I made a post combo version that you can play -

 http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=3309

here’s some screens of the new version:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=3309

“Crush things smaller than you and take their money” – Bad Business Crocodile

You play a business-crocodile who kills cute things in order to maintain his investments.

here’s two early shots of “Bad Business Croc, Nobody Likes You”

I’m having lots of fun kicking back and rummaging through everyones games, here are some interesting/fun/smart entries worth checking out.

There is a Picture by MortisGhost

Extensionism by Eelfroth

ANtopia by pgil

Still lot’s of awesome games to checkout, if you want me to check yours out let me know!

Oh hey there. I’ve been so busy post-Ludum Dare I hardly had time to talk about my game D:

Well here it is, Scape-

Scape is a puzzle game where your goal is to fill all the empty spots with trees. Every move you make you plant a tree, every tree takes 3 moves to grow fully and once it’s grown it blocks your path so you have to plan your movements carefully. There are some added challenges later but I’ll let you play to see them

You can play it here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=3309

Also, I’d like to say this was a special ludum dare for me because the day it started was the my last day at my old job, which I quit so I can make my own games full time, because I want to. And I’m very happy with how things turned out! Thanks to everyone who has played/commented on the game.

I’m looking forward to playing everyone’s games. If you think i’ll like your game post it in the comments and I promise to play it and give feedback!

Cheers,

Andrew

Wooooaaahh. Exciting times. Get back to work!

almost done!

Have a WIP screenshot -

Still a ways to go, but not worried.

Can’t wait to play everyone’s games, good luck!

I had a lot of fun this ludum dare, thanks everyone!

The game I ended up making was Step Off, which is a simple play forever style game with 40 items to unlock. The description from the game page- “you play the purple guy who is so deathly afraid of other people’s company that it physically pains him. To stay alive he must make them leave. But he doesn’t want to talk to them or touch them so he just throws stuff. ”

This wasn’t the game I initially set out to make, however. Infact, it was quite the opposite at first (a brooding, dark, abstract platformer/narrative), but I felt that it was boring and not fun so I started over with something I thought would be fun.

My process in making Step-Off was very “loose”. I didn’t really know what I was making at first, I just added things one by one, thinking to myself each time, “that would be fun.” And eventually things fell together with a little elbow grease.

The controls: There has been a lot of mixed criticism and praise on the aiming while throwing objects, so I’ll go a little into my thought process behind the choice. I didn’t want to use a precise aiming method like the mouse, because that would have been to easy and tedious. I wanted something that felt like how I feel when I’m throwing something myself in real life- challenging but it’s satisfying when you hit something.

What went right: I learned a lot from my previous entries, and because of that I had about 5-6 hours to polish the game and add more unlockable items.

What went wrong: wasted a little too much time on my first idea when I knew deep down it was never going anywhere. Also I bought nothing but lasagne to eat which got really boring…

I’ll end with a gif since you guys seem to enjoy those a lot

Thanks again guys!

And you can play the game here.

One more gif before bed, for your enjoyment

And of course you can play it here – http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=3309 

All done! You can play it here

I’ll be sure to do a postmortem in a short, but first- nap.

So you play the purple guy who is so deathly afraid of other people’s company that it physically pains him. To stay alive he must make them leave. But he doesn’t want to talk to them or touch them so he just throws stuff.

Just about there…

Still on the todo list:

• Title
• Intro
• Gameover screen
• Music
• More unlockables

Some progress shots:

I swear this all makes perfect sense. You’ll see.

All stocked up on food and music, so I’m ready.  Will be using flash. See you there!

Astar Postmortem

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=rate&uid=3309

Tools used

Flashdevelop – $0

Flashpunk – $0

PXtone – $0

ASEprite – $0

Postmortemdinner – $16

Total cost – Not going to laser-tag with my friends on Saturday D:

Learn from my mistakes -

- and don’t leave butternut squash soup out for 48 hours, it goes bad. Also, making games is hard:

The first risk I took was implementing the A* pathfinding algorithm into flash, which beforehand I had only ever done in Gamemaker, and that was a looong time ago. So I opened that up for reference and away I went.

