I was hoping to make it as I'm enjoying the process and idea. :D But I think I got started too late to finish in time.

The idea is that you play as a nosy grocery store cashier. Claire is desperate to make friends on the job. You try to get into as many deeper and deeper conversations with customers as you can. But you don't want to scare them off!! Some customers are more 'tolerant' of certain topics as well, so you can attempt to get deeper faster. And you don't have enough time to only have shallow conversations before the customer leaves.

The thought of trying to get into deep conversations with strangers sounded funny to me. :laughing:

I'm hoping to still finish this. Maybe I can manage to enter as a jam instead of compo.

Fred was fed up with FedEx losing his packages so he took matters into his own hands. Created his own personal delivery service, "FredEx". Not sure how long he'll be in business though. :grimacing: :laughing:

Had a lot of fun with this one, and also plenty of frustration. Not sure if everyone experiences laughing directly into crying during the jam, but that was most of my weekend. LOL. Just happy to have actually submitted my first Ludum Dare. (I attempted one in the past, but didn't finish in time :sob: )

I originally had lofty goals of a crane type game to load your truck, (so that the stacking was part of it). Which I think would make it a little more 'sim-like', and give more player choice. As well as how much to load your truck vs actually pulling off the deliveries. I think all of that would've helped. Along with a bunch more tuning. But, 48 hrs. :laughing:

I really just wanted to make something that would make me laugh.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/fredex

There is a lot more I want to do with this post jam... but for now I posted a version with some critical bug fixes and added some touch screen controls so you can play from a mobile device.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/fredex

I tried to keep the difficulty and experience fairly close to the jam version... just with less bugs. :stuckouttongueclosedeyes: So it 'might' be more doable now. (It's -0.00000001% less rage inducing).

Eh, still... #%@& that TV.

Humble Beginnings...

At the start of this jam... I struggled a bit coming up with some decent ideas I felt excited to work on TBH. I knew I wanted something small in scope. But the ideas weren't flowing as I would've liked on Friday night into Saturday morning...

Then I hopped on Pinterest to find some reference for a few ideas... and came across some images of the cutest food 'creatures'. I loved it. I mean... look at this stuff! It's TOO adorable! :openmouth: :hearteyes:

That springboarded the idea of controlling these little 'Bobas' in some Boba Tea... trying to avoid getting sucked up in a straw? I thought it had a nice simple element to it, could be fun, and had a bit of surprise. So as with most things Ludum... had to just go for it, as I had already eaten too much time coming up with an idea. :grimacing: :stuckouttongueclosedeyes:

Mistakes were made...

I had just come across this really neat lattice tool for Unity by Harry Heath... it allows you to create, animate and manipulate lattices in-engine.

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/lattice-modifier-for-unity-293850

It looks amazing, and doing the jam, thought this might be a fun idea to mess with it. (I promise this post is not an ad for that tool :wink: :stuckouttongueclosedeyes: ) But definitely worth checking out if you get the chance!

So I went the 3D route... (even tho most jams I do pixel art as it's just a faster workflow for me overall and I enjoy it).

I had to just try it, and it looked really promising, so I got a prototype mocked up as fast as I could to prove it out. Then when I went to make my build, I had all kinds of issues getting a webgl build to work without crashing, and various shader errors etc. I just didn't have the experience/knowledge to figure it out in that time.

I love learning new things during LD... it's one thing I love about doing this jam, but maybe learning a totally new workflow is a bit much in that time. :grimacing:

Time to panic and redirect...

With a whole day down... I had to pivot. And just focus on what I knew. The process became fun again. This had a lot of opportunity for juicy bits and fun character animation. I'd love to continue exploring some of that polish post-jam. I wish I had more time to add further levels and better progression etc too. But it was still a fun experience and I learned a lot!

My fav part may have been making slurpy noises at my desk. :joy:

Feel free to check it out here when you have a moment! :smile:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/boba-teeny

Been playing some amazing games this jam. :raised_hands: Cheers.

This theme had me rolling :laughing: :rofl: