For a game that was all about contrast – I gave myself the challenge of working to a high-contrast, 16 colour palette, arrows, and one other button.

I started out with really quite over-the-top expectations for this mini LD. I’d planned out a game with 10 levels, with cutscenes in between telling a story. But in the end I only really got started on Thursday/Friday, and only had a working level by this afternoon. So this is the stripped down, gameplay only version of the game I’d planned to make.

There’s something about the old EGA palette that just takes me back to playing Alleycat/Commander Keen (I can’t even look at that blue/purple combination without drifting off), and I made it a little hard/tricky to try and get that feeling of nostalgia to shine through in the gameplay as well as the graphics.

Matt (@brainfed) provided music, and although he initially struggled with getting the ‘french’ sound, I think he came up with a great ‘sneaking’ theme, and two other tracks that I’ll work into the game when I finish the rest as I originally intended it. Josh (@joshuatreee) helped out too, providing in-between frames for the walk cycles, and the Eiffel tower painting. Both were great collaborators to bounce ideas off, and we might go into LD24 as a team.

This is my third Ludum Dare game, and in each one I’ve hit a massive memory management stumbling block on the last afternoon. This time, entire levels failed to unload properly, which resulted in the game running faster for some reason. Eventually I fixed it, but on the way created one of the funnier bugs I’ve caused making games – A second player would spawn in, standing on the head of the first one. You could then knock this unresponsive doppelganger flying into the oncoming guards. Matt and I both enjoyed playing around with it, so I make work that mechanic into something else down the line.

Play the game here. We’d all love some feedback, and I’m really keen to hear if any colourblind people are able to play the game and if they have any problems with the colour mechanic.