Well, I was tired of an heavy job week, so I started by getting too much sleep… Starting about 12 hours after the theme have been announced, I quickly had an idea for a simple “time-management” game : “The One Fork Restaurant”.

The One Fork Restaurant (4h30 of work prototype)

As the title implies, it’s a restaurant where people come to eat various meals, but the restaurant only have one fork, so customers have to share it! But when the customers are waiting for the fork, they start to get bored, and may leave the restaurant if they wait for too long. Eating gives them a little relief, so each time they eat, they’ll be able to wait a little longer afterwards.

After about 4h30 of work (with Flash), I’ve got this roughly working gameplay prototype full of ugly programmer art:

The upper bar is the waiting jauge for each customer, and the lower bar the amount of meal they’ve eaten.

Done:

• Basic gameplay mechanics (click on tables to swap the fork)
• A skeleton to generate customers with various stats (eating time, waiting time, face, etc.)

Next Steps:

• Do all the Art (and I usually suck at this)
• Define a list of customers with balanced stats (easy to say, hard to achieve)
• Add some more mechanics. For example, I was thinking that some customers wouldn’t want to use a dirty fork, so, for them, you’ll have to wash the fork before sending it to them (right now, every customer have rather loose hygiene standards ;))

One last update before going to sleep. Doing graphics and balancing gameplay is indeed way more time consuming (and less rewarding) than programming the proof-of-concept prototypes!

Anyway, I’ve been able to draw and animate four cartoon-like customers, and I started to tune in the gameplay to create a first playable demo available here.

The One Fork Restaurant – first playable demo [WIP]

You move the fork from one table to another by clicking on the tables. Each customer has to eat the content of his rice bowl before the end of the bar representing his own time limit (below each character). Each character type has a different eating speed / waiting time tolerance. You are allowed five mistakes before going to the game over screen. Aim for the high-score!

The gameplay seem to still need a lot of balancing, especially in mid-game (around 300-500 points I have the feeling that it gets too hard, after 600 points I think it starts getting too easy). But it’s hard for me to balance the game as I’ve been somewhat accustomed to it. So any feedback regarding the gameplay flow and balance is very welcome!

To do tomorrow:

• Finish the graphics : draw a background, a title screen and a proper game over screen, and do some general polish
• Fine-tune the gameplay balance so the game delivers an interesting difficulty flow
• Add in some sounds and music (seems like I gonna play with sfxr!)
• Add some basic tutorial / instructions

I’ve spend the last few hours trying to work on the graphics for the game. I really suck at graphics, but I think this little anim will do the trick for the customers eating with the “only one” fork:

The One Fork Restaurant – Eating Anim

Now I’ll try to make some variations of this guy to add some graphical variety to the game, and I’ll also try to define several related “customer profile” to start balancing the game!

The One Fork Restaurant is a game that takes place in a restaurant where many customers are coming to eat, but unfortunately the restaurant has only one fork! So the customers have to share this fork in order to eat their meals, but they aren’t really patient…

You move the fork from one customer to another by clicking on them. The patience of each customer (represented by the gauge below them) slowly decreases when they are waiting for the fork. Each customer must eat his whole bowl before running out of patience. Therefore, you are strongly encouraged to swap the fork before each customer finishes his meal, if you want them to stay in your restaurant.  You’ll get points each time a customer complete his meal. You are allowed five “unhappy leaving customers” before encountering the game over screen.

Two people, eating with one fork!

As it’s my first participation in LD48, I’m happy to have been able to complete this game. I’ve started late due to being exhausted from the job week and oversleeping the first day, but in the end I’ve been able to devote about 19h-20h to work on this game over the weekend, which is good for me!

The game was made with Flash CS3 (drawing and coding directly in the Flash IDE), and sounds created with AS3sfxr. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Play the game (Web – Flash)

Rate the game

 

Many of you suggested in your comments that my game The One Fork Restaurant would be nice to play on a touchscreen – so I’ve just released an Android version of the game!

You can now swap the fork in touchscreen!

The game is a self-signed APK, so you’ll need to allow “untrusted sources” on your terminal to install it. Also, it’s my first ever Android game, so any feedback is welcome! You can download the apk file directly from the game page. And if you’re seeking for challenge, the current game record is 1360 points!

P.S.: for those of you who enjoyed the game, I’ve also written a in-depth post mortem.

Happy New Year Everybody! As the competition results are coming, I’ve been working on a post-compo version of my game The One Fork Restaurant. It’s a kind of “time-management” game. It takes place in a restaurant where people come to eat various meals, but the restaurant only have one fork, so customers have to share it!

