For the Anti-puritans.

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That’s right. I made this banner myself. I know, I shouldn’t be proud.

Try it here

So, I made a game for this LD. Some part of me says, “That’s awesome!” while another part says, “Dude, it’s not that cool, 2600 other people did as well.” Well, never mind. I’m much happier with how this one went than the last two times, because the game actually got done to the full extent of my original plans. I’ll explain

The story

Early concept art

How could this be? the young handsome protagonist programmer wondered. And he had reason to wonder. Hours upon hours of preparation, a $1000 gaming computer, and weeks of hyping for this moment. And despite all of this, he couldn’t think of an idea for a game.

That’s right, I, like a lot of people, couldn’t think of an idea for a game that would fit the theme. I was stuck. In fact, I spent more than two hours sitting in front of my computer trying to think of something. A number of (terrible) ideas came to mind, like a game where you have to defend an icecream from evil icecream gobbling monsters, but nothing worth doing, nothing that used the theme interestingly. And suddenly it came to me. what if I didn’t have to make a simple world on one screen or use a stupid pun to justify a mechanically inadequate game? What if the game stayed on the same screen, and the world itself changed around the player? And so the basic concept of my game came into being. “Get to the safe zone before the labyrinth shifts.” This would allow me to make infinite usage of a finite space. It would also allow for expansion of mechanics such as addition of enemies, traps, or even puzzles and bosses, if I had time after completing the entry.

Complete with an interesting title screen

The good

• The basic concept was complete. You could run around on pillars and walkways above lava, and had to reach the end in time.
• I didn’t experience any major hiccups in my coding, like I have in all of my other projects. They often upset my coding for hours, but this time, I never experienced any problems that held me longer than 15 minutes
• I managed to make the game look better than I expected, implementing slight 3d-ness and particle effects.
• I got a lot of good feedback on the controls, apparently I really nailed the movement, and as an infinite runner, it plays quite well. (Some people complained of it being a bit slippery)
• Most of all, it was my first LD that I did completely by myself (except miniLD 42, but we don’t talk about miniLD 42) including art(if you can call it that), music, coding, and all that jazz.

Unclean code. *shudders*

The bad

• It was extremely simplistic. It was so minimalistic that it could have been in LD26. (What, no one laughed? oh…) Basically, the basic concept was complete, but it was the only thing that was complete. I didn’t manage to add any of the cool enemies, bosses, puzzles, etc. that would have added variety to the game.
• This would’ve happened to everyone, but my code was very sloppy and unclean. *shudders*

Dayuum! Looka dat lava!

The ugly

• As I said above, I spent waaay too long trying to think of an idea.
• On launch, the game crashed on most peoples computers, because it was incompatible with < java 7, with monitors with a refresh rate less than 6o hz, and probably won’t look very good on screens with a height less than 720 pixels. On top of that, other people still can’t use it, and it crashes without giving an error log.
• The whole game. I am a truly despicable pixel artist, and the lava looked like a magical void of endless red aurora borealis

The mediocre

• My music. It was satisfactorily not tuneless.

The summary

I’m overall quite happy with with how it ended up, and despite a blatant lack of features, it makes a fun and ever so slightly addicting infinite runner. Some people have suggested I make it a mobile/tablet game, which is some thing I’m considering, but not in its current form. I just wanna say thanks to all of the guys who played, rated and commented on my game, and good luck to everyone who entered the competition.

If you haven’t already, you can try my game by following the link below or at the top.

One Screen Labyrinth

BTW, my record is 11, betcha can’t beat it!