Post-Jam Wrap-Up
Now that it’s all settled down a bit (and I’ve slowed down on rating all your excellent games) I thought I’d thank everyone who has played/rated/commented or tweeted me about this game. I really appreciate all your feedback and support, it really means a lot to me.
This was my second Ludum Dare and much like last time, it was a lot of fun, this time though, it went significantly smoother. I had an idea I was happy with very early on and stuck with it, which is what you see before you now. I think the key to this time’s success was the simplicity of the idea coupled with (in my opinion) the satisfactory feeling of obliterating ships, last time my scope was way out, causing me to have to can the idea half way and start afresh. This time my scope was almost spot on allowing enough time for the entire game to be finished in the first two days. The third day (after a split second decision) I decided to recode (Due to browser constraints) the entire game for HTML5 and release it on a platform I had never attempted to develop for before. Note to self: Although it’s good to try new things, don’t try new things while in a games jam. But I still managed to release an almost full version of the game on HTML5 in less than 14 hours, which is something I am very proud of.
Still having a few hours left on the third day I decided to add something I have wanted to do for ages in a game; Orchestra Mode.
Orchestra mode for those whole haven’t played it, is basically the same game but with unlimited health, the game runs in slow motion (with variable game speeds) and has some of my favorite classical musical pieces playing with all other sound effects removed. It has 10x the ships therefore 10x the destruction and is my favorite thing in the game by far. It’s just a time killer, it has no end and no point to it but sometimes it’s nice to just sit back and admire the mayhem without having to worry about health.
A few people have suggested that I further development on the game and expand it into something bigger/better, I probably won’t do this despite the amount of fun I’ve had creating it, simply because I’m really happy with it in it’s current state and it was never meant to be anything more than a bit of fun. I may release an android/iOS version of the game if the controls feel right when I get to messing around with it later this week (and with that may come a few new enemies) but as it stands this is probably going to be the final state (with a few bug fixes) .
Thankyou again to everyone who has played, double thanks to anyone who has voted or commented. If you have a game and want me to play it, send me a tweet and I’ll be more than happy to give it a play and a rate.
Until next time.
-Shaw
