Working on my MiniLD#59 game! It will be a puzzle, you play as a traffic warden and you need to help snails and snakes drive to their destination by controlling traffic lights.

Here is how it kinda looks (still WIP):

And here is my tileset:

The game is not complete, so I won’t submit the tileset yet. But you can copy it and insert into your game!

I don’t like writing post-mortems before the end of the voting. How can I say if the game is good or bad if I don’t know if people liked it? So, here is a pre-post-mortem + timelapse.

Wordskill

Idea.

I expected this theme to win, so I made up an idea beforehand. So, it’s a game a game about a cowboy, whose gun is made for suiciding only. What, is my game is not about it? I figured out it would be too relying at graphics. So, I made up a new idea pretty quickly, and I liked it. However, the actual game is not about fighting, I should’ve added a healthbar for the enemy/friend or something like that, just to make the theme usage a bit more clear.

Coding.

And again, my code is crap. I feel sorry for those who want to understand more about the game and look at the source code. However, it’s not hopeless, I wasn’t hurt by it being too messy.

Time-management.

Actually, I was ill during the LD, so I had a lot of free time. However, I had less time left by the end of the compo. I think, it was the only time I didn’t have time to make any music. Other than that, I have no complaints, I balanced sleeping, coding and designing well. Well, maybe I was a bit too careless, because I didn’t have a working demo for a long time.

Graphics.

Oh, a big thing. I used pixelart this time. Well, I always use pixelart. Not because I like it a lot, just because it’s easier. I use it as an excuse. I went McPixel-inspired and made each level have 2 frames of animation, so it looks like I can draw. Actually, I wasn’t able to make it perfectly pixelated, you might notice borders of speech/though bubbles are blurry. I couldn’t fix that.

Level design.

I knew my game needs a twist (not like it’s already twisted enough), so I made a smaller speech area for some levels, a bigger one for others, some syllable counting in forms of poetry and haiku e.t.c. Actually, the poet is Alexander Pushkin, though I’m afraid he doesn’t look alike. I also wanted to make a singing level featuring Freddie Mercury, but everything went well without it.

Title.

I made up a name quickly: “Words kill, words give life”. I drew the logo in the last couple of hours, and accidentally put “Words” and “kill” words too close. And I noticed they can be read as “Word” and “skill”! I quickly chopped of the second half of the title, making it “Wordskill”.

Rating entries.

I wasn’t able to play 100 games for some LDs, and I’m not close this time as well. But this time I made a thing I didn’t do before: during the compo and the jam, I bookmarked games I would like to play when they are released.

Timelapsing.

Nothing to say, just watch:

And here are some game highlights with little ratings:

Quality Television,

a compo entry by crazya02.

The TV is extremely addicting, but not for you! You your TV set to stun guards and escape the prison!

Mouton,

a compo entry by Noisette.

Trick the shepherd and get to the paddock! Or be a shepherd yourself, and kill those sheep! And it’s multiplayer!

Seamus’ Gun,

a jam entry by 01101101.

Use your paint-shooting gun to kill the enemies! But be careful, you only need a certain paint color!

So, my game title is “Wordskill”. I can be either “Word skill” or “Words kill”.

For me it’s almost night, so I will submit it soon. But you can still test it and give feedback. Link

I didn’t make any music, and I don’t feel productive enough to do it. Sorry.

• Your speech is nimble
• and sincere. Your body
• is magnificent!

Simple and beautiful.

You can play the demo here! Feedback is wanted!

I’ve been making my game non-stop today, so I want to take a break. For now, I’ve done almost all the features I wanted. But there is more to my game: I need to add more words, more graphics, maybe a soundtrack.

But I’m happy with results. At first I thought this is a difficult idea, but it turned out easy enough.

You can’t just spam words, they have meaning!

I have some interesting ideas for other levels in my head: making up a poem (bonus points for the meter), singing a song (bonus point for vowels), etc. And, of course, switching between insulting and praising.

In this game, you can say nasty things about your opponent (and his mom) and get points for it! Or you can be a good guy and cheer up your friends.

What’s inside your head is unordered, you can’t say what you think.

Did you forget your most conventional weapon? Doesn’t it hurt when somebody says: “You are ugly and stupid”? Doesn’t it make you healthier when somebody says: “You are as vigorous as an elephant”? In my game, you will be the one who says these things.

You are ugly and stupid – insult, multiple, insult; -3 total

You are as vigorous as an elephant – praise, eloquent, comparison, fitting; +4 total

P.S. I’m ill and coughy and sneezy now, so some good words are appreciated!

I didn’t expect to have time, but it seems like I have time. So, let’s participate!

