First off, here’s the game if you are interested.

So this game exists now. That’s amazing. I’m amazed. It still feels weird to me that I managed to do that.

About the game:

This game is based on the Franz Kafka short story A Hunger Artist, which can be read here or listened to here. Wikipedia has an article here. It tells the story of the Hunger Artist, a hunger artist who wants, even needs, to be understood by people who cannot understand him.

In this game, you play as the Hunger Artist during one of his performances, which lasts a maximum of 40 30-second-long game days. During the day, interested people from the town come in, sometimes bringing friends, and watch you not eat. The Impresario will try to keep the crowd interested and maximize your profit, while you do what you can to try to make the audience understand your art.

With the exception of a few buttons mixed in, all of the controls are controlled by hovering. Hover over sprites to see information about the characters. Hover over the action buttons to perform those actions. Audience members are persistent, so do your best to make them want to come back.

Observations and Lessons Learned:

This is the section where I’d put down all the mistakes I made this Ludum Dare and tell you about what those mistakes taught me for next time. I’m surprised at how short this section is, but this weekend went surprisingly smooth.

My only really identifiable mistake?

• I feel I failed to make it cute enough to properly contrast the Kafkaesque story. I would have had an easier time making the game style match the story. As it is, it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, and

• Saturday morning, I discovered that microwave pot pies with chunks of potatoes are really dangerous.
• I ordered way too much sushi on Saturday night, especially since my tongue was still swollen.

As for things that went right,

• I didn’t get stuck working on assets. I did two dresses for the women as proof-of-concept on my random sprite generator, and then I moved on. I generated some mediocre abundant-music music Friday night after I stopped being functional, and experimented with different ways to independently adjust settings on it, and then didn’t use that music in the end, but I didn’t waste good time on it.
• I was fairly reasonable with respect to scheduling. I woke up surprisingly early on Saturday (three hours before my alarm, even) after working late into Friday, so I got tired fairly early Saturday night. I had planned to get the game playable before bed Saturday, but when I started getting too stupid to code right, I didn’t try to force myself.
• I got the scope exactly right. The game as it is is only a small part of of what I imagine the game to be, but I came into this knowing that this was the probably form the game would take.

This type of section is really boring when everything goes right. Sorry.

Things left to do:

• Fix the graphics. The background image is a bunch of colored rectangles. It was supposed to be a bunch of textured rectangles. I never got around to giving the women hair that is not a copy of the men’s hair. I never got around to making a title card with a cutesy Franz Kafka face like I wanted to. And I wanted to make a wall clock. I should probably get an artist.
• Fix the music. At the very least, I should find a sound font I like and spend some time choosing better instruments.
• Add animation, or at least movement. Did you know that the audience members have faces? Well, they don’t, but they do have front-facing sprites with more face skin showing. The relative stillness works with the game’s theme, but the plan was to have audience members walk in and out, and only stand in the general location of their assigned seating. The alert bubbles also only appear for a fraction of the things they are designed to, and sometimes linger after their parent object teleports off the screen.
• Implement talking. One of the best ways to influence the audience is by talking to them. Talk to them when you are too incredulous, and you might say something offensive. Let kids touch your scrawny arms and they’ll tell all their friends. Talk to the Impresario to let him know what you think will be the most useful. Talking was something I was looking forward to implementing.
• Balance the hell out of it. As is, the game is fairly luck-based an allegory on the inability of man to self-actualize. There is some strategy to getting the audience interested, but the main trick is just not doing things to upset the Impresario and hoping the Impresario handles the audience well.
• Add in campaign mode, endless play mode, and play as the panther after you die at the circus mode. A campaign across time and space! Well, across a few decades in the early 20th century Europe. You build your fame, watch the world’s interest in hunger artists wax and wane, drive off the only person who is looking out for you, and shrink until you disappear.
• Add more in-game text. The story it’s based on is in the public domain.

Little observation I like that I would like if people noticed but they won’t so I’ll mention it

Despite the fact that every NPC thinks you’re probably sneaking food, it doesn’t even come as an available action occur to the player character that that would be something to do.