Howdy! This is the first time I’m participating in Ludum Dare. I was in Global Game Jam though so I think I know what kind of madness I am signing in for!

I’m mainly graphics artist with no real coding skills, but I’m using Stencyl to create games and I hope I can make something respectable in just 48-72 hours, I use Photoshop and Flash for graphics and BFXR for sounds. I’ve never made music but I’m testing out if I can create something with PXTone.

Good luck for everyone participating!

Tags: first ludum dare 23

This is the first time I’m participating in Ludum Dare and I started to work on a small platformer Tiny Island Adventure. You control small mechanic girl Lydia who is bored beyond her mind in the small world she lives in. She decides to escape by finding enough scrap and tools from other tiny islands near her own so she can build a rocket and go on a huge adventure!

I’ve finished most of the tileset and hopefully I can start making the actual game soon. Besides her home island she can jump on other tiny islands nearby and enter small dungeons to collect scrap and tools.

I use Stencyl for the game, it’s a neat game developing tool for graphics artists like myself who know nothing about coding. I’ve made games with it before and it’s very easy to use. I use BFXR for sounds and I try to compose something simple with PXTone, but I’m no musician so I try to aim for something small.

Tiny Island Adventure

I’ll post updates here and to my Twitter: @AdventIslands

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 21st, 2012 at 6:13 am and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I’ve finished the most important graphics and I’ve started to work on the actual game now. Currently I’ve finished only the very first test build where you can only run and jump around. But you can try it out if you want, use arrow keys to move and Z to jump.

Currently there is just one island to jump around, but I’m starting to work on the story where more small islands float towards the island and Lydia can jump on them and explore them. I will also probably work on the physics and animations if I have any spare time.

Play the early test build here: http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/12317
(if the character doesn’t move, click the game once)

Tiny Island Adventure

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 21st, 2012 at 9:29 am and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

After lots of hard work I’ve finally finished my Ludum Dare game Tiny Island Adventure! Here is it’s Ludum Dare page:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11391

Play the game on Kongregate!
http://www.kongregate.com/games/AdventureIslands/tiny-island-adventure

Thank you everyone who has been following the progress and thank you other devs for shared moments of laugh and frustration in Twitter! Good luck everyone!

Tiny Island Adventure

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2012 at 1:34 pm and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Greetings, this is my seconds time time participating, I’m incredibly excited about what this LD’s theme will be!

I’ll be using Stencyl to make my game, it’s fast and easy to use program and I’ve always used to make my games. A bit limited here and there but so far it has always gotten the job done.

For graphics, I’ll be using Photoshop. I’ll most likely stick with pixel art style, because that’s what I can produce quite well and pretty fast.

For sounds and music, I’ll be using BFXR, to make sounds, and cgMusic to compose some simple tunes, but if that fails, I guess I try to compose some very simple beats with PXTone like I did during last LD. I’ll also use Audacity to edit the songs to mp3s, because that’s the only sound format Stencyl can use.

Good luck for everyone participating!

Also, here’s my previous Tiny World themed Ludum Dare game I made last time: Tiny Island Adventure

Here’s my “I’m in!” Post: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/08/24/adventureislands-im-in-post/

I’ve spend most of the first day just planning the stages and drawing most of the graphics, here’s a game I am working for Ludum Dare! I named it Tiny Evolution Adventure after my previous Ludum Dare game Tiny Island Adventure. Who knows, I might end up naming all my Ludum Dare entries Tiny Something Adventure.

In this game, you play as tiny creature who starts off as a tadpole. In the first level, you can freely swim around in the sea, devouring creatures smaller than you, and avoiding bigger creatures that try to eat you. During every level, you need to find and devour enough creatures to fill your DNA, when it’s full, the creature is ready to evolve and reach a new stage! For example, in the second level he has now grown limbs, and must travel on ground while eating bugs and avoiding hazards, evolving further when he eats enough critters.

