I haven't gotten a working prototype my self imposed deadline, so I'm quitting while I still have some time of the weekend left.

Here's a yellow robot that never got turned into a sprite:

I hope everyone else gets finished!

I haven't managed to complete my last few attempts, but I'm feeling good about this one. Most of the final round themes look either good or at least OK.

(I wish I'd been able to enter LD47, I really liked that theme!)

I'll be using Unity. Depending on whether I go 2D or 3D, I will be using some mix of Blender, Krita & LDtk for my graphics and level editing. I usually never get as far as adding audio, but who knows? Maybe the Ludum Dare Imitone beta edition will get a run.🎵

I'm still brainstorming the theme, but in the mean time I've made progress on coding. Level loader and display working. Starting on character control. Probably going for a platformery type of thing set underground.

I'm going to take a break to ponder and pin down some definite ideas for the game.🤔

I'm having a wee bit of trouble with my physics, so it'll be a rip out and start again situation. Might make it for the Jam.

This little fellow won't behave himself and treats gravity with disrespect

They make a great whooshing sound as they fly by.

I was aiming for the Compo and only just got finished in time for the Jam by the skin of my teeth.

My game is barely a game, but at least I finished this time!

Sadly I couldn't get the WebGL build to run, so its only Windows.

https://shockeye.itch.io/go-deeper

My suggestions:

I hope none of these cause me to get given the "Bad Theme" lecture!

It goes without saying, the theme sucks, so I made very little progress at first yesterday as I pondered the theme. I don't want to do the obvious magical thing, but also "process server rogue-like" wasn't much better.

So I spent some time setting up my project boilerplate as thought about it. Eventually I thought it could be about a some sort of alien portal preparing for an invasion - you know, something that Jodie Foster might have been tricked into building in a darker version of Contact.

And then someone mentioned that the theme reminded them of Smash Bros. I have no real idea what that is, I'm not a Nintendo guy, but I suspected immediately that some sort of Tag Team may be involved. Tag Team! That's also a sort of summoning, init?

So now I have my complete idea: Robot that hack alien tech to 3d print different robots to solve puzzles to stop alien portal from being constructed.

Tools: Bevy engine, LDtk level editor, Krita graphics.