After submitting the entry, it’s time to conclude thoses 48 hours of development. This is my second participation and like the previous one, I had a great and challenging time working on this subject. Two numbers to compare the two entries :

• 184 lines of commented code in the LD29, 242 lines of OMGWHATISTHAT for LD32;
• 7 assets (4 sprites, 1texture, 2 sounds) for LD29, 12 (2 spritesheets, 6 sprites, 1 texture, 2 sounds, 1 track) for LD32.

So even if I failed at making multiple levels for the game, I still am quite satisfied with the result and the learning process. The theme was fun and quite open, and I’ve already seen nice weapons and concepts on Twitter and this website. For the game, I wanted the unconventional weapon to be fully part of the gameplay rather than just a fun discovery of a concept. That’s why the goal is to use the opponent weapon against himself while having no offensive possibility : the unconventional weapon being the use of the other guys’ weapon. The hero being a turtle was a way to place reflexion over reactivity, and the other levels would have been around patterns or bosses with 3 or 4 items to activate in the right order but hey, time limit ^^.

So the pros :

• More art in the same time, hurray !
• A game “winnable” in his current state
• Aseprite which is just a wonderful tool for pixel art and creating spritesheets

And the cons :

• Only one level so really short
• The gameplay is not really thrilling, as the concept is not developed
• The hitbox feels sometime like it is not on the fire on some close hits
• I should do the warmups.

Software used :

• Phaser.io for the engine
• Aseprite for the art
• SFXR for the sounds
• Autotracker.py to generate the music
• Sublime Text for the code

Anyway, looking forward for the next LD and have fun playing and making games

Well, that was a fun first Ludum Dare ! I would like to thanks first everybody who gave feedbacks and advice, it really helps and motivates to do better next time.

So first, things that didn’t go as planned :

• The music. Man, this was way harder than expected, and went so bad that the game has none. Will have to practice for the next or switch to the Jam category with someone better than me at it.
• The gameplay. Even if the game is playable, the fact that the difficulty is always the same prevents player from playing again
• The animation. Currently, the character isn’t animated but is “x reversed” when changing the direction. I also strongly believe that’s the reason why it is unclear if the miner is running towards the crates or they’re falling on him. It’s the second option by the way.

So these are the major flaws of the game/development, but some good still comes from it :

• It runs ! That’s the first step, but it’s important to point this out.
• The game engine : Phaser.js. I chose it 30 minutes before the beginning of the jam, and it has proven to be really well made and easy to use.
• Theme. To be honest at first I didn’t like the theme, but now I think this pushed me to work more on the game and its graphics. If I had more knowledge in design, I would have wanted to make one cool background rather than a rock texture.

For a jam where my goal was to make a gam which is playable and a little fun, I like to think I reached, even for 5 minutes, those objectives. I will do my best to participate in the next one !