If you are, I have some recommendations for you

I’ve rated about 200 games, and it’s high time I shared some favorites !

 

ONLY US by Datamosh - Jam Entry

This game has the greatest mood ! You play a cosmonaut, and you must explore a planet. But you must be careful not to run out of food or be too lonely. In order to do that, you can build buildings and interact with things. It feels like a sandbox because you can interact with what you want and build wherever you want. Besides, there are multiple endings. I really enjoyed this one, playing in this strange, creepy atmosphere.

 

 

Tiny Journey – Evil Sandwich Studios - Jam Entry

You play a little guy who dreams about building a rocket to escape his sad tiny planet and the not-so-great existence he had on it. It’s kind of a point and click where all the controls are with the keyboard. Don’t miss the checklist on the first room because it’s the guide of the story. You have to place the character up to get it because otherwise he wants to interact with the door.

This one too has a great mood. I really felt compelled to finish the story and I didn’t get stuck. I’m always stuck at some point in this kind of games… Everything is pretty straightforward in this one. It’s a very enjoyable game.

 

 

 

The World in a Bottle – Robotic - Jam Entry

This one is a very well thought take on the theme. You play an evil scientist that likes to torture tiny things. As he’d like to torture humans, he has to make them tiny. So in the first phase of the game, you have to miniaturize people with your laser to put them in a jar. But humans won’t let you do it that easily ! In the second phase, when you have enough humans, you can play with them in the jar.

A very fun entry !

 

 

 

There is a Picture – MortisGhost - Jam Entry

Some people have already talked about this game but it still doesn’t have a lot of ratings (40). You really should play it, that’s a very unique game with a very simple gameplay. You play a guy in a spaceship that wants to create a new world by uniting planets. To convince planets to join his project, he has to give them something. They all want objects, and the guy has a lot of objets in his spaceship. So you just have to walk between the rooms to find the objects they want to get them on board. Sometimes you have to merge objects together.

The screen doesn’t show it much, but this game is very immersive. The storytelling sequences are great and you want to follow the story. This game is very unique and has a great mood.

 

 

 

Disregard All Humans – Fireblend - 48 Hour Compo Entry

Another very fun game that fits well the theme. You play a dinosaur on a tiny planet. You destroy cities and eat humans, but they attack you too of course. As you eat more humans, the moon turns red and you grow so big that the earth seems tinier and tinier to you.

A very simple and dynamic gameplay and engaging graphics make this game a pleasure to play.

 

 

 

Corky – Gib - 48 Hour Compo Entry

I love the idea behind this game, and it fits very well the theme. You have a tiny world that looks like the one on the screen, but in grey and you can name and customize it. In your world, there are 3 NPC that you can name too and you can change their dialogs and then talk to them to see it. The corridors on the sides of the screen lead you to the customized worlds of the other players.

Unfortunately, not a lot of people seem to have played the game as I didn’t encountered any other customized world, but I would have loved to and I really enjoyed customizing mine.

It really was a great idea for this theme.

 

 

 

World Panic! – raarlac - 48 Hour Compo Entry

That’s one of the games I played the most. The execution is just perfect. That’s an avoider game where you play the earth. You battle against several planets of the solar system and ultimately the sun (not that I managed to get that far as the game is quite difficult ). Planet throw bullets at you and you just have to avoid them, you can’t fight back.

The gameplay is as simple as it can get, the graphics are engaging, the particle effects are beautiful, and the music fits so perfectly : it really follows the rythm of the particles (or the other way around) and it gets more intense as the battle becomes more intense.

 

 

 

Niña Nueve – Jonathan Whiting - 48 Hour Compo Entry

That’s a great game. A first I thought I wouldn’t play it long because I wouldn’t manage to solve the puzzles. But it’s not really a puzzle game even if it looks like one. It’s part puzzle, part Zelda-like, part something else. It’s quite unique actually. Anyways, in this game you have to move through the different rooms by getting to the arrows. To get to the arrows, you’ll do various things : activate switches, play with a balloon, lure monsters into activating switches, kill monsters, avoid monsters, kill bosses.

What I really enjoy about this game is that there are fights, but you don’t have an attack control. You fight monsters by throwing at them a balloon that you find in some rooms. And it is so much fun ! I finished the game and I’d love to play more of it. That’s a very clever game.

 

 

 

The Traveler – Thotor - 48 Hour Compo Entry

Such a beautiful and poetic game… It’s a puzzle game where you play a little guy in a snow globe, and in each level the objective is to get to the blue checkpoint. But you can’t do it at first. You have to shake the snow globe : it makes the snow fall (pretty), but more importantly it makes some blocks falls. Some blocks will take several shakings of the globe to fall, according to their pattern. So it’s all about getting at the right place when you shake the snow ball.

