Hello friends, it’s my first Ludum Dare, hopefully not last. Good luck, have fun!

Now with 100% more cows

Floodtown, after 18 hours, including sleep and a lot of doing nothing. The more I think about it, the more I realize this game might not be most exciting game of all time, but I think it's fine for my first Ludum Dare.

Floodtown, 24.5 hours after first idea for it. Now that it is mostly playable, I find it better than I expected it to be, although it's still far from state of the art (especially source code). Most of the 2nd day I will spend on finishing touches, and sounds, which will be something new for me.

In Floodtown, player is tasked with earned the biggest amount of money possible, while Floodtown is being, well, flooded.

Hope your projects are going well too!

Hello everyone!

I decided to join Ludum Dare 42, my first one, 4 hours before it began. I was on impulse, but I don’t think I regret that decision. My game received rather positive comments and I think many players enjoyed it.

But now, after 2 days of rest, I think it’s time to analyze what went good and what went bad. So here we go:

Good things:

• Gameplay loop was enjoyable. To maximize earnings, player must constantly readjust positions of their buildings, which requires constant attention.
• Overclock system allows player to breathe for a short moment, only to make game faster and more alive. Combined with changing global bonus it makes game more alive, and not only „place and forget”.
• Many players found graphic design to be rather good, but most of all clear and consistent.
• Game is relatively bug-free (only two bugs that I know of, with one already fixed for next release). Floodtown fits „Running out of space” theme very well

Okayish things:

• Floodtown does not use any popular game engine, but rather is written in very simple Java, using mainly Graphics2D library. It allowed me to do whatever I want, as long as it’s simple. But that also means that game will not run as fast as C++ code and I had to do a lot of optimalizations on my own.

Bad things:

• Performance of Floodtown was suboptimal on low-end devices (but the game didn’t really require high framerates).
• Some people who didn’t get how the game was supposed to be played, could be lost relatively easily.
• I’m not good at creating sound effects, so some of them (waves sound) were bad and distracting.

What’s next?

I’ve already started rewritting most of the internal code, as I want to fix it first. Then, I plan on adding at least settings menu and tutorial to make game easier to understand.

Also, * thanks to all of you, for playing Floodtown. * I think it’s my best game to date.

If you haven’t played it yet, you can do it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/floodtown

Including no new mechanics, same bad sounds, but tons of optimizations and new features (if by tons of new features you mean settings and basic tutorial). Also, now houses use solar power because of balancing.

If you haven't played it yet, you can do so, by downloading the game here:

https://sita.itch.io/floodtown

or on the ldjam page:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/floodtown

(includes original version for unbiased reviewing. Also, love how simple fixes and some new features took me entire 17 days)

Hopefully arriving within the next 8 hours.

Managed to deliver on time. Hopefully without major issues.

Good luck to everyone!