My LD entry had multi-player in mind from the get-go to eliminate the need for two things; interesting single-player mechanics that required levels to show off, and AI that needed to work appropriately under most circumstances. Obviously multi-player has it’s own downfalls, but those usually come from connection issues which for me are a lot easier to work around, and I only had to make one mechanic that worked well in a multi-player environment.

I actually had my first working prototype (mostly bug free as well) after approximately 22 hours (can’t quite remember), which I’m really happy about. I usually struggle to think of a neat concept but the theme was extremely workable with regards to the type of game you wanted to make. The idea of making a multi-player battle arena game came fairly quickly (half an hour maybe), and I spent a few hours working on it before bed at 6am to solidify the idea in code.

When I resumed on day 2, I thought it would be pretty neat if I just made right-mouse launch you instead of shooting. It turned out pretty well, and even introduced a bug that can be used to drop through platforms! That second mechanic completely changes the dynamic of the game, and makes camping a bad idea instead of a good one. Plus, I can use it to design levels that have no stairs or are almost completely open, which makes the game play faster.

A massive issue (in my opinion) with making a multi-player game is hoping that enough people try out your game at the same time, it doesn’t work if you get a slow stream of people each finding that nobody else is playing it and promptly leaving without enough info to rate the game. There’s also getting people to connect to each other, which I worked around, causing that issue to shift to needing to keep a server running 24/7 for the next 3 weeks (or getting people to play it when the server is up instead). I can’t possibly expect myself to be able to run the server needed for the game to work for the entire 3 weeks, but I do hope I manage to keep it up long enough that everyone gets to try it out, and hopefully they bring friends to help them try it!

Here’s a gif showing the basic mechanics:

Here’s a gif showing the platform drop bug:

Hopefully that gives you an idea of how it works!

After looking through the game list a couple times, I really can’t find any that interest me. I don’t want to vote because of bias against them, so I’ll have to whore for votes instead (only at 17 so far).

[edit] To clarify, I have nothing against any of the games in particular, I just started out a bit strict in what I was looking for in the list. I’m sure there’s a lot of good games in there that I missed.

I’ll be playing my game (Bit Raiders) for a while, and since it’s multi-player this means you’ll definitely have an opponent this time if there wasn’t any for you last time. This tends to be an issue, as people will only wait for a couple minutes before looking at other games, so hopefully this also helps get ‘fairer’ ratings, if that even means anything.

I’d like to not whore out like this, but I really need more votes and can’t bring myself to vote on other games. I’ll take a look at the game list a few times in the next couple of weeks before voting ends to try and strike a balance with any votes I get.

Also, if you do come, make sure you check the controls. Half the people who played didn’t seem to know that either you can charge shots, or that right mouse propels yourself instead of firing. There’s also tips there, to elaborate things you can do and how some things work.