Creating a building and managing game requires a lot of forethought and planning. And a good one needs to be rich enough to be a fun and interesting challenge. But when the theme “Your are the Villain” came up, it was hard to resist the temptation of doing a tribute to Dungeon Keeper. So we decided to do it anyway.

Keep our Dungeons Evil : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=10263

What we managed to get working in time :

In KODE we wanted to add a nice twist which was to have an inspector arrive and check that your dungeon was truly an example of evilness. We thought that would suggest some backstory of a higher hierarchy where the player is only managing a branch of a greater evil realm. The kind anyone can relate to, since we all have someone to respond to at some time or another.
We’re really glad we managed to get that in the game in time. We kept it for the end, in case the other more urgent challenges we had to address first wouldn’t allow for that added layer of gameplay.

Also six buildings (corridors count as two because of turns) PLUS three animated characters is actually a lot to design and get working properly. Not only did the artists barely work fast enough to get them done in time, but some of them posed some serious coding challenges. And sleep deprivation really didn’t help in that respect. Especially  AI pathfinding was a big mouthful. Our coders must have spent half the time getting that working for the game.

What we needed more time for :

So the player has to place each bloc manually and you can’t really turn them otherwise than selecting them as different blocs. But give us a break, we only had one weekend .
The lava pit clearly deserved more functionality than it’s current evil aesthetic one. Even if it counts a lot in the demon inspectors eye. Maybe in a future release you’ll be able to drop someone in there.

We decided early on we wouldn’t go into fighting. It can also be interpreted as a game design decision as much as a time management one, but it clearly deserves more time to think about. And it could have implied more characters (three is enough for one weekend).

Some of our designs planned for more types of building like trapped coin boxes or canons pointing outwards for some more evil kudos. But you just have to know when to stop.

And more spells would have been a blast!

In any case, all I can say is, I’m having a ball just playing our game, which isn’t a very objective statement since I worked on it, but it still showed I loved working on it and I hope it will show when you try it.

ONE LAST THING : one of our late bugs is that everyone seems to get the WIN screen when finished. but you’re not THAT good. Until we sort it out I would suggest you to put your score in your comments to know if you are truly evil or if the goat only says that because it loves you all, deep down inside.
I know we don’t. But we are very evil, we hate everyone

Have FUN !

Please play and rate our game !!

Finally, we’re through, it took a lot of work but we can now give to you Keep Our Dungeon Evil !

Or KODE for short.

Now we’re off to bed, have a good night everyone !

Those idiotic friendly knights are ruining our dungeon ! The demon inspector will be here any minute. Beware if your dungeon isn’t evil enough after he leaves!

  Click here to see our game !

Goal:
You need to build a dungeon that will be inspected by the demon inspector… But it seems happy and friendly knights have decided to make it prettier… with pink paint ! You must stop them at once to please the inspector !

Team :
Chevalier Quentin : Programmer
Kalinowski Fabien : Programmer
Mauge Francois : Graphist
Schneider Vincent : Graphist
Coudert Romain : Sound

So we’ve decided on something and we’re off to production. Here’s a bit of our ‘offices’ !

We’re aiming for a dungeon construction game, where you try to prevent gentle knights from repainting your evil castle to fit their horrid taste….

Hello everyone,

for the third time we’re gonna participate in Ludum Dare… we should be around 3 or 5 friends.

We are splitted across europe… (actually France and Belgium ).

We’ll be using Unity3D as our engine and start from scratch even if the jam rules does not impose it. The contents will be made using 3dsmax and Photoshop I guess, but we’ll see that as we get started !

Good Luck to everyone !

Hi everyone,
Here’s the game we did for the October Challenge ( our Ludum Dare 23 entry ), we polished it quite a bit and there it is !

Here’s the pitch :

As the 37th reincarnation of the ball god of Balance, you’ll have to herd your people to safety around their home… But alas, as they appear, those little fellows will unbalance the world, threatening your own equilibrium !

- Move the ball by tilting your device !
- Scare off your people to gather them around the house !
- Careful not to roll over them… or not !
- Sacrifice some to restore balance, avoid falling and save the rest !
- Win the levels by gathering the necessary amount of people !
- More content is coming !

Feedback and comments are welcome, thanks for the support !

Please note that we will constantly add features and updates to content !

October Challenge Entry Page
Balance Google Play Page

We found some time to build an Android version !
Move the ball by tilting your device !

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=10263

This version is also a bit easier, as the tiny people weight less on the world.

Flash that QR Code to download the install straight to your Android device :

Thanks everyone!

Work progress at 13:00

Hello,

We’re  a team of three to make the “Jam” for the anniversary

We’ll probably use :

Engine : Unity3D

Art : Photoshop, Max, Flash

Sound : sfxr, musagi, audacity

Good luck to everyone !!