I like making games!
questions? comments? hit me up at alexjerlandson@gmail.com
Ludum Dare 36 | Ludum Dare 35 | Ludum Dare 33 | Ludum Dare 32 |
Ludum Dare 31 | Ludum Dare 30 | Ludum Dare 29 | Ludum Dare 27 |
Ludum Dare 26 | Ludum Dare 25 | Ludum Dare 24 | Ludum Dare 23 |
Ludum Dare 21 | MiniLD #27 | Ludum Dare 20 | MiniLD 24 |
Ludum Dare 19 | MiniLD #21 | Ludum Dare 18 |
 Jupi's Jam Favorites Awarded by Jupiter_Hadley on October 28, 2016 |  you have been in Helevenium #LD29 Awarded by alvivar on May 19, 2014 |  Maker of awesome games Awarded by piper82 on September 14, 2013 |
I’ve polished and published my LD30 game juxtapose to Kongregate!
juxtapose a puzzle game about discovering all of the endings to the tale of two lost travelers in parallel worlds.
play it here!
this is a re-release of a version I published to Newgrounds several months ago.
check out the jayisgames walkthrough here!
in taikun, you pilot a huge dragon robot to incinerate your target.
you’re on an important mission… if only you knew what it was!
check it out!
juxtapose
is an interactive experience in a small world, divided in two.
four travelers are stranded on two halves of the world.
their lives are in danger.
you can help them.
you can explore.
you can simply rest, and do nothing.
all actions will eventually lead to an ending.
their story can end in eight ways.
discover them all.
denudation now has a post-compo version!
now with:
new animations
updated level design
updated music
??secret ending??
newgrounds medals
each Ludum Dare event, I challenge myself to try something that I’ve never done before.
this time, I wanted to make a game using a physics engine, feature a multi-stage boss battle, and focus on fun gameplay.
this turned out to be far trickier than I expected and I though I ended up having to do a ton of math (and getting very little sleep!), I am incredibly satisfied with the results.
I used the nape physics library for actionscript, and used the figure app to generate the music.
I went with an even lower-res art style than usual this time. I felt like it would be something fun and new to try, and it fit well with the game mechanics.
I had a blast making this game, and I learned many new skills that I’m excited to use in future Ludum Dare events!
this ludum dare was a thrill.
I was able to put together something that I was really proud of, I had a ton of fun building it, and the reception has been fantastic.
exposure has received coverage from rockpapershotgun, jayisgames, and indiegames.com, and even has some video reviews.
the presentation
this time around, I wanted to create something that looked pretty.
the art style was inspired by the beautiful proteus. I was hoping I’d be able to get away with minimal, pixel-blocky art if I embraced it and gave it some 3d depth. it seems to have worked.
the music was created using figure. I’ve previously avoided making music for my games to save on time, but with this app I was able to get it done in less than 30 minutes.
the gameplay
I love to explore in games. I don’t like my hand to be held. I like to walk in the opposite direction I’m told to go and climb things because they’re pretty.
I don’t give much direction in the game.
some players will walk straight to end, bypassing hints to the depth to the world.
that’s a totally valid experience.
but some players will talk to all of the desert denizens, wander, explore the ruins, and piece together what’s going on.
this game is for those players.
the endings
exposure has three endings, but none of them provide much in the way of story resolution.
you can choose to help out either tribe… but is that’s really what’s best?
I thought about adding a canonical “good” ending, which would provide closure to the story and solve everyone’s problems.
but that seemed kinda unrealistic and saccharine.
there are some problems that don’t have a good solution.
exposure is a game about discovery and exploration.
climb ruins, explore the desert, discover ancient artifacts, find multiple endings, and try not to get scorched by the heat!
i went for a minimalist art style and control scheme (think proteus).
this was my first 3d game, using a custom pseudo-3d engine i made using flixel.
enjoy!
you can play terminus here
for my ld entry, i wanted to create a small, reactive world for the player to experiment and interact with.
i’m fascinated by game worlds in which events will transpire on their own as time passes, without any input from the player (see majora’s mask, a heavy inspiration for my entry).
the villagers in terminus have their daily routine, with each day resulting in furthered progress toward their goal, and ultimately a step toward the impending disaster. the player can choose to interact with the various objects in the game in an attempt to influence what happens, but things will continue to happen even without any interaction from the player.
the game will continue even after the player's death
my biggest focus was developing the npc behaviors. getting their chop/build/sleep routine to a point where it was recognizable took a surprising amount of effort, though developing the state-based ai system ended up being a ton of fun and incredibly interesting to develop.
additionally, i wanted the npcs to be able to respond to the player’s various interactions with various bits of the world, to give the player some feedback within the world itself, since the game doesn’t provide any sort of direction for the player.
even though I put over 30 hours into its development, there’s still more i would have liked to add. particularly, i wish i would have added some further npc chat to clear up some less apparent game interactions (such as breaking/replacing axes). additionally, i had began development on a tertiary endgame goal, but ultimately ran out of time to implement it altogether.
also- god battles, godzilla style. a missed opportunity.
this ended up being the most fun i’ve had at one of these events; i didn’t sleep at all on saturday night, since i was enjoying myself so much and i just wanted to continue adding new features.
ultimately i ended up with my strangest game yet, but one that i’m incredibly happy with.