Here is the first in game screenshot, the game is proceeding nicely and I am quite sure I can get the game finished on time without too much hurry. The first level is nearly finished so I can peacefully finish rest of the graphics and levels. You can follow the progress in my Twitter!

Screenshot of level 1 of Tiny Evolution Adventure

More info in my previous post! Introducing Tiny Evolution Adventure!

Today I have been working like crazy to get my Ludum entry finished on time, I think I have put over twice as much work and effort to his game then my previous entry! There are currently 2 from planned 3 levels finished where you play as a tadpole and a lizard. I’m working on the final level where the creature you control (I think I call him Munchie) evolves to walk on his back feet, running and jumping higher and faster than before.

Here are couple new Screenshots from the finished levels. It still takes couple of more hours before I can finish the third and final level and the ending, but I know I can get them done before the deadline! I’m proceeding really fast and I’m damn motivated! Stay tuned!

Set on a evolutionary adventure where you must devour the weak and survive against
the strong so you may evolve and reach the top of the food chain!

In this game, you must travel the stages and eat creatures that are smaller than you. After you have eaten
enough, you are ready to evolve and you need to find the stage exit to proceed to the next level.

Phew! It was a close call, but I managed to finish my Ludum Dare entry in time! Had to work like crazy, it’s very late and I have work tomorrow, but screw that! It was worth it! Play it here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=rate&uid=11391 If you rate and leave a comment, I make sure to play, comment and rate your game as well!

Phew! Last weekend was very intense! I was starting to get a bit worried about if I have enough time to finish the game, but luckily I managed to submit the game two hours before the deadline. Here’s my game’s page: www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=rate&uid=11391

In my game, you control a small creature who must swim or jump around levels and eat creatures smaller than himself. After eating enough, level exit unlocks and entering it the creature evolves into a new form he will use in the next level. The look and gameplay is highly inspired by excellent platformr EVO: Search for Eden for SNES.

I think I spend over half of the first day just drawing most of the graphics. I’m a graphics artist mainly, so I wanted to make sure the game will look good! I might have spend slightly bit too much time drawing, because I didn’t end up using everything and extra time could have been used to polish the game.

What Went Right:

-The game was finished on time! This was my biggest worry because I used so much time with the graphics. I think I finally finished the game when there was still 2 hours left before the deadline. I also managed to create 3 big and highly different levels, ending and credits scene and all that. I was aiming to make the game very pretty and I think I succeeded with that quite well. I am overally pretty content how the game turned out. Also the cgMusic program that composed the songs heard in the game turned out much, much better than I initially expected, I think they really fit and add a lot to the finished game.

What Went Wrong:

- What could have been: There were some ideas I was planning to make, like 4th level where you could fly around, but the deadline was closing in so I decided to just end the game after level 3. Also the game was supposed to have much darker downer ending, but decided against it after all. It would have been a fun shocker for the player, but would have taken too long to create and might have clashed with the overall sunny and cheery feel of the other parts of the game.

- Rough around the edges: I was running out of time so I had to rush the game a bit near the end, the 3rd level is alright but not as good I would have wanted it to be, for example the parallax graphics of forest don’t look so good in motion, they are too fast, and there are small annoyances like very small bite detection area and weird dashing movement when biting. I should have tested the game more, but hurry and tiredness was taking their toll. The game is also quite difficult with no checkpoints. I couldn’t figure out how to keep eaten critters dead when stage reloads.

What Else:

This was probably my biggest project I’ve ever accomplished on such a short time limit. It’s not perfect, but I am proud of what I managed to create. I would really like to give a try for some bigger, more refined sequel sometime, with more levels and forms with big gameplay differences. Perhaps someday when I finish my current projects.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 1:33 pm and is filed under LD #24. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The game’s Ludum page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=rate&uid=11391

I’ve made some adjustments for my Ludum Dare entry Tiny Evolution Adventure, the original game is a bit unpolished because I was running out of time, but the post-compo versions have many small fixes:

