I am really tired. It’s 6am where I live.
I’ve added a couple of things to my game. I think this will be the final version as I don’t much more time to work on this but I’ll probably work on a post-jam version.
If I don’t make any other edit to this I’ll submit this build to the jam.
Here you can try it out:
// EDIT: Here is also a version of the game running on Android.
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ludum dare so awesome!
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This is the fourth time I’ve participated on a Ludum Dare, but the first going solo. It was a big challenge as I would have to make everything and I wouldn’t have the support of an awesome team.
First Day
beer beer beer bere brre beretb mdsamda bwqe IDEA!
The first night I was preparing myself with some beers and something to eat, just anxious about the theme. Once the theme was announced I was a bit disappointed, I wanted afterlife to be the chosen one, but at the end an artist is formed by challenging him self.
I spent about 5 hours trying to figure out a game, I made a lot of prototypes which at the end I discarded. Finally I decided to use a very old idea I had, even before I could actually program. I thought the mechanic was very minimalistic, so I just went for it.
The result of that first 4 hours was this :
A very simple version of my actual game which had the core mechanic.
Second Day
The second day was a bit easier for me as I already had an idea, now it was just about polishing and adding more features, at least that’s what I thought first.
As the hours passed I was getting a more robust game, I’ve already added some new levels ( you could actually play with more than just 1 core ) and a couple of effects ( particles and some reduction affect on the cores ).
At the end of the day I just decided to submit my game to ludum dare, saying “yeah it’s playable” plus I thought It would be great to get some feedback before the deadline.
This was the first version of the game I submitted:
After that I just went to bed wishing the best for my game.
Third Day
After sleeping 4 hours I decided to watch how my game was doing on the comments. Great ideas as many errors and ideas were mentioned. I was skeptical about making does changes, but after more comments I noticed it was mentioned very commonly. Then it’s when I decided to just make the changes and added moving cores, this was the result:
http://apps.monkeycoder.co.nz/249/1/html5/MonkeyGame.php?width=800&height=640
I needed to give my game a name, so I just looked at my cat and thought why not call it like him. I like my cat!
origin of the name!
Last Day
The last day I only slept for 3 hours. Fortunately my friend, with whom I am developing indie games, told me to take the day to recover myself. I didn’t do that so I decided to keep working on the game. With just 10 minutes left to submit my game I sent my final version which included a couple of fixes and more enemies. I thought that would have made it a better game.
giffin’
The Good
I really liked making a game all by myself, I felt I could do anything I wanted.
I could finally do a game I wanted to do for a long time.
I believe the mechanic is very solid.
The Bad
I really wanted to expand the gameplay, after a while it gets a bit boring.
Very disgusting source code which had so many bugs.
I wish I could have added better graphics.
I wish I’ve had more time so I could have added more type of defense.
If you haven’t played my game please do, if you could rate it that would be awesome too. My cat would love you for that!
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=13148
Thanks!
Felipe
So I started really late on this ludum dare. I felt very uninspired and everything that came to my mind were dungeon and cave games.
I decided to start working on this “hack the game” idea. Felt it was a nice way of looking at “beneath the surface” theme. I still don’t have a good idea of what I am going to do with it. I am still brainstorming something.
Well, here are some screens of what I’ve got so far.
First ( about 5 – 6 hours ago )
Second ( about 2 – 3 hours ago )
Third and the most updated
Cheers!
I’ve been working all day on this game. I was able only to create 8 levels, I don’t think I’ll continue with that. Now I must focus on creating some art to make this thing pretty.
I am so tired!
Here is a small screen:
Cheers!
Just a couple of hours left and I’ve got most of the art done. Now I need to finish the main screen art, make some music and sleep. Tomorrow I have to work, damn!
Here is a small update:
Cheers!
5
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2014 at 3:33 pm and is filed under LD #29. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I am finally done! I had a lot more expectations for this game, but time wasn’t on my side, sadly. I really wanted to add music and more levels, I also wanted to take more advantage of the core mechanic.
Anyway, I feel very happy with the result. It’s my first time entering the compo, so now I feel more like an extreme developer.
Good luck to everyone! now I am off to bed, I got to work in 4 hours. shit…
My Game:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=13148
And a small gif:
Cheers!
Felipe
This is the 5th Ludum Dare I’ve participated and my first 48hr compo. Before I used to go on for the Jam, sometimes solo and others with a cool team. I experience this compo, for me, was really “extreme”. Not like the jam, were I had a bit more freedom and time, but this is good. I like to work with limits. I had a really hard time trying to figure out what I could do for the game. I decided to discard all obvious ideas I had with the theme. So I was looking into ideas and I stumble upon this really cool game called “Glitchspace“. I thought it was genius and it gave me the base idea for creating my game. I couldn’t have created a new programming language and interface in just 48 hours, so I just decided “why not just expose properties”. Exposing the properties would be like seeing under the hood of the game, seeing beneath the surface.
The First Day
I didn’t do much really. I had a vague idea for a game I started prototyping, but it didn’t feel right. It was to dull. I stayed up until 4 am working on this prototype and I just decided to discard it and go to sleep. I was just about to quit this jam.
The Second Day
I woke up at 12 pm not feeling inspired at all. Very unmotivated about not being able to find a good idea for my game, so I just continued my day as if I was not going to participate anymore. After having some dinner and watching a movie I started checking out what new games had come out and that’s when I found Glitchspace. I immediately felt inspired and motivated and started programming the base object, which I called Hackable, that could allow me to modify any property I wanted in real time. So I just started pushing the idea. This was my first result:
It was very simple, but it showed the power of what I had created. That was good for me. From now on was mostly thinking on how could I implement this into a real game.
This was a very difficult task, but finally I decide to go with a simple platformer puzzle type of game. This was my first result with it:
Then I started creating some levels. I had real hopes about making about 20 levels, but after I started drawing the tiles on my tile editor I began to feel that was far to what I could accomplish. So I just decided to go with ten. This is how the first 4 levels looked like.
After this I felt I couldn’t really get to 10 levels, specially if I didn’t have any art, sounds, or even a main screen. I just left the game with only 8 levels. Now it was time to focus on the art. I had the make a couple of iterations about this because I wanted the game to look nice, my first approach was to make something really detailed, of course this didn’t work out because of time issues. At the end I just went with a more simple style with bright colors. I thought it look good.
For me the game was done after this, at least I thought it was, until I showed it to a couple of friends and the first reaction was “the controls suck”. This was a huge problem! I had to figure out this asap! I had almost no time for fixes. I tested a lot of controls. I went from mouse wheel to on screen buttons to finally just using hotkeys for changing values. I didn’t want the player to feel frustrated about changing values, like gravity, that were huge values. At the end, I think, the controls aren’t perfect but are useable and don’t interfere much with the game flow.
The Bad
– Designing the controls was a very hard task, I think I didn’t accomplish this perfectly.
– Working solo is hard. It’s always good to have a team who can support and give instant feedback.
– I couldn’t take complete advantage of the core mechanic because of time reasons.
– No music. I was working on a track but the exporting to wav got messed up and only one track was playing so I discarded it.
– Bugs. There were some bugs I couldn’t fix because of time problems.
The Good
– I believe it’s a nice concept. I like the approach on the theme.
– I really enjoyed creating the game.
– I got some really good feedback and I feel this is a game mechanic I can explore more in depth for a future idea.
Thanks a lot!
You can play my game here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=13148
Cheers,
Felipe.