We really took the idea of an anniversary seriously, so we aimed to create a game while drinking a lot of beer. For the sake of Ludum Dare’s next 15 years!!!

The idea doesn't sounds so right now that I'm writing it and, in fact, it made that the first day a mess. The jam started at 3:00 AM in our Time zone, so we were at a rock bar until the fateful hour. That meant that one of the team members fell in action (I won't say who) and nested in the only couch of the office.

So the remaining two started prototyping ideas on paper and blackboard until almost 10:00 AM, when they fell asleep on a table. Shortly after this event, the fallen team member woke up and gathered the other two to his home so they could sleep in a bed. During the way, they told him that they've got a great idea: something related to two tiny planets sending messages via radio frequency.

However, the afternoon came and one of the team members who took part in the brain storming awakened with his mind changed. He stated the following: 'We are thinking on complex ideas instead of focusing on a small funny concept, like an arena or something'.

And the other two agreed because ideas worth to nothing. In fact, they agreed a lot, the game would be a multiplayer arena. Also, each of one added an idea of his own to the arena concept:

1. A button would suffice to control the characters.
2. The world would be hell. A small hell, of course.

And everything went smoothly from there. We invited some friends to test the prototypes and we saw it was funny even for non-drunk people. In fact, the development was going so well, that we went to a rock concert to celebrate. They were two amateur groups, but they were really good and the beer was almost better.

The following day we polished some features and added the sound effects (the beer was really helpful for the countdown). We also added the famous Wilhelm Scream to the mix. And for the music… As our musician was in a stag party, we took the tunes from our last Ludum Dare and they fit reasonably fine, so we moved on.

As we had to work on Monday, we closed the project and spent what we could of the last day fixing some bugs and uploading it.

Maybe one day we’ll be able to add some features that we discarded for time reasons: power-ups, more interaction with the scenario and random goats.

And that’s all! You can make a game in weekend while partying! Ludum Dare Celebration completed with success!

Maybe we were influenced by Mark Brown's Game Jam (really great game design channel), maybe we are diehard fans or Sonic or maybe we felt that unifying mechanics under a single button were kind of poetic…

It doesn’t matter. The thing is that we came with the idea of a platformer that could be played using only three buttons:

1. One button (A) to move to the left. Really boring, pretty standard.

2. Another one (D) to move to the right. Again, nothing new under the sun.

3. THE BUTTON (Space) that shoots, controls gravity and, little by little, sucks the life essence from the main character.

Since the beginning, it was obvious that making the third button feel right was going to be key to the game flow (sorry for the bad joke). So we started messing with the gravity mechanic, tinkering Unity’s 2D physics variables until we reached a control system that felt good to us. It took us a good part of the first day.

In fact, in the beginning, the main character was going to float in the middle of the screen. In the end, we chose a control inspired by VVVVVV and , although our character would be able to maneuver in mid-air. This last detail really made the difference, because the feeling is more unique and, we think, more suitable for an arcade platform game. We also took inspiration from Astrorobo Sasa control.

Here is a gif from the first prototype:

From there, we got a canvas to work with. But we will talk about it in the second part: One pixel at a time

You can check Soul Gun's page here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/soul-gun

Welcome once again to this soulless post-mortem. While we were getting our main mechanic polished (you alter gravity by shooting and shooting drains your life essence) our artist (@pablodap, great guy) started looking for a graphic style which suited the overall feeling of the game.

It was clear that we would use a minimalist style for two reasons:

1. Taking the player to an era when difficulty raged wild in the video game market.
2. Time, the Final Boss of every game development.

So, our self-sacrificing artist worked on a simple palette of four or five colors. He started with the main character design and worked through there. White soon took the leading role in this insane Pantone quest, being the main component of almost every element. Luckily, the design took shape quickly. Here are the first concepts:

The eye and the particles would be critical to represent the character losing its soul. Green won purple, so purple would be the hue for enemies and spikes (BTW, the turret-like enemies fire goat eyes). Here are some examples:

Then, we needed another tone for the floors and as we wanted to represent that they do not pose a threat to the player. That’s why they have a darker green than the one used for the main character. And then… tiles!

We also used that color to represent the boxes (they got goat eyes too!), as they are only deadly when they crush you and the checkpoints, which didn’t make into the game (our idea was that you had to destroy them to be active and they could crush you like a box).

