| Volume 1 |

Hello! Here, I will show off concept art, sketches, design musings, and other little bonuses from the last LudumDare. This one took way longer than anticipated!

This time: Game About Trying to Gain More Time In A Time Cave! You can play it here, if you haven’t yet.

Some Words…

I think this was one of my most ambitious entries ever, and I'm pretty proud of it. I really wanted to tell a bit more of an obvious story this time around. I have a LOT of stories I want to tell, but games with those more obviously deep stories have ended up taking the most time. I'm pretty sure I came up with the idea for the story first, and the gameplay emerged mentally after thinking about it for a good while. Oh, and, for anyone who got invested in the story... I don't think this is the last of the skeletons' adventures! I think they'll probably find some way to carry the life prolonging magic of the cave with them after a few years of having to go thru the cave. Or, does that ruin the poetic ending? Haha... interesting to think about. At any rate, the world of this game pre-existed it, and more games will take eventually place on the same planet, so please stay tuned for the long-term future.

Anyway, as I developed the game I thought it would be cool to iterate on fixed jump arcs, and make that something that felt interesting and fun to use. (This isn't actually my first experiment with fixed jump arcs and that sort of thing- besides my internal experiments, check out 'FROGS...') I think the 'short' and 'long' jump concept was good, and I think I did a good job with most of the level design. The 'time gem' checkpoint concept was a little controversial, and I'm not 100% sure it's 'good game design'... but it was fun trying it, anyway! :D

Visually there was a lot more I wanted to do, especially with the general feel and tileset, and the 'cutscenes', but I did what I could with the time I had. I'm really happy with how the character's animations look though- did you notice that he has a separate set of left and right facing sprites, because of his outfit? It's true!

Lastly, really really happy with the audio! The ending theme was actually something I sung improv-style and then transcribed in LSDJ, which I think gave it a bit more of an organic feel. I also think the main cavern theme is one of my most catchy tunes yet!

Concept Art and Such

All of the below sketches were made early on during the jam.

Some of these were intended to be cutscenes before I decided to draw it all in Aseprite due to time. I tried drawing what the skeletons looked like before they were all bones. (In this particular world, living skeletons were once living humans...) I don't know if this is exactly how they look, but something like this. The 'friend' in this image is someone who helped transport the two wizards. I think she exists in the world even though you never see her in-game.

Little peek at early level design progress.

Parting Words

Not much else to say, for now at least. I'm glad I followed through on this even though it's super late... See y'all at the end of September!