The theme:
My idea was that a big ugly spider is a classical villain in games (Limbo, Minecraft and many more) and the cute fireflies were the source of lights in a dark cave (finally not so dark, but that was the plan). A bloody eating animation was also supposed to highlight that, but not enough time.

The engine:
I took a risky bet to improvise some basic physics engine with per-pixel collision and it turned OK. I initially planned to use a library again, but LD is also to quickly experiment new things. However, I constantly modified the gameplay around it. The jumping mechanic exists mainly because walking was a bit clunky. Similarly, the rolling and sticking behavior solved the same stability problem. My first idea was to use some ninja rope possibility, but jumping was already fun enough. The second reason to use per-pixel collision was to quickly create levels simply with an image editor, thus skipping the need to code some custom map editor. This also allowed to easily add many graphical details.

The levels:
Making the first level was really fun (almost too much fun). I wanted to make more of them but drawing take more time that I expected (the price to pay for its flexibility I guess). I also added water a bit late, and it’s probably a bit too hard. Plus, a last minute typo made it even harder. I had more gameplay situations possible with the current terrain types, but again, levels were done too late. I also coded some compression tricks to handle these big megapixels bitmaps but it was probably not needed because the final game is only 180kb.

The controls:
I think the look and feel is good. Tried a lot of control variants and lost some time on the sprite and animation, but it really helped to make it more natural. Simple things like the spider orienting its legs towards the wall, or the difference between the rotating open/closed states made a big impact on the resulting impression.

The result:
Pretty happy about the final game. I really like the mechanic and wish to explore it more. Also, less ashamed than usual by my sprite skills. I really need to improve my level creation timing, though. But in the end and as always, I greatly enjoyed the Ludum Dare challenge