I normally write this post immediately after finishing and submitting a game to the compo, but I fell asleep. This was the closest I’ve gotten to the deadline (Half an hour remaining); I often finish with a few hours to tweak minor things.

Anyhow, my take on the theme was to take an often complex/overwhelming game genre and strip it down to its core elements. Antarctic Skirmish is a minimal real-time strategy game featuring just one type of unit, and two main objectives: farming resources, and fighting the enemy team.

Penguins may to farm fish at fishing holes, and said fish can be used to hire more penguins. Due to only having one type of unit, the strategy is primarily in positioning and disruption of the enemy’s farming.

I’ve had mixed feedback regarding the difficulty of the game, but unfortunately couldn’t spend as much time as I would’ve liked to with regards to balancing the AI/overall game. I hope it’s enjoyable, regardless.

Entry page

After a hectic all nighter and several hours on top of that, my entry’s done. It lacks background music, but I’m happy with how all of the other assets turned out. The game could probably use some balancing in terms of how good each ability is as well as the game’s difficulty curve, but I’ll leave that stuff to post-LD edits. For now, sleep. ¦)

Link to entry page

- Meep

I wasted the first 26 hours or so being indecisive about things. ): Having almost given up, I finally had a concrete idea as I was about to sleep. One very productive all-nighter later, I just to polish it.

Due to several people suggesting it, I made a post-compo version of Take This Penguin that doesn’t start at the title screen each time you die. Link is on the entry page for it. Hope you enjoy it!

Entry Page

Gameplay Video

Post-mortem

Firstly, I had a lot of trouble with the theme. I wasted 26 hours of the competition trying to come up with a decent yet feasible (to finish within the remaining time) idea. However, once I knew what I was going for, the bulk of the game was finished with around 10 hours left.

I went on to add sound effects, but when I got to making background music, I just couldn’t get anything decent that I decided to scrap background music after wasting maybe 5-6 hours trying a bunch of things. This left me with very little time for smaller details I had wanted to add in, such as power ups.

The only power up I managed to get done was the shield. I had a grappling hook functional (It would shoot up and carry you several platforms up) but it was a bit buggy and would have ruined the quality of the game. That wasted time on the grappling hook could have added a first aid kit of sorts which I had also planned.

Overall I’m happy with the finished product, but of course there were things I should’ve spent less time on (background music) to make room for things that I was more confident I’d be able to properly implement. In a nutshell, it was (like always) a hectic 48 hours. However, it was very enjoyable and definitely worth it.

Entry Page

So I was once again hopeless at making background music, but I added sound effects, cut-scenes, and a pause function. Since I don’t think I’ll be making any decent music in the next few hours, I decided to call it done. Maybe I’ll add some in post-LD, if I get any better at it. Overall, though, I like the way the game turned out and I hope those who try it will feel the same.

<3 Penguins!

Link to entry

Pulling all nighters seem to have become a regular Ludum Dare thing for me. Plenty more hours were put into this and it’s more or less done. I just need to add sound effects and try my hand at some background music (In the past I’ve been hopeless at it). Perhaps some tweaking/balancing too.

So it took me a REALLY long time to come up with a good enough idea to start working on the game. If I recall correctly, I began when there were around 22 hours left.

The good news though, is that it’s making decent progress. I’m still not sure how the finished product will look, but here`s a progress screenie:

I have a family party to attend, so I’ve lost a large chunk of my time due to that. I pulled an all-nighter to get it done, but I had to leave out so many things I had planned.

The game plays as a platformer, but has the feel of a children’s story book. I guess it’s an art game. It was planned to have more gameplay to it such as a fight with a leopard seal, as well as belly sliding, but I guess I was being too ambitious.

Unfortunately the game doesn’t have background music or sound effects at all, but I hope the cute artwork will account for that. =(

Entry Link

Progress I made from last night:

At first I didn’t know what I was gonna do, so I figured I’d draw penguin sprites (I love them) to be productive. I’ve got some ideas on what to do with them now; hopefully I can get it done! :3

I decided to record a gameplay video of my game Defend Your Glacier.

I was going to record clips and edit them together but for some reason my video editors can’t read the AVIs put out by my screen recorder. =< Also forgot to record from speakers and recorded from my microphone instead. ;-; But anywho, the video's here.

Should skip near the end, as it starts out slow. =P

Defend Your Glacier Entry Page

It’s my first time trying to enter a Ludum Dare competition ): Wasted lots of time trying to come up with a decent idea, but made significant progress overnight.

You play a little penguin who starts off with a limited number of snowballs, fending off snow enemies that’re invading your little glacier. You can then make snowballs from the remains of the enemies to continue fighting. =P Harder enemies come out over time and such.

I’m not very good at making background music so I don’t know how that’ll turn out =<