I GOT MY GAME SUBMITTED!  WOOHOO!!  I think it was technically 1 or 2 minutes late, but that’s because I was having upload troubles.  At any rate… I did it!  It’s not complete!  It’s not perfect!  It IS playable though!  I had to disable a couple half-finished things for the submission version, but there’s still enough there to see where I was going, I think.

Also, I’m entirely too exhausted.  And I have work in about 9 hours.  I’ve gotta go to bed, which sucks… I’d love to hang out with the festivities on IRC and here on the blagosphere.  Tomorrow, though, I’ll start looking at everyone’s stuff!  Good job, y’all!  It was an amazing experience for sure!

I’ve used the snazzy new uploader tool to submit my final version of Angry Caverns with 10 minutes to spare even!

You can play Angry Caverns here in your browser.

Main menu

Level 5 of the final version

You can play Angry Caverns here in your browser.

ANGRY CAVERNS – by HybridMind – August 28th-30th, 2009
Created from scratch for Ludum Dare 15′s 48hr game competition

Concept:

You are the angry caverns. You awaken one day to find many creatures living inside of you. This pisses you off. Destroy as many as you can.

How To Play:

• Click on the stalactites and bubbling vents to trigger your attacks.
• You will have limited time on each level
• Chain attacks for big combo points
• Glowing creatures are worth more bonus points
• Bigger completion bonuses for more creatures killed
• Supports online leaderboards!

Tools used:

Coded in Flash / ActionScript 3.0 using the Flash CS4 IDE and using Dr. Petter’s sfxr for sound effects. I composed both music loops in Reason.

Got Feedback?

Feel free to email me at dave [at] hybridmind.com or visit my blog and leave me a comment.

I’ll be working on this game some more so any thoughts or suggestions while be taken into consideration for the post-compo version! Thanks for playing and I hope you have a good time with it!

I’ve got another playable billed uploaded along with another gameplay video for the passively curious:

Play version 0.3 here (Flash)

Watch gameplay video of version 0.3 here (YouTube)

A suitably themed main menu

Concept:
You are an extremely angry cavern. You awaken one day to find many creatures living inside of you. This pisses you off! You have a short amount of time on each level to use your cavern weapons to destroy as many creatures as you can. Kill multiple creatures with one attack to earn combo points and kill rare bonus creatures for extra score! Compete online with global leaderboards.

Controls:

• Use your mouse to click on your weapons (stalactites, geyers, etc.)
• Kill as many creatures as you can within the time limit.
• Kill all the creatures for a big bonus!

A few more screenshots with captions after the READ MORE…

(more…)

ok Ok.. so they are still rather stick figure like.. BUT they switch comically between running and walking and change directions too.  You can watch a gameplay video of version 0.2 here.

At this point I’ve implemented 2 different enemies (bats & cavemen), 2 different weapons (stalactites & geysers), a combo system, tracking of stats like base level score, bonus score, and reporting back on a level over screen.

Many things still to do of course but my plan is still holding so far of trying to get the bulk of all implementation finished before generating levels and upgrading the graphics.

You can play version 2.0 here in your browser too.

6 hours of development so far and progress continues on my game…  thought I’d post a few early screenshots.  I’m working to get the first playable level done so I can continue messing with making the mechanics fun.  Doing bare minimum art as the lumpy bats will testify to:

Stalactites, Geysers, and Bats now spawn.  The bats have a funny animation right now which I think will make them enjoyable to watch flap around as you try to eliminate them.

Rough working main menu too.

Well, I’m stalling out on productivity right now because I am starving.  I have a chicken pot pie in the oven cooking but it won’t be ready for another 30 minutes so I’m powering on best I can.

I’m really trying to focus on getting the earlier playable and fun parts of this game coded.  Building out primitive menu systems and game framework logic so that I won’t have to mess with it later.  I have implemented the timing bar, level counters, and scoring widgets.  My hope is that once I get the basic ‘level format’ working I can do 5 rough levels with very basic art today.  Then tomorrow can be spent on improving the art and adding music and sound.

Yes.. plural.  Been refining my idea a little.  I think I want to keep it more fun and interesting by making hopefully 5 different cavern levels.  Each with a slightly different theme and weapons and targets.  Each level will have a short time limit (1 minute?) in which you’ve tried to use the levels weapons (stalactites, steam vents, rock falls etc) to take out any life forms.  It will be a score based game tuned to encourage compelling replays and leaderboard competition.

I am thinking of some various themes for the cavern levels which are like 1920s bootleggers, 1700s pirates, 2000 teen hangout, 20,000 BC cavemen/critters, far future theme.

Potential Targets in the above themes:

• creatures (sprinkled throughout all themes…?)
  • bats
  • centipedes
  • lizards
  • fish
  • bears
  • wolves
• humanoids
  • teens (doing drugs? hanging out? contemporary theme)
  • cavemen (20,000BC theme)
  • explorers (going from A to B? contemporary theme)
  • pirates (after their treasure 1700s theme)
  • criminals (whiskey bootleggers (jugs / barrels with xxx, 1920s theme)
  • spacemen / aliens (future theme?

I’m excited about this game so far.  I think that with the variety of each cavern level having a different configuration of weapons layouts, path layouts and creatures with a unique theme it will be an amusing and humorous game.  Now I just have to see how much content I can pull off in the compo time limit.  I will attempt to get one playable theme first in case that is all I manage to pull off.  I’m thinking I’ll go for 20,000 BC wrapper first because I can do many cave creatures as well as humorous cavemen for targets.

Battery was my entry to LD9. The theme was “Build the level you play”. Initially, the open voting hinted at a clear winner of the theme “battery”, for which Hamumu found the best explanation: Battery is a place where bats are hatched. Now, when I woke up the morning of the LD, first thing was I checked the theme, and it mysteriously had shifted. So, I decided to make an RTS where you start with nothing, then have to build up the battery you play.

The title screen.

An in-game shot. Basically, you can order bats to dig (build the level you play), and in the new cave room build different structures for hatching worker and soldier bats and providing food to them. At fixed intervals, a wave of most horrific enemies will attack the battery – so you better have enough soldiers by then.