I made another semi-interactive graph in case anyone is even remotely interested. It shows the distributions of votes and coolness.



You can play with the graph parameters if you click on it.
The ‘user’ parameter adds markers for the values from your game, just add your username.

Timelapse video of my entry Dimensional.

Its probably about time to write this.

Design
I had a good selection of ideas at the start of this competition, something I have had trouble with in the past, The only problem was which one to choose. Unfortunately I did not spend any time fleshing out the ideas and properly designing the games which i believe is where everything went horribly wrong.

First Idea
This was supposed to be a game where you played as a cell in a petri dish. There are other cells around that either try to kill you, block your path or various other behaviors. I spend about seven hours implementing this concept but stopped when i couldnt think of how to make it a fun game. Te prototype was not headed in the direction of my initial vision of the game. I also wanted to try out the other idea.
You can play what I ended up with here.

Second Idea
I had spend a bit more time thinking about this one. I didn’t start with it as I thought it did not fit the theme as well as the other idea, but the extra time would definitely have helped.
More design time would have been mush better, as I did get stuck a few times in the implementation due to not having a clear grasp on the game’s structure. I ended up re-writing the code to display the blended dimensions a few times and I got stuck with the collision blending.

I eventually ended up scrapping everything but the level loader and started again from scratch about five hours before the deadline, taking a completely different approach that works much better. Unfortunately five hours was not really enough, and I ended up hacking in some elements right at the deadline, like the ability to drop orbs, which is why the controls really suck.

Tiled
I tried out Tiled during the last Ludum Dare. It saves so much time not having to write your own level editor. It was definitely very useful for this competition as I had no time to make a playable world at the end of the competition.

Conclusion
Generally I should have stuck with a single idea, or at least not spend much time on prototypes if I am unsure. Also I should really take the time to fully design the structure of a game before I start ANY implementation. I never do this which is why nearly everything I program gets re-written at least twice. Maybe I’ll finally learn…

Post Competition Version
I have had a lot of positive feedback about the idea which is encouraging. I have already started writing a new version of this game. It is currently about the state of my entry with a few extra features. I want to add monsters and other puzzles that make use of the dimension blending in creative ways. I will upload a version of it soon.

Play my final entry.