What the title says.

Well, here we go! My first Ludum Dare! With the Small World theme, I started throwing around ideas. It ranged from tiny gremlins that live in your house, to insects. Then, after running some ideas by my mom and sister, I remembered a conversation about microscopic life forms with my mom that morning. This led to the idea of a white blood cell fighting infections inside the human body. I currently have a draft of the mechanics I want to implement for this. I also managed to get basic player movement, enemy AI, and a player death animation working. As someone who has always been more of a programmer than an artist, the art was definitely the hardest thing so far! Yeah, none of it is too complex, but I'm terrible at drawing. My goal for today is to get a working version of the game that I can submit. Once I have that, I'll post more details about how it plays.

I have something playable now in terms of one level. It would have been done sooner, if it weren't for a really easy to miss bug that plagued me for two hours yesterday. Glad I fixed it, because it was game-breaking. I currently have a win condition set up. All it's missing is a title screen and a Game Over screen. I would show some gameplay footage if I had the means to do screen capture. Didn't install the software for that ahead of time. I'll have it next time, though. For now, have a screenshot:

The gray blob is the player, a white blood cell. The red and blue things are germs inside the body. Your goal is to use randomly-spawned colored pills to power up and kill germs of the same color by eating them. You take damage if you're the wrong color or if you're gray. Pills have a time limit on how long they stay active. Today, I'm going to get a title and Game Over screen working, as well as add some additional visual effects, sound, and maybe a biological hazard that you can't kill, but need to avoid if it shows up. Feeling good about this so far!

So, for my first Ludum Dare, I actually managed to submit a game! That alone is an accomplishment! It's not as good as it probably could have been, but it was a solo project with only three days, so I'm not too bent out of shape. In addition to this being my first Ludum Dare, this is also the first game I've made from start to finish. I'm treating this whole thing as a learning exercise. Here's a screenshot of my finished project, simply called, "Cell."

I ran out of time to include anything other than a Windows build in my game submission before. Here's a link to where you can download or play the game in HTML5, for those who prefer it.

http://gamejolt.com/games/cell/252047

This is only the second Ludum Dare I've been able to commit to. Let's do this!

Unstable: Synonym: Unbalanced

Game is unbalanced in the enemies' favor. Tip the scales in the opposite direction.

I have most of the process mapped out. More to come.

I'm getting tired from the initial push, and want to come in fresh for the first full day tomorrow. So far, I think I have a decent start.

The game concept I came up with uses the word "Unbalanced" as a synonym for the word "Unstable." It's a 2D platformer where the game is unbalanced to favor the enemies. The player levels up with each enemy kill, and wins when they shift the unbalanced game in their favor, becoming too powerful for the enemies. Here's a screenshot of the player and a prototype level layout:

I'm primarily a gameplay programmer, hence the basic rectangle art. I managed to get the movement and jumping working after a pretty nasty physics bug made itself known out of the gate (because of course it did). The time I spent fixing that is why I need to step away for tonight. Still, it was a critical bug to fix early. Overall, I'm satisfied with this as a start. I have a concept outlined, a checklist for the development steps, a prototype level, and the vital platformer mechanics of moving and jumping.

More updates to come!

Minimum goal: Finish the basic gameplay loop. Further goal: Start giving the game some extra "kick."

The nature of the extra "kick" is still TBD. Let's do this!

The long and short of it is that I came in poorly prepared for this. Ultimately, time ended up being the enemy here due to trouble managing it. I also hit a wall today that ended up with my project getting messed up to the point that I would need to scrap it and rebuild it from the ground up. Finishing within the timeframe is unrealistic at this point.

The good news is that I got a better sense of my strengths and weaknesses than I had going into the jam. And I still have the my game concept that I can do something with. Not the result I was hoping for, but still valuable.

Next time, Ludum Dare. Next time...