decided to make a UI-heavy Unity game, so instead of coming up with jokes and drawing art and balancing the gameplay, I've spent three hours on fixing some obscure bug

I'm in pain, literal physical pain

Just like the site when the theme is announced, amirite

I think I got something kinda weird and not about falling towers. I just had to kinda stretch the dictionary definition a bit. And it's overly ambitious, which is terrible when you have 72 hours

And I have to write lots of horse jokes or die trying

It's not like there's a time limit or anything

Not even half of the game mechanics are done, but some parts are starting to take shape. This is way too ambitious for Ludum Dare, but fuck it, right? Why not try anyway?

It's not a feature creep if you're doing it for a one-off joke

Oh, wait

No, I refuse to look up what a horse actually looks like

You know, there should be some step between thinking "Hey, that's a funny idea" and actually making multiple different games and merging them into one

So yeah, I think with 10 hours left on compo, I think it is now definitely a jam game

And here I am, chugging along and hoping for people who are going to play my game tomorrow to be in the same mood as Sonic

I swear, every Ludum Dare I end up in the situations where I have to google puns and I'm not sure how it keeps happening

I should've probably gave up yesterday, because it's just too ambitious for me to handle alone, but I', so deep into the sunken cost fallacy I can't even see the sunshine anymore

Welp, it's not the first time where I had to just describe the ending in text and show it on the screen

And with 9 minutes to spare

(and with a placeholder itch.io page)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/horsey-computer

So, I have hit 20 ratings on my game a few days ago, got some feedback on it, so I think it's a good time to reflect on it a bit. It's a long one, so, I'm really sorry if you needed to scroll somewhere, but I kinda needed to vent

TL;DR: Don't ever do what I did, that way lies madness.

Link to the game for reference

For those, who decided to not play the game (or at least look at the comments), here's a quick rundown. Horsey Computer is a game about an unstable game that you break and end up hopping from one game to the next. And those games can be completely different genres and have completely different art styles.

Oh dear.

That's why you work in teams, by the way. You really do need another person(s) to slap you across the face for thinking this is a good idea for a 72 hour game jam.

But what's really surprising is that this decision had some positive effects. Yeah, I was crunching like hell to get something playable and somewhat complete in time (more on that later), but at least I was never stuck on one thing. As soon as got bored and frustrated with some part, as soon as I felt that writer's block (well, a gamedev's block, I guess), I immediately switched to a different genre. Got tired of making pixeart for the point-and-click? Switched to 3D level design. Got stuck there? Opened sfxr and generated some blips for the OS.

That approach did not come free though. Apart from the obvious crunch exhaustion, the game did not come together until an hour on Jam timer. I was playtesting this game on my girlfriend 40 minutes before I was supposed to be done. That led to the discovery of some minor bugs, the 3D character's speed felt a bit slow (which I decided to leave as is, because dialogue timers kinda depended on this (fucking whoops), and a couple of reviewers complained about it), oh, and an entire fucking character was missing.

Not, like, a bug, where some character wouldn't render or whatever. No. A kinda vital character referenced by others and it was just not done. Not even started. No sprites made, no dialogue written. 40 minutes before the deadline. It's the device in the point-and-click bit, for those who are interested.

Yeah, no, seriously, this is not right.

And speaking of writing. I have outlined a completely different (and longer) story with even more genres and characters. There was supposed to be a fake out shooter bit, where you were given a gun and told that you'll be needing it soon (you absolutely wouldn't). That was taken out because I just forgot to reserve a place in 3D level for it. A joke that was written, recorded, had sounds of an empty gun clicking made specifically for it had to be cut because someone is a dumbass.

There was also planned a text adventure thing, that would've always had "horse" as a valid response. That's as far as that went

And a mock racing section, kinda like the shooting bit. That's as far as that went

And of course the existing sections were significantly cut down. More levels for a platformer, a proper folder structure for the OS, a second screen (with another recurring character from my past game), inventory and actual puzzle-solving for the point-and-click

Oh, and an actual gameplay mechanics

So, let's touch first on the recurring characters and an honest to god fan service. And I know what you'll say. Who are those fans that you wanted to service? I know, right. But that turned out to be another excellent time-saving technique. I need a bartender character? Why not a carrot from one of my games? I have the fitting sprite that wasn't drawn in a hurry and the dialogue writes itself. You served the food made from sentient (and angry) vegetables, now they serve the food out of you. Hilarious. I hope. Whatever, doesn't matter, at least it was quick to write. The three-legged alien referencing someone who stopped existing? Here you go, the fourth icon on the left on the screenshot. Was it funny before? Eh, kinda. Great, that would have to do. Better yet, It saves me time not drawing an entire new character and a part of the background on the second screen (that was cut, but whatever, at this point it's a part of the joke). Fucking perfect.

So yeah, the big one. The gameplay

So, the game is "unstable", right? So how do you make it unstable? By messing with the properties of some objects, of course, through some sort of cheat menu. And that was supposed to be the main mechanic of the game. Puzzle solving through some meta means. Opening a console, screwing with some objects and solve puzzles in a wacky way. That's a solid pitch for a small puzzle-game right here. Simple, yet deep mechanic, level-based, so can be as big as the timer allows it to be. A prefect little jam game, that could, potentially, be expanded to the full game. So why the fuck didn't I do this

What a knob I really am sometimes

So yeah, at the middle of the second day, the game became a walking simulator, basically. Just do what you're told and look at all the jokes. Which seems to be fine, people are liking the jokes, but I just wish they were attached to the actual game. The narrative also suffered because of this. The developer is blaming you for breaking the game, because, well, it was you who actively breaking it, because screwing around in this kind of sandbox is fun. But just listen to this nonsense. A narrative fucking design in a game that has to be made in 72 hours. But then again, people like the madness that happened because of the ambition, so I don't even know anymore. There is a neat game in there somewhere, right at the point, where I should've reigned in the ambition and started making a coherent experience that is focused on some point.

So yeah, as you might've guessed already, I was on the brink of giving up for one and a half days. Well, I guess, that's not strictly speaking true, because I was ending it all out of spite, sunken cost fallacy and some little glimmer positivity that was me genuinely liking the damn thing and wanting it to be made. And you know what, I'm really glad it got made, even though it's not exactly what I wanted and it sucked all the energy from me to the point that I'm still couldn't be bothered to properly set up an itch.io page.

After all that negativity towards the game and myself, let's end on a little bit of positivity. The game's not shit and I don't hate it, I'm just (as always) very critical towards myself and the game, because I genuinely like it and want the final result to be better, because it can.

I also like the jokes and I like what I wrote for the game in general. Picking a theme and just rolling with it really helped to make a coherent-feeling game (even though, I know how much of mess it really is). It was really heartwarming to see people laughing at my silly horse puns and jokes and the general madness of it all. Because, after all, isn't that why we're doing this? Just, don't do it like I did, it is absolutely not worth it