I just finished my first mini-LD Game ! I could only spend 12h on it (4h+4h+4h) so I tried to keep it simple.

At first I wanted to build some kind of infinite boulderdash runner game ( from bottom to top ) with randomly generated content and water flooding form the bottom of the screen.

The result was not very fun to play, water was easy to block with boulder and always going up was boring ( and not very strategic )

So I finally removed the level generator and changed it to a more classical version with just infinite cycling level as new mechanic.

Few innovations here but I hope somebody will like it

Only 9 levels to beat.

Play Never Endin Rock Slide

I’m a bit late but here’s the Post Mortem for   Super Strict Farmer 

It tooks me some time to figure out what to do with the Tiny world theme. I was just thinking to a little piece of ground floating in the air. So I decided to adapt a famous boardgame ( my favorite ) named Agricola to a short and more accessible version .

I think I succeded in making it shorter ( boargame version play are 2h-3h long ) but the result is still very difficult to handle and not very intuitive.

You can play Super Strict Farmer  here !

The Timelapse is here

What went right :

- Preparation / Efficiency

On the week before LD23, I focus my attention to go to bed early and slept at least 9h-10h per night  ( that’s a lot for me ). It made my 48h very pleasant, I slept only 6h in one shot and had almost no focus problems. It didn’t help to take good decisions, but I had my head clear when I had to implement them

- Animation and arts :

I’m used to graphics gale and can work fast with it. I spend a few percent of my time on graphics and could focus on the core of the game. I just wish I had more time for particles and special effects

- Artificial Intelligence :

Well. I was thinking I wont have time for this in 48h. So I first decided to make the computer player play random move and balance difficulty with initial advantages ( more food, peoples or ressources ). I finally decided to give 2 hours for AI and I dont regret it. I mean, the result is not perfect but working on it was the most fun part of the project. Trying to give score for each possible action, made me think like a player ( not a game designer ) and it works like actually testing your game and detecting his weaknesses. At the end, I made the AI compute opponet best actions so it can try to steal them from you. It made the game more interesting and in my case very introversive, because I really had the feeling to play versus myself.

- Title

I had fun imagine it and draw it in 90′s super street fighter style. I was thinking that maybe, it could be the best title and then… I saw Copulous

What went wrong :

- Simplification of the orginial Gameplay :

One of the bad points of Agricola is that you have to wait the end of the game to have a clear view of your score. It make it very obscure to new player, and I was thinking I could avoid it by creating ingame-actions that let the player trade ressources for victory points. I could not balance them in time, and was forced to add a final grain/sheep/cattle count. It ruined my original idea.

- Balancing :

Even if the result is playable, the game balance is unstable and took me most of my time. It’s difficult to estimate it, but it should be around 9-10h . I could have better intro screen and better ingame help if I didnt spent all this time on balancing.

- Boardgame :

Trying to adapt a boardgame to a short casaul game for LD is not the best choice I could make. This kind of boardgames are not very popular and I know that only few people enjoy their mathematics. I think I ended with a game too simple for boardgame veteran and too complicated for unitiated.

- Loneliness in a crowd :

One more time I had a chance to share this Ludum Dare with a lot of friends who was participating in the same place ( deepnight, 01101101, thotor , valandre ). And once again I stayed focus on my work not trying to go around and see what they were doing. But this time I have the solution : LD24 will be a jam entry for me

I can’t wait to know the final theme !!

I hope for ” Build it then use it ! ”

My tools :

- Coding : haXe

- GFX :  Adobe Flash CS5 and/or GraphicsGale

- SFX : Bfxr and LabChirp

- my lib

Good luck every one ! Let’s break the 1000 entries !