First time. I’ll be using Unity, PyxelEdit, FL Studio and maybe Tiled.

Looking forward to my seconde LD!

Tools:

• Unity
• Tiled + Tiled2Unity
• PyxelEdit
• Bitwig Studio <3

Thank you everyone for your feedback. You made ferret super happy! :3

If you haven’t already, please check out our entry The Skinmancer!

I also wanted to mention that I will play some more games this week end. Leave a comment with a link to your entry and I will check it out. 😀

My little puzzle game is shaping up. The game is inspired by a very old obscure DOS game called PC-Bakterien. This is my unique spin on the concept. I'll try to teach the game via level progression instead of help screens.

I'm finished. And I'm beat. I need sleep now. I wanted to write music for the game so badly, but I ended up not having enough time. Thanks to Ben Burnes for providing his amazing chiptunes.

Submission url: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/midori-has-a-cold

The inspiration

The main idea for the game about the immune system was inspired by a DOS game I used to play a lot, called "PC-Bakterien!". It was developed by the same guys who made A Game of ROBOT - also pretty obscure but a bit more well known, especially in Germany.

The basic premise of the game is that each level is infected by different types of bacteria. You have to mark them using helper cells so the phagocytes can identify and eat them. This is pretty close to how our immune system actually works.

The whole thing played a bit like Lemmings in top-down with a ton of time pressure.

In the original game you also controlled a main character to navigate around the level. I wanted to simplify that and see how the game would feel if you removed that and instead make it more Lemming like, where you indirectly control everything "from above".

Early prototype

I made a crude prototype with ugly graphics first, so get the mechanics down and see if it would be any fun. Here's a comparison of how the prototype looked versus the final game:

Prototype

Final result

The prototype was fun enough for me to decide to go ahead. Also I didn't have a lot of better ideas for the theme anyways. ;P

What went wrong

My big goal for the jam was to make the game completely by myself, including the soundtrack. Music production is a new hobby of mine and I wanted to write my own music for it so badly. Alas, I underestimated how much time it would take to make the puzzles for the game. In the end I fell back on using free music provided by my friend Ben Burnes. People commented how much they liked the music in the game. Check out his stuff ( http://www.abstractionmusic.com/ )! :)

Game design wise, the biggest feedback I got was that while the tutorial levels were helpful, the first "real" level was too challenging. That's where most people quit. I played the game so much while developing that it was really hard to gauge difficulty. Next time I want to sign up some playtesters more early in the process. I'm always hesitant to approach people with my early games and ask for playtesters. I need to work on that!

What went good

This was my first real project using GameMaker. I was pleasantly surprised by the workflow and how easily I could transfer my knowledge to it. Handling data structures is a bit clumsy at first, but I got my start in C/Assembler on DOS so the clunkyness became somewhat enjoyable and made me feel nostalgic (memcpy, printf, ... x3).

To build the levels I didn't use the room editor but the image editor. Actually the whole game is created using one room only.

I created all the levels with the image editor. The whole level pack is one sprite, and each level is one frame inside the sprite.

This allowed me to make a bunch of levels, sandboxes and tests and just shuffle around the frames to change the order.

Also making the instruction pages before the start of the game was a really good idea. A lot of people said how it helped them understand the game faster.

Last but not least, this time I went to bed early and took actual breaks to go for walks outside. Woooh. :P

In conclusion

Game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/midori-has-a-cold

I had a ton of fun again this Ludum Dare. I wish I could do it more often. Now I'm going to play and rate some more games!

Let's talk gamedev! :D

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