Since the compo, I’ve been doing the following:

• Added music and some new SFX, a credits screen and some animations in the menus (i.e. polishing)
• The highscore is now saved on the local machine
• Some fune-tuning to the game balance
• Added the ability to pause the game
• Released a working Android version

I’m currently looking for overall feedback, in order to see if there are any other areas where the game need to be improved! After that I’ll release the post-compo version officially (for now, this improved version is only published on my test server and only in the Web/Flash version).

Play the Work-In-Progress version here

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

As promised, I just released a post-compo version of my game The One Fork Restaurant. It adds musics, a bit of general polish, and an better Android port besides the regular web (flash) version.

I’ve updated the post-mortem of the game, to include the results of the game. For a first participation in the compo, I wasn’t excepting much, so I’m quite astonished by one the ratings:

Theme

4th place, woaw! Due to the high quality of the others entries I’ve played here (Titan Souls, One Precious Arrow…), I wasn’t excepting to reach top 5 in one category – so thanks to all of you who voted for the game! I guess washing dishes can actually help you have game design ideas with some potential after all :p!

Humor & Fun

Around top 100 on those two seems quite nice too, though I’ll try to really get in the top 100 for Fun next time!

Innovation & Overall

For sure the game wasn’t that experimental, and I guess the Overall score has been lowered by the remaining categories. But I’m still quite happy with those results for a first participation.

Mood & Graphics & Audio

As I said, I’m no graphic artist, and not a musician (the compo version didn’t have music). Guess I now know the areas I have to improve on during the next 4 months…

Conclusion

All in all, this first LudumDare was a really wonderful experience for me! During the compo, seeing all those ideas and in-progress reports were really motivating. After the compo, I’ve discovered a nice community with a lot of people providing very useful feedback during the ratings. So, thanks to all of you and to the organizers, because it was really awesome to take part into this event, and I’m really looking forward for the next one!

Even if it’s not easy, I’ve tried to use the compo theme as gameplay mechanic instead of a technical limitation only. My idea is that an “entire game on one screen” means a game with no scrolling. So the game is just that : you are a sprite inside a bitmap, and you are trying to prevent your enemies to scroll your single screen away.

It plays like a top-down arena shooter, except that the enemies stay at the border of the screen, and each enemies tend to scroll the screen towards itself. The more (or the bigger) the enemies, the faster the scrolling. When your background image unfortunately goes outside of the screen, the part that was scrolled away is lost forever, so be careful not to overshoot one side of the screen if you don’t want the background image to be scrolled away on the other side !

I’ve been toying with this idea and implementing a prototype during this whole day – no graphics for now, I’ve been solely focusing on gameplay.  Here is a functional prototype with several enemy types (some can even shot at you to freeze you). Tomorrow I’ll be working on GFX and SFX, and tweaking the game if needed. So the game is now looking for testers.

You can test the game here (Browser – Flash)

Do you find the game fun? And does the gameplay feels balanced?

Use the arrow keys to move, and click on the enemies to shoot them with your laser.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated

Beware of the Screen Scrollers! They will scroll your “one screen game” background image away, and destroy those precious pixels forever. Also, this image is your only ground, so you’d better protect it if you don’t want to be “scrolled away” too!

Use the arrow keys (or WASD) to move, and click on the “Screen Scrollers” to shoot them with your laser. Each kill will earn you points, so aim for the high score!

Play & Rate the game here

(my personal record is 1292 points)

This was my second Ludum Dare, and it was quite a challenge! But I hope you’ll enjoy my entry, and I can’t wait to all the games posted here!

Even the war has rules : some weapons are allowed, while others are forbidden. They are called unconventional weapons. You are sent to a battlefield, and your mission is to seize any unconventional weapon that you’ll see. You are neutral, so the soldiers won’t hurt you. But beware of the stray bullets.

Use arrows keys / WASD to move.
Use Space / Control / Shift to seize a weapon from a soldier (you have to move over the soldier first).
The weapons convention change regularly. Try to capture unconventional weapons only.

Play & Rate here (browser game [Flash])

They say that constraints enhance creativity. For my entry, I chose to use all the *three* LD34 themes at once: Growing, 2 buttons control, and… “It’s a tie!”.

So I’m proudly presenting my little game, titled “Growing Ties”:

You run a tie shop. Patrons want to get custom ties.
Can you cut a tie at the right size for each one of your patrons?

 

 

Use Right Arrow key to grow a tie.
Use Left Arrow key to cut it.
The tie will fall down, and hopefully reach a patron.

