I’ve been busy trying to incorporate all of your excellent feedback into a more fun game. My game, Escape Velocity, features a ship that has to tango with realistic gravity (scale notwithstanding) in order to accomplish its missions.

My latest attempt, which I’m calling v1.2, has the following added features over the compo version:

• Multiple ships (extra lives)
• Menu screen & multiple (easier) difficulties
• Added direction indicator for delivery zone.
• Added out-of-fuel indicator and reminder that F5 resets.
• Narrowed the rectangle your ship can move in before the screen scrolls (so you can better see what’s ahead).
• Added animation to target zone.

Before I discovered Ludum Dare, I was a programmer and a game enthusiast. Even though games were why I started programming, I would hesitate to use the term game programmer for myself because I’d never finished any games. I would make a lot of tech demos and the like: programs I’d made just for myself but abandoned well before they had any purpose outside of my own amusement. I think on some level, I never really thought one person could finish anything really cool that others could enjoy. At least, not without having tons of experience, time, industry connections, etc.

To say that this experience has been inspirational would be a huge understatement. This has been super-mega-awesome-bordering-on-religious-awakening-great. Ludum Dare 21 has been my own personal right-of-passage. I embarked on a great journey, saw a vision of Princess Peach eating Toad and returned to my community as a Game Developer.

Of course, we’ll ignore for now that there’s not much to my game. I want to keep up this can-do attitude and keep pushing my game further forward. That means I’ll need more honest feedback and constructive criticism. So if you haven’t played my game, please hook a brother up. If you have, please see if you like it more. After all, you haven’t played this game yet . Naturally, the compo version is still there too, in all it’s ugly glory with all it’s original assets.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 31st, 2011 at 8:59 am and is filed under LD #21. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.