Ludum Dare 35 has ended and as always it is time to think what went wrong and what went right. This was a third jam with a bigger team, but the fifth one for some of us. As always, it was an amazing, fun and sleep depriving experience and we loved every second of it! We are happy with the results, because the game turned out to be pretty enjoyable, so we proudly present – Skywind Temple.

In the game you play as a sourcerer who can shift between human and bird forms. Each of the forms has it’s own unique abilities and allows for a different type of gameplay. Your goal is to use her fighting skills and the bird’s agility to compete against your friends or test yourself in a single player mode. The game features four local multiplayer modes and one singleplayer mode. Yes – we have created a local multiplayer game with only little singleplayer gameplay.

We know what you’re probably thinking right now. “A local multiplayer game? You won’t have too many people playing this!”. And you’re right. We knew exactly what we were signing up for. But we still wanted to give people an ability to play and rate the game without the need of another person and a gamepad. That’s why decided to create a singleplayer version of one of the game modes that were already in game. But we will talk about that a bit later.

A funny thing is that this game wasn’t actually our first idea. While the player mechanics – fighting and turning into a bird where in our minds from the beginning, we imagined gameplay a little bit differently. Not so long after the theme was announced, we got fixated on the idea about dynamic fighting with one complex AI. We liked it so much, that we couldn’t think of anything else, so we started developing it. About halfway through the jam, our lead programmer sat down one a bed and said “Guys, this game is shit.”. 😀 The main problem was that we couldn’t develop such an incredible AI opponent in such a short time. Everyone agreed and we decided that it needs to be changed. After about an hour of redesigning we changed the game to what you can play now. And that was the best decision we could make. Even though the majority of the people won’t be able to experience the local multiplayer gameplay, we are still happy that those who had a chance to play it had a lot of fun with it. We ourselves spent a lot of time playing our game once we submitted it. “But how did the singleplayer mode ended up in the game?” you may ask. Like we said before, we still wanted to give people an ability to play and rate the game without the need of another person and a gamepad, so about six hours before the submission we decided to hack in the singleplayer mode. It did not turn out as good as the other games modes, since the game was designed for multiplayer, and most of the mechanics are useless if you don’t have a second player but most people still liked it so we consider this a good decision.

And talking about good decisions, let’s list what went right:

Local multiplayer gameplay

• Art – First time we went through with such style but our artists didn’t disappoint us and delivered a visually stunning experience. The art turned consistent as well, which we always try to focus on as we belive it’s a very important part of making the game look good.
• Local multiplayer gameplay – Playing the local multiplayer is a lot of fun. Dynamic movement, fast action and rotating world blend perfectly into an amusing gameplay.
• Different game modes and match customization – being able to freely customize your game allowed for everyone to create their own amazing experience.

On the other hand, there were things that went wrong:

Flying islands on the map

• Unpolished singleplayer – We definitely haven’t spent enough time on polishing the singleplayer mode. It was more like a port and that made it lack some gameplay.
• Sounds – We didn’t do a great job on the sounds this time. We just didn’t have time to hook up audio to everything.

What’s next for Skywind Temple?

Well, it depends on the results and your feedback. So don’t be ashamed and go rate our game now!

Want to know what others think?

Holy cow. This is amazing. The graphics, visual effects, models and textures are all amazing. The mechanics and different gamemodes are awesome as well. Well done.
@EthanBierlein

Incredibly fun to play with friends.
@w1n5t0n

Oh my god. this was the most beutiful game i have ever played. ever. 5/5 in every category. well done! Really well done!
@Blobo

Do I event need to say anything?
Great graphics and music, solid gameplay. Has great potential! Keep it up
@Obvious_San

Play the game here

If you liked the game please leave feedback in the comments for us. We really appreciate this.

Fireline Games Team | fb.com/FirelineGames | @FirelineGames | firelinegames.com

We have submitted our game – Skywind Temple! You can go check it out now.

Play it here

First Ludum Dare day almost ended, but we’re happy with the results we got so far. Here are some concepts and screenshots from us. Enjoy.

