The game is called Red America.

The concept is simple, to oppress all the continental United States. Each state will have it’s own oppression meter, once it it hits %100 it stays there, otherwise it declines overtime. The United States a whole also has an oppression meter which is the mean of all the states.

When the player starts he’ll look at a political map of the USA, and all states start at %30 oppression. Every few seconds an issue will arrise and the player can choose how he responds to it. At first he only has two options: Distract (Starts a new season of American Idol / Starts a random war with a random country.) And Propaganda. Distract is effective against large groups/organizations while Propaganda is effective against the individual. After about 6 events, the player gains access to the NDAA: Dissapear option, which makes an individual dissapear because the goverment says they are a terrorist. A more effective version of the propaganda option and the player should always end up using this option over Propaganda. After about 6 more events the player gets access to the SOPA/PIPA: Censor option, which is a more effective version of Distract. When the player reaches %100 operation, Russia invades America because they believe that America is a communist totalitaristic dictatorship and must be purged from the world. Russia obviously wins because most intelligent Americans decided to hide that fact on the account that they didn’t want to get NDAA’d and thus couldn’t help with the war even if they wanted too.

[Smash Shove Solve] Full Walkthrough
[Smash Shove Solve] Play and Rate It

For a little project I’m working on, I made a flowchart to help with the design aspect of it.  After finishing the flowchart, I realized exactly how important and helpful it is to make one…

A few reasons why flowcharts are good to have in your game.

• You can see how each menu connects to others
• It will allow to decide what to make public and what to make private based on connections
• It shows how the game will flow
• They can look pretty nifty
• It’s something to put in the Bonus Features

Although… I have realised that I’m probably putting too much detail into this

Just threw together the UI, this picture isn’t quite the latest… …I do actually have a score section XD

The design of the UI

Before Evil Come

Well, I really made it. This is my first Ludum Dare, and actually my second playable game.

Before this competition start, I’m  so exciting and also doubt whether I can finish it. I made a strategy for myself, no collision detection, no physic and no animation. I know they’re important for a game, but I can’t count them in before I really conquer them.

Game Overview

This is an evil game like the title said. You’re a demon, came to our world, because good man protect us you have nothing to do without some buddies. So you go to the wild and hope get some buddies join you. Although it’s wild, still some enemy out there. You can have rest in house and graveyard, but be careful your enemy also rest in some house. After defeat your enemy, you gain exp and may level up. The more buddies and hight level you have, you can kill more people. If you don’t have any buddies, you die.

Developing Tools

I used below great tools.

Libgdx: an open source Java game engine, also supports Android. It’s really good and best game engine on Android in my mind. The texture packer and bitmap font generator tools are very helpful for me in this competition.

Gimp and Inkscape: all graphic assets are made by this two software.  I think Inkscape is a good tool to draw cartoon style graphic.

Bfxr, LMMS and Audacity: The BGM was made by LMMS and other sounds were from Bfxr. Audacity handle the polish work.

Developing Process

Ok, enough background, I want talk about how I made this game. When I knew the theme It’s Dangerous to Go Alone, Take This., the first idea was ant. Tiny ants group a great army to defeat strong army. Based this idea, I split gameplay to two steps, first summon army and second defeat big boss. The bigger army got in step 1, the easier in step 2.

Because I like dead creatures so I replace ants with zombie and skeleton. I’m not expert of complicated control game, so one click control is my choice. Top view, tile map and my cute dead creature, first stage is done.

When I start made second stage, I hesitated. It’s actually a totally different game, did I have enough time to finish it? I give it up at last, instead I made a slot machine mini game, whose digit number is lead by gain points in first stage.  (OK, actually I am just lazy 

After add story board of game background, this game finally done. It’s mini and some kind shabby, but I really love it. So do my girlfriend, though she just like click things and don’t care game content.

Conclution

Cons:

1.Not enough feedback when player made decision.

2.Inside game mechanic is too simple. OK, maybe it’s some kind pro  .

3.Not enough introduction, player would be confused 

Pros :

1.It’s really very easy.

2.My cartoon characters are cute, isn’t it, especially when player lose. I love the skeleton on the cross.

Hope you like this game and my poor English not disturb you. 

Codename: Der Soldat

I got all the art i need.
Now: some BFBC2.
Later: Coding

Will be done in JavaScript for Canvas with my lib http://gamejs.org

Platformer.

When you land on a platform, it triggers a note. There are buttons that you can pick up. When you go by a switch, its button is triggered. Buttons on platforms trigger that platforms note.

you need to move the button to the correct place so that running by the switches triggers the correct notes in order.

