‘The Veiled World’ Autopsy and Post-Comp Version
I had a ball taking part in my second Ludum Dare this year. More than anything, I’ve been impressed and humbled by the great quality of games on display. I’ll write another post soon to enthuse about my favourites but first I thought I’d say a little about my own experiences.
Right from the start, I eschewed any thoughts of doing anything clever or complicated with the theme and just went for a very straightforward and literal approach. The Veiled World is therefore the story of four stereotypical characters who stop a cliched monstrosity from taking over a generic fantasy world. Once I’d boiled the story down to it’s raw materials, I found I could have a lot of fun by just being as stupid as I liked with the details.
Similarly, the gameplay is nothing new. Jump, shoot and flip between parallel dimensions. It’s hokey but I tried to make it as extreme as I could to turn the hokiness into a virtue. I think it worked in some ways better than others…
THE GOOD:
– I tried to give the combat a Vlambeer-style crunchiness and I think it worked pretty well. The screenshakes and hit physics give the right amount of feedback and make the fights feel satisfying. The variety between the four weapon types also worked well.
– The sound effects. I did everything with my mouth or objects found on my desk (tweaked in Audacity) and it worked surprisingly well. It’s amazing how forgiving the brain is when it has a visual cue to go along with a sound. The sped-up sound of a man blowing a raspberry suddenly seems the perfect noise for an axe hitting flesh once you put it in context.
– The voice-overs. I had fun with these. Most of the positive reviews I’ve had have mentioned my pronunciation of the characters’ names. 
– The art style. I’m loathe to call it art really but I think it worked out well in the context. It looks appropriately old-school and it works that way, especially with so much blood splatter on the screen.
THE BAD:
– Opinion has been divided over the control system. I quite like it but then I spent a long time playtesting and getting used to it. A lot of players have found it too twitchy and difficult to manage, which I think is fair comment. I changed it quite a lot for the post-comp version.
– Many people have found the game to be frustratingly difficult. Again, I overlooked this because I’d spent so long playing it as I went along. I knew where all the platforms were so didn’t have to put up with frustrating falls and long climbs up again as many players did. The enemy AI was also a little too vicious.
– No music. A little music would have gone a long way, I think, but I lacked both time and talent in this regard.
– The title screen and cutscenes are pretty awful. Nothing much to be proud of where presentation is concerned.
– The font is hideous. Time ran out before I could change it. That said, it has a sort of goofy appeal of it own, I guess, if you’re in a forgiving mood.
THE UGLY:
– There was a bug which caused all the gnomes to fly up into the air if you pushed the up arrow. It was stupid of me to overlook it but kind of fun when someone pointed it out to me.
Terrible font…
***
POST-COMP VERSION:
Altogether, I was happy with the way it turned out and happy enough to think of expanding it into something a bit fuller. So the post-comp version has better controls, special abilities for all four characters, an endless arena mode and a few coats of extra polish. It’s the game I had in my mind when I started but didn’t quite get to make within the time limit.
The wizard now dispenses Hot Facts
Are you not entertained?
The post-comp version is available here: http://panurge.itch.io/the-veiled-world
Any feedback will be welcomed with open arms.
5This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2014 at 11:27 am and is filed under LD #30. 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.