Be careful to cut right-sized ties!
A perfect-sized tie matches the height of the patron’s shirt.

 

You’ll get 10 points for such a perfectly fitting tie, but less points if the tie is too long or too short. Of course, Patrons varies greatly in size and shape!

Cut several perfect ties in a row to get bonus “combo” points.

Play & Rate the game

 

 

 

 

Enjoy!

Hi everyone! Here is my entry for the October Challenge : Vintage Game Shop

Description

Vintage Game Shop is a game about using your knowledge of retro or classic video games to make profit!

Everyday, people will come to your shop to sell you vintage games and consoles. Your goal is buying them as cheaply as possible, so you can earn some money when you’ll resell them to another client!

Your profit will enable you to buy rarer and more expensive items, so you can complete your personal game collection.

Will you earn enough money to buy all of the most iconic games in history?

About

As you can see, this is a “documentary game” about the history of video games, and it was heavily influenced by the “Pawn Stars” TV show!

This game is an “hobby” project I made during nights and evenings after my day job. As an avid retro gamer and game history enthusiast, I wanted to create a game about history of video games for quite a long time. So, I finally made the jump!

To be fair, I started working on it long before October Challenge. Ideas and concept aside, the development work started in March 2016. In previous years, I wanted to take part October Challenge but I always lacked the confidence (and time) to expand my jam games into more polished projects. This year, I’m happy to finally be able to submit a “finished” game!

Oh, and this project is the reason I skipped LD35 and LD36 (too much work, so few time), so I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Play the Game [Browser – ArmorGames]

Play the Game [Android – Google Play Store]

Yes, I finally submitted my compo entry, Blob Catcher

You are in  a (single) room full of blobs, and they have an overwhelming desire to escape. Use your grappling hook cannon to catch as many blobs as possible, and don’t let them escape through the top of the room!

Aim with your mouse and click to shoot.

You’ll have to tie two blobs together to stop them. The first time you shoot, you’ll stick one end of the grappling hook to a blob. Your second shot will grapple another blob. Once two blobs are tied, they’ll be attracted towards each other until they get smashed out!

The farther away the two blobs are, the more points you’ll score!

And, each time you manage to smash additional blobs when the two are attracted towards each other, it’ll double the points you just scored!

Play the Game

From a technical standpoint, this time I was away from home and didn’t have access to my gamedev computer. So, I borrowed a laptop and I attempted to make a game using only online-based tools (without installation required). So, I actually created this game with Scratch 2.0, a tool designed to teach kids how to program. I wanted to see if you could make Jam games with it too – I hope you’ll enjoy the result.

 

Play “Blob Catcher”

Breakout meets Top-Down Shooters!

In Shootanoid, you'll have to "guide" balls using a laser gun so they break all the brick walls! But beware, if you get touched by the balls, you'll die!

I had very few time for this compo, so my entry was made with only ~15 hours of work in total. Everything is made with TIC-80, the fantasy console I used for the first time (LD are great to discover new tools).

It was a very pleasant experience to use TIC-80, it's a wonderful piece of software. I never thought I could build something from scratch in 10-15 hours with a tool I didn't knew before the compo!

My entry lacks a bit in the audio and graphics area, but I tried to focus on the gameplay due to the limited time. There are 10 levels in total, with a lot of multi-ball walls destruction!

Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy my "Breakout+Top-Down Shooter" mashup: Play Shootanoid

If anyone want to try want a "Breakout / Arkanoid" mixed with "Top-Down Shooter" mechanics, here comes Shootanoid

The game is quite simple, as I had to wrap it up in under 15 hours. It was my first attempt at developing a game using a "fantasy console", in this case TIC-80.

What's a "Fantasy Console"?

I discovered TIC-80 during the compo, and I very pleased with it. It's very easy to develop a game as the software comes with all the required editors: drawing program, map editor, sound editor, code editor (in Lua, Javascript or Moonscript). There is no compile time: make a modification, press "Ctrl+R" and you're able to test the updated version instantly.

My last project was to develop a game for the SNES, and I can tell you it really makes a difference to use tools where you can see your modification in minutes (while working on actual retro consoles involves a more complicated workflow - sometimes you'll waste 1 hour just to display an image on the screen with the right palette / tileset). It enables you to have a lot of iterations, making it easier to fine tune the gameplay in a very limited timeframe.

