This is going to be my first Ludum Dare. I’m glad to see a lot of other folks who are new to the experience all over the website. Very excited to participate, should be a ton of fun, and a good chance to sharpen up the absolutely maddening variety of skills that are used in game making.

I’m doing this to try to round out my collection of Time Crunch Art. I’ve done two 24 hour play festivals and a 72 hour film, hopefully this isn’t too much worse than those. It’s certainly new in that I’m going solo for this one. Good luck to everyone, especially to me, I’m going to need it.

Last night the power went out due to a bad storm… It cut into my spriting time a lot, but I didn’t want to get behind on the programming too, so the sprites are just boxes for now. This is the room in game, where you do all your stuff.

The game is working titled “Hephaestus”, and you play as a legendary smith making magic items for warring kings. The goals are pretty player driven, you can choose to support whomever you like. Unfortunately, due to the time lost, I probably won’t have the sprites for those characters done, so all their communication will be done via letters. Such is the nature of the beast.

The game is now working! It does things, you can interact with it, there is response. I like the second still here, in my mind its a combination of civ and zork, but then made way more terrible than those two games because I made it in a day.

But the basic premise is, in the one room you make items for customers, and then time passes, the people do things, influenced by the items you’ve given them. Some make them stronger and smarter, but some affect their behavior. If they like you, they give you more crafting materials, molds, enchanting spells, that you can use to further affect the ongoing wars.

Now what I need to do is add some end states, some things to wrap the game up. The game has to end when one guy rules the world, or if the wars end for good, or else you’ll be sitting around with no customers. After that I can add some particle effects, sound effects, music, spice things up.

My first game jam is complete! Just submitted my project to the Compo. Man, what a weekend. Fun, but very stressful.