Setting in 3 words – check.

Concept: A resource driven travel-story of a band of vikings looting the island of Atlantis (Vanaheim).

Rough rough first island draft

TECHNOLOGIEZ!

Iz in! A bit sad that we will not have scoring, but will do my best again.

Tools in short:

• Unity3D,
• Inkscape,
• Photoshop,
• Some bleepy music maker and time.

Inspiration: √check

As usual, I was short on time for the LD compo! But I got time on Monday. So Jam, here I am!

Still struggling with the gameplay, but the visuals took a turn to ‘better’ when I went from flat lighting to actual lighting. Whadda difference.

Progress so far: Slow – lost some time trying to get a ‘Amoeba’ texture thing going. Instead went with an easier ‘gassy’ body for my space-blob-turned-transporter:

BLB Mostly Harmless

Yes he uses telekinesis for manipulation. How do you think he retains all that gas?

Wait don’t answer that…

Just trying to vary the “I’m in” posts here… 😉

Finally have a full regular weekend to spend on LD! First in almost a year I think. Yayz!

Tools of the trade remain roughly same:

• Engine: Unity3D
• Pixels: Photoshop
• Vectors & art: Inkscape
• Sound  & editing: Audacity
• Music: Bosca Ceoil or Abundant-Music / SoundHelix / cgMusic if I get desperate

When LD34 finished, and Sanctuary Station reached #18 in Innovation and #51 Overall in the Jam, I was pumped to try and spin this into a full game. But the first thing to do was to analyse how exactly my game was received, so I dug into my ‘data’ – the LD response messages.

LD message feedback analysis: 

• Positive
  • Matching the tetris-block available airlocks is innovative and is fun (7x)
  • A time pressure mission works to create challenge (5x)
  • The people ‘pips’ inside give feeling to the speed (1x)
  • Satisfying ‘connect’ sounds are important (no mention, but I like it)
  • Visuals (2x)
  • Learning curve (+4x, -2x)
  • Atmosphere, story (2x)
• Negative
  • Pods move too slowly (6x) (-1 who liked it slow)
  • Pathing, getting stuck, alignment (3x)
  • Visual/Audio gameplay indicators (4x)
• Unknown
  • Music (-1x, +2x)
  • Camera controls (-2x, reads minor tho)
  • Too short (4x) largely a positive, methinks 😀

Quite a lot of feedback! Some minor or specific things not mentioned.
I took this, and my own ideas and went to work to improve!

Post compo

My goal for this Post-compo version was to keep to the general scope of the LD entry, and smooth out most of the ‘bad’ things – to get to a solid core mechanic.

Multi-moves & Aggressive NPCs!

The changes

• A bit faster & smoother: Pods move faster (quite a bit)
• Expanded controls: More mapped keys, and now you can plan multiple moves ahead!
• Patched codebase: Rewrote the worst of the real hacky underlying structures
• Interface: Pimped the interfaces for readability
• Minor extension: Added one additional mission – with aggressive NPCs
• Lots of small things: And they add up too

Improved text interface & new mission.

Try it out! Unity Webplayer and Windows/OSX standalone

Feedback very much appreciated

The future

Game jam prototype was successful and fun –
Discussed the game with some other game-dev friends, who see potential –
Let some people play and observed their fun and non-fun –
Got a notebook & doc full of ideas, that stay in-theme and in-scope –
I have time set aside to ‘spend’.

Guess I just gotta go for it. 😉

I’m been working on a post-compo version of my LD game Sanctuary Station, cleaning up the codebase, and adding some new controls/features.

Some improvements:

• Plan multiple moves ahead
• NPC movement orders (the grey arrows)
• NPC behaviour & hitpoints

But now that that is mostly done, I am making more missions! First one is where there are two alien races that are mortal enemies and you want to save them both.

Of course, I then tried to make them fight to the death instead… (yes all grey ones are dead bodies :D)

A real massacre…

Play my original LD entry to see the pod-puzzling part in action. (not the combat, as of yet ;))

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all get & give plenty of noms, presents and/or love!

Merry Santuarious Christmas!

And when still in the Christmas spirit, why not save some souls seeking sanctuary? I will return the visit if you comment!

This LD I made a tetris-like base builder in space!

Sanctuary Station in action!

I made this as a Jam, because I did not have Saturday off and wanted to spend 2 days on the LD. (basicly a compo entry, with only two sound effects sourced externally.)

The Concept

This game started out slightly differently – I had prepared/pre-thought about games for most themes, but this theme combo stumped me a bit. At Sunday 1200 I finally had a concept, which was more about the guys in the pods than the pods themselves. A few hours laters I realized matching the pods to the central hub is actually the fun part!

The Bad

• Spent too much time on the lil guys in the pods & them walking about
• The pod movement is a tad klunky when you change direction or collide
• Could have added more sound FX, more appropriate music (always the last to go in)
• Only 2 levels, of which one is more a tutorial

The Good

• Pivoting when finding the fun
• The ‘clunk’ of airlocks joining
• The learning curve – the two missions have good ways of ‘starting’ fully when the player gets the mechanics
• The visuals – simple sprites, with moving light from the guys and (easy) star-field background go well together

The Result

I am very pleased with the results, and plan to make this into a proper game – I see lots and lots of ways to add depth and variety.

Please play it & provide feedback!

Had a busy weekend, so only could start my LD on Sunday – I had prepared ideas for (nearly) all themes though!
Alas the theme(s) were not my favorites, so had to rethink. Rehashed my concepts and got about 14 hours of work in yesterday. Not enough to finish for the Compo, unfortunately. But good progress and I rrrealy dig my concept.

So I’m moving it to the Jam – taking advantage of being able to wing some good CC music/FX too perhaps:

4-way Tetris in Spaaaccee~

Awaiting the theme

I am in once more~

Unfortunately I got less time again, got a family BBQ on saturday and a thing going late on friday night/saturday morning.
So no full-weekend LDing, but I will squeeze in about 1.25 days I think. Might even stretch into a Jam if I need more time.

Tools of the trade:

• Engine: Unity 5 (yay all-the-features!)
• UI: NGUI or native Unity UI, not sure which one yet
• Graphics: Photoshop, Inkscape
• Audio Effects: Audacity / BFXR
• Music: Going to try Bosca Ceoil, it feels pretty nice

“Brun never knew that his blobs would save humanity! “

Game type: Tactics fighting with semi-random blob-grubs!

Extra challenge: I try to put as many themes into the game as I can, going down from the list 😀

An Unconventional weapon: Weaponized Pig-blobs
Companion: My blobbies!
Deeper and Deeper: The adventure descends…
You are the power source: Brun holds the raw energy that super-powers his blobs!
Grow: Your blobbies grow as they get XP
Adapt to Survive: Select which blobbies to take with you

Among the Stars: No clue… I’ll figure out something 😉 Blobbies into space?

Todo: Get some opponents in.