Ra Ra is a 2-player star boxing game. Your only direct control is movement, but the planets orbiting your star gain momentum in reaction to how you maneuver yourself. Smash them into your opponent’s smug star face to do damage. Ra, of course, is the Egyptian sun god. Grab someone you want to punch in the face with a planet and give it a play!

The process was strange. Ra Ra is actually a 30-ish-hour game, with two unrelated failed prototypes for older siblings. I first tried Unity and then XNA, before finally returning to FlashPunk (familiar territory for me). At 3:48 PM on April 21 I tweeted “Not sure what to do with this” along with a link to this prototype.  It had the orbiting mechanics, but the sun was immobile. You could click the screen to shoot fireballs to affect the trajectories of the planets. Unsure how to proceed, I took a shower. While showering the entire design of the game revealed itself to me, beginning with the title. From there, it was a simple mad dash to fulfill that potential in time.  I ended up hacking circle collisions into FlashPunk and as a result the source code is a mess (seriously, don’t look at it, it’s hideous).

I’m pretty happy with the game. After playing 50-ish rounds with my roommate, my favorite aspect is how analogous to actual boxing it gets as you improve. Not that I’m a boxer or know what I’m talking about at all. But you start intentionally jabbing, blocking and hooking with your planets, and it becomes really satisfying to land a huge wide swing square on your opponent’s jaw. I’m going to keep working on it and see what happens, but the link on the LD page will remain as the 48-hour version.

-Matt

Hey y’all. I did the music for Chevy’s amazing Keynote video and I figured, why not release all the WAV files. So here they are. Feel free to use any of them for your Ludum Dare games. You can do whatever you want with them (chop them up, play them backwards, etc).

And I’m in! Tools:

Code: FlashPunk, Unity or XNA

Audio: Reason and BFXR

Graphics: Paint.NET

Levels: Ogmo Editor

Excited to finish something for once, I think the last game I finished was also for Ludum Dare Good luck to everyone!