This was our first ludum dare.

Anticipation

We live in South Africa, the comp starts at 3am Saturday and ends Monday, having to work meant loosing an entire day. I went to bed at 11pm and got up at 4am like a 6 year old on Christmas morning

Because of my inexperience with unity and the fact that this was our first ludum dare we decided from the start to keep it painfully simple, a single screen with preferably a single button and definitely 2D.

Theme

We struck gold with the theme, what could possibly be easier to do than to guess when 10 seconds have passed, an interpretation I initially thought many people would use but later realized it runs the risk of being too simple or boring.

We made a quick priority list of features we would like which looked something like this:

• Press space to guess when 10 seconds have passed
• Distract the player by scene transitions
• Distract the player by having to somehow interact with the scene
• Distract the player by using sounds
• Distract the player with animations

Revelation

Clem sketched out the scene.

Since we committed to one scene we needed to make the most of it. We decided to start zoomed in and progressively reveal the rest of the scene as time progressed. This gave an initial low expectation as no sound or movement was present… very very sneaky sir

He then suggested we cut it into pieces to help give the illusion of depth when the perspective camera moved.

As the camera moved through the scene we kept trying to hide the fact that we have multiple layers, but decided to embrace it and reveal it in the end for … dramatic effect.

The white border around the final frame makes the zoom out feel floaty in a browser because the browser background is also white.

Directors cut

We wanted to add sound to each section that fit the objects, another part of me wanted to joke around which is why we added the directors cut.

Score server

I built a quick rails app to submit scores so that I can see if anyone is playing the game. Seems like there should be a service somewhere that anyone can use to submit ludum game score. I might implement this if it hasn’t already been. The scores are woefully lacking any form of statistics, it basically just lists all the player and their score per section.

Did not have time for

• Scene interactions. I struggled finding a reason for the player to explore the scene. It would not have added anything to the guessing. I for example at one point had it rain when you mouse over a cloud.
• Sound on each level
• Sprite animations: There was suppose to be a person proposing under the tree and children running towards the fisherman with a kite
• Having the camera zoom out to a point where the scene is a picture on a wall in a room

We had fun and will definitely join the next one.