You can vote for Toothless Speed Dating at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/toothless-speed-dating. With that out of the way, here is how it came about.

Theme

Since for me Ludum Dare started at 3AM, the first thing I did in the morning was check the theme : Sacrifices must be made, and I liked it right away, thinking of such games as Lemmings, Life Goes On and Rude Bear Resurrection. I decided to try and make a little 2D platformer where you have to sacrifice yourself in order to get to your goal.

First day

First day didn't really go well, I was struggling a lot with Unity and its video tutorials and only had a character and a platform and a deadly platform and some basic movement scripts. I was almost ready to give it all up and learn more Unity and try again at #44.

Second day

On the second day things got a lot better. Unity got under control with the help of DuckDuckGo. I found some cool sound effects, added a nice photo that I took a couple of days earlier for the background. At the end of the second day, the last stage of the level was complete and it looked like I was going to make it after all. The most important thing still missing was a name for the game. Already in bed, I thought of a way to make the level longer without making you have to repeat your steps too much - respawn points, in the shape of the lovely tooth girls, that run away when you reach them.

Third day

On the third day I started expanding the level and made a force-based follow-camera that I had to scrape because it was making me dizzy. While testing, one of the respawn tooth girls jumped away from me and knocked the goal tooth girl of her platform, so I couldn't finish the game, so I reversed the direction of her jumping, which solved the problem, but can now actually get you killed, which is actually much funnier (and more realistic 😈 ) . So level expansion could begin. I found some cool sound effects on freesound.org and made some music with BoscaCeoil, which unfortunately turned out to be rather annoying afterwards. I decided to publish the game with some hours to spare, so I wouldn't break it by trying to implement some other more or less crazy ideas going through my head.

The name

The name of the game became rather obvious after it was made. The characters looked like teeth (which wasn't actually my intention), the girls even more so, and you had to lose a couple to win. The goal was always to get a date. The encounters with respawn girls were also rather short so you could call them speed dates.

Possible future improvements

If I ever decide to make a full-fledged game out of this fun little project, it should include * date counter * bigger level * more levels * special tooth girls giving you extra powers like higher jumping and temporary immunity to hazards * better soundtrack or at least the ability to switch it on/off * more tooth babes

And just in case you don't want to scroll back up: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/toothless-speed-dating.