Hi.

This was my first Ludum Dare, and I dare (get it?) say it went fairly well!

I made Polygonal Expansion, a strange rhythm-based game pre-loaded with a single royalty free song that hardly manages to maintain tempo.

Anyway, I had so much fun coming up with an appealing concept while also figuring out how on Earth I was going to program that. I feel like this was a worthwhile experience, and will probably take part in the next one as well. Enough babbling, though. Let’s reflect.

I hated the Two button controls theme. It’s really more of a restriction than something to build off of. The first thing I did in my Post Jam Update was remove that restriction as far as I could. Growing, on the other hand, led to the conception of so many great games. Okay. Let’s continue.

Development

I came up with the concept within about half an hour of the theme announcement, and started working on the game that night. It was in working order, which is a foreign experience to me. After some sleep, I continued my work and had a full-blown engine on my hands that was — and is — more versatile and complex than anything I’ve made in the past. (Am I disappointed that some of my best programming came from 40-ish hours of work and sleep deprivation? No. Okay, maybe.) I honestly don’t know how I came up with it, but whatever. It works. Mostly.

Anyway, It was Sunday night by now, and I had school the next day. Instead of stressing myself out, I figured out how many hours I had and needed to finish up this game and submit it, then did the school thing. I got back from school, did all the things I knew I needed to do, and submitted. And got scared, as expected. The people who have played it so far seem to be enjoying it, barring a few things. I fixed a majority of them in the Post Jam Update. (Again? Really?)

The Good and the Bad

First, the good: It appears my inability to let my work fall below a threshold of quality has really helped my game stand out a little bit. I usually strive to at least make my games enjoyable to play, if nothing else. (Frankly, I can’t stand when games have awful controls or just don’t feel good to play.) I got everything I wanted to get done done in time for the jam, and ran into no real major issues at all.

The bad: Uhm… I lost some sleep? Honestly, this went surprisingly well for being my first strictly timed attempt at making a game. No real problems came up.

Finally, the Future

I feel like this game has some potential to be somewhat entertaining, but I am wary of the bias I have toward my own work. I will be waiting until after judging is over to continue with potentially developing this into a full project.

Until then, I can’t wait to see which games win what categories and if any of my top games so far will make it! Good luck and good work, everyone. It’s been so much fun playing ~1/28th of the games everyone made, and I can’t wait to play more. Truly inspiring stuff.

Happy Holidays, everybody.

-GogglesKitty <3 (Scandalous Twitter Link)

Wow, it’s already been four months since LD #34! It feels like just yesterday I was trying  my hardest to make a game in under 3 days… Anyway, I think I’m ready to try again. This will be my second Ludum Dare, so I hope I will have better luck this time!

I’ll be using Game Maker: Studio and Aseprite for coding and visuals along with Audacity for audio.

Good luck, everyone!

First off, if you haven't played Downward Frog, you should give it a go! If you want. Up to you. It's pretty short. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/downward-frog ...if you don't, that's alright. it's cool. no problem. you'll just be missing out on THIS:

And if you have, thank you for trying it! I really appreciate all the feedback and am so happy people seem to be having fun. 's all I can ask for. Thank you! :heart:

Anyway! I wanted to write a bit about the game's development and why the game is sooo slooooooooow.

Jammin'

As I'm sure was the case for many people, this jam started with several hours of struggling to put together a good idea. I ended up falling asleep Friday night with a vague idea of where I wanted to take the theme. It involved you swimming after your toy frog that you'd accidentally dropped into the pool drain. Same general concept as the final game, except you'd be able to swim in any direction and have to surface for air regularly. I liked the concept, but the gameplay seemed repetitive. Come Saturday morning, I kept brainstorming while starting to work on the weird fish art...

(the rest of them were out to lunch so i couldn't get a signature... sorry...)

By Saturday night, I'd finished most of the animations. ...but I still hadn't decided on what to do with the gameplay... My mom came in and presented me with a bunch of name ideas. All of them were centered around the frog. (One of them was "Downward Frog"!) The frog wasn't playable, but she thought it was. Poor communication on my part, the way I'd explained the concept wasn't super clear. That got me thinking though, "Why don't you play as the frog?"

(Shoutout to my parents for being really cool and joining in on the creative side of game stuff every now and then!)

Even when you're working alone, it's so, so helpful to get others involved whenever possible!

I went to bed that night with much to consider, and by Sunday morning, I had my game. You are the frog, you sink slowly, you dodge with bubbles. Cut, print. Ship it. As the deadline neared though, it was clear that if this was to be a Compo submission, it would be lacking. No sound, music, or logo to speak of... very little polish or visual flair... after some deliberation, I asked my mom what she thought. She said, in essence,

"In a day, in a week, will your decision make you happy? If you wrap up now, will you be okay with the work you did?"

I decided to go for the Jam instead.

Of course, Monday ended up being a cursed day. Cat vet appointment, car troubles, bleh. When I finally got home, I rushed to create the sound effects and music, threw everything together, and submitted the game! ...juuust as it seemed like my computer was about to give out on me. As the game was uploading, my mouse pointer started flickering and a green line appeared on my monitor. Talk about stressful. It's fine now, I guess. Who knew technology could be moody?

It all worked out though! I'm happy I took the extra time to make the game the best it could be. It was absolutely worth taking it slow. Did it still involve rushing things a bit at the end? Yes. I get that there's some heavy-handed irony in writing a post about taking it slow during a game jam of all things, but hear me out! Of course deadlines exist. Things need to happen at some point. Given the chance though, it's worth taking the time to get things right.

Slow Fallin'

Downward Frog is a slow game. Incredibly slow. Glacial, even. There's some intent behind that, but it also just happened that way. Something that struck me at the end of development was the way this game straddles the line between peaceful and melancholic. The way you just slip into the pool, the lackadaisical drifting out of harm's way... it's... tranquil. There's no rush. No need to hurry. It's just you, some strange fish, and a really deep tunnel.

What's at the bottom? Doesn't matter. How quickly can you get there? Not important.

What is important? Keeping yourself alive and well. Making sure you're stocked up on bubbles in case something comes up.

I'm sure you could derive some meaning from that...

Well anyway, thank you for reading all this. And hey, if you submitted a game, congratulations! Try not to worry about the rating you get, the most important parts are learning and having fun (and playing games, of course!). Making a game in a weekend is a sure way to do just that.

Thank you for your time! You could follow me on Twitter if you want. I don't post too much.

'til next time, stay froggy!

-GogglesKitty