needs a dash more evil…

Hate elves?  Sure we all do.  Now is your chance for revenge!

The Evil Lair Construction Set

Design your very own Evil Lair.  Layout the rooms and hallways and set some treasure as bait.  Curious adventurers can’t resist those shiny baubles.  Raise their hopes and then have your minions close in for the kill.   As if the look of terror on their little faces is not precious enough, they often carry a few coins in their pockets as a bonus.

More treasure will lure more and stronger adventurers such as:

• the curious naive – not very filling
• the quick elf – the minions are always fighting over the chewy ears, the little scamps
• the hearty dwarf – delicious spread on warm toast
• the mighty knight – err… he looks kind of tough

Set traps, raise the dead and generally be awful.

I have done three Ludum Dares and finished three games.  For that I am very happy.  However, none of these games were very “fun”.  I seem to have the mechanics down so I will do some soul searching this time around to see if I can find the fun.  This game design stuff seems easy but it is really hard!

• Language: HTML5/Javascript
• Libraries: Raphaeljs and maybe Craftyjs
• Graphics: Paint.net
• Music: musagi
• Sound: bfxr

Okay so my game was pretty-much impossibly difficult to win and confusing to boot.  Lesson learned.  I made some tweaks and uploaded a new version under a different link “Playable Version” so as not to be confused with my entry version.  Please try it!  (and then ignore it because you should only vote on my entry version)

Now with more love

Things tweaked:

• added positive/negative feedback for when you are winning/losing
• bigger fonts and different colors for readability
• graphical indicators to show what the actions do
• some gameplay tweaks to make it easier

Velocigopher attacks!

The game:  Survival of the Leggiest

Help the little critters to evolve longer legs so they can escape their predators.

Frameworks:  Craftyjs, Raphaeljs, jQuery

Sounds:  bfxr

Music: Musagi (thanks Dr Petter!)

Art: Paint.net

This has been my second LD attempt and my second completed game!

Shoebox World

The Good

• Music.  My first game to have it.  Musagi is fun!
• Artwork.  Perhaps you are thinking this should be in the Bad or even Ugly categories.  This means you haven’t seen my previous games.  I am actually improving!
• I started to hardcode the “goals” for winning the game and then stopped and decided, for once, that I would actually design it.  It took a tiny bit more time than hardcoding but in the end all I had to do was cut and paste my first goal, change two parameters and presto, new goals!

The Bad

• The game is confusing for first-time players.  I need to get better at making it accessible.
• I came down with strep throat on friday.  I was a pitiful sight all weekend but damned if that was going to stop me.
• Even with the strep throat excuse, I could not dodge a commitment that stole away most of my sunday.  I am just not good enough yet to make up for this lost time.

The Ugly

• I was reserving sunday night for game balancing and polish.  I cut out any remaining features, made a test deploy to the server, a quick test pass and…it hangs?!  Obscure error message deep in the framework?!  Gahh!   I lost all my polish time desperately trying to debug a dumb little error that happened only after a deploy to the server.  In a way this was just bad luck since I am pretty familiar with the framework and the error ended up being obscure.

All things considered, another enjoyable experience.  Looking forward to the next one!

LD22 was my first attempt and I actually finished a game!  Was it a fun game?  That is up for debate but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  My goal for LD23 is to increase the fun level and increase my standing in the scoring.  I landed square in the middle of the pack  for  LD22.

• Language: HTML5/JavaScript
• Framework: Craftyjs, jQuery
• Graphics: Paint.net
• Music: musagi
• Sound: Audacity, SoundManager 2

Mantra: Keep it simple!  Focus on fun!

Postmortem of “Lonely Island”, my first Ludum Dare entry.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=7542

The Good

I decided before the compo I would not make a game about killing things (having kids changes your thinking).  This helped me come up with something original (for me anyway).  Okay, so you kill the trees and you kill the fish when you cook it but hey, baby steps.

I took lots of breaks, got enough sleep, and ate healthy.  I think this made a big difference in my stress level.  I wasn’t even feeling that stressed when Sunday came and I still didn’t know what my game was going to be about.

I found an animation template that helped immensely.  My programmer graphics perhaps went from fugly to “charmingly ugly”.  I probably would have spend the whole two days just adjusting pixels to make the guy walk without it.

The Bad

I made the n00b mistake of committing my pre-competition thoughts to either Random Generation or Evolution themes, both having great possibilities.  I never thought Alone would win.  So when it did my mind went blank.  “How can I make an original game about being alone?  That’s like 90% of games already out there.”  I spent Saturday just making a generic game and hoping inspiration would hit me.  That might explain why you saw down trees by umm, punching them?

I waited until late the last night (GMT+1 here) to make most of my sounds.  My kids were sleeping in the next room and I was exhausted.  Not the ideal environment for trying to voice hilarious dialog.  Next time I will do this during the day and leave quiet night-time for coding and graphics.

Not enough playtesting. I got my wife to stop rolling her eyes long enough to try the game a couple of times so that helped.  Myself, I only played in easy mode (everything costs 1 log) to test all the features because building the boat over and over got tedious.  When your own game gets tedious to play after just a few times that should tell you something.  I missed the message because building the boat is still tedious.

Got too used to seeing my placeholder graphics for terrain.  The only piece of terrain that wasn’t created in the first 3 minutes of the compo is the freshwater, which is exactly one tile out of 300.  I should have looked at it with a more citical eye.  Spending just 20 minutes on terrain would have made the game look much better.

The Ugly

Not this time.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.  Can’t wait for the next one!

Just submitted my first Ludum Dare Entry.  I was sweating it this morning since I still didn’t know what my game was going to be.

Lonely Island

See it here http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=7542

Now for some sleep….

This is my first entry.  I have a dismal record of finishing games but I am optimistic that the two-day deadline will keep me focused.   What I plan to use:

• Language: HTML5/JavaScript
• Framework: Craftyjs
• Graphics: Paint.net, Pixothello, TiledQT
• Sound: Audacity, SoundManager 2

Mantra: I WILL keep it simple!