Extraordinarily Awesome Petroleum Male Child! by Kassoon
You are the Awesome Petroleum, on the quest for the ultimate cupcake or something.
The idea for this was to have a protagonist that started out huge and replayed the same level over and over getting smaller each time, with more and more hazards appearing as it happened.
I also wanted to prove to myself that superior organization beat out superior elbow grease, so I spent several hours doing planning, UML layouts, and tasks for myself. Code-wise it worked great, I got all the engine coding beginning to finish done within about 8-10 hours. Unfortunately you can't do a major amount of planning art and design-wise, and the final level design took the brunt of the lack of time. It was initially going to be 9 levels (ended up 5) with a much more gradual curve. The game is also quite difficult which I wound have evened out a bit more if there had been more time. And hey, brutal platformers are all the rage these days.
All in all though I'm happy with the results, the controls are nice and fluid, the engine does what it's supposed to (although there are some bugs and jankiness) and I survived my first Ludum Dare.
The idea for this was to have a protagonist that started out huge and replayed the same level over and over getting smaller each time, with more and more hazards appearing as it happened.
I also wanted to prove to myself that superior organization beat out superior elbow grease, so I spent several hours doing planning, UML layouts, and tasks for myself. Code-wise it worked great, I got all the engine coding beginning to finish done within about 8-10 hours. Unfortunately you can't do a major amount of planning art and design-wise, and the final level design took the brunt of the lack of time. It was initially going to be 9 levels (ended up 5) with a much more gradual curve. The game is also quite difficult which I wound have evened out a bit more if there had been more time. And hey, brutal platformers are all the rage these days.
All in all though I'm happy with the results, the controls are nice and fluid, the engine does what it's supposed to (although there are some bugs and jankiness) and I survived my first Ludum Dare.
Ratings
| Coolness | 46% | 688 |
| Overall | 2.92 | 452 |
| Audio | 2.36 | 476 |
| Fun | 2.77 | 450 |
| Graphics | 2.38 | 691 |
| Humor | 2.88 | 165 |
| Innovation | 3.35 | 234 |
| Mood | 2.67 | 437 |
| Theme | 3.08 | 411 |
1) The difficulty spikes waaaay up the third time you play the level, when suddenly everything kills you. Maybe have the shooting enemy not be able to kill you still at that size?
2) The player physics feel too stiff and jerky.
If you clean up a few things I bet it could be a lot of fun :)
The negative lives thing was intentional, yes. Both a jab at lives systems and a mark of shame.
The lethality of enemies was based on their relative size to you, which turned out to be a tricky thing to tune in the engine and I ran out of time. As is I'm not at all happy with level 2 and 3. Level 5 was the only level I was actually able to make complete, but it needed 3 checkpoints instead of 2 (checkpoints were a last minute addition).
And yeah, the physics were pretty buggy. Next Ludum Dare I'll probably use an engine instead of writing one from scratch. I wasn't sure if that was allowed in the 48hr.