There is also something about goombas that I can add if I have time… I am more than a bit concerned because I am going to have to integrate a platform editor at some point. UH OH!

also I drank a ton of seltzer. LETS ROLL!

pens on paper what!

Okay I have had an hour now and I have spent it trying to come up with an art style and game ideas. I have chucked a load of screenshots down into a google doc here: https://docs.google.com/drawings/edit?id=1W7ILlCI3mODPue3oW25gb0maryxfTIo7XZRv8XlXbHM&hl=en&authkey=CIO9wIcM I think I have a rough idea of what im going for.

I really like the World Of Goo art style, plus im hoping the shilloette like style will be much easier for my poor drawing ability

As for gameplay, “Enemies as Weapons” instantly reminded me of the flash game Boom Stick for some reason. So in that game you shoot enemies flying by overhead with your shotgun. You then run around and pick up ammo that drops from them. You then use that ammo to shoot more of them, simples!

The great thing about this idea is that I have done work in the past on LieroXNA and Worms 2 Mobile so hopefully I can use some of the experience I have gleamed from doing those games to make this one

With design out of the way now, I think im going to setup my environment and get cracking!

Got a basic palette picked out and started throwing things into the flash editor and so here is mockup number 2. This is going to be what the first playable prototype will look like as I seek to get a playable game ASAP. Then it will be time to swap out all these simple shapes for final art once it is tuned and fun.

The 5 sided shape is the player, the circles are the collectible targets (only score when enemies hit them), the pink squares are seeker enemies (think homing missiles) and the orange spikes are proximity shooting spikes that launch in a straight path.

Got my basic idea in place. Since there is so little time in this competition I was looking for an idea that I believe will be a good balance of fun with ease of implementation. This theme is fun and so wide open I expect a ton of similar base ideas implemented in many different ways.

My idea is simply an arcade score or collect-o-thon based around using various types of enemies on screen as your weapons to hit the collectibles.  In the screenshot above you are the target or bullzeye player which will be mouse-controlled.

You will fly around and lure the enemies into following or shooting at you. Once they are coming at your player you can move them around to hit the collectibles.

Simple and basic but it leaves a lot of room for fun and messing around with that mechanic.

oh no LD haha its crappy game season

i hope the theme is snow because i know wher to get some LOL its in my back yard

i made a tutorial to help people I hope you like it

1. get an idea. like rolling snow balls
2. make a clear simple goal from it. “make the biggest snowball” isnt clear because you dont know biggest than what? i will use “roll up all the snow”. other good ones are: get to the exit without dieing, eat all the apples, kill the evil boss. if its not simple the game will be confusing
3. add obstacles to get in the way. if the snowball is too big it will be too hard to push so thats my obstacle (you can only push it downhill). it will be a puzzle game to rollu p all the snow by finding the right way to roll your balls LOL
4. make sure its not boring. if your game is about shoting enemys and theres no reason not to shoot them then its a crap game because “should I shoot him?” is a boring choice. good decisions make you give up something because fun is when you make risky decisions in your life. so the risk in my game is that rolling a ball makes it too big and then you lose the puzle
5. test it by makeing a simple version on your paper so you know its fun. delete all your boring ideas, you mihgt have a lot of them so dont fall in love with your turd game haha. look at my game that i made in like 10 seconds while i typed this (my camera string is not part of it tho):
   i also wrote down the rules which i edited until it was fun to play. can you get all the snow??? you move snowballs up down left or right, except against an arrow, unless they rolled into it. balls dont roll downhill automatically, you have to push them down. also its supposed to say “10 or more” snow. i already started that level it was kinda tricky
6. now you can add powerups very carefully but dont forget to make them intersting tradeofs and dont add them if they make the game boring. i could add a rule to remove one snow by melting it with pee but I havent played the game enough to know if it would be any more fun also its kinda gross

so now you can make your game. but watch out for these highly important tips:

• design while youre sleepy at night or just got up because thats when your brain is the best at creativity and art
• write down your ideas so you dont forget them when youre programming
• if youre not sure about an idea, do not do it. simpler is better.
• finish the game in 24 hours, because it always takes twice as long as you expect

good luck making your crap game, everybody! (plz vote this 5 stars if you liked it)

This is a short behind-the-scenes explanation of why my game, Let’s go cave-burrowing is missing some gameplay

In the beginning I envisioned a game where you threw “grenades” to change the environment, sort of a casual-like game. I didn’t want to have any game-over screens or the like, as this would detract from the core gameplay. One solution to make it more interesting was to add diamonds that threw out more puke-like balls that exploded, though I didn’t had the time to implement it.

