Ludum Dare

Posts Tagged ‘shopping’

A little while since my last entry, but I’ve been pretty busy at least. I’ve come up with some slightly more road like graphics (I kind of miss my old hyper abstract ones, but it feels like I should work the theme in when I can). I’ve also added some AI opponents, so now instead of one blob there are several

Each enemy has somewhat different behaviour, kind of like in pacman. Actually the whole thing was starting to become very pacman-esque which was a little worrying, I didn’t particularly want to make a clone of something if I could avoid it. I was getting a bit bogged down generally too, so decided it was a good time to get some fresh air, go to the shops, and stock up on some food. It worked pretty well, I’ve got a much better idea of what to do next now, and I’m much less worried about the pacman thing (there’ll be similarities, but I don’t expect it to feel like a clone).

Got back from the shops, was hungry, so mades cheese on toast for lunch, served with more browny beverage goodness \o/ (my count is now 3).

Random Dungeon Exploration is the result of trying to push the Random theme as far as possible. It got random levels, random enemies, random quests (well, a little bit random!), random items, random player names, and random events. I guess it could have been even more random, but time was a limiting factor.

As for the actual gameplay, it’s fairly simple step based dungeon crawling. And a ‘town’ screen where you can shop and select dungeons. It felt pretty solid, but there were a lot of balancing issues that you’d notice once you reached some higher levels.

The game was well received, placing second in the ‘Fun’ and ‘Production’ categories, and also getting the ‘Best In Show’ UBER prize.

You can get the slightly improved post compo version, or the compo version. Both are for Windows and OpenGL.

LD48 #8.5 was an unofficial competition with two themes: Moon, and Anti-Text. “Moon” was actually some insanely long thing about how you’re looking at the moon and suddenly realize it’s an alien spaceship or something, but we just called it Moon. So I created probably my favorite of my own LD48 entries, Moon Invaders. There’s no text whatsoever in the entire game, which makes reading the manual rather necessary, since it’s a strategy game. It’s basically a tower defense game, but instead of monsters following a path, they descend Space Invaders style. I greatly enhanced this game post-compo, working obsessively for a week. I just like it!

LD48 #8 theme was “Swarms”. It also occurred right around the initial release of the Nintendo Wii. Thus, you get Wee Ninja, a game where you are trying to beat an insanely large horde of other shoppers to the last remaining Wees in stock during the holiday season. It’s fun to play, simple, and includes achievements to unlock bonus abilities. One of the more complete entries I’ve ever done (possibly because the gameplay was so incredibly simple!).

LD48 #3 was themed “Preparation – Set it up and let it go”. For this I originally made a game where you were a leprechaun and needed to plant traps to kill people trying to come steal your lucky charms. For some reason, despite how fun that sounds, I couldn’t get anywhere on it and quit halfway through. Then I came back on the second day, reusing some of the code and graphics and created NPC Quest! It’s a game of buying gear for a fantasy hero, and then watching him fight battles without your help. It’s actually more strategic and fun than it sounds.

LD48 #1 theme was Guardian. I created Scarecrow: Heart Of Straw, a game where you play the role of a scarecrow, scaring crows (as they are wont to do) away from corn. I don’t know what Pellies it did or didn’t win. I think it did fairly well, and has a rockin’ crowmetal soundtrack and a mumbly farmer.

Posts Tagged ‘shopping’

Bots and Shops

Random Dungeon Exploration

Moon Invaders

Wee Ninja

NPC Quest

Scarecrow: Heart Of Straw