Submission page doesn’t seem to be working for me at the moment. I’ll try again shortly.
my escape
controls: arrow keys and spacebar
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5333420/myEscape.html
I spent friday night and most of saturday apartment hunting, so I made my game in just over 24 hours.
I’ve definitely got some stuff to clean up, including letting you replay the game without refreshing the page 😀
play it here!
I’ve never made a game with any sort of dialogue choices, so I didn’t know how to approach this.
Most dialogue-heavy games allow the player as much time as they want to make a decision; I wanted to make my game real-time, in the sense that conversations had to be responded to one way or another. After a bit of mulling over the theme for a week or two, I hit on the idea that’s represented in the game.
I kind of missed the mark from my initial intent. I initially wanted to give the game a lot more depth (I had 5 or so more screens planned with interesting decisions), with part of the goal being to illustrate the impact that having different companions colors the choices available to you. I also never came up with an ending that I really liked, so I pretty much just avoided one altogether.
With full-time job and a fully-booked weekend, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to finish. I ended up putting a few hours in after work for a week, and then doing some touch ups and all of the art in one sitting. This game was definitely made in the least amount of time of all my games; maybe 15-18 hours total.
I’m very happy with the art style I ended up with. I deem it minimalist-by-necessity; I did it all Monday morning starting at 12:30am, with having to go to work the next day. I’ll probably use it in future ld’s, where I don’t want to focus on art much.
Check it out here!
Thanks to all the positive feedback from everyone who played p.i.g!
I’ve used a lot of suggestions to improve the game.
The enhanced version includes:
-original music from the composer for ‘endeavor’
-3 new unlockable levels with a new mechanic
-level select screen to replay levels
-enhance portal funneling feature to make portalling easier
-bugfixes!
Go play it, and have fun!
Finished!
Play p.i.g here!
Upside down!
I’ve been thinking in portals the last few weeks, so I made a puzzle platformer with portals.
The portals are like tunnels: you shoot one end, and another appears at the other side.
Once again, my project grew as I worked on it. I told myself I’d make a very short demo of the portal mechanic, since I graduate in a week and have final projects to attend to. But I was having too much fun with it, and I had to implement all of my ideas!
I decided to up the resolution from my usual 320×240 (and then zoomed x2) to 640×480. I adjusted my art style to something a bit cleaner, and I’m happy with the result.
I’ve always struggled with level design, particularly puzzle design, so I took this as a challenge to improve my skills. Hopefully the results are enjoyable!
Instead of writing REAL reports, write an EPIC REPORT!
My Mini-LD 24 entry, EPIC REPORT, is about putting together reports in just a few minutes by collecting letters that fly across the screen. My goal was to make a stunningly boring activity into an exciting action game. The game currently features 4 reports and 16 achievements.
Check it out here!
The space report
Hey everyone!
Since this is a mini with loose rules, I’ve decided to pretty much ignore them altogether! The only limitation it’s following is “one button only” (the mouse), but it follows my own theme of “making something totally boring into an interesting game.” I’m also spreading the work out over this week, but finishing in less than 48 hours of work time.
My game is about writing a final report on a subject in just a few minutes. It’s my first action/arcade game for a while- the gameplay involves catching falling letters to bring them to the paper. If you miss letters, the words on the report will be misspelled. If the player collects enough letters and powerups while avoiding typos, they’ll get a good grade!
Each report has a topic, which determines the environment and the way the letters appear and move.
Here’s a screenshot of the report “The Internet”:
I’ve always wanted to make a game using the “groundhog’s day” concept, similar to Majora’s Mask, Level Up!, and Pikmin to some extent. I have a love-hate relationship with time-pressure games, but it’s so rewarding to finally understand what’s going on in the game’s world and figure out how to manipulate it.
I had a lot of fun making this one. It doesn’t necessarily have the greatest gameplay, but it’s really the story and level design that counts in this type of game. Since the theme was discovery, I decided to make it purely about information seeking- each time you try, you should learn something new that’ll help you the next time. I tried something different this time and planned out the entire game beforehand, complete with a map and a rough description of the natural progression of the game. I felt that this really helped, since I had time to come up with a ton of ideas, and then once I started coding I just followed what I had already laid out.
This was my 3rd 48hr design competition, and I still fell into the trap of planning more than I could ever finish in that time. I had hoped to get this done after the first 24 hrs so I could have more time to study for my finals, but after the first day it was apparent that it wasn’t going to happen. I actually didn’t even have a working build until an hour before submission.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to have someone else play your game after the first day, or whenever it’s playable. For me, it was a sort of sanity check- it really helped to have a fresh set of ideas tell me what was broken, and what just didn’t make sense.
Play it here!
Also, check out my Timelapse!
It’s taking more time than I had imagined, but I seem to be approaching the end.
Still no title for the game, but the gameplay is 95% done. Then it’s time for art and detail!
I’ve worked in a bit of xenoarchaeology and have some interesting subplots near the end of the game… now I just have to make sure everything leading up to it is engaging enough to keep people playing.
