This is my first Ludum Dare.
 
 I will use my entry to showcase my music production talent and get a taste of video game development.

Professionally, I am a Web Application Developer for a Financial Trading company and will appreciate the change of pace.

For a taste of my music visit: http://www.soundcloud.com/DJSakamura
 
 Good luck to all

The first thing I think of when I see the word “alone” is fear, darkness, loneliness, or survival.

Immediately, I wanted to create a horror game with creepy music and sounds that would drive up the wall.  However, I feel as if that is too obvious of a method to include the theme into the game.

Then, I thought of another idea: What if the object of the game was to achieve the theme?

Surely there must be some scenario I could follow.

If I can’t make the deadline I’ll join the JAM

I am very exhausted while I’m blogging this so please bare with my poor grammar, syntax and spelling.

I’ve been waiting a long time to get the opportunity to make a game based on being the villain.

I want to make a game that shows that it is sometimes great to be the bad guy. Force others to your will or help them get to their desires to bring them to their destruction.

“You are the villain” of a local town set in the age of mythical creatures and heroes.  This reminds me of a similar game from the called Tecmo’s Deception. You play the role of a prince that was blamed for the assassination of your beloved king. In your desperate plea for help at your execution a dark force give you another chance. You take this opportunity to live long enough to seek your revenge on the ones who betrayed you while taking and killing the souls of heroes and curious characters who enter your castle.

I wanted to build on this idea by taking what I liked about Deception

• You lure “victims” into your castle while they’re “visiting” you torture them to death until you capture their soul
• It utilizes a stats system to determine dodging and other abilities
• You can build new rooms and set traps for your prey
• You can create your own monsters

and improve where it failed the most:

• Trap placement wasn’t fluid and activating traps is very tedious
• There is no motive for killing intruders for gold since most intruders are worth more for Mana Points since this allow you to place more traps
• You never seem to run out of mana. There should be more opportunities to consume mana
• The AI just follows you into traps. Not much of a challenge since this is the only way to get them to get into trap ranges
• No autotraps or tripwires. Just lay traps, wait for them to step into trap range and then activate. Very tedious and boring since to set traps you have to go into a special save room.
• It’s a First Person shooter with strategic elements.
• You’re defenseless
• There’s no incentive for the AI to try to stop you through other means: Loot the castle, destroy your soul gem, rescue a trapped soul/maiden.
• The music is terrible
• It has ninjas

What I would love to see:

• More opportunities to interact with the nearby town: Hold someone hostage and demand a ransom, capture a maiden, capture the children
• Better objectives other than kill the visitors
• Player is armed
• Traps that can be tripped upon (making it more of a challenge since you don’t control the trap being sprung)
• AI that will try to loot your premises if you don’t deal with them in time

So what’s next? I will collect my ideas and see if I can develop a simple of concept of this improved game.

I’ll be laying in the bed now. Half awake and ready to sleep.

 The player (in green) just set an arrow trap (red NO sign) while another intruder enters (in red). Nothing is final and this is just to provide a placeholder until I get the game functional with more resources.

The name of the game is Clementia Ratio. Above is a sample layout of how the main screen of the game would look like. Now that I have an idea on how the user will interact with the game it’s time to start programming.

Getting some progress going. First time getting the render to work the way I want. Here’s what I’m using for this project

• Java – LWJGL
• Eclipse Juno – IDE
• Gimp – for creating sprites
• Reason + FLStudio – Sound and music creation

I will be taking a 1-2 hour break since my neighbor has asked me to do some work for him.

This time I have worked on my skills and hope to have something tangible!

There are real monsters and there are fantasy monsters. Here is a list of a few monsters I have thought about:

1.  Politician – You are an alien from another planet and have come to earth to prepare the planet for conquering.  To help with your plans of world domination you try to become president of the United States. However, because of your hideous natural form you have to take on a disguise.  You disguise yourself as a toupee and mind control a candidate who is running for office.  The candidate has access to plenty of resources and seems to gain popularity as he continues to say the most meanest ignorant things.
2. Colossal Creature – You are a creature who is very hungry and misunderstood. All you wanted was something to eat but these little pests keep bothering you and preventing you from getting food.
3. Final Boss – A nearby town has had enough of your shenanigans and seeks to put an end to your life. To survive you must defeat all challengers while continuing to grow your power.

I’m leaning towards #3 since I have an idea of how the game play would work. #1 would require a lot of dialog but could feature some unique game play. #2 Seems to be more of a comedy.

Design doc!

I have started work on the over world map.

Overworld objects!

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I’m starting to have a feeling I may not complete the compo in time. However, I’m learning a lot more than I expected.