This will be my first Game Jam. Wish me luck!

There, I did it. Entire game on one screen. project finished!

Just Kidding! This is the screen for my game. The whole cyan part will just be a viewport into the games that you will play to beat this lil game.

It’s sort of reminiscent of my child hood (and probably many other devver’s child hoods) where I would look at a small screen and play video games for as long as I was allowed to (by my parents).

More coming! >.<

Okay, so the theme is “entire game on one screen”. As I understand it, that isn’t a “hard rule”, but rather a theme.

So here are the ideas I have had, many of them feature the idea as a “soft rule” I should say.

Door Unlocking Game – my initial though, the idea is there is a vault behind a bunch of doors and you just have to keep unlocking them and behind each one is another door, all the way up to the prize inside. In this way the game could be on one screen. Each door that unlocks, would slide out of the way to reveal the door behind it, and so on and so forth. However I feel that this idea has been done, probably a lot of times. That is not to say that I couldn’t make a cool game based on this idea, but I feel it would lake a certain “je ne sais quoi”.

Screen slider game – the idea here is that you would be handling a bunch of different games at once. The screen of this game has several small games going on in it at once. You would click one of them to zoom in on it, and then do something and then click to zoom out of it. Some of the games, you could also slide off screen. Okay this is really a loose idea. The basic theory is that you have to manipulate stuff one your screen space in order to maximize what you need to do. Like there might be one screen that displays numbers every few minutes, and when it does you need to put numbers into another screen and hit enter, but meanwhile you have to watch another screen to interact with it once in a while. You could slide the screen that the numbers need to go into off the screen while you don’t need it, thus allowing you to see the other screens more visibly. basically, yeah, it’s a game about screen space and organizing it as new elements are introduced.

Camera Game – this idea I couldn’t work through to make something quite right. The idea is that your are some person who has to watch several monitors (somewhere around 8 monitors) and you have to use all of them. One idea on how to make this work, was to be something like a security guard at a prison. where you would have to call guards on escaping criminals. But it might also be more like a war situation, where you have to figure out where troops are based on the screens. Another idea is like a criminal investigator. Each screen gives you a different short clip of what happened, and you have to figure out who did the crime. (but you might not be able to tell certain things just by the clip, such as the time of that specific clip or possibly some persons identity in it. You have to use context clues and other clips to put together what happened. This idea seemed sort of like it would be short lived. (not much story or not much to do before you get bored.)

Single screen camera game – like the last idea, but you have one screen and you have to flick between cameras. You also have different tools, such as a crane, or possibly a remote control car (idk), but each screen has something you could do, and the objective was to get some kind of box from one place to another, by using all of the screens.(This ideas seems easy and like it’s probably a safe bet to use. However… I felt it lacked story and a sense of adventure. It seems like it worked for the theme and the game jam, but wasn’t truly “special”)

Nostalgic video game game thingy – okay, this is the idea that I am going with. This is it: You are essentially a kid playing video games (SNES). You can look at a tv screen, and interact with whatever game you are playing with at that moment. You can also switch game cartridges (there are 3 games) and play other games. Each game has it’s own little adventure about something (their stories might be connected or not. Idk yet. I wanna make some sort of connection). The catch is that items/ abilities that you get in one game, you also, get in the other games.) And so you might get a lava suit in one game, and now you can use that in another game to move through a Lavafall. The games will have to be extremely short and feature much the same mechanics (probably side scroll plat former, since that is more doable and better at making a meaningful narrative).

Keep Game Jammin my peeps!

-TTYS!

Jumping around in lava can be fun!

One of the three games is up. I’ve got to get the other 2 set up, then it should just be porting, that I have never done before, and… I think that’s it! PROGRESS!!!

let me know what your think!

GameSystem

In this corner, weighing in at 200 mhz is Catwheel!
This competitor is using the legendary Unity 5, with a breathtaking C# flourish.
He also may end up doing 8-bit because its so simple, and is sure that BFXR will have all the sounds he needs, but is also ready with a mic, because he kind of wants to do mouth sound effects.

I like to spend some iteration on my ideas over the first 2 hours.
At this point I have brainstormed 10 ideas for games. Games in bold have survived my first iteration.
As an additional challenge this Dare, I will not be making a 2D plat-former (to test my creative skills).

1. Top-down fighting Game involving bar style fighting.
too vague. also just my first idea I wanted to get out of the way

2. Nuclear weapon puzzle game. You must assemble/disassemble weapons of mass destruction under a time limit, and perhaps with some vague instructions.
this sounds like a lot of content generation. I’m not a super great artist, and this sounds like it would take longer than 48 hours unless I want to make a single puzzle.