I find that the snow globe idea is such a perfect take on the theme. This game has a wonderful mood, the snow-globe-levels are beautiful, and on top of that the concept of the game is very interesting. This is definetly my favorite entry on the compo.

 

 

****

 

 

What I enjoyed a lot when playing and rating games is seeing all the various interpretations that were made of the theme. I tried to list a few categories for fun. And put some entries in them, in case you have time to rate more games. A game can belong to serveral categories.

 

“Tiny World” as a tiny world in a bottle

World in a Bottle – very nice to play and watch evolve

The Traveler

The World in a Bottle

 

“Tiny World” as a small ecosystem you influence

Miniature Words – fun little game to play with

This Precious Land - very polished triple-town like game

Evolve – not much to do but awesome graphics

Atom Planet – Beautiful Minecraft-like game with a great mood

World in a Bottle - very nice to play and watch evolve

Sun Bringers – little puzzle game with nice mechanics

 

“Tiny World” as a small ecosystem with humans

Tinyvilization – a great well thought strategy game, you should check out this one

Tinyville Confidential – fun idea, great execution !

 

“Tiny World” as the world from tiny things’ point of view : insects

Ant Surf Hero : the surfening

ANtopia

Prince of leaves

Flea Circus – fun little game

 

“Tiny World” as the world from tiny things’ point of view : atoms and molecules

Atom grid – You really should try this one, it’s a very clever puzzle game. But don’t overlook the how-to-play or you’ll be lost !

Polarity – Very polished and interesting puzzle game

Microscopia – Amazing game with unique mechanics and super simple gameplay. Check it out, you won’t regret it !

 

“Tiny World” as a tiled world with a few tiles

Five by Five – a nice looking little puzzle game

This Precious Land – very polished triple-town like game

Scape – beautiful, clever and very polished puzzle game

Cracked – nice puzzle game with interesting mechanics

 

“Tiny World” as restricted space with boundaries that can be extended

Extensionism – Puzzle game with great visuals, mood, gameplay and concept

Recluse – a platform game with such a great twist

 

“Tiny World” as “I am on a little planet”

Scape - beautiful, clever and very polished puzzle game

Tiny Journey – talked about it earlier

Tiny Island Adventure – a platform game with great graphics

Quest^3 – an RPG on a rubik’s cube like world, very interesting mechanics

 

“Tiny World” as a restricted perspective on the world, psychological (or not) imprisonment

Memento XII – a highly polished game

Tiny Flat

Predicament

Asylum – Great mood, great graphics

 

“Tiny World” as tiny planet to protect

Tondie and Zupe

Aether – unique game with great graphics and mood

Astro Break – great graphics

Necro Gaia – incredibly polished defense game

Space Bear – very bizarre surrealistic game that deserves a look, collect cosmic stars to repair the earth !

 

“Tiny World” as in “I enter a world that gets tinier and tinier”

Fracuum – incredibly polished game with great mechanics

Soul Searchin’ - a great take on the theme, very innovative game !

 

And you, what categories did you find ?

 

***

 

As for my game if you want to check it out, its here : Tinysasters !

 

 

Hello everyone !

 

So this is my post-mortem for Tinysasters, my LD# 23 48h entry made in Flash.

 

 

Play and rate Tinysasters

 

As I said before this was my very first participation. I hadn’t planned to enter the event until about one week ago, and I didn’t prepare. But I work on flash games every day, so this must count as some kind of preparation

I was a little anxious, because I had never developped a game in such a short amount of time, and I didn’t know if I could do it. But everything went very smoothly.

 

The game

Tinysasters is a puzzle/simulation/gestion game. You play on a 8*8 randomly generated tile map and have to build workplaces, shrines and cities in order to collect ressources. The goal is to build a level 4 shrine. Natural disasters happen every now and then. They reconfigure the ground and make your life harder !

 

Build the level 4 shrine to heal the ground and spare the world from disasters like earthquake !

 

The idea was to make something between the boardgames Settlers of Catan and Labyrinth ; basically a Settlers of Catan where the tiles move and change of nature.

At first, I was absolutely not happy with the theme. I rated it -1. I liked “Artificial Life” and “Castles in the Sky” a lot better, but I don’t know if I could have made something good out of them. The theme doesn’t matter a lot actually.

 

As for the nature of the game, to be honest, when it comes to play, my heart usually goes to platformers and adventure games with a good story. But programming is my strongest point, so I thought I should rely on it a lot for my entry.

 

What went right

- (almost) no time wasted on debugging ! That was a good surprise. I’m used to spending a lot of my time fixing problems that seem to come out from nowhere and make absolutely no sense although they usually end up being all my fault after all. That’s one tremendous benefit of working on a very small project : I just had to see a bug to know where it came from because the entire code of the game was so fresh in my mind.

 

- I was a little scared at first when I started programming the tile animating sequence that happens when there’s an earthquake or the player generates a land. But it went smoothly and the TweenLite library was very handy.