I've seen a lot of wonderful games created with PICO-8 around here, but sadly none made with TIC-80 yet. It's sad because TIC-80 is equally easy to use, but offer a larger screen area, so why not give it a try? It's free and open source: http://tic.computer/

Play the game

And if you want a example of what can be made in a few hours for a first time user of TIC-80, you can play the game (HTML5 browser) here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/shootanoid

Dear player, we had to keep the main area of the web page to display a word from our sponsors. Sadly, it means that we are running out of space to display the wonderful game that you want to play. Therefore, we had to use the only space left to display the game: the URL address bar at the top of your browser window.

Play & Rate my game "Outrunning Space!"

How to play?

Look up at the URL bar!

You are the "X" running out from the deadly "Space" at the left of the screen.

From time to time, you'll see "o" shaped obstacles on the floor.

Press any key to jump over the obstacles.

You'll earn 1 point each time you evade an obstacle.

If you hit an obstacle, you'll fall back and will come closer to the space of the left.

Once the space catches you, you're dead!

Your current score is displayed between the two "#" signs.

About the game

Sadly, due to real life constraints, I had only 2h30 in total to work on a game for this compo.

I really loved the theme, and while I knew I had to keep the scope very small due to very limited time, I thought that it could be funny to interpret the theme as "we are running out of space in the web page to display the game, so you have to play it from the URL bar".

So that's it, "Outrunning Space!" is a very simple game taking place in the URL bar, where you have to avoid obstacles in order to outrun a deadly "Space" in the URL.

It was made in Javascript, using the location.replace() method to modify the URL display inside the browser URL bar.

Extra theme constraints

At first, I thought that the theme could be a cool way to make a "small game", as in "taking as less disk space as possible for the source code". So, there you have it: once minified (striped comments + regpack'ed) the whole code source is only 792 Bytes, so way below the famous 1KB code limit of the JS1K code compo :).

The source code is inside the HTML page of the game (due to its small size, I wrote it directly inside the HTML page, with comments and all).

Conclusion

All in all, I hope you enjoy this game despite its very "simplistic" nature (using a 1x20 display area is though!)

By-the-way, it's a Javascript game, it should work on every browser, except Safari (and maybe others) as it doesn't display the whole URL in the address bar.

I've only tested it on Firefox, so I hope it will also run well on others browsers (I lacked time to do more thorough testing, sorry!)

Enjoy!

I lacked time to do the "finishing touches" during the compo, so I've just released a slightly-updated "post-compo" version. The game is the same, but I improved the look of the "html page" presenting the game (how to play, etc.)!

"Outrunning Space" (a.k.a URL Bar Runner) is a Javascript game taking place inside the URL bar of your browser.

You can try the post-compo version of the game right here.

And you can play and rate the compo version here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/outrunning-space-1

Making new games for retro consoles is the best way to keep them alive!

So, for this Ludum Dare, I choose to create a brand new game for my favorite console: the Super Nintendo (SNES). You can play the game in HTML5 through an online emulator. Of course you can also download the ROM file to play it with any SNES emulator you want, and even on a real console if you have a Flash Cart at home!

PLAY IT HERE: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keeping-snes-alive

The game itself is quite simple: you have 4 SNES laying around, but only 1 cartridge of a homebrew SNES game (Yo*Yo Shuriken, a SNES game I made in 2019 that was released on cartridge like the old days). Using the button you can make the cartridge "jump" so you can move from one console to another. Be careful no to miss a cartridge slot, else you'll fall and it's a game over. And do let the SNES without game play for too long, or it's a game over too! :)

The game was programmed in C using the wonderful PVSNESlib. The music was composed by XRACECAR and is used under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NS-SA licence: http://battleofthebits.org/arena/Entry/7049+Bytes+of+Memories/25393/

A fun fact about the audio: the "shlak" sound that you hear when the cartridge enters a console is an actual recording of the noise made by the SNES power button (recorded directly from my childhood console, still alive and kicking after 30 years!)

I entered the Jam as the music wasn't made by myself, but besides audio (which I opted out), all the others part of the game where created from scratch during the event!

All in all, I spent about 10 hours in total making the game (I wished I could have more time, but real life isn't always as you hoped).

Last but not the least, the full source code is included. I spent about 2 additional hours cleaning up and commenting the code, as I hope it'll help you to start making new SNES games too!

Enjoy!

PLAY IT HERE: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keeping-snes-alive

There is less than a couple hours before the official end of the Jam. Having finished and submitted my entry, I can now relax myself while playing the new SNES game I made during the event:

If you want to try the game on emulator or on your own console, you can play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keeping-snes-alive

P.S.: My current record is 01:12