A couple things bugged me about my entry, so I decided to make a post-compo update. The updated version is available alongside the original behind the webplayer link at the review page.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=8347

Also, here’s a gameplay vid of the original version.

As a sidenote, the game plays quite well on iOS as well, though touch controls aren’t quite as nimble as mouse, and on an iPhone your finger kinda blocks the view. Gameplay is fine on the iPad though.

Thanks for everyone who have taken the time to review my game so far! I’m planning to take some time off later this week to play and review a bunch of games by others. If you made or you know a game where the gameplay also revolves around a planet, please let me know, I’d love to check it out.

Well, at least it’s done. Not quite as good as I’d hoped, but not that bad either. Damn me and my lack of artistic skills! Well, particle effects to the rescue…

Quite a few planet circling games here. I’ll try to review as many of them as possible, will be interesting to see what other people have done with the idea.

One day almost behind and I’m glad to say I have a functioning game, and I can spend the next day polishing, creating artwork and making the game enjoyable. The game is called Dragons of Pluto. The player controls a dragon who’s trying to usurp an older dragon from the throne of Charon, one of Pluto’s moons. Nothing too fancy, the player flies around the planet, eating Plutonian dragon-cattle while avoiding the other dragon’s demon-minions, until the player’s strong enough to be considered a threat and the other dragon steps forth from its lair to confront him.

The game still has no UI, most of the textures are placeholders, there are no sounds and there are quite a few smaller features I really want to implement, but I’m rather optimistic about this. There hasn’t been any glitches or the sort in some time now, which is nice.

I’m really curious to see how many others have done a game with a small planet that you can go around, in 2d or 3d, and what kind of gameplay they have managed to get out of the concept.

The wait is almost over! I’m just itching to get started on my second Ludum Dare.

I was pretty pleased with my previous entry, Solitaire of Solitude, which by the way is available in a bit more polished form for iPad in both paid and free version. If I remember correctly, it tied with Notch’s Minicraft in the fun category, and was rated fairly high in innovation.

I was hoping to try out some new tool this time, but alas, I’ve had no time to do any warmup, so I’ll probably just go with my strengths and use Unity.

My main goal for LD23 is to make a game where the basic structure easy and quick to implement, so I can spend more time on content and playability.