First things first, go play Pixel Story here. Seriously, do it. Please? Pretty please? This story can be viewed as a slightly confusing timelapse here.

Intro

Pixel Story is pretty much the best game I’ve ever made, in terms of being a complete experience. It almost didn’t happen, as I started making a different game but scrapped it within a few hours.

What went well.

Friends
I spent the first day and a half at a friend’s house. It was his first Ludum Dare, and he’s an accomplished programmer who struggles with motivation and doesn’t really have a game dev tool he likes that much yet. I was there because I wanted to encourage him to participate, and as I discovered, having someone around to bounce ideas off of for the first few hours is really handy. Also, I could have immediate feedback on gameplay.

Scope
I actually got really lucky here. I made a decision early on that all levels should be 24 pixels square, and that the camera would be static. I also decided to make a game with 8 levels or realms. This later turned into 6 after I made the town level. As a result, I was gameplay complete with 15 hours to go, which allowed me to really polish my game.

Difficulty
Just for the record, I haven’t seen anyone aside from me actually play through my game. The difficulty was originally tuned with me in mind, which turned out to be really harsh on some players. The type of difficulty tended to be about reflexes, which I later retargeted to multitasking, after some fairly solid feedback from another friend.

What went badly.

To tell you the truth, not much actually went badly. But I can think of a few things I’m not incredibly pleased with.

Future plans
I really can’t see where I can go with Pixel Story. It really feels like a complete experience. I could release an updated version with new levels, but I’m just not sure how much I’d like it. This is as opposed to my last good Ludum Dare Entry, Questling, which I could totally see with a community and on mobile devices and the like.

Playtime
I’m still not quite sure how much gameplay there is in Pixel Story, as I really haven’t seen anyone play it through in front of me. I feel that the replayability is just too low, and that it’s just a bite sized experience. I’d far prefer to have created something that has lasting appeal.

What I learned!

• Be around people, people you can work with. They significantly decrease the chances of massive burnout and death spirals.
• Don’t be afraid to make small games! Pixel Story is complete! It’s super finished, and super tight. Feels good man.
• Leave time to polish! Falls in with the above lesson, but polish turns a meh game into a good game.
• Don’t post your game to Reddit too quickly. You get downvoted and ignored.

Most importantly:

I had tons of fun, learned a lot, and I’m super excited for  LD24.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FR7FS7lHqI&feature=youtube_gdata

My timelapse is up. I have to say, I’m very happy with my game. It’s fully finished, and I’m happy with the level of polish it has. I’m working on getting people to actually play it now!

I’ve finished off my newly named game, Pixel Story. You can play it here!

Some screenshots are in order though. Go save the world!

It’s been an interesting Ludum Dare so far. I’ve scrapped one game, after realizing it has bad scope and it wouldn’t be fun, and I have a new one going. It’s a top down adventurey shooty minigamey game, made entirely out of pixels. I’m scarily on the right track for this Ludum Dare, but I don’t want to jinx it.

Stupidly ill! And also in. I missed the last Ludum Dare to go on a much needed holiday, but I’m good to go this time. I’ll be at a friend’s house competing, for that extra motivation. You can expect to see a timelapse, and I’ll be in the IRC.

Tools:

• Game Maker
• Illustrator
• Photoshop
• SFXR
• Maybe Wolfram Tones (god forbid)
• Chronolapse
• Notepad++

Let’s do this shit.

For my tools, it’s gonna be this:

• Game Maker 8
• Photoshop/Illustrator CS5
• Chronolapse
• SFXR
• (Hopefully not but probably) Wolfram Tones

I’m going to spend the next 25 days procrastinating and listening to Daft Punk. Let’s do this!

I have problems with this theme. The problems are that all the games I want to make would take far too long, and I’ve already scrapped 2 moderately ambitious games. I’m not artistic enough to get away with making an arty game, so that’s not really a decent option. My morale is low enough and I have not enough ideas to make anything awesome, so I decided on a platformer!

This is the result of about an hour’s work, and more details will follow later.

Looks like it’s that time again!
List of tools I’ll be using:

• Game Maker 8 (Development, Sprites)
• Photoshop (Art, GUI, Sprites)
• SFXR (SFX)
• Possibly a music tool I’m thinking of making, which I’ll release if I do
• Or Wolfram Tones if I don’t
• And Chronolapse for making a glorious documentation of my probable failure!

GL HF

Best day ever!

http://indiegames.com/2011/06/freeware_game_pick_questling_f.html

It’s been a long Ludum Dare. No longer than usual, but still. I submitted my game, Questling, with 4 minutes to go. I then realized there was an additional submittal hour, so I polished and added music. Since then, I’ve kept updating my post release .exe, and I’ve finished my timelapse. I really wish I got more levels into the final version, but I’m very proud of what I have. So, try it out.

Submission – Timelapse

Who says that’s not a word. Anyhow, work on my game, as yet unnamed, has gone suprisingly well. Too well, some might say. I’m pretty tired, so just have a screenshot.

Hi, my name is Flyboy. You may remember from such Ludum Dares as LD#19 and LD#18.
I’ll be using the following tools!
Game Maker 8
Photoshop CS5
I’ll probably try some music thing, then realize I suck and use Wolfram Tones.

And I’ll try not to suck as much this time.

First of all, here’s my timelapse:

Science Tycoon Timelapse

My game is a bit jiggered at the moment, but I think it was a valiant effort, with many cool by-products such as the Ludum Dare User Powered Scientist Name Generator! LDUPSNG! As well as I discovered that it’s probably not a great idea to aim as high as I did. Also, I found out that it’s not a good idea to stay up late the night before Ludum Dare watching Star Wars. Where was I? Anyhow, this was a great experience and you all rock. Peace!

Ludum Dare Official Unofficial Mumble!

Currently having an amazing party over 72.249.10.144:64738 #ludumdare! Come swing by!

You can get Mumble over here.

Shoutout to Furyhunter for hosting the Mumble server.

Uncle Flyboy needs you! To submit names! Together we can beat the reds! Etcetera!

You can watch the war effort here!

You can mourn for your fallen comrades over here!

GET TO IT SOLDIER!

More specifically, scientist names, for me to generate.

GOGOGOGO!

You can view results here.

This is second Ludum Dare, and I’ve convinced 5 friends to participate as well.

I will be using Game Maker 8 to develop, SFXR for sound effects, Wolfram Tones for music and Chronolapse for timelapsing.

Let’s do this!

But better late than never. It starts a few hours into my development as I was using fraps to capture the start, which failed badly. Without any further ado, I present my timelapse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNbIu-Tmsf0

My game, with less than two hours till the end of LD48, has terrible balance issues. It would take much more time than I have to fix. I’m going to package up what I have, and send it out into the wild. I suppose there’s not much I can do.
I had a great first compo though.