Bad luck has always plagued me whenever I decided to participate in these contests. Last time the LD challenge happened during a vacation weekend in which I couldn’t participate. The previous one as well happened during holiday time which found me without a computer (just for that one weekend). Now, you may think I travel a lot etc etc, except I don’t. It was just a very unlucky coincidence, I tend to stay at home for the rest of the year, there must be some sort of unlucky magnetism that brings me to travel around when LD is scheduled.

My previous participation in LD was last April with my Dream Sequencer game, it was a (rather poor, if I have to admit) point and click game I developed over the weekend with C++ and Angel Engine.

It was a fairly interesting experience, I had promised I’d write a post mortem on that but I eventually forgot and I didn’t. I guess we can consider this post to be a somewhat of a late post mortem. I always enjoy challenging myself and even within the scope of this challenge (the LD48) I had decided I would challenge myself further with C++ (a language I had never used before) and Angel Engine (a very simple prototypical engine that I had never used).

Honestly, the challenge went greatly, I learned a lot and I had a lot of fun although it wasn’t easy. This time I plan to challenge myself yet again and try develop a game in ClojureScript. What is ClojureScript? It’s a Lisp dialect (Clojure) compiled to Javascript for HTML5 deliciousness. I’m a Linux user and I know my target audience would be very small if I didn’t provide an OSX and Windows executable. Even then, people playing a lot of LD games just want them to work in the browser without having to download libraries and shady binaries. I do not support Flash, I do not have Flash and I am unable (by choice) to run Flash, so that’s a dead option too. (on the negative side, I won’t be able to play any Flash game, sadly). I dislike Javascript so ClojureScript was the obvious choice for me.

We’ll have to see how it works.

As far as gameplay goes, last time I attempted a point and click (my first ever) and the puzzles were lacking, the story was rushed towards the end (lack of time, curse you C++ and poor planning) and the art wasn’t that great (yeah, I’m a bad artist). Nonetheless I got a very high score (#35) in the Mood category which is what is motivating me to try this style once again. I plan to attempt yet another point and click, it’s my favorite genre and I have played all the classics, this time I might pay more attention to the puzzles and give more details to the mini-universe I will try to fit to the LD theme. I just have to hope to get a good theme (I have a few ideas, who knows…)

From my previous experience, I have to say that designing a point and click is harder than it sound. Putting aside the game engine and mechanics, the puzzles themselves have to blend in well with the world you create. Add too many details and your players will be lost without knowing what to do. Add too little details and the puzzles become obvious (just combine everything you find with everything else and it will eventually work out). Striking a perfect balance between longevity and fun is challenging. To top it off, a good story with proper writing is the icing on the cake. All of this will have to happen in a weekend, who wouldn’t love it?