The first implementation “worked” but had some sorta hilarious path results. I wish I had a screenshot but it looked somthing like this ->

My professional representation of pathfinding gone wrong

The Second issue was sound. I knew I needed music and I had a nebulous idea of the type of feeling I wanted from the music. “Puzzle-y music” I thought… “Puzzle-y music”… So I started to fool around with some violins and realized I sucked at that. So I ended up using my old friend the Sin-wave and was glad I did. It took about three tries before I had the sound I wanted.

So I suppose the lesson here is to experiment, because my favorite part of this compo/exercise is the risks I took and learned from.

blah blah blah, you can play it here.

P.S. I secretly have a crush on every participant, don’t tell. Great job everyone!

one of the new level mockups for T.H.I.S

No zombies, I promise… But maybe some skeleton kittens.

The Making of The Heart Is Safe

Tools used:

flashDevelop – $0

flashpunk – $0

MSpaint – $0

pxtone – $0

sfxr – $0

beer – $12

Total cost – a bit of my health

picture > words

Scanlines and diamonds and hearts, oh my!

T.H.I.S. was mostly a stream of conscious accident than anything.  In it’s first day of life it played more like a game of kleptomania. In fact it still does. So this is really a game about kleptomania. Which really says a lot about everyone who plays it.

The main thing I did differently in the making of this game was the lack of any to-do list until the second day. This created a fear that I wasn’t on schedule. Most people say that a to-do list is a way of tracking what you need to do. In this case it was more a way of tracking how much I had gotten done, because after writing it, I took a nap. I don’t necessarily condone this, but it worked in this case.

“I wouldn’t not be lying if I didn’t say that I wouldn’t hate seeing a sequel” -Farfin

Having tools like flashDevelop and flashpunk are really what made this project possible, so I feel I need to put that out there. I went into this project only wanting to use free software.

For sound effects I used sfxr, as most do, but for music I used pxtone. The music wouldn’t have existed without it, and I recommend it as highly as I would recommend sfxr. But if you disagree I would love to hear what you use. The music itself took about 20 minutes to write plus about 10 minutes of polish, but made a world of difference.

I think it’s worth noting that any amount of documentation before the game was built, or during, would have resulted in a much different game. I was confident going in with what I wanted the feeling of the game to be and went with it.

If I could go back and do something differently it would be the theme setting up a music playlist before hand so I would spend less precious time dj-ing.

blah blah blah shut up and let me play

My mother always told me: Never leave home without your heart – or else you’ll be attacked by exploding ghost cats.

The Heart is Safe

This certainly was a fun experience, and I’ll definitely be back again. Until then, I need a drink.

From Nothing is a minimalist game with a simple goal: The world begins in darkness but is revealed as the player navigates through it, and collects shiny things…

I can see myself revisiting this, developing the mechanic, polishing, and optimizing the code.

I began this game in an odd way, due to the time constraint no doubt. I started doodling with the character design as I brainstormed possible directions to go. Realizing I had spent way too much time fiddling with the little details of the player character (If I adjust the alpha by just 0.02…) I moved on to the controls, still without a clear direction in mind.

I wanted the controls to be simple to reflect the rest of the game, and be easy to pick up. Again, I spent way too much time fiddling with the little numbers in order to get the right feeling, but I think it was worth it.

This is where I feel I went wrong, designing the character and controls before having a clear idea of the gameplay, so I buckled up and focused on the word… discovery. I decided I wanted the world to start from nothing and be revealed slowly. To do this I designed a quasi-destructible terrain engine, covered my world with it, and optimized it as much as I could in the time I had.

Now I had the player, the controls, and the idea. Implemented. But I didn’t have a game. And I had just slept for 12 hours. Great. So with a few hours before the deadline, I tied up the loose ends with what felt right. And so we have From Nothing.