My game was Thursday the 12th, Lake Polygon. http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=41214

This is my second Ludum Dare, and my first Ludum Dare where I went Solo.  I tried to fit as much work in as I could between work and family during the weekend, overall though I think I did ok.

What went wrong.

This time around I had the theme ok, but 3/4ths the way through I realized I didn’t really have a win or lose scenario.  Basically I built a murder simulator with no way for the player to lose.   Though the first few kills were disturbingly satisfying, after a while it got boring as the game was missing “tension.”

To counter-act this I added the ability for the campers to pick up clubs and hit you back.  I also gave the player health.  This added tension back but now it went to far the other way.  You almost always ended up dying to the club wielding campers.

To counter-at that, I added a player power-up, a machete that you can throw.  I initially made it to where you could pick up you machete after you threw it. This swung the pendulum back again and made it way to easy to kill everyone quickly.  Finally, I modified the Machete one more time so it would randomly appear somewhere else on the map after the player used it.  This got me closer to where I wanted but currently the system still needs to be tweaked.

To recap, my biggest issue was I fell in love with my theme before thinking about what the game play should be like.

What went right.

Graphics.

Early on I decided to make everything out of layered basic shapes.  This let me generate most of the graphics in a couple of hours.  I really like how the graphics turned out, (with the exception of the player, I would like to go back and tweak those)

Some trickery withe some prebuilt shader effects let me add a gloomy viginette to the game, and to animate the water, fire etc.

Sound.

Though I didn’t create the sound effects, I think I got really lucky with some open source sounds/music I was able to find.  That more than anything completed the feel I was going for with the game.

Gameplay.

Overall I think it’s pretty fun!  It gets more frustrating as the kill count goes up, since you have to look harder for the remaining campers.  If I had had more time I would have added some sort of indicator to help you find the campers and maybe a couple more powerups to help you chase them down.  But overall I think the gameplay has a pretty decent base.

Anywho, I had a blast making it, and I hope you can all get a chance to try it out.

Thanks again fellow ludders.