Absolutely loving this though! My game is combining the genres "Platformer" with "Escape Room" for incompatible genres!

Follow me on Twitter! https://twitter.com/gamekrazzy

Check it out! ;)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/escape

Go back a few days from the beginning of Ludum 41.

The Week before Ludum 41

The date is April 14th, 2018. At this point, I had no clue what I was going to do for Ludum Dare 41, and the theme choice was down to the top 100 options if I remember correctly, However, very quickly, I had decided that whatever I was going to make for my Ludum Dare 41 entry, I wanted it to be a platformer and it was going to be made in the program Construct 2.

To ready myself for this project, I began making a rough platformer, that I might have a better understanding of Construct 2, because the last time I was working in its environment, I was working on the unfinished project, Fair Maiden, almost an entire year beforehand, August 9th, 2017.

This rough platformer was only just a practice run, and never really got past what you see in the first picture, however, without that refresher, I feel Escape would not have turned out as well as it did!

The Hours before Ludum

Having only prepared by creating a rough platformer in Construct 2, the themes were down to the top 10 choices, and I began brainstorming early.

I never wrote anything down at this point, although I should have, as that's the best way to brainstorm. I had made my choices in the vote, and was also surprised to see a few familiar options such as Light in the Dark and Floating Islands.

Is it bad to say that I looked at Combine 2 Incompatible Genres, and my first thought was I do not want to do that one?

As I continued to brainstorm though, I managed to think of something that would work for that theme as well as a few of the others, not everything mind you, but enough that I was comfortable.

The Hour of Ludum

When the theme was decided, which was Combine 2 Incompatible Genres, I had already had a basic idea of what I wanted to do, but I continued to brainstorm for about an hour as I went to grab myself Dinner.

Ultimately however, I had decided to go with my idea of an Escape Room + Platformer. This was the Beginnings of the game Escape!

The first item I developed was the player graphic. I did this because I knew I wanted my character animated, which required a bit more implementation in the player controller design. This is something I usually do when developing my games, as often it affects the level design, and the graphic design of the rest of the game.

After the player controller, I designed a simple room, where the player had to grab a key, and that key opened the first door. There were no complexities, even the key was just a grey key shaped item, with no actual graphic yet.

At this point, both the door and key were implemented, however they were not fully implemented to work, as this was just the beginning of...

The Grind

At this point in the development process, I had been working on the game for a few hours, and this is where the interesting features come in, as well as the buggy problems and issues.

The first step was to design an inventory system, as well as an interface, which would allow the player to pick up the keys, and any other items I implemented in the future to be used in solving the escape room puzzles.

This was the very early stages of the inventory system, and it worked relatively well, except for when I dropped the item, in which the physics of the item would get very wonky. (I had managed to get the feature to work, however it isn't seen at all in the final ludum submission, as there is no way to get a new item and drop the old one while playing the game)

During the development of the interface here, I also developed a working text system, that displayed text on the screen to the player visually, at about 4 frames per second, character by character.

Halfway There

About 7-8 hours straight, no sleep, constant work, sweat, blood and tears, and I was finally at a good halfway-point, or at least a good stopping point, it was around this time that I finally took the time to get some sleep, and be ready for the rest of the game's development!

The game's features included a working clock that counted down at all times, a working inventory system, keys, and locked door mechanics, and the beginning implementation of the pass-code doors.

The idea of the pass-code doors I felt strongly gave the feeling of an Escape Room, and I was excited at how well everything was going together at this point in time. Not everything in the development process went smoothly however...

The Little Problems

There weren't very many major problems that stalled development of Escape, however little problems, such as graphical errors, and interfaces not functioning properly did occur often enough. My biggest problem occurred when implementing the pass-code doors. The doors had to store all values used, and an entirely separate interface had to be used when using them. Let's just say that implementing menu-controllers isn't my strong suit, as this led to a problem with the sprite font not displaying certain characters, when it should have... Talk about a headache

The Result

After many more hours working on the interfaces, and level design, I finally started working on graphics! The Graphics overall took about the last 2-3 hours in developing Escape. This was my strong-suit, and I saved it for the last thing to do, because I prioritized my gameplay first. While I feel that I could have focused a little bit more in the gameplay, for instance the difficulty spikes are noticeable, I still think that the amount of time I gave myself to work on the graphics, was the perfect amount, and due to needing the extended time, I opted out of the compo, and instead planned on submitting my game as a Jam.

Anyways, I am very proud of the product I released to you guys here at Ludum 41, and if you are interested in trying the game out for yourself, or haven't tried it yet, you can give it a go HERE!!! The game is web-based, and requires at least a keyboard.

When you are finished playing it there, feel free to give it a rating and review before the end of the Play-Rate Games phase! You can do that HERE!!!

The game is going to get continued support, and I plan on expanding much further on the idea! If you would like continued updates and info on how this continued project is going, definitely give me a follow on twitter HERE!!!

At this point, I would also like to thank everyone for their support on this project! And everyone's support here overall! This is a great community, that I am glad to be a part of!

This is my first Ludum Dare 41, and Escape did really well!

I am not going to lie, I definitely had hoped the game would have scored better, however I am proud to share with everyone...

The Results!!!

There was definitely room for improvement on my game, and I so wish that the version I am working on currently was the version I had submitted, but alas I was not fully prepared, and could not make use of the full 72 hours that I gave myself after switching away from compo. (That will change in the future, and I will definitely be more prepared for my next Ludum Dare!)

Anyways, I will continue to work on this game, for a fully featured version in the future! I really appreciate everyone's insight and positive support!

On a side note, how did I manage to get a 2.775 in Humor when I didn't even know about Humor being a category?

Thanks again everyone!!!

If you haven't played my game, you can find the link below! (It's web-based)

HTML5 (web): https://gamekrazzy.itch.io/escape