Prototyping the level based on concepts:

We also did a quick study on how we should place rocks and trees so that they look natural:

And last but not least, our main character, fully textured and rigged ready to kick some ass in the game:

Almost 12 hours have passed since LD35 started. We have a clear idea for a game, and we’re prototyping gameplay to test it out ASAP. 😀 Here’s a concept of one of the locations:

SAAAM got featured on GameJolt today. So if you haven’t played the game yet, you should do it now. 😀

http://gamejolt.com/games/saaam/117761

You can also check out this AWESOME gameplay video by @ButtonMasherBro:

So, the results are finally it and SAAAM did pretty good. We’re happy that you’ve enjoyed the game and left so much feedback. We really appreciate it!

A few days ago we’ve released a Post Jam version fo SAAAM with additional ending, bug fixes and much, much more! If you haven’t played it yet you should definitly do it here. Also, feedback is still welcome so if you play the game please leave the comment. It means a lot to us.

SAAAM on GameJolt

Ludum Dare 34 has ended and it’s time to present our game and think about what went right and what went wrong. This was our fourth Ludum Dare, but second with a bigger team. As always it was an amazing experience for us and we had a lot of fun and a little time to sleep. 😀 We are really happy with the amount of work done and how polished the game turned out to be. The themes for this edition weren’t bad and we came up with an idea pretty fast. We’ve created a game called SAAAM.

SAAAM

In our game you play as a Crewmember 341. He wakes up in his cryo-stasis pod on a vessel called Trieste. He’s a mechanic and his job is to maintain the vessel assisted by S.A.A.A.M. which stands for System Automation, Assistance, and Analysis Matrix. The player is faced with a series of choices whether to listen to S.A.A.A.M. or to disobey. The game features three different endings based on the choices you make. Will you be obedient? Will you do what S.A.A.A.M. wants you too?

What went right?

SAAAM – Final Room

SAAAM – The Vessel

• Art – The game turned out to be a visual feast. We’ve really tried to focus on consistency of art in the game and it turned out great for us.
• Script – Funny and creepy at the same time. It created a very unique, comedy-horror atmosphere. A lot of players were expecting a jump scare somewhere along the way. 😀
• Polish – We’ve finished the level design pretty soon and that gave us a lot of time to polish the game. Make sure every little thing makes sound, every light is tweaked properly, every corridor is interesting and unique etc.
• Voice Acting – Once again we’ve cooperated with Elijah and he did an awesome job as always.

What went wrong?

SAAAM – Starting Room

• Slow pacing – A lot of players mentioned the game’s slow pacing. It would be good, if we had more narration and choices.
• Lack of option to skip dialogues – If you want to discover all of the three endings, you’ll have to listen to S.A.A.A.M’s initial talk three times. And this is a lot. We had an option to skip dialogues in the dev menu, but it didn’t make to the full game because it wasn’t release ready.

What’s next for S.A.A.A.M.?

We’re now working on a Post Jam version. It will include all of the things that you, the players, suggested and much more! The Post Jam version will feature one additional ending, bug and glitch fixes, faster doors, skipping dialogues and many more. You can expect it to come out in the last week of voting. And what we do after that, will be based on the results.

In conclusion, we think that this game has a lot of potential. We strongly feel that this is an interesting concept and turned into a full game it would be a lot of fun. But for now, we have to focus on a Post Jam version of S.A.A.A.M.

Go play the game here

If you liked the game please leave feedback in the comments for us. We really appreciate this.

Fireline Games

Hey!

Just writing to remind you to go play SAAAM if you haven’t already! We really appreciate feedback so check it out and leave a comment. We’ll check your game out too!

PLAY SAAAM HERE

We’re almost finished with the level art! See for yourself:

Hi! Time for an update on our game SAAAM. Here’s the screen of the starting room:

Here our two concepts of our game called SAAAM. We’ve seen a lot of great work and want to share ours too!

First of all, we would like to thanks everyone for the votes and feedback we have received!

Here are the results:

We are very happy with the results and we hope to break #100 overall next time!

If you haven’t played Spheres yet go check it out: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=39370