Hi everyone,

my name is Twan. Together with Julien I developed Blood Rite for this Ludum Dare 44.

Blood Rite is an actiony-puzzley game where the player starts in an arena filled with traps and obstacles. Looking for an honourable death, the player has accepted to join a ritual of his people where people are wounded with a cut and try to collect the skulls of 3 that have failed before you and bring them to the altar.

Using a time mechanic where time only moves as the player moves, the game becomes a bit more puzzle than just avoiding obstacles.

I wanted to do a write up of how our gamejam went and share some of the WIP things from along the way of our 72 hours. We're really curious as to what you think of our jam game, so let us know in the comments what you think of it:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blood-rite-1

Team

Julien (Code, music and SFX) & Twan (Art, animations, menu and writing)

Tools used:

• Construct 3 (all code, using the visual scripting language)
• Piskel (all in game art and menu animations)
• Paint.net (menus & letter as game intro)
• Reaper (music)

Game Jam Progress

Getting to know each other

Julien & I met a few days before the jam on crowdforge where he had set up a team wanting to make a 1-bit game. We had a short talk, introduced our previous (jam) work and decided we could work together. As I had never done any pixelart before, especially 1-bit pixelart on a very low (16x16 pixel) resolution, I spent a little time in my lunchbreak before the jam to see what was possible and what things totally not. Here are some of the first characters I made to learn more about the technique.

I shared them with Julien and he linked me to some great tutorials on the subject which I then watched to further orientate myself.

Day of the jam

Brainstorm

Our first thought associations of the theme were about gambling. We talked about that Justin Timberlake film where you need to buy time to stay alive and coin dozers where you put in so many coins, just hoping for a few to fall out on the other end.

We quickly moved over to a story/setting something where a big boss was controlling you and the your life away to make money. He wouldn’t care about you, if you dies, he’d just hire a new person. Trying to find a mechanic which was not about killing, we talked about trading away body parts in a certain order to make the most profit for this boss.

Julien came up with the idea of that time is money and movement takes time, so why not play with time, movement and currency. We decided on a bleeding mechanic where you need to find the optimal route somewhere to survive and get to the end. The boss had thrown you in this “maze. This seemed to fit what was possible in the 16x16 pixel limit and was close enough to the theme that we could start and see where it would lead us.

Working Together

Working as an artist alongside someone using Construct was really great. Julien could quickly make builds and show iterations of gameplay changes and implemented art. Especially as we were not in the same room. It was easy to try out some different things, discuss directions and spot places where the art and code didn't match.

Piskel, like Construct, was a great and flexible tool. I could export seperate images, GIFs and spritesheets where needed to show something or deliver final art. Being able to show things on you piskel profile page directly was also great to show and discuss art progress. Julien was very trusting of me, so often what I drew, he would be very quick to throw into Construct and we could quickly see how

First versions

Julien made a version of the game with some cubes sliding left and right (which would later become our wild horses) and the player.

The first version of the game.

From there I sketched out the horse, a ice-skating man who could zig-zag over the screen vertically (he didn’t make it in), the tentacle and the stomper.

While Julien continued with implementing the time mechanic, and setting up the scene I worked on all the character and background animations.

Here is our character, getting thinner and thinner the more blood he loses... Poor little guy..

We discussed an ending for the level and I proposed adding a big sword in that would kill the player. I love drawing splatters, so I just wanted to do some ultra-violent thing and kill the player when they won and have even more blood on the screen. Julien loved the idea and we discussed how many the story of the game wasn’t about this big boss throwing you into an arena, but it was a holy ritual where you had to do something to be allowed to die a heroic death.

At the end of day 1. We had the game running with only the horse enemy in, some coins that you had to pick up, the player moving and a blood trail behind him. We both had no idea if this would be anything good and if we could implement all our ideas from before.

Day 2

One of the first changes we tried out on day two was how the game would feel like being played with the keyboard instead of mouse. Playing with the mouse felt great and really worked with the blood we had over the screen as it would really be everywhere. It felt very free and even when you died, you had painted a nice little painting on the floor.

Using the keyboard controls did make the game more intense as you where really controlling the character, not just have him follow your mouse. It also seemed to make the stopping of time feel less like a bug and more like part of the game.

We added and tweaked the other enemies to make work: the stomper, and a tentacle that would rise from the ground. As a little joke I also added a flower, so sometimes a flower would come from the cracks instead and would do nothing. We didn’t put too much thought into it, but when I pushed Julien to put it in the game, we immediately thought it was a great addition. It added a bit of randomness and silliness to the quite dark game.

Julien added scanlines to the game and although at first I really didn’t like them, when he accidentally changed back on a build later I felt the scanlines really made the screen more comfortable to watch. He asked me if I wanted to go back, but I immediately said no.

The final task was adding a more clear progression in the game. The coins you had to pick up didn’t fit the game, we changed them to skulls and decided to add a podium in the back that would show the skulls you had collected to show the progress. Doing this made the game finally feel like a thing. Julian had designed 5 levels and added the big sword finish and everything clicked. Both of us called it a day and went to bed with a relieved feeling.

Day 3

We had both counted on a 2 day jam, so we tried to complete everything on the second day. While I went to my work, Julien worked on music, sfx and fixing small bugs. Even though I can’t recall the small things Julien fixed in the last day, I can say that the difference between the build we had end of the second day compared with the third day was like a piece of wood with lots of splinters and rough edges, while at the end of Monday the game was so much smoother and satisfying to play.

We had a few friends test the game during the monday and decided to add the last level into the game to make it a little more challenging. Some reviews have said it was a little difficult, but both julien and I like it. It really challenges what you have learned while playing and gives you a stronger reward feeling for beating it. It’s still a relatively short game experience, but we both feel now it’s a fun and cohesive bitesize experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Music

As Julien was quite experienced making music, he took the task on him to make songs. He started with a tribal-like rhythm which we discussed. We talked about the fantastic soundtrack of “Ape Out” and how cool it was that it was interactive. Brainstorming a bit, we thought it would be great to layer the song, adding more and more drums, the further the player got in the game. When playing the game with the sounds implemented for the first time, it really blew me away how well it fit. Julien had captured it perfectly.

https://soundcloud.com/julienlussiez/blood-rite-music/s-sVZgo

Main Menu Progress

Here are a few iterations of the main menu we went through before reaching the final design. I made these in Paint.net because It would’ve taken me too long to draw everything in lots of 16x16 pixel images. I did eventually export the blood drip out to piskel and animate it in there just because I like the animation interface for that.

Conclusion

To end this post, here is a big file with all the art that we have used in the final game. Thank you for reading our post mortem and I hope to be able to play your game in the upcoming weeks!!