Phew! This was my first Ludum Dare and what an enjoyable experience it was!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/montezumas-revenge

Outside of work I only have little time left to do the art I really want. The timeframe, stress and my dedicated teammates @blacklambert and @theforceluke created exactly the environment I needed to create some assets I really wanted to do and try a new artstyle. Normally I work in 3D and only do 2D stuff primarily to draw up concepts for my next planned model and only tried pixel art once or twice before, but while liking it, I never tried to do more with it, until this jam.

After a few hours of brainstorming, talking through concepts and basic drawings of possible level layouts we had our game. Our 2 player sacrifice competetition: Montezumas Revenge!

The spare time I had on the first day was probably not used optimally. I dedicated almost the whole rest of thefirst day to only finding a character I liked, but I had a lot of fun drawing the various concepts. The decision to only draw in greyscale was mostly because I only wanted to explore different silhouettes, but while drawing the black and greys grew on me and we decided to keep the characters that way.

At the evening of the first day I also wanted to start animating my character. I did some 2d Animation with Anima2D before and wanted to try Unitys new 2DAnimation package, and oh boy, it is bad! Trying to work with that package was so clumsy. Because I wanted to use Unitys own Sprite Atlas for packaging, I had split my character in parts. This however meant that every time I wanted to add a bone I had to jump between the different sprites in Unitys sprite editor and between the sprite editors submenus, which save after every menu change, and every step took far too many clicks and even more time. At this point I was honestly already quite heated. The final straw was trying to build a sensical rig with this abomination of loose bones. Under the stress of the jam and the awful state of the 2DAnimation package at the moment I quit early that night. I really hope that the package improves in the future, but for now its only purpose was to teach me a lesson: Don't try to learn new stuff in a jam! Next time I will stick to methods I know better. Experimentation is fine, but trying a whole new tool which is still in development was too much for me.

The second day went smoothly. I created all off the animations for our little sacrifices and the animator. I am also somewhat unfamiliar with the animator and it shows. It is an abomination of connections going all over the place, crossing each other and being impossible to follow. But while it may not be pretty, the setup went smoothly and we had fully animated characters on the evening of the second day.

What I did between that evening and the deadline is kinda a blur. On Monday I had to work which took some time, but I still managed to create two cutscenes of our sacrifices paying with their limbs for their failure of sacrifing enough to the gods. I am quite pleased how they turned out. The header gif is a little teaser. If you want to see the whole thing you will have to play our game ;)

If you want to test our game, you can find it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/montezumas-revenge

All in all this was a great experience and I want to thank my teammates @blacklambert and @theforceluke again. Without them I would have never participated and would have missed this experience.

Cheers to all the other participants! We all created some great stuff last weekend!

• Anze

Jam is going strong so far. Extremely happy with the visuals of the game! Please take a look at the video and tell me what you think.

https://streamable.com/519qfe

And a Screenshot:

I am extremely happy with how the game turned out! But while I enjoy my entry very much, I feel like it will suffer in a game jam format. The game is obtuse, intentionally so, but this also means most people will probably quit before they understand the game. Maybe if some people are interested I will write on that later in more detail.

If you are intrigued, you can play it here.

Or check out the page here.

Now with a Windows Build!

If you are intrigued, you can play "The Icarus" here.

Or check out the page here.

My girlfriend did the mission logs and did some extensive research for the short timeframe we had. If you are intrigued about what inspired our submarine, here is a short text from her telling you about the Daedalus:

A short history of (our) submarine: Submarines have a long history. Our submarine is inspired by the Ictíneo II, one of the first machine powered submarines and the first air independant one, launched 1864 by Narcís Monturiol, who lend his surname to the explorer of our game. It of course did not have a sonar or communication system, flares or the cababilities to withstand the forces of deep ice cave exploration. The real Ictíneo II could only dive 30m deep and had air reserves for up to seven hours. Nevertheless, the design was revolutionary and paved the way for inventions, which now make the deepest sea trenches reachable. Wow!

If you are intrigued, you can play "The Icarus" here.

Or check out the page here.

I have a confession to make, I don't actually know how sonars work. I just tried to replicate how I felt about sonars. You can find out what my sonar makes you feel by playing my game. Hopefully it feels like a hot chocolate after a hard day of work in front of a fireplace on a rainy day. But probably it will feel like spooky chocolate after a spooky day in front of a spooky fireplace.

If you are intrigued, you can play "The Icarus" here.

Or check out the page here.

The last game jams I participated in on my own I always told myself: "I do not want to make a narrative game!" And in the end, it almost always was. This jam started just the same and look where we are now. A game which mechanics are good on its own, but carried by atmosphere and the narration.

I am very happy with how the gameplay turned out, and as far as I can tell from the games I rated and gave feedback on so far my game is relatively unique. I am especially proud of how the visuals and the sound came together, but in the end without the great texts my partner wrote for "The Icarus" the game would miss something.

If you want to find out yourself what happened to "The Icarus" in the mysterious cave system under Greenland, try it out here!

Or check out the page here.

