So I’m pretty happy to finally post my first ever completed entry for Ludum Dare. Check out Into the Pit: The Endless Caverns here!

It’s a game heavily-inspired/influenced/ripped off from level 2 of Battletoads for the NES (which was one of the more sane levels in that game). You basically go around avoiding spikes/traps and killing bats with a simple dash attack. Like Battletoads you can juggle the bats for extra points and to regain health. The game goes on forever until you die. Right now there’s plenty of chance of that due to the lack of end stage balancing since I ran out of time near the end and wanted to get things like menus done.

This time around my goal was over the first 24 hours to come up with a fully-playable prototype and to spend the last 24 hours adding graphics, audio, and polish. Surprisingly enough that actually held true for the most part. I managed to come up with the basic game late last night and I spend most of today on things like finer gameplay details and working on sprites and sounds. You may notice my explorer sprite is a little too close to comfort to a certain famous indie game character. Forgive me for that, I really suck at pixel art and being derivative was the best I could do.

One thing I’m actually really pleased with is how at the very end (literally the last 2 hours) a more ominous feel entered into the game. On a whim I added in some rumbling sounds that I looped continuously on the menu screen. Combined with screen shaking I really dug the “collapsing cavern” atmosphere that was being generated so I ran with that. If I had a little more time I would have liked to have added touches like falling debris and other signs of collapse.

Regardless I hope people enjoy it. Have fun and feel free to criticize and comment.

Note: It was made using Flixel which I understand is perfectly fine for this competition. And I can safely say that without Flixel there’s no chance in hell I would have had anything completed.