So here it is, folks! I AM TIME BOMB is my LD27 entry. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

I AM TIME BOMB is a multiplayer game. Doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it alone! It’s a fast, high-octane arcade game about explosions and the hurried panic of exploding in ten seconds. You are Time Bomb, and you’re going to explode. But hey, if you’re going out with a boom, you might as well make it last. So spread explosives through the room in such way that, when you explode, it’ll set up a chain reaction. Compete with up to three friends of yours and see who’ll become the best fireworks. Simple!

RIGHT THINGS I DID

• IT’S SIMPLE: I KISSed to the core, from the beginning. It’s simple, and it’s stupid. This prevented me from going overboard. Simple colors, simple shapes. This was by far my best decision, because it let me do a lot of crazy stuff and left me with spare time before the compo time ran out!
• GOAL: Right when I started I had a clear goal in mind. My objective was making a multiplayer game. I went with that and, although the gameplay didn’t work very well after all, I succeeded in my goal. So even if it’s not the hottest piece around, I’m still happy that I succeeded!
• THEME: I stopped worrying and learnt to love the theme. I believe most people saw the theme as a restriction, a constraint (I know I did, at first). But after thinking outside of the box I came up with a bunch of crazy ideas for it.
• TOOLS: I sticked with what I knew. Game Maker 8 never disappoints me. For music and sound effects, my faithful and dandy FLStudio did the job.
• WORK WITH FRIENDS: I gathered with some friends to participate in this Ludum Dare. Each of us made a separate game, but just being together helped on focusing and having an immediate feedback on our progress.

WRONG THINGS I DID

• GAMEPLAY: I wasn’t sure how the game would be played until it was very late. Unfortunately, the way it ended up isn’t very interesting, as it involves too much randomness. I didn’t have enough time to change the gameplay, but I have ideas for an eventual post-compo version.
• TOOLS: I started using GM: Studio instead of GM8, because I wanted to release it in several platforms to make it accessible to everyone. That wasn’t a good idea because GM: Studio has problems even in its primary platform. I rolled back to GM8 soon enough though, so it wasn’t a big impact.
• MULTIPLAYER: This being a multiplayer game has its problems. First of all I never really tapped designing multiplayer gameplay before, I’m more experienced with single player games, so this was quite challenging for me. It’s unfortunate that most people will probably not even try because it doesn’t have a singleplayer mode. Plus, because it’s multiplayer, it was difficult to test it as well. Certainly not a very good choice for a LD game 😛

So there you have it. Try it now, and let me know how it goes for you. I can’t wait to receive your feedback 😀

Have a blast!