All the easy game-play I could add to make it more challenging would remove the fun. For example I thought to add a timer so that you had to complete the level within a certain time, but then the player would not be able to “explore” the level at his/her own pace.

It was only now this morning that I realized that the perfect solution would be to rate the player based on some score of fast-completion and huge explosions, since then it would add a challenge for those who wanted it, but it wouldn’t punish those who didn’t. I guess you can’t win every time

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.

Gonna writeup my game idea that sort of synthesized while I slept last night.  I feel the fun and scope of this game will be something I can pull off in 48hrs in Flash.

What I’ve got so far:  You will literally be playing as a cavern in an action / shooting gallery type game.  Your weapons will be stalactites which you will click on to let drop.  They will regrow and be various sizes as well.  You will also be able to click on steam vents on the floor that will shoot up a rush of hot vapor.  These will also have a recharge rate and various sizes perhaps even growing in various spots as the cave floor changes across game rounds.

You will be attacking against all manner of cave life, native and alien.  There will be the usual bats, snails, blind fish etc as well as various human archetypes one might find in this genre.  The lost teen(s), the hiding criminal, the cave explorer, the national geographic expedition etc.  Eventually if you incur enough rancor with the outside world you will be visited by the demolitions expert who will attempt to blow you up by placing charges.

I want to keep this in the realm of action/arcade instead of defense genre.  I think it will be more fun to interact with the cavern and very analog based ‘reload’ concepts (like watching the steam recharge in the vents and watching the stalactites regrow from the ceiling) versus a ‘recharge bar’ artifice.

Left to figure out is just overall cave layout(s) and round / difficulty escalation.

I’m picturing a really cool looking drippy cavern. The drips could even help with guiding the aiming of your rocks and stuff by helping lead your eye at the correct gravity setting to hit your targets.  I’m thinking mouse based click-controls to launch various attacks but I don’t want it to be a click heavy game.

I think the humor element could be high in this game as well if I handle it right.

Here is a current rough mockup for color reference:

Argh, the wysiwyg tables keep eating my text. Wysiwie tables more like.

So.. I didn’t have enough time this weekend to produce an entry but I made a mock-up and design sketch to ease the pain.

:: Desert Road Painter

This is a single button game. Press button down, paint starts spraying.. release button.. paint stops.

Your task is to repaint a set of fading road markings as accurately as possible. Each segment is rated and scored according to degree of accuracy. After 10 bad errors the game is over.

The game is pretty boring to start off with. It’s mostly just about getting a steady rhythm going and not becoming so hypnotised by the process that you screw up.

As time goes on, the desert starts to get to you. The long straight road feels static — as if only the rocks and dust to each side are actually moving. The sound of the paint hitting hot asphalt seems close and intimate. Memories start drifting through your consciousness, at first with clarity, but soon become confused and tangled with your senses.

It turns out the last guy who painted this stretch of road had the same problem. The strange creatures he saw hovering in front of him starting beating rhythms on his brain. The regular stream of painted segments became a rich sequence of syncopated markers; a secret language communicating ultimate truths about the world as it is.

Except for doing such unproductive stuff as showering and doing laundry, I’ve drafted out the intial idea. Thought I’d share it with you.

Base tile types:
Clay – together with water and a worker gives bricks
Moutains – together with two workers gives stone
Forest – together with a worker gives wood
Field – together with a worker and water gives food
Water – nothing, but provides water to nearby hexes
Sea – together with a worker gives food

Created tile types:
Fundament – created from stone, allows for building tower, on rock it doesn’t require stone, on water it requires two rocks, and on sea three.

The tower:
Building new levels costs a bricks or stone and half that in wood per level already built, plus food for each worker, and as many workers as levels are also needed.

Workers:
You gain workers by area of influance. Area of influence is decided per tower level. 1-5: radius 1 (up to 6 workers), 6-10: radius 2: up to 6+13 workers. And so on.

Workers actions:
Workers can either build, produce or do nothing. Building costs food. Produce costs nothing.

Roads and channels:
Channels gives water to distant hexes. Roads makes it possible to transport goods. Costs nothing but a build action per hex. Can be built beyond influence point.

Ships: Allows fishing further away.

Alt. 2: Must build quarry, lumbermill, farm, brickmaker etc before getting resources from them. Or else have them as optional bonus givers? Could also build/work beyond influence, but at half speed?

Perhaps a bit too much stuff, but it’s just so I have where to aim.