So after skipping LD34 and LD35 I’ve finally participated again. I was afraid not to make something as fun as I made for LD33, but my wife inspired me to overcome this obstacle and make a freakin’ game =)
And here it is – Tomb Robbers.
My experience with both Unity and C# grown a lot since the last year, so I thought it would be a lot more easier to make something more complicated.
I couldn’t be more wrong =) Idk if Tomb Robbers is a better game than Zombie Rush or not, but here is a lot more content in here actually. Not graphical, but logical.
What went right:
1. Finite State Machine. I used State pattern for the first time in the way I liked it (read: without huge switch-case). Every state for every entity has its own logic and can be easily changed without any changes in other code. Raiders have pretty complicated FSM (walking, climbing, hit, dead, stunned etc.), but every trap have its own state set either, but a simpler one (ready, acting, reset).
It’s the most righteous decision I made in this LD since it was a pleasure to implement separate logic for every trap.
2. Gameplay mechanics. I’m sure I nailed it the second time ) Again, the game feels good, offers some satisfaction for the player and some tactical and strategical challenges which is good in term of replayability. Yeah, I know, not many people played it more than once, but personally, I played it about 20 times finding the most optimal strategy. And it was fun.
3. Visual accents. I’m not very happy with the visuals, but in was a total lack of time for it, and it still works well. Traps and raiders are highlighted enough to see them easily.
What went wrong:
1. No goal. Again. Maybe it’s because I’m a programmer and I always want to build some kind of system instead of player experience. This time I planned to make three levels with different themes (Egypt, Aztec, etc.) but I barely made one. And of course no win state, like in good old times ) Ancient times.
2. No narrative. It relates to the previous issue, but I want to separate it. I’m sure for the next LD I’m going to make something heavily narrative-based. Not sure if I will succeed, but it’s what I really want to learn.
3. No sounds. Epic fail. Hadn’t got time to add even a single sound. Game lost a lot of depth because of it.
I also hadn’t got time to polish the game overall. Wanted to add some funky FX, screen transitions etc, but again – run out of time completely.
I hope to do better next time.
And guys, thank you all for the feedback! It’s the most important part of LD =)