• Coding: Phyard Builder. I feel like I should use something else, but not this time.
• Graphics: GIMP, maybe Inkscape.
• Music: probably Sonant Live. Abundant Music is fine too.
• Streaming: unlikely.
• Timelapsing: yes. I mean, Chronolapse.
• Warmup: yes. I mean, I drew a space ship, made it move and composed a music loop.
• Wallpaper: yes. I mean, this one. I have to clear up my desktop now to enjoy it fully.
• Eating: food.
• The last list element: next one.
• Reader: you.

So, I rated 50 games. What can I say?

After playing first few games, I thought that the theme is bad, because there were a lot of games with the same interpretation or without one at all.

But now I can say that I was mistaken. There are games which use the theme nicely. Here are some of them:

(I picked games with little ratings)

Aketa,

a jam entry by chikun Dev Team.

A game about a little girl stuck in a big maze. And the maze is stuck in one screen. But this time Aketa is going to escape! If it’s not enough to make you play this game till the end, there is an ending song!

Cathode Ray,

a compo entry by Figglewatts.

Even wondered how does a computer screen work? This game will tell you! Follow the electron in its epic journey to a computer screen. More specific, to displaying “ENTIRE GAME” on one screen. Got it?

The Broadenlands,

a jam entry by Wolve.

You wanna go adventuring? Instead of going somewhere far away, why don’t you go to your bedroom? It has much more than you think! In fact, this entire game takes place in one bedroom.

Also, why won’t you play my game?

Kaleidoscope,

a compo entry by Me.

Have you ever looked through a kaleidoscope? There are some crazy stuff. Now, put some moving polygons inside it and play it.

Kaleidoscope the game

I get a lot of positive comments on my game! I like this game more than my previous games. So, how did I manage to make a better game this time?

KISS is for keep in simple and stupid. I read about this principle here a while ago, and this time I was totally going to use it.

Good stuff:

• Planning. I woke a minute before the LD started, it’s my first time seeing the final countdown. And I started programming about 6 hours later, because I had stuff to do. So, I could take some time to plan my game well.

Level sketches

• Game idea. This game is simple, but it’s still fun and original, so I didn’t need to implement big features or draw big artworks or anything.
• Time. I can’t say that time-management was perfect, but since my game is simple, I spent less time on it than on previous games.
• Graphics. I’m bad at drawing, but I managed to make good graphics with almost no drawing! Instead, I used a lot of graphic effects and details.

So-so:

• Music. Oh, I can tell you so much about making music for my game! At first I wanted to try out a new tool I found recently, Sonant Live. I composed some music and realized I’m bad at it. Then, I decided use a time-proved tool Abundant Music, which is a music generator. But it has 2 problems. 1: it can only convert into .mid, 2: I guess you have to be a pro at it to make it generate exactly what you want. After some time, I managed to convert the most fitting track into .wav, with this amazing device I invented during one of previous LDs:
  

  Super Awesome Sound Wave Generator 20000

  …yes, I just put the microphone between my headphones and ran sound recording. After some tweaking using Audacity, I managed to get good sound quality. So, the first problem is solved. But I couldn’t solve the second one! Abundant Music didn’t generate a track I’d like. So, I went back to Sonant Live and made music with it. It turned out to be pretty good, maybe that’s because I had no other choice.

• Code. OMG my code. When I wanted to add recoloring floor, I just modified “move walls” function to check if the input entity is a tile. When I wanted to add moving enemies, I just modified “move walls” function to check if the input entity is an enemy. One function does 3 things! And loading level is done by 3 functions, so if I want to find something, I need to look through all of them. Also, I had several nasty bugs those took me a couple of hours to fix.

But I learned something:

• You can make a game that’s both simple and innovative.
• I’m not a noob at making music, and Abundant Music isn’t a panacea.
• Graphics isn’t only about drawing.

Play and rate my game!

..this post feels empty. Ok, I’ll submit post-mortem next time, and that is not going to be empty!

Yay! YAAAAY!!! My game is finished!!!!!

Time to sleep. And… 3 weeks of non-stop gameplay are coming!

I’m worrying so much. I like this game the most of my other LD games.

Gamepage here.

My Kaleidoscope might be finished! But you can still play it post feedback. I’m not going to submit it right now.

I have added more levels and a high-score list. And that’s pretty much it.

Kaleidoscope is a game about coins, enemies, disorientation and symmetry.

I’ve almost finished it, I only need more levels.

So, I want some testing!

Please, play it and give feedback.

My livestream

I made a lot of progress. I managed to fix 2 big bugs (They were about 10 lines of code away from each other) and made some more levels, sound effects and a mute button. And also made difficulty increasing.

Now I only need a finish screen and some more levels! That went quite fast.

My livestream