It is my first Ludum Dare (not my first game jam though). I made my game Birdy Bridge. I could never imagine I finished a game with such completeness in 48 hours. Graphical and musical effects are out of my expectation. It is a game with new ideas for the gameplay and fairy-tale-style art.
This game is inspired by Chinese folktale The Weaver Girl and the Cowherd, but the ending is totally different because you are the monster. Acturally it doesn’t matter if you have no idea about the story itself.
Now here is what I’ve done in 48 hours (originally written in Chinese). I hope my English is good enough to express.
Theme
I am mostly a front-end developer, so I was prepared with HTML5/JavaScript with CreateJS. CreateJS is a good framework for prototyping games, though not perfect. I have used it before. It could decrease my coding time and solve some browser compatibility issues for me.
I voted for all candidate themes and gave -1 for you are the monster. I do not like this theme at all. I do not want players to act as monsters, and I’ve never drawn monsters before 
But I had to make it. I was considering a game “finally find that I am the monster”, something like “princess finally find the prince and eat him”. Later, the folktale came into my mind (because Qixi Festival in China just passed two day before). Then I designed a game “prevent lovers from reunion”.
Originally in the final level, players should act as the boss. However, I gave up this idea for I thought it bad for overall gameplay, so it was somewhat away from the theme. Sorry.
Graphics
40 minutes passed when I finished thinking about the theme. I thought I should hurry up. I had to do the following myself: graphics, programming, level design, texts, music, and final fixes.
I started from graphics. Here I made an important decision: using vector graphics. Vector graphics would meet the folktale, and could save me lots of time! I did not wasted much time in graphics, and improved overall quality and completeness.
In the next 1 hour, I drew a girl in pink and a bird that not moving. Both of them are replaced by better sprite sheets later. Then I spent another hour to structure basic code. Before lunch (LD started at 9 a.m. for me), I could see a girl stand on a bird.
Programming and Level Design
Coding went well for me. I met a bug about path detection and fixed it soon. Some gameplay details were decided while coding. Stars were drawn. Before dinner, 3 levels and a simple game cover were done.
Then it took me a whole night to design levels, play, and fix bugs. Code were always changing. After the first day, I could see
- Seven playable levels, including boss fight (though it differed from the final version).
- Whole story with prologue and epilogue.
- Birds, the girl, stars, but no background images.
- Game cover with title, level selection, text descriptions, and my logo (game progress could be saved).
I had to do on next day
- Draw background images, a.k.a. the sky with moon and stars.
- Create music.
- Final fixes.
I did some graphical fixes and slept late. In the morning of second day, I had the background image embeded into the game.
Music
Music is important to my game. I preserved a whole afternoon to create music. I planned to make two sound tracks, but finally I made 3 sound tracks in 6 hours. Crazy?
The first sound track are used in title page. It is the most important one and took most of the time. It was a combination of imagination, sorrow, and bravery. The second were created for difficult levels, and the third were used in boss fight.
Later I decided to add sound effects. It differs when jumping onto birds with different heights.
Final Fixes
The final fixes include
- Replace the girl with a better sprite sheet.
- Checked the texts.
- Added some small features like back to title.
- Fixed known bugs.
- Changed title image.
- Submitted, and fixed bugs in iframe.
I finished these late in the night.
After then…
Next day, I discovered some bugs and fixed them.
Some players suggest that the game is difficult, so I released an “easy mode” several days later.
Overall, it is a great experience in Ludum Dare. I feel greate to make this game. Hope you enjoy!