3. A game where you use enemies as weapons. Enemies can be turned into weapons, sort of kirby style, but not a kirby clone.
I can’t think of a conceptually fun way to do this without making it a 2D plat-former. It definitely sounds like it has potential, but since I have time restraints, I need to cut some ideas.

4. Robot puzzle Game. Top down game where you program robots to perform tasks. you have to coordinate their tasks and get them to do actions simultaneously to complete each level.
I had thought of this before when thinking about a programmable robot top-down tower defense game. In this Dare I could define the concept further than a footnote.

5. Turn-based isometric view
just a thought on game types that are not 2D Plat-formers.

6. A tower defense game where you can turn enemies into towers.
not sure how I can get this to be interesting and balanced. Conceptually the idea is that you run around the battle field and attack enemy units. You can also spend some points when you kill an enemy unit to turn them into a tower. It’s hard to conceptualize how this would not turn into a cluster F%*#. Actually I just thought of how I could do it. Guess I’ll submit this game to my next iteration.

7. transforming weapon
conceptually I thought of this because of games like shovel knight and the core gang.

8. Racing Game
nothing further came out of this idea.

9. God game where you observe a battle and can support your own units. You must help your units to win while maintaining a balance of their divided factions.
I’ve thought a lot about this one.

10. You are a German pilot dropping leaflets on Britain. Drop as many as possible.
I like the idea of having a historical theme, but I’m not sure how to keep this interesting, as a developer and a gamer. Also, I do need to consider dev time.

I have chosen an idea. The idea is a top-down wave fighting game. You must run around the battle field and slay enemies. You can do a special attack that expends points to turn an enemy into a tower (tower defense style). I chose this over the war game because I think it has potential for being multi-player.

Time to build a prototype.

^click for animation^
I have my spawning system for my generic enemies going. Good progress so far. I plan to head for bed around 5 so let’s see what else I can do. Up next is probably player movement and attacking.

^click for animation^
This is where I am so far on my project. I have player movement, enemy spawners and an AI pathing system. Tomorrow it will be actually implementing the main mechanic.

I’m actually not enjoying my game idea. Do you think it’s too late to start over? I could do my second idea.

I was looking to add narrative so I’ve decided to have the main character keep a journal. The player will get a snippet from it after every mission. It will also be used to explain some game mechanics.

Read it on my blog Here

So I have never written a post-mortem before. The theme for LD32 was “An Unconventional Weapon”. I had a few ideas and I was down to 2 major concepts and was particularly excited about the one I didn’t choose. In the end, I went with an idea for a tower defense game where you can turn your enemies into towers.

Spaced

Spaced is a top-down tower defense shooter where you turn your enemies into towers. You play as a stranded astronaut lost on an alien planet with no memory. Game play consists of a top-down shooting system where you fight off waves of enemies and protect your land rover. You have an alternate special fire that you can use to kill special enemies and turn them into totems, which you can then spend to place towers. (tower defense style)

Game play

The player is the cyan dot (bottom-left). Dots with a translucent aura are towers. Other dots are baddies. The baddies are trying to get to the rover at the top of the image.

The Good

People liked my audio. It was my highest rated piece. I used a music generator and mostly SFXR, for some more sci-fi-ish sound generation. While the music was generating I would add complexity to parts I wanted (more high/low notes) to oversee and make sure it was more towards what I wanted. It made a pretty cool atmosphere.

My second highest was innovation, so that’s good. Honestly, I didn’t think the idea behind my game was all that innovative, but it seems like many compers use one of the first few ideas they had. Innovation was the second highest on my last submission as well, so Innovation might actually be one of my strong suits, which would be a pretty awesome strong suit to have. :3

The Bad

I tend to focus on the bad, but the bad is just a place where you can improve.

My game was really difficult. This has been an issue for me from the dawn of time. I usually cannot get a grasp on difficulty for some reason, not sure why, but my number one complaint was that my game was hard. I let a few of my friends play-test the game and 2 of them had an easy time, while 2 of them had a hard time. I’m not really certain how to tackle this concept. Many of the LD games seem to do stuff like, make the game last until you lose, so the challenge comes in time and you are eventually over whelmed and your skill level just determines how long you last, but some submissions do seem to have alternative ways of having challenge and they work it out well.

