![\"ss\"](\"http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ss19.png\")
THE STORY: Imagine it’s the morning of that big job interview or business presentation. You were up ’til 3 a.m. preparing, but you forgot to set your alarm clock and you’ve overslept. Your train leaves in 10 minutes, so you only have a few precious moments to shave…
\nTHE PITCH: Since the dawn of time, mankind has yearned for a realistic beard shaving simulation. The dream of virtual beard maintenance has sadly, to this day, proved elusive. Today, however, I am pleased to announce that the most anticipated shaving game of all time is some other game which, quite possibly, doesn’t yet exist. Until that game exists, until our collective grooming vision is realized, I humbly submit… Shaving Quest: The Razor’s Edge!
\nLet your creativity soar to new bearded heights as you nimbly create the perfect Fu Manchu, a razor thin pencil mustache, or perhaps the venerable Van Dyke.
\nhttp://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=3609
\n… And the reviews are in!
\nThank you to everyone who has commented on Shaving Quest! You have all provided tons of encouragement and I thank you all sincerely! Below is a sampling of the reviews (taken completely out of context).
\n You made SOMETHING.What went right?
\nMission Accomplished! If the goal of LD is to create a game, and if the definition of “game” is relaxed to include such activities as erasing pixels from a bitmap image, then SQ is technically a game that was completed before the Jam deadline. This was my first LD, so I was pretty much in over my head from the get-go.
\nPhun with Physics! Box2DWeb was successfully incorporated into the game with humorous effect. If you poke a man in the eye, does he not blink? I think he does! His nose also twitches in a totally unrealistic manner.
\nWhat went wrong?
\nKnow thy tools. I had never used Box2D and hadn’t spent much time with CreateJS. I wasted several hours figuring out the API’s. I should have invested some time during the week leading up to LD26 to familiarize myself with both libraries.
\nThe enthusiasm gap. As the code got uglier and more convoluted, my enthusiasm crashed through the floor. I slept in on Sunday. I lost several perfectly good hours to the History Channel’s Vikings season one marathon. As the compo deadline passed, so too had my will to continue. However, the jam still had one more day to go, so I tinkered with it a bit on Monday and submitted what I had (sans shaving). I was so completely overwhelmed by the amount of encouragement I received shortly after submitting that I decided to take a few hours Monday evening to add a crude shaving mechanic just before the jam deadline. Feedback helps. A lot.
\nYou wanted to make a game about what? So, the original idea was to make a crude version of Surgeon Simulator 2013, but with shaving. Yep. Shaving. Somehow, late Friday night, that seemed like a good idea. I imagined with glee that players would end up cutting, bludgeoning, or otherwise mutilating their cartoon selves. I envisioned Dexteresque blood splatters, Gwar-tastic fountains of gore… but sometime Saturday evening I was regretting my game choice. There was supposed to be a timer counting down and a blood loss meter that, if emptied, would cause you to black out. You would be able to stanch the flow with toilet paper, and… and… as the hours wore on, it just seemed like there was too much to do and I found I had lost interest.
\nConclusion
\nHappy shaving!
", "time": "April 30th, 2013 10:02 am", "title": "Shaving Quest: A Post Mortem"}