Well I just submitted my game “Tinker Maze” here at Ludum Dare. This is my first game jam I have taken part in. I really wanted to see what it was like to have to get a game done in 48 hours. I took part in a little contest on IGM a year ago but I had a week to get my game done so doing a game in this timeline was new to me.

When I saw the theme connected worlds I wasn’t sure what I would do. But I saw my kids toys on the floor and got an idea to do a game about Tinker Toys. I decided to use Game Maker 8 as my engine it isn’t as fancy as Studio but it has some nice features and it compiles quickly on my computer.

I modeled all the wheels and sticks etc in Anim8tor that took  me a couple hours.  Then I built my first room and the idea came to me to make a maze game just moving the pieces around the other pieces that join to it.

Level design was pretty much the bulk of the project designing the 8 mazes was not unlike playing Tinker Toys with my kids. The mazes I made sure were not unbeatable but challenging enough.

The greatest challenge was getting through the day after staying up til all hours of the night working on a game. Good thing it’s the weekend but weekends are usually for recharging yourselves.

Well it’s friday night after a long work week and I want to start on my entry but I see the theme and  I absolutely draw a blank. So I crashed and while in bed it hit me. What if I made a game about a working monster.

So I began work on my game Monster Production saturday morning. I worked most of the day on the artwork. I took a nice break in the afternoon to spend time with my family. I resumed work  on the game mechanics.

Needless to say after a long while I started making some pretty funny mistakes like putting semi-colons on the end of if statements. I worked late Saturday and managed to finish the game up Sunday afternoon.

The basic premise of the game is you work a standard 8 hour shift with the usual coffee and lunch breaks. After working your 80 hours you will collect your Monster pay cheque.

This is my fourth Ludum Dare in a row so I’m hoping I will do a little better than my last outing.

Tags: ludum dare #33, monster

Well I’ve just done a little update to my jam entry Monster Production. After reading some feedback I got some ideas to add some more elements to the game to make it a little more interesting.

It is pretty hard to play the game for the full 10 day time period in order to collect your paycheque before some tedium sets in. I also realized my apartment building was so big that some of the apartments were too far to reach at your current rate of speed.

So I added random coffee stations that reset after each day. If you find a coffee station you can have a drink of java and your speed increases for the rest of the day.

The other feature I added was your efficiency the more time you spend standing around it will drop quickly. If you allow it to drop to zero you are terminated from employment.

I also added some more interactions to give you a better sense of what is going on. When your coffee breaks occur the message coffee time appears when your monster is reset to the start point. I also added some minor little silly things just to spruce things up.

The new version is 1.0.0.3 and is available here .

It has been ten jams since I last enter Ludum Dare and with the recent events surrounding the Covid19. I just found there was time again to be at home all weekend. This included some time to program in the evenings. When I seen the theme I was on Twitter checking my notifications. 
Like many people I found myself on Twitter an awful lot and perhaps too much. One of the things I have always avoided for the most part was to get into arguments about politics. So when I saw the theme I was also checking my notifications and I had a angry reply to a post I had made it was nothing but it gave me an idea for a game for this game jam.
So the game is called Please Feed My Troll and it's about the mythical online troll. To keep the troll alive you must reply to his posts. You have 3 options one is "Scorn" where you tell the troll off (usually sounding superior to rile him), to agree with the opening post which the troll is replying to or to retort which is to fire an insult or comment back to the troll.

I have always avoided replying to trolls on Twitter or gaming forums but this game gives anyone who ever had the desire to fire an insult back at a troll without having to deal with a real life online hater. The game focuses on current events from a Canadian perspective so appearances by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and PC leader Andrew Scheer along with US President Trump. Anyway the game is here --> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/$200337 it's built with Gamer Maker Studio so just a Windows build. I tried to do an html build but the views don't work so good right now.