This message is here to tell everyone I’m participating.

I think I’ll use PyGame. Maybe OpenGL (I’ll have to learn it during the competition though).

For graphics I’ll use mspaint and maybe a camera. For audio – sfxr?

I’m not skilled in graphics, audio or game-making so it’s going to be interesting. I am however skilled in Python and networking, so it MIGHT turn out to be an MMORPG.

MIGHT. M.

You’re a Bollywood cop, fighting aliens in space!

WARNING: They will quickly evolve and develop immunities against your attacks!

DGP is ready to fight some aliens, Goa-style.

These enemies look harmless, but DGP must be careful. They evolve amazingly quickly, and before long, they will be immune to his attacks!

(Written by Hagay, the graphics guy)

This was our second LD jam (our first was number 22). Last time we tried to create an adventure game, we made all of the assets but ran out of time before we managed to combine everything into a working game.

This time around we had a much bigger team – seven core members and several more who assisted along the way with food, bug testing, etc.

We started working six hours after the countdown started (Since we’re from Israel, the competition started in the middle of the night and we wanted to get some sleep beforehand). Our first ideas were pretty generic – Evolving player, mega-man style levels, and so on. Eventually we found a good idea – a platformer with many weapons and enemies who react intelligently and evolve defenses against the weapons.

Brainstorming the game. Gal (The composer of the game’s music) helped us via Skype on the TV

After we had the general mechanics worked out, we thought of a plot which started as a joke – A Bollywood movie police officer – IN SPACE!

I went out and started sketching while the others started work on level design and writing.

Working on my trusty Cintiq 24HD

Yoni, the programmer, started coding the engine using temporary graphics from our previous game. By evening I already had the basic character graphics ready, along with the basic evolution of the enemies. The others worked on level design, animation, music and pizza.

Enemy with different evolved parts

Thanks to the amazing teamwork, we managed to have a semi-playable game by the end of the second day. By the middle of the third day we already had most of the animations, music and levels ready, leaving only some annoying bugs (mostly related to hitboxes) and polishing. However, due to the lack of time we had to remove the entire planned boss fight – Still, we had 8 complete levels, each with a different feel and gameplay twist.

Left to right: Gal (music and animation), Lihi (animation), Aviad (Writing and design)

So, what have we learned?

– We had two major bottlenecks – Animation (Walking and 10 weapons for each character in the game) and programming. the animation problem was solved thanks to the fact that both Uri (The designer) and Gal had enough knowledge to help with the animation work. Programming was harder – Yoni is an excellent programmer but he’s also only one man, and he had to work with six other people at once. This caused the game to end up with some annoying bugs due to lack of time.

– We were lucky to have a team with excellent communication skills – Bad communication can lead to lots of wasted time and effort.

– ALWAYS SAVE THE STUPID FILE oh god why do I have to redraw this entire level from scratch where’s my coffee aughh

– The best feeling in the world is playing the finished game for the first time.

6AM: Best feeling in the world (except for sleep after 72 hours of non stop work)

In conclusion, we’re awesome and we should win.

Play our game here.

Until next time!

Some work in progress art from our untitled game. Made using Aseprite and a borrowed Cintiq 12"

Art by Hagiler