This is a quick mockup of the game idea that I came up with. It’s a mix of the good old Wolfenstein game mixed with some puzzle element. Basically you step through the maze using elements from the palette at the far right. Just left of it you see you current selection. You then execute the sequence of moves in the hope that it will result in your escape from the prison. When you playback this sequence of moves, you’ll see it replayed in the game world on the left side.

Gonna get some sleep now : D
Good luck for the next few hours,
-leaf

Brainstorming notes:

And some mockups:

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.

This isn’t gameplay, but a mockup that should resemble it fairly closely (minus menus and minimap)

Mockup!

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:

Alright– so my food photos won’t win any beauty contests but between the bagels and the coffee I’ve got all the fuel I need for the next few hours to keep working on my game mockups.  I got about 5 hours of sleep last night after waiting up for the theme.  Before going to bed I wrote 4 game ideas down and slept on them.   Waking up at 5am EST I felt I had a good synthesis of them in my head and an idea that felt fun enough to me to get cracking on some photoshop mockups after initially doing a little writeup on the game.  For now though it is om nom nom time.  Good morning LD!

First, the mockup!

(Click image to view larger)

Anyway.. the simple concept is you are controlling a fleet of the last ships of your race.  You are fleeing your planet as an alien armada of doom approaches.  You will be able to move your fleet up/down/left/right and there will also be a key that lets you toggle the density/pattern of your fleet.  Think of it as able to expand or contract.

You will move through the armada avoiding colliding with capital ships and what will surely be horrendous energy weapons fire as they attempt to anihilate your race.

You must get a least ONE of your ships through the armada to win.  The more ships you get through the larger your bonus at the end for saving a larger gene pool of your race…

Simple idea, hopefully the scope will be one of which I can get a fun, playable game out of before the deadline is up…

This could only bring madness… or terror… or both!

Short Fuse + The Hairy Chestival.

I’m going for it!  This is rough mockup to get the idea down but basically instead of the old miner carrying the leaky powderkeg.. we have our miner taking up a different profession.  That’s right, he’s using the lawnmower (or is that chestmower?) from The Hairy Chestival.. only problem is that the lawnmower is leaking fuel like there’s no peak oil!  You have to mow down the dry grass (or is that… hair?) before the spark ignites your fuel mixture.  Oh yeah, for some reason the field is littered with explosive barrels that you can’t run into but that you have to destroy.  There will also be a fuel meter on the lawnmower that will run out I think as well (like the button to discard the powderkeg in Short Fuse.  I still have to work out exactly what the rewards are (do you really need one in a game so ludicrous?    ) and what the dangers are.  But, I have high hopes for this.. hehe.  I’ll be using Flash.  Either AS2 or AS3.. jury is still out for this mini-LD.

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.

Standard Theme (Day1b).mp3

(EDIT: OOPS! Wrong link!)

It could use many tweaks, but I’m much happier with the direction this is going. Remember, each change is roughly the soundtrack for a level.

Ideally, each level is a “page” from a story. The glitch part is where something happens. If I was really cool, I’d say something like the guitar represents the villain, but really at the moment it’s just several melodic layers I think sound neat.

Spent the better half of the evening playing around in Ableton Live. I had the idea of writing a song that’d progress to the next part after each micro sized level. Here’s what I ended up with, arranged linearly.

Standard Theme (Day1).mp3

Sheeat… I’m not sure I wanted quite such a dark tone. Now I gotta make a game suit that mood.

Are you showing?

Oh, I also happened to make an asteroids game during the compo… didn’t mean to do that, but technically I guess it could have been an entry. Not quite weird or unexpected perhaps, but at least it’s asteroids.  Windows-only.

http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/asteroids.zip

Now where’s the Inquisition game? Me want play!!!

I’ve been taking all kinds of notes, and doodling many pictures. I could have probably got the mechanics working correctly by the deadline (with a keyboard based control scheme), but I wasn’t going to have time to build a level. Man, a general purpose level editor would have been sooooo nice. ;D

So instead, I’ve continued on the game as if I entered a compo that ends monday or tuesday.

Rather than going out posting nothing, I decided to whip up a mockup, to see if my thoughts on paper would work. So in closing, here’s the mockup image.

The idea of the game is you control this block mass. You (automatically) walk towards other blocks and add them to your mass. You don’t jump, but can pivot yourself at any block in your body (similar to a Tetris block rotation).

Legs sprout on the lower parts of your body to give you momentum (purely visual). The face goes on whatever side the of direction you are facing. The art look I wanted was one where everything was very rigid, made of rectangles. The mockup demonstrates that well enough. I wanted trees and little bushes in the mockup as well, but I wanted the collision to be a little more obvious in this mockup.

So that’s what I was/am working on. Hopefully I can put another day or two on it, and get it somewhat playable (I have my doubts I’ll get legs working, so it’ll just hover). I’ll post it as a “post compo” game if I do.

Thanks everybody for a great compo. See y’all again in April.