I also believe that conveyance was a huge place where I can improve. I had originally planned to have a narrative that would occur between every mission that would help to explain some of the mechanics and bring some questions to the player that they would want to finish the next section of the story to answer, but the narrative was dropped for time reasons. I had also wanted to work on a real UI instead of the text based UI that is currently there. I think that if I had a UI, that would show which button to press anytime you have at least one tower to put down, then it would have conveyed a large piece of the games mechanics to the player. A lot of people that played, did not even understand the game’s core mechanic until half way through the second level. Also, each tower had a special thing that it would do that was intended for the player to figure out, but most people just felt it was confusing. Next time I think I will add a short tutorial beforehand and not rely so heavily on something that may not get into the game in the end.

Art for the Narrative that didn’t make it in.
I wasn’t even excited about this idea until day 2 when I came up with a story.

Controls where also clunky. Playing on a Xinput, I had a twin stick shooter, but you had to press RTrigger or LTrigger to fire while also moving with the left stick and aiming with the right stick. It didn’t work out so well. One of the totems required you to aim with the right stick and place it with the blue ‘X’ button, which was very hard. I also, left out keyboard and mouse controls, so many players couldn’t play it at first. I later added them in, and they proved to be much easier to use than the X-input controller. Oh, and also, placing totems on the X-Input controller was based on the color of the buttons. So the Y button (which is yellow) would place the yellow totem, a lot of people didn’t get this.

Conclusion

Overall I got in the 45th percentile. Not too shabby. Last submission I got in the 59th percentile, so I cannot say I am too satisfied with myself. In this LD I went with an idea that was fairly simple, had a little innovation, but mostly, was easy to polish do to the conventions it contained. During the pre_Ludum Dare hype, I had watched the shadow keynote from the button masher bros and they said that a good submission was functional, and polished. In my early brainstorming step, I came up with about 11 ideas, and later refined it to 2 choices, one being the one I used and the other being a more creative idea that I was excited about, but not entirely sure how I would execute. So, this LD I went for functional and polished over innovative. I really think I should have trusted my personal design sense and stuck with my normal creative process. Innovative & working is, in my opinion better than functional and polished. Next LD, I think I will go with the more innovative idea, especially if it is the one that I am most excited about. I also succeeded in my personal challenge to not make a 2D platformer. Next time however, I don’t think I will put such restrictions on myself unless I really notice a pattern forming.

All-in-all it was a great LD and I learned a lot and that is what’s most important. :3

You can try out my submission Here.

feedback welcomed

As the title says, I am looking for jam partners for the next LD occuring on august 21.

A little about me, I’m from Georgia. I study computer science and am a pretty neat programmer. I have competed in 2 LD compos and I competed in the global game jam. I am looking forward to meeting people online and working on a game together. You can see 2 of my entrees on my profile page.

I would like to work with a group of 2-5 other devs for the jam. I’m pretty much open to meeting anybody with the one caveat, that they have finished atleast one small LD game before (jam or compo). Just want to make sure everybody has an idea of how much work it takes, and isn’t likely to quit halfway through.

If you’re interested, make a response here, or shoot me a PM (if that’s possible here)

As you all know, Ludum Dare 33 is coming up. I am getting together a team for my first jam submission (I’ve done 2 compos before and a jam at the global game jam).
So far we have:
1 -Programmer/Designer
2 -Programmer
3 -Concept Artist

We need some more people:
We are looking for people with talents in:
-designer (we need another)
-animation
-sound effects + music

If you are looking for a game jam group for this next LD and have any of those talents, feel free to leave a reply. I can of course answer more questions about us, if there are any.

Our team consists of:
1 – A programmer
2 – A programmer/game designer
3 – an artist

This will be my 2nd jam. (I’ve also done 2 compos). I personally prefer innovative ideas over well polished ones. I am number 2 on that list up there. We are hoping to get one more person in on our team. My artist friend is looking for an animator to work with because this is his first game jam. If said animator also feels they have strong/decent skills as a game designer, then that would be even better. We would also love to have someone with experience doing a few jams, but that isn’t necessary.
If you’re interested, post a little about your self below, and please include a reference to a jam entry you have done (if any).

So pumped and so terrified. This is my 3rd LD and my first LD to be doing with a group. I can’t wait to start this adventure!

We are doing a moody mystery point n click adventure game that takes place in a sci-fi cyberpunk setting. We are using pixel art and could really use some chiptune or similarly style medium for our point n click adventure. If anyone is interested, or has some questions, respond here.

post below if you’re interested. I can tell you more about the game if requested.

This time I’ve got 2 jobs and some classes to finish up on the 11th. I would LOVE to attend again, but it looks like I’m just super busy this holiday season. I’m actually pretty exhausted. Also, since one of my jobs is working on a small game it would kind of be weird to put off that job to work on a game jam for a few days. Hopefully I’ll be free to join the next LD. LD #35. Anyways, enjoy you’re LD yall! I’ll be around to play and rate still. Have fun! :3