A few days ago was the 44th edition of ludum dare. One of the largest online gamejams all around the world. In this type of gamejams participants make a video game about a theme proposed by the community in 48-72 hours.
The last time was a great experience: little sleep, heavy workload, and not knowing if you will finish on time, among other wonderful things. So I decided to participate again.
I decided not to explain anything about the game code because I think the post would become extremely dense if I did. But if anyone has any doubt or curiosity about how I’ve implemented something, put it in the comments please.
Day 1
This time the theme was «Your life is currency», it was a bit ambiguous, so I used the rule of «keep it simple» and decided to develop a small 2D game where we’ ll have to defeat waves of enemies and get upgrades in exchange for our blood. As it could not be otherwise, the shopkeeper who offers us the upgrades is a nice vampire.
First I started with the funniest part of all, pixelart!
I decided that the whole project would be in 16×16, so started drawing the tileset.
I also created Caith, our main character, with all her animations (Unfortunately I didn’t have time to make a jump animation).
Taking advantage of the proportions of the main character, I also drew Fred (our vampire shopkeeper) and a couple of enemies.
I also built the first version of the level and a parallax background.
Day 2
With all of this finished, I started with the functional part of the main character and the enemies. Recycling a 2D movement script that I already developed and optimized in past projects Kaith came to life!. I also implemented that she could fire projectiles and adjusted the animations.
The whole set didn’t feel alive, so I added some lights, particles and screenshakes!
I also started implementing the first version of the enemy wave spawner and the dialog & shop system.
Day 3
On the last day I had some personal issues to solve so unfortunately I was out part of the day. As a result, I couldn’t finish all the mechanics I had in mind (like adding more variety of objects and abilities to the character or including new enemies). So I implemented the most relevant ones and started working on the user interface and menus.
While I was doing all of this, I came up with a name for the title of the game: «Oh my blood!». I thought: «It’s a bit lame, I’m sure I’ll come up with a better name later on». And of course, I didn’t come up with a better name in the whole jam…
So I’m glad to present Oh my blood!. You can play it by clicking on the link at the bottom 😀
Final results & conclusions
Throughout the past month, people who participated in the jam also had the opportunity to vote for their favorite games and give feedback to other developers.
Sometimes it’s a bit complicated to have visibility between all the entries that are presented (In this edition more than 2500 games were presented, WOW). But luckily people are quite active in this kind of events and spend their time trying other games, something that is appreciated when you see what you have failed and what you have succeeded in.
This week the voting is over, and here’s my score:
Two readings can be taken from these votes, one positive and one negative. The negative is the innovation section, I focused a lot on making an attractive pixelart and smooth controls, so I ignored the depth of the mechanics, making them too simple. This is something I will have to take more care of in future jams. On the other hand there is the overall, compared to my previous participation there has been a considerable jump, the 55th position of more than 2600 entries is very good, so I am very pleased with the results.
Ludum Dare page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/oh-my-blood
You can play the game directly in the browser here: