Do not vote for the snowman. It is a bad theme. It should not have been included.
Themes are at their best when they guide and constrain our work. A vague or unclear theme is of no value to developers.
Don’t believe me? Try this. Imagine making a game based on this theme:
Now imagine the game you’d make based on this theme:
The first theme is better. It’s harder, yes. But the soul of creativity is taking tight constraints and finding a way to make them work. At first you might think that there’s no way to make a game in only one dimension. Have faith. There is always a way. And the more difficult the obstacles, the more beautiful, unexpected, and smile-inducing will be the solutions when they are revealed. Creativity thrives on restriction, not on looseness.
Snowman is profoundly vague and totally unclear. It will result in a whole lot of games that show the snowman in some way: as a character, as a background, as the lines that structure a level. It may inspire some games with snow, or with snowmen generally, or with snowmen with hats, or hats generally. Beyond this, the games will wander off in every kind of direction, with no real connection or, indeed, “theme.”
Snowman offers no guidance toward gameplay. No guidance toward the structure of the game. He’s a visual thing, and he will influence some visuals. But he will not offer creative constraint or guidance.
Imagine if the theme was, “Snowman with a hat.” Would you vote for it then?
If you vote for Snowman, the result will be worse games. Ludum Dare 31 will be remembered as, “The stupid one with the snowman and all the random, bad games.” It may have some great games in it. But how will you know, when you’re evaluating this year’s Superdimensional, whether the developer stuck the snowman in at the last minute or whether he developed the whole game—somehow—around the snowman?
Put it another way. If your best hope of winning a Ludum Dare is to cheat the system by bringing an existing game into the weekend, this is the Ludum Dare for you. Bring that Mario clone, that RTS, that racing game, that sneaker, that mini-RPG, that beat-em-up—whatever—and stick ☃ into it somewhere. Animate him, make him the main character. Have snow fall somewhere and put him in someone’s yard. Have him be the Yoda character who gives the player his missions. An hour’s work, tops. I’m telling you, if you’re disposed to cheat, 31 is your lucky number.
No. ☃ stinks as a theme.
And there are so many good ones to choose from. What will the soul of this Ludum Dare be? Not just the cute emblem, but the soul? Is this to be the Ludum Dare with a snowman thrown into each game? Or is it to be a Ludum Dare in which the developers took on a real challenge and found a thousand sometimes beautiful, sometimes bizarre, but always interesting ways of overcoming it?
Do not vote for Snowman.
If you already did, change it.
Vote against Snowman.
