I’ve wanted to participate for a long time because I’d heard so much about it, and here I am. There are so many really cool ideas and projects—it’s fascinating. And we actually managed to create something interesting, even though at first, after the theme was announced, I felt like I was banging my head against a wall. Thanks to everyone for the great games! And good luck!

Escape into the mystery. Your broadcast starts now: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/save-our-souls

I already mentioned that when the theme was announced, I was at a complete loss, unable to imagine what I could come up with. I realize it’s possible to make a game that doesn’t strictly follow the theme, but I don’t like that approach—since we were given a theme, I’d prefer to build something specifically based on it. After brainstorming a bit, Morse code seemed like the most interesting direction to take, but we didn’t settle on it, and I decided I should go to sleep and think it all over.

In the end, in the morning I tried sketching out the basics for a different concept and realized it wasn’t right at all, so I firmly declared that we would make a game with Morse code. I tested the core mechanics on a quick HTML prototype, where you also had to click through the word “Hello.”

I let a girlfriend try out this prototype, and she said it seemed pretty good, so we kept working on it. While I was porting the core mechanics over to Unity, she drew a grid map—an idea that had popped into my head right after I finished the core mechanics. I wanted to create something atmospheric, but since there were only two of us and time was limited, I thought we should severely restrict our movement, so we’d just sit in front of a computer somewhere in a log cabin, and the map would serve not only as a gameplay element but also help paint the world around us in our imagination. So, by the end of the first day, we only had a map and a nascent dialogue system using Morse code clicks.

While I was trying to fall asleep, my mind was working hard and came up with a few character ideas. Since we’re currently working on a kind of visual novel but without character art, I wanted to make them distinguishable in some way—and not just by their personalities.

That’s how the different colors came about. The basic green was reserved for the guy who explains everything to us, so I figured the leader character would suit him—a real dad figure. I immediately decided to add fishing to his backstory, and I needed to pick a callsign for all of them. Since it’s fishing, let’s go with HOOK—it sounds good, fits the theme, and is short.

Blue came next, as a more serious, technically savvy, intelligent character, and so on. That’s why he uses more technical terms. But we didn’t have time to come up with a callsign for him, so he just stayed BLUE (very much in his spirit, we thought).

Pink, on the other hand, is the opposite of Blue—she’s very sociable, rarely uses technical terms, and prefers everyday words and “UWU.” My girlfriend came up with her call sign; I think BOW really suits her. So, from a technical standpoint, I had to add the sender’s color to every dialogue. I also thought that since everyone has a callsign, it would be cool if we could choose our own. So I added a free-text field, with the option to save that name for future references.

Anya drew a whole bunch of other stuff. For example, the table texture turned out great, so we tried adding a normal map and other stuff like that to the table material (I haven't learned all that yet). The result turned out great, and I thought, why don’t we add some 3D objects? Because they’re clearly needed, considering that the camera can be rotated, albeit with some limitations.

I hadn’t opened Blender in several years, but luckily I remembered the hotkeys, so making something simple wasn’t too hard. That’s how the* little monitor was born* (but I didn’t like the display, so I just replaced it with a plain black plane). I also dug up some shader from an old, unfinished prototype project that allowed for proper lighting on 2D objects like sprites; it came in very handy. From there, everything went smoothly: Anya drew additional sprites and textures, while I tried to make something coherent out of the dialogues.

By the time I finished everything, the deadline was approaching, and a bunch of sprites still hadn’t been added. When I finished the script, I think there were only two hours left. AND THERE WAS STILL NO MENU. I was terrified. I threw together the menu and buttons as fast as I could, picked out fonts and colors, and in the last few minutes crammed all the new sprites Anya had drawn onto the scene. I built the game and that was it. Finally.

But of course, that wasn’t the end of it. Anya immediately went to test the compiled and already uploaded build, and sure enough, there was a softlock in the script. I quickly found it and fixed it. I built a new build, AND OF COURSE THERE WAS ANOTHER SOFTLOCK!

I was still under pressure from the deadline and kept frantically searching for the bug and fixing it, but that was over quickly too. And when the game finally played through to the end, I finally let out a sigh of relief. I was incredibly happy with what we’d created.

Yes, it wasn’t perfect, but it was something unique, something only the two of us had made, and there was something special about it...

It was really nice to read the first comments and see that people put in the same effort as we did.

Thank you to everyone who played our game and left a comment—it means a lot!