-Fixed bug that prevents level 2 exit from working sometimes.
-Adjusted controls and difficulty.
-Edited intro text.
-Bigger bite detection area.
-fixed level 3 parallax background

Post-Compo version is playable at Kongregate and Newgrounds. The original unedited entry is playable at Stencyl.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2012 at 1:55 am and is filed under LD #24. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Hello again, I’m AdventureIslands, and this is my 3rd time joining Ludum Dare! My previous entries were Tiny Island Adventure, and Tiny Evolution Adventure. As much as I would have wanted to keep using the Tiny Something Adventure naming, it wouldn’t have really fit this Ludum Dare game I am making. The story of Mad Princess goes like this:

“There is a story of a beautiful princess trapped in the castle of a horrible demon. Many brave warriors have fallen trying to face the dangerous traps of the castle to save the princess…

The truth, however, is much more darker: The master of the castle is no one but the princess herself! She uses terrible dark magic to set traps for the hapless heroes who invade the castle, and then uses their blood to create more deadly traps for new heroes who dare to set their foot in the castle!”

Mad Princess is a tower defence type of game. You control the princess, who uses blood as currency, to set up different traps from spiky floors to crossbow sentries to kill the invading heroes! The heroes travel in sideway 2D view in the halls of the castle, trying to reach the princess. If that happens, she is forcefully “saved” and probably married, or worse, taken to some mental care institution!

I have finished most of the graphics by now, and I will start to build the actual game soon. This is an interesting and challenging project. Because I am using Stencyl once again, and I have never used it to make a tower defence style game before. But I am fairly sure I know what to do, so stay tuned! Follow my incoherent rambling and maybe status updates in my Twitter at @AdventIslands!

Previous posts Introducing Mad Princess! and Enemies of Mad Princess here.

It’s 3 am in my country, so I better catch some sleep and continue working after sleeping for 5-6 or so hours. Tomorrow is going to be busy day! I just finished the the trap buttons in the GUI, tomorrow I start making the actual traps you use to kill the enemies. Before I sleep though, here is a screenshot of the current alpha build, click it to enlarge:

The game is a sideways tower defence. You need to stop the advancing enemies from reaching the Princess. To do that, you use collected blood to buy and set different traps like spike carpets. Killing enemies gets you more blood to buy more traps. Info about the enemies in my previous post Enemies of Mad Princess. Some stages will be wider and will scroll following your mouse. Please note that this is early footage so some graphics can still change.

Follow the development and my other ramblings in my Twitter @AdventIslands

Previous posts Introducing Mad Princess!, Enemies of Mad Princess and First Screenshot of Mad Princess here.

Phew, the deadline is soon closing in. I’ve finished creating all the traps and I can soon start building the actual levels. Phew! Looks like I am not going to get much sleep tonight. Here are the five different traps you can use in Mad Princess to destroy those hapless heroes:

First trap is the Bombs, you can spawn them pretty much anywhere by just clicking empty space. They are cheap and pretty powerful, but be careful though, because they start rolling around easily and will blow up your traps if they happen to collide.

Second trap is the Spike Carpet, it falls on the ground and will sap the health of anyone who steps on it. The invading heroes cannot attack it, but be careful when placing it, because it breaks if it touches other traps.

The third trap is the Wall, well, it is not really a trap, but a strong brick wall, that will halt the travel of the heroes until they manage the break it. Agile enemies can run through it with no harm though. The Wall will break any traps that collide with it.

The fourth trap is the Crossbow, it’s an automatic sentry that will shoot arrows at the invaders. It’s also a bit like the Wall, and will halt the heroes, but only briefly, because it’s not as sturdy as the Wall. Agile enemies can also pass through it with no harm but they can still be hit with arrows.

The fifth and final trap is the Chain Ball, it spins in place in a round arc. It’s very powerful, but it will destroy any traps it happens to smash into so be careful when placing it.

The traps cost blood that is awarded by slaying the invading heroes. Be careful when placing the traps though, they cannot be removed and when they break you won’t get the blood back. Even if they broke from touching other traps.

