I managed to obtain a free licence for Clickteam Fusion 2.5 during the Indies VS PewDiePie game jam, so I guess I’ll be using it here so I can familiarize myself more with the program. That jam was the only other one I participated in, but I read that simply releasing a game to the public is a great way to get motivated for bigger projects so I want to participate so I can make a bigger, more serious game.
I have got all major elements of my game, BREAK, done.
BREAK takes place in an extremely tiny window (if you have a giant monitor, this game isn’t for you), but in order to follow the theme, it must all fit in this small space, right? WRONG! The title of the game refers to “Breaking” the boundaries of the game window, which is the main element of gameplay.
The player can collect gems, which make the window wider or taller (hey, no one said that we couldn’t change the size of what “one screen” is), which leads to a Metroidvania-style progression, since you need to enlarge the screen enough to reach certain areas. Other power-ups also allow access to more of the world, until the goal can be reached. What is the goal? That’s a mystery.
I had a power outage all night yesterday that made me miss the announcement, ruining my plan of looking at the theme and thinking up a game while falling asleep.
A game where you perform common actions such as jumping and opening doors by pressing the space bar, but you are only allowed a limited amount of presses for each level. You are technically running out of "space (bar presses)", so it fits the theme in a punny and clever way. The issue is that this game cannot have rebindable controls or it might no longer fit the theme.
In this post, I mentioned a game where you pressed the spacebar to perform actions and had a limited amount of presses allowed. I was worried about rebindable controls, but I figured out a solution.
In my game, you will control a robot using an old (in-game) keyboard. The keyboard is so old the spacebar button is breaking down. Unfortunately, the spacebar also happens to activate the robot's important functions. So press it too many times and it will fall off. By default, you'll be pressing the spacebar on your real keyboard in order to press it on the in-game keyboard, but even if you rebind the control, the in-game character is still pressing the spacebar so it still counts. Or at least, I hope it counts.
I tried last LD and it didn't work out too well. I'm gonna try again. I won't be abandoning too much homework. I can do Unity, pixel art, basic 3D modeling, and music.
I got my basic game mechanics. Tomorrow I'll do polish and add win and loss conditions.
I finished the basic gameplay. I just have to finish music, 3D models, and balance the numbers a bit.
Currently torn between using Godot or using Unity. I like Godot and want to practice using it more, but its web exporter doesn't work well at all, and being download-only makes it less convenient for people to play my game.
I'm hyped for the Compo.
My arsenal:
I was hoping that the winner would be "Change the genre of a classic game" and then I'd make a survival horror Pac-Man. Oh well. Being stumped for ideas and having to come up with something is part of the fun.
It only took me 43 minutes. Hooray! Now I can start working on the bigger stuff. More details coming once I have more things ready.
My game is a pretty basic shoot-em-up where you're a potion merchant and need to shoot bandits who try to steal your cargo. If you get shot, you automatically drink one of your potions to heal yourself.
Next on my list is the ability to sell your potions (lives) between each level so you can buy upgrades. You also automatically brew potions, but I might add a mechanic where you can graze the enemies' projectiles to absorb their mana and use it to make even more potions. Potion prices are randomized for each level, so there's going to be an element of gambling if you want to sell your potions now or wait for the next village.
I've had a neat idea. Because of the nature of my game, I feel that anything past the first screen could be a spoiler, so all I can say is that I currently have finished two stages. I'm not sure how many stages there will be, but there should be at least 5.
It's going well for me. I'm close enough to finishing the game. I have music, combat and crafting completed. I still haven't decided if, when, or how the game ends, but it'll probably be after I've finished one last stage of the game.
My game, Void Builder, is done. It's a bit weird, so I'm worried that people are going to get stuck.
I've been wanting to take advantage of the current global situation to make a game, but I have trouble motivating myself on my own. I need a deadline of some sort, or my brain just doesn't work at all.
Having a good game idea is the first big hurdle with Ludum Dare (and game jams in general). I haven't always cleared it in previous events, but I did this time so that's good. 🎉
There's a fire. You drag and drop things into it to make it bigger. You can shake the tree to get more things to burn. The fire will shrink if you don't put things in it. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to make the game fun. I have some good ideas for plot twists, but they won't mean much without a fun game behind them.
I finally finished my game and even make it fun to some extent, but I forgot to download the export templates for the newest version of Godot. I'll still have plenty of time to spare by the time it's ready, but it still feels bad.