 

- I hate building / coding menus and interfaces with so many buttons, and so many textfields, and tabs, and they all have to update, show the right information, show a red color when there aren’t enough ressources, etc., and it’s so overwhelming… It was very tedious but it went ok. There are a lot of ugly duplicates in my code but I guess I can live with that.

 

One of the many possible states of this interface box…

 

- About 40 minutes before the deadline, there still were no sounds, and the tiles were still rough colored cubes. I rushed on as3sfxr to generate some sound effects (very useful tool), made a quick music arrangement, added an underground effect to the tiles, some texture and some decorations.

Despite the fatigue (it was about 2 AM and I had worked all day), I found myself inspired so everything went quickly and I finished on time.

 

- I’m very happy with the result. I enjoy just watching the game playing disasters and reconfigure the map into wild deserts, forests and lakes. The mountains always prevail, eventually.

 

Invasion of the mountains !

 

What went wrong

- The firsts hours of coding were the hard part. Sometimes I’d finish coding a new fonctionnality, like the map generation, and had some kind of a mental blockage : I just couldn’t figure out what to do next. What I had in front of me was so far from being a game… it was a little overwhelming.

 

a depressing early stage of the game

 

- Like I said, I only had 40 minutes to polish the sounds and graphics. I had great expectations for the animations, I wanted to use beautiful particles effects… I wanted the tiles to explode in a thousand of pixels when they reach the borders of the map instead of those mere alpha fade outs… I wanted the volcanic eruptions to set the map on fire… I wanted the flooded tiles covered with shiny swinging blue water drops… I wanted a little flying god inpersonating the player’s actions react to the disasters and constructions…

Nothing of that was done. I am so sad. Maybe in the enhanced version

Also, more types of disasters were initially planned. Disasters that only affect the constructions : plague, civil war, etc.

 

- 7 hours before the end I was like “Great, 7 hours left, I have PLENTY of time to do everything I want !”. But 7 hours in the end are not like 7 hours in the beginning, especially with the timezone I’m in. I was so tired I was like a zombie and sometimes found myself spending half my time just starring at the disasters do their thing. It’s a good thing the game was already well-advanced at this point.

 

What went terribly wrong

- But the biggest problem I encountered came from the nature of the game itself.

“Do the game mechanics even work ?”

I couldn’t answer this somewhat significant question before the game was ready to be tested. The disasters had to be coded, same goes for the ressources, the buildings, the upgrades and all the time-consuming interfaces that come with it.

The game was ready to be tested 2 hours before the end.

I had my fiancé test the game. He told me he was troubled by the game even though he knew what he had to do.

At first, I didn’t listen to what he said and continued to blindly code what I could. Coding more interfaces wouldn’t have bothered me that much at this point.

Then, I had to face the reality : the game mechanics didn’t work as they were.

I had to balance the costs and gains of ressources, add difficulty settings to avoid overwhelming the new player or boring the experienced one, write a “how to play”… For that, I had to test the game a lot which takes some time… And the game navigation (title screen, restart…) wasn’t done yet, nor the graphics and sounds, not to mention the fancy particle effects I still hadn’t given up on !

 

The last minute how to play screen

 

Damage control was done, but the game ended up being less challenging than I would have wanted. Hopefully a future enhanced version will correct that !

 

Final thoughts

I’m very glad I participated !

Thank you for reading and don’t forget to rate Tinysasters

Play and rate Tinysasters

Link to the to-be-enhanced version on Kongregate

I hope you’ll enjoy the game, I enjoyed making it a lot !

 

 

I’m very happy I’ve finished my game Tinysasters on time ! (Tinysasters > Tiny disasters)

You can find the game here : Tinysasters

This was the first time I participated in the Ludum Dare and I’m very glad I did it

The post-mortem will probably be for tomorrow, as I’m very very very tired right now. It’s 5 AM and I worked until the last minute.

Here’s a screen of the finished game :

See you soon !

Hello everyone !

So I’ve finished working on my project for today (it’s 3 A.M. here).

This is my first Ludum Dare. I’m using Flash. I’ve never programmed a game in such a short time so this is a great experience !

The game is looking good so far, I hope I’ll be able to finish it before the end of the 48 hours.

It’s a game where you have to develop despite natural disasters which happen every now and then. The world is procedurally generated and the disasters are random.

You can manipulate the terrain and build things, but the disasters can also change the terrain, and they can destroy your buildings.

I have a lot of screens of the game at various stages of development, so I’ll probably write a more detailled article in the next days. But right now I’m a little tired

Here’s a screen of the game :

Each color of tile corresponds to a type of terrain (brown = woods, green = grassland, blue = lakes, grey = mountains and yellow = deserts). I’ll try to make the tiles look better tomorrow if I have time.