My girlfriend did the mission logs and did some extensive research for the short timeframe we had. If you are intrigued about the location, here is a short text from her telling you about it:

Quassiarsuk on the southern tip of Greenland was the first settlement of the Grænlendingar, established 985 A.D. by Erik the Red. Not long after, members of the Thule-people are said to have settled in the same region, being the ancestors of the Inuit Tribe of the Kitaamiut (in this area, the Kujataamiut). At some point in history the settlement was abandoned and repopulated later. You ask why? Well, "The Icarus" might have an answer for you.

If you are intrigued, you can play "The Icarus" here.

Or check out the page here.

My girlfriend did the mission logs and did a great job at researching to make the game believable. If you have wondered about our squids, here is a short text from her about those cute little squishers:

Have you wondered, which of the fascinating squid species inspired our white, glowing squids? We took inspiration from the tropical, shallow watered bobtail squid, on which skin bioluminiscent bacteria grow and the Vampire Squid, a deep-sea creature discovered on one of the first deep-sea explorations (the Valdivia Expedition) by German teuthologist Charles Chun. Chun has also discovered the squid in our game - or maybe it was his father, as the Valdivia Expedition took place about 30 years after the Journey of the "Daedalus".

If you are intrigued, you can play "The Icarus" here.

Or check out the page here.

The Daedalus sets out to find the Icarus, a submarine lost in an unexplored cave system under greenland. So far no clues of why it never surfaced again have been found. But now, after a years passing, some waymarkers left by the Icarus on its exploration have, giving the first reference point for the Daedalus to start its rescue mission. Embark now into the icey depths, * your vision restricted to only what your sonar can make out. *

If you are intrigued, you can play "The Icarus" here. Available for Windows and Web.

Or check out the page here.

The "Daedalus" sets out to find the "Icarus", a submarine lost in an unexplored cave system under Greenland. But wait, why is it Icarus and Daedalus? Icarus and Daedalus are inspired by the greek myth in with Daedalus creates wings for himself and his son to soar through the air, but Icarus gets too cocky, flies to close to the sun, falls down into the ocean and drowns.

In "The Icarus" it is just the other way around and the submarine "Icarus" dives too deep, instead of flying too high. And instead of drowning, it is destroyed by getting too much air? Well, the comparison might just go so far. And now the Father embarks into the icey depths to find his son, * with its submarines vision restricted to only what the sonar can make out. *

If you are intrigued, you can play "The Icarus" here. Available for Windows and Web.

Or check out the page here.

* What are some of your favourites you have played this jam so far? Share them in the comments. Preferably games with not too many/not enough votes. Only games you didn't work on. *

In no particular order:

Awfully Good Pizza

This game has the most expressive animations I've seen this jam. I love them!

Downward Frog

I love the pixelart in this one, it is just so clean, and the eels are super scary!

Scython

If you are a sucker for TDs like me, you should play Scython! Nothing more needs to be said.

I am super tired and can't think of anything interesting right now, so here is the basic pitch. You are in a submarine delving deeper into a pitch black cave searching for the lost submarine "Icarus. * You can only see what the sonar is making out. * Can you navigate the depths and uncover the secret behind the "Icarus's" disappearance?

If you are intrigued, you can play "The Icarus" here. Available for Windows and Web.

Or check out the page here.

Some people where wondering how I did the visuals in my game, and oh boy, let me tell, I wasn't smart about it.

The playerobject and what is visible to the player are at entirely different locations. I didn't want to deal with disabling mesh renderers and excluding stuff from being rendered, so I solved that by just moving the camera far enough away with a very short clipping distance. Of course just excluding some layers from being rendered by the camera would have been a far easier and smarter solution. Because of my setup I had to recalculate a lot of stuff at the cameras position to make is visible, overcomplicating a lot of how the visuals work and ddditionally it made a lot of stuff to add impossible.

For example, I wanted to add more functionality to the flare: When using the flare I wanted to send out one "spherical sonar beat", giving an actual three dimensional look of the environment for one beat to make navigation easier. But with my convoluted system there was just no easy way to add that.

Here is a gif of how the game looks in the editor, with a view of the actual player object and what the camera sees. Here is the gif as a video in higher resolution

If you have any question about my game and its systems feel free to ask!

If you are intrigued, you can play "The Icarus" here. Available for Windows and Web.

Or check out the page here.

My girlfriend and I are playing your games on stream. Join here: https://www.twitch.tv/poweranze

Heya, my girlfriend and I are streaming games and give feedback. If you want us to check out your game, come join!

* Multiplayer games especially! *

https://www.twitch.tv/poweranze

As I am currently looking for work and am pretty proud of how "The Icarus" turned out, so I wanted something to quickly show the game off, so I created this trailer. Mind you, video cutting is not my strong suit, but I think it turned out decent enough. If you have any input on the trailer, I would be very grateful for your feedback!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLk5Q82iRHk

If you are intrigued, you can play "The Icarus" here. Available for Windows and Web.

Or check out the page here.

Hey there, my girlfriend and I will play your games once again!

You can submit your game here!

And join the stream here!

People in Chat will be favoured!

Hello hello, me and a friend are streaming Ludum Dare games now! Wowie.

So if you have a game you want us to check out and get some live feedback! Especially if you have a multiplayer game :3

Join Here

https://www.twitch.tv/poweranze