girl2501 / play+rate / braingale

this was my third time participating in ludum dare; when the theme was announced I absolutely hated it.  I was ready to sit this one out and spend the weekend loathing myself, but ended up joining forces with John Sandoval, PostPre, and Jack Sanders to make this.

what went well:

• teamwork — I usually prefer to work by myself or with a musician, for many reasons. my experiences collaborating with people have been largely negative up to this point: my priorities in game design seem to differ quite a lot from most others, and it can make me a very difficult person to work with. the decision to team up was made on a whim, and I had no idea whether it was going to be a disaster or not. it was a lot more fun to work with john and jack than I expected (I’ve been working with postpre for about 6 months now, on this, so I knew what to expect from him);  I’m pretty sure there was more than one occasion where jack sanders wanted to punch me in the face, but overall it was a good experience with lots of laughs and good vibes. definitely want to work with one of them again in the future.
• art — the visuals for this turned out really well, I think. most of the credit goes to John, of course —I just did the environment art and UI design.
• sound — PostPre basically fucking killed it.  the music is great, and the creepy intercom voice-overs are a defining point of the game.

what went shit:

• time management — there were a lot of corners we had to cut that, in my opinion, kept this game from being something really special. I believe that a big reason for that is how much we dicked around with things that probably weren’t very important. for example, I spent two hours making this and showing it to the rest of the braingale gang. that was a bad idea. I also feel like we spent a lot more time on art assets than we should have — we really should have focused more on quantity than quality.
• gameplay — this game had a really solid idea behind it, but conflicting interests and early programming difficulties really hindered us from fully fleshing out the concept. the gameplay isn’t anywhere near as dynamic or interesting as it could be, and is blemished by janky movement and collision boxes.

click here to play and rate

wasn’t quite feeling the theme, but instead of sitting this one out I decided to join forces with my boys John Sandoval, PostPre, and Jack Sanders. here’s what we got so far. (on the right is John Sandoval™ in a thong)

fuck yeah

a few of my favorite entries so far have gotten far less attention than is acceptable. what the heck, people. please rectify this accordingly;

• MakHappy // JosephGribbin

a happy-ass game about little dudes hanging out. more charming than any one game has any goddamn right to be.

I guess I’m kind of late with this.

apocalypse inc. / play+rate / devlog

Apocalypse Inc. is a tower defense-action game depicting the day-to-day struggle of a freelance space pirate bounty hunter duo. when a particularly small planet is being menaced by the intergalactic yakuza, only Apocalypse Inc. has the courage, tools, and style to save the day.

what went well:

• art — my original intention was for the color palette to be randomly generated every time you start a new game. the red, pink, white and black palette was a placeholder, but when people started commenting on it I decided to make it permanent. the art itself is super simple, but bold. I didn’t have any problem pumping out art for this.
• gameplay — I don’t play many tower defense games, and I definitely haven’t made any, so the decision to go with tower defense gameplay was pretty bold. I feel like the game is pretty fun, if for no other reason than the way things feel and flow.

what went shit:

• gameplay— I don’t play many tower defense games, and I definitely haven’t made any. having made other arcade style games, I was able to intuit things like spawn rates and health. I didn’t have this advantage with the tower defense aspects of my game, and that shows big time. a lot of the interface is left completely ambiguous, and things like the lack of wave-based enemy spawning works against tower-building. most everything in the game isn’t very well thought out or balanced.
• programming— holy shit. this game was a pain in the ass to make. I suck at programming, and I especially suck at trigonometry. the circular nature of the game means that pretty much everything runs on trig equations. I spent most of Saturday trying to get gravity and the camera to work. I had to start over from scratch at least 4 times trying to figure that stuff out. never again.
• narrative — I originally wanted my game to be a lot more narrative based. the rectangular natives that you’re trying to save were going to talk to each other and yell swear words as they were being blown up, there was going to be a constant banter between the main character and his in-orbit partner. hopefully I’ll add that stuff in later.

making this game was pretty hellish. I was ready to, and even pretty certain I was going to give up on Saturday; I have no clue how I actually ended up getting this done. I’m not entirely happy with the game, but people seem to be enjoying it a lot more than my entry last year.

I’ve been talked into continuing work on this; I started development blog for anyone interesting in keeping up with my progress. I plan to release it as a full game with more enemies, weapons, buildings, and story-oriented gameplay.

click here to play and rate

Apocalypse Inc.

that was a rough weekend. I had to rebuild this from scratch at least 5 times, and ended up having to cut a bunch of a stuff that would have been cool. I think it’s something worth continuing, tho. I’m not entirely happy with the state of this build, but it’s playable. (be sure to read the notes on the entry page before you play)

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=6474

explosions can make any game fun

off to a pretty slow start due to programming difficulties. wasted a lot of time on an animation that I ended up scrapping as well. here are some colors:

I can always count on LD for having the weirdest fucking themes.

for anyone still needing to get pumped:

here is this: http://www.doitmotherfucker.com/

and here is a Ludum Dare mixtape that I just made: http://8tracks.com/mooosh/do-it

good luck, gang.

yeah

I finished my game!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=6474

this was my first Ludum Dare, and I’m pretty pumped that I was able to finish on time. I learned a lot. it feels really good to just go for it and make a game without any documentation or planning. I pretty much planned out my entire game on the fly, and I’m pretty content with it for what it is. (even though it’s really stupid)

super close to being finished with my game, but not sure that it’ll be 100% in 2 hours… do you have to submit it before the timer hits zero? and is it possible to revise an entry after submitting it? (before the deadline?)

little behind, but I got some stuff…

(The stick person is a placeholder) I’m not 100% sure where this is going, but I find that that’s the best way to do things sometimes. What I do know is that this fucker is alone.

If I had the time, I would totally make this game with smooth anti-alias lines. Maybe later? At the moment I am calling it ‘Solitaire°‘

I have purchased the licensing rights for the song, “Escape from the City” from Sega (or plan to), and would like to use it in my game.

is that ok? I already sent an email to Sega and I’m assuming that they’ll give me the green light.

in in in in!

IN!!

IN IN IN