The word for the title eludes me. However I wanted to write a little bit about my first Ludum Dare experience. (FYI I entered the compo)
First off, Ludum Dare was a blast and I learned a whole lot. At 8 years old, I had downloaded python to learn programming because I wanted to make games. 7 years later, I finally did it, and only because Ludum Dare gave me the motivation and deadline to do so. The whole thing means so much to me and I’ve only done it once.
I had no prep for the compo. I knew how to make a canvas and get the context, but that was it. It was intimidating trying to learn how to make the game in a limited timeframe. That plus splitting up work to do graphics, sound, and the three hours it took to get an interpretation of the theme, of which I’m quite proud of.
I had so many ideas for the theme. All of them involved space, or time travel, or the multiverse. I spent three hours going through themes that had no motivation, no originality, or no real interest to them. Finally I had a great idea. A TV Crossover Episode. Connecting two fictional worlds. It was perfect, and allowed me to use and setting, genre, or characters I wanted.
The game I made has no real gameplay. I tried to focus on telling a story. There was some movement, and a section of dialogue choice that didn’t matter because they all lead to the same end. The gameplay is very similar to Telltales, I’d say, yet not as complex. Everything to do with dialogue was tedious, even simple stuff. The dialogue choice section, which has two sections of choices, took up almost half my total code. I would have loved to do more.
Art was fun. The only real art I can do is pixel, and I love seeing good pixel art and the design. I’ve always seen good pixel art as something that was made oddly, but works for some reason. Take for instance, my characters. They have no faces at all. It’s just blank. But it works. Another thing I liked doing was the close ups. For dialogue, I wanted to make the changes in screen during dialogue emulate the effect of camera angles on tv. So the angle may go from close up on the talking persons face, to backed out on something he’s talking about.
Music has had a positive response in the comments, though it’s one tune played on a loop. Never ending. Writing the music wasn’t even really a writing process. I found some double chords that I liked, threw them together with a snare drum rhythm in between, and apparently it’s good. I only like the fact that it suits a detective genre well.
This first Ludum Dare will be something I never forget. It’s so special to me.
Now you can say you’ve seen me babble on about the game for 6(?) paragraphs.
