Mr Head and the Cow Drowning is now complete. Or as complete as it will get this weekend. I have many ideas on improvements, but they must, alas, wait. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As said earlier, the game is about drowning cows to prevent them from dying. Granted, they die anyway, but in a much more nice way, and outside the screen, mostly. Anyway, to drown cows, you must use key 1-5 to select which slot is currently bouncy, which will make any cows falling there to bounce out into the water. If you fail to catch a cow, you lose a life, but if you catch two in a row, you gain a life. You can have ten lives, and if they run out, the game is over.

During the game, Mr Head will observe and give you points and make announcements. He’s the mastermind behind everything, but exactly how is not certain. Do use his combo scheme to get many, many points. I’ve gotten 22 million as best so far. There’s no highscore in this version, but maybe I can add one later.

So, except for what has been told here, and what can be seen, there’s also a fancy intro, and mighty fine sound effects.

You probably want to download Mr Head and the Cow Drowning. Binary and source are included, the binary is for Windows, but with the right libraries and some changes to the makefile, you’ll be alright on other platforms too. Hopefully.

Also, make sure you don’t miss the Banana Ship text adventure non-entry, also made during this warmup.

I now have a scoring system, combos, and lifes, so you can get game over. And announcements. Here’s a screenshot:

What’s missing yet is some effect for non-bounced cows, lip sync for Mr Head up in the corner when announcements are made, and some balancing.

Things that would be nice, but aren’t top priority yet, is a highscore table (for scores, most drowned, highest combo etc), a nifty pause feature, a skip intro thingy, and possibly web scores, only that probably won’t happend during this weekend anyway.

LD48 #8 theme was “Swarms”. It also occurred right around the initial release of the Nintendo Wii. Thus, you get Wee Ninja, a game where you are trying to beat an insanely large horde of other shoppers to the last remaining Wees in stock during the holiday season. It’s fun to play, simple, and includes achievements to unlock bonus abilities. One of the more complete entries I’ve ever done (possibly because the gameplay was so incredibly simple!).

LD48 #2 theme was Construction/Destruction, with a minor theme of Sheep. As such, I created Hitsuji: Shears Of Fury, a game where you destroy construction equipment as a ninja sheep. It featured a really cool tweening animation system I wish I had used since, as well as some lovely use of very default Allegro fonts. It also included zombie construction workers, and pelicans. Pelicans appear often in these games.