I’ve updated my LD22 entry with bug fixes, better instructions, music & sound, and a timer. You can play the new version here. Of course, the original is still available for voting here.

I was very happy to hear that people enjoyed the game. I don’t know if I’ll ever add more content and levels to make it into a long game, but I was able to polish it a bit more. The two big bugs I fixed were 1) subjects who stop colliding with walls and just leave the castle and 2) the player not being able to turn exactly when he wants to. The only other bug I know of is that subjects don’t always leave and enter their rooms well, but that doesn’t affect gameplay, so I left it for now.

I just finished my first Ludum Dare, and it was a success! Admittedly I didn’t finish in time for the compo and my game’s still not totally done, but I’m still proud of what I did.

The Game

The gameplay of Busy King is something like Pacman, but a bit more strategic (for example, you can hide in other rooms, and you should probably avoid the wizard.) You play as a king who needs some alone time to get some work done, but his subjects keep seeking him out to ask him stuff. The only way to get rid of them is to bring them back to the room they came from.

If anyone is wondering what the characters are supposed to be: the pages (red) belong in the dining room, the advisors (green) belong in council chamber, the knights (blue) belong in the armory, and the wizard (purple) belongs in his tower. I would have added more characters (including kittens!) if I had more time.

The bad

Too many other things to do! All Saturday night was spent on a bus, and almost all Sunday was spent with my relatives. So it was not a good weekend for Ludum Dare – but I was able to get the game playable on Monday. There are still some weird bugs though (I like the one where a subject suddenly is able to walk through walls and escapes the castle.)

I also wish I had done the instructions differently. I wanted to be in the cool club and use integrated instructions but it didn’t work well, and I was out of time at that point. Since the instructions are simple, a single splash screen might have been better.

The good

The game turned out fun! The concept evolved over time: at first I was thinking of a time management game where you had to assign your subjects different jobs in order to get them out of your way (which would probably not be practical for Ludum Dare), but after discussing the idea with friends I ended up with this. (By the way, the king idea came from watching Merlin just before starting…)

I’m happy with the graphics too, and I think that using a scroll for the meter was a good idea.

I’m looking forward to the next Ludum Dare, when I can hopefully devote more of my weekend to it! In the meantime, I probably try to finish Busy King, especially if people think it’s fun.

Play and rate here

I’ve been too busy with actual life stuff to work on my game a lot, so I think I’ll submit it to the Jam instead.

Here’s a pic of my game:

The game is a bit like Pacman – you play as a king who has to stop all his subjects from bugging him so he can get some work done.

I still need get the movement working smoothly, implement UI and scoring, and hopefully add more people and rooms. I’m looking forward to getting it all working!

Hello, friends! I’m a newbie here, but I thought I might be able to share a useful idea.

As far as I can tell, using Wolfram Tones to create music for your game is within the rules (as long as you don’t sell your game, which might go against Wolfram’s terms of service.) Since I have no musical talent, I will probably generate music for my game that way when the time comes.

So do all you non-musical LD participants know about this already? Is there a better version out there that I’m not aware of? Or is this against the rules somehow?

Edit: Thanks for the tips, everyone!

This will be my first Ludum Dare. I may have a 12-hour bus trip right in the middle of the 48 hours, but I’ll have my laptop on the bus, so I’ll do my best!

I’ll be using AS3 with FlashPunk in Flash Builder and making the art in Photoshop. I don’t know yet about music/sound.