Finally, we got some nice “box art”! I think it captures the essence of the game. The protagonist being upside down is my favorite part.

Not bad for a 48 hour development. Our artist worked like a mad man (he also made some sick animations)! And that takes us to our next chapter: Sleep is the enemy. Coming soon!

PS: Remember, you can check (and play and rate!) Soul Gun here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/soul-gun

If you find yourself out of contest, you can access part I here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/soul-gun/soul-gun-post-mortem-i-a-button-to-respect

And part II here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/soul-gun/soul-gun-post-mortem-ii-one-pixel-at-a-time

Every wise jammer advised us to have some rest. Even go to the beach (we were in Málaga, at a big jam event). We took their advice into account, but… Well, you know… restless development is what happens when you are busy trying to follow wiser people’s advices. At least we slept the first night. About three of four hours, but we slept.

And that’s it.

The problem was that tinkering the mechanics to create a nice flow were tougher than we expected. Having invested time into the gravity control was a nice idea, but we needed to make some enemies (because the player needed something to shoot at) and some obstacles (because the player needed something to avoid while messing with gravity). That was a problem because if we had decided to focus on action we can have gotten rid of obstacles and if we had decided to focus on movement we could have gotten rid of enemies.

A lot of time passed while we were testing these enemies:

1. Ground enemies, because they force you to shoot/change gravity (also, they fall vertically when you change gravity).
2. Floating enemies, because they force you to maneuver.
3. Stationary shooting enemies, because they force to do both (and are so good to add pressure).

And even more time passed while testing these obstacles:

1. Spikes, because it allows us to direct the player and everyone understands that it's never a good idea to touch a spike (unless you are Super Sonic).
2. Boxes, because we wanted another element affected by gravity.

And after making all this stuff that has apparently nothing to do with running out of power (although I think our deprivation of sleep really fit this particular theme), the Soul Gun awakened. If the player shoots too much, it drains his/her soul, hence the title. And it solved the game’s main exploit: spamming the shooting button.

All of this was a lot of work for everyone and, in the top of that, we were forced to take a little break to return to our hostel just to pick up our stuff before they give the room to some other group of delusional people. They saved a day of cleaning.

Ok, that’s enough for now. See you in the next chapter, Unity matters.

And of course, you can check our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/soul-gun

Just in case you need some context, here are the previous chapters:

• Part 1 (A button to respect): https://tinyurl.com/SoulGunPM1

• Part 2 (One pixel at a time): https://tinyurl.com/SoulGunPM2

• Part 3 (Sleep is the enemy): https://tinyurl.com/SoulGunPM3

The final hours were a nightmare. Sleep issues were striking hard and, in addition, we were still creating the sound effects (we used Bfxr, a great free program for this kind of stuff), the level design needed a little polish, bugs were starting to mobilize and raise an army and Unity started to do strange things. Maybe these last two were related…

Don’t get me wrong, we love the Unity Engine and we have worked in some professional projects using it, but… Well, the game is made with the 2017.1 version using NET 4.6 experimental support. Perhaps not the best idea when you are fighting against time and exhaustion. Our programmer was stressed out (and who wasn’t?) while some scenes loaded themselves infinitely, the editor crashed while trying to load a scene like a hundred times and rebooting wasn’t fixing anything.

But somehow, we made it alive and Soul Gun is a reality. And, in top of that, we have received a lot of awesome comments from the Ludum Dare community, so we are really happy. Here’s how it looks right now:

Thanks for taking your time to read this last chapter of our post mortem. If you think Soul Gun is your kind of game, please don’t hesitate to try it out. We read and answer every comment. We are eager to improve and learn from your experience!

LD Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/soul-gun

Play right now(HTML5/WebGL)! : https://ex3.itch.io/soulgun

Cheers!

If you are looking for a frantic platform inspired by VVVVVV, Super Meat Boy and Downwell your quest is over! Soul Gun is here!

Thanks for taking your time in this final hours. The end is nigh!

THE GAME

• Play right away: https://ex3.itch.io/soulgun
• Ludum Dare Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/soul-gun

MORE INFO

• Post Mortem Part I: https://tinyurl.com/SoulGunPM1
• Post Mortem Part II: https://tinyurl.com/SoulGunPM2
• Post Mortem Part III: https://tinyurl.com/SoulGunPM3
• Post Mortem Part IV: https://tinyurl.com/SoulGunPM4

Cheers!!!