Hi! First time I'm doing this kind of post, I hope it will be pleasant to read! By Guilloteam_clement

If you'd like to play our game, it's here :arrow_right: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/super-mowser-bros

First, some though process :thinking:

After the announcement of the theme, "Delay the innevitable", we started to brainstorm, and quickly found a first direction. Our "innevitable" would be a well known video game code, the hero's victory, but from the point of view of his antagonist. Thus, during the game, the "hero" should lose as much time as possible; the player cannot win the game, but he should make the game last as long as possible.

From there, we thought it would be best to take a well-known game as a base, and to turn the point of view around, so that the player controls not the hero of the story, but the "villain". A reference game was quickly obvious to us, since it would speak to everyone: the famous Mario, and his all time favorite bad guy Bowser.

We therefore decided to make a parody game, which pays tribute to the Italian plumber. The game is a kind of tower defense, and consists of placing obstacles on the path of ~~Mario~~ Bario, in the form of levels from the old games, with a view on the map. Bario is always trying to find his princess Cheap, so you have to build castles to take her there (as the famous line "But our princess is in another castle"!). You have units that can build buildings (Bario's levels): mushroom farms, which can create new units, and towers, which slow down Bario and can then be upgraded to castles.

Difficulties and unforeseen events :cold_sweat:

We are used to be a bit larger group for the previous jams. This time, we were 3, and tried to adapt the scope of the project in order not to be overwhelmed. What we didn't anticipate was that the testing and balancing phase would take a monstrous amount of time, and that on a game using so much UI, we had to be extremely precise in the tutorial to explain all the different mechanics in a simple and efficient way.

As those who have already tried the game have seen, we clearly ran out of time on these aspects, and the game suffers for it; it is very easy to get way ahead of Bario, making the game impossible to lose, and therefore making it less adherent to the theme. However, almost all the desired mechanics are in place, and give a good idea of what the game could be like when improved. Said improved version is comming soon!

Some visuals for the character creation process

We clearly had good base material, however we tried to make the parody aspect visible also in the character design. They are clearly recognizable, but they have something different. In particular, we made the "bad guys" cute and endearing, and in contrast, Bario looks angry and bad-tempered.

The sketches are by @michael-assing and were edited by @clement-feanor . I also want to mention @jrevel, our extraordinary devloper!

Thank you very much for reading, and I hope that you liked the game! Plase note that we do count on making a post-jam version (link soon to come)! If you are interested, please stay tuned! Here's ou itchio page, on which you can also find our previous jam games :arrow_right: https://guilloteam.itch.io/

See you soon!