Follow the progress and my other ramblings in my Twitter @AdventIslands

Mad Princess is finished! Go play it!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=rate&uid=11391

Phew! That was hard work but I barely managed to finish my Compo entry! There are 8 levels, and they might be a bit rushed, because I only had 2 hours before deadline to start designing them. Haha. I hope they are still fun to play through.

Now I need to head to sleep because I want to get couple of hours rest before I need to leave to work, but I’ll start rating your games and writing a post-mortem after work!

Play the game here! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=11391

I had another fun and busy weekend pixeling and making a game. This time was much more interesting than usual though, I made a sideways tower defense, and I have never made a game like that before. Frankly, at first I wasn’t even going to make the game about this idea, fearing I would not have time to make it, but then I thought, whatever, at least it will be an interesting learning experience.

I’ve had this idea of a psychopathic princess killing heroes for a while now, but I’ve been just waiting for good time to start making it. Then it turned out that the Ludum theme was You Are The Villain, what an excellent chance to finally make the game!

What went right:

– Finished the game on time
This was real close call, I spend perhaps a bit too much time with the graphics again, and lots of time was spend just making the traps and enemies behavare correctly. I only finished the core mechanics near the end and all 8 levels were designed in hurry with just two hours left before the deadline. I also should have started making the graphics to the 16×16 tilesize like they are in the finished game from the very beginning, when I first started making the game, the characters were much bigger, but I soon realized it takes too much time to make and animate their sprites, so I instead started to remove pixels and made them as tiny as I could. Here is some before and after comparisons, I think the smaller ones look much better anyway. I can’t draw big characters. At all.

Before and after

– Made a good tower defense!
Like I said, I have never done a game like this before, in fact, this is my very first game that is not a platformer. I am very proud of myself. At first I wasn’t going to go with this type of game, but I decided to take a risk and it paid off. Considering how fast I had to learn everything and put the thing together, I think it turned out pretty well and I am glad the feedback has been prettypositive too so far.

What went wrong:

– Number of levels

I had only two hours left to make some playable levels, so it’s no wonder some of the levels are bit poorly balanced. I also didn’t have the time to add any kind of help or tutorial texts to the beginning of the game. Currently you just have to read the game description. I was aiming to finish 10 levels, but it would have taken too much testing, so I had to go with 8, but that’s pretty ok number too. Also All the levels turned out to be the same tiny hall, with lots of unused empty space underneath it. The reason for this was that I simply did not have the time to start designing more complex levels like in alpha design picture:

– Enemy balance.

There are 3 types of enemies in the game: Regulars, who are basic walking and attacking knights, Agiles, who can run ridiculously fast and can walk past road blocking traps, and Brutes, who are slow but very powerful giants. Plenty of people have said that the agiles are bit tough to deal with as they take no damage from spike carpets and reguire either arrows or carefully placed bombs to be taken cared of. I haven’t really heard anything said about the Brutes, but I personally think they should have showed up a bit more and perhaps be a bit more stronger, they are pit of a pushovers currently, there is a weird bug that makes them slide down hills when they punch things.

– Trap balance

I didn’t have enough time to properly test the traps, so I am not entirely sure if the prices are balanced enough. Also the final Chain Ball trap turned out to be bit useless, it costs a lot, moves slowly and breaks way too fast. I really should have boosted it’s spinning speed and HP. Also the game gets a bit easy if you just buy lots of crossbows in the later levels, the wall trap doesn’t get much use either, it should probably get a boost in HP to be truly useful.  There was also supposed to be 6th trap but I didn’t have the time to make it. Well, I didn’t really even have any ideas what it could have been. Perhaps slime that slows the enemies down when they walk through it?

Traps of Mad Princess

Disregard of what went wrong, I think the game turned out pretty well anyway, at least this is a good foundation to start building something bigger and better, maybe an improved post-compo version with better levels and more balanced gameplay and fixed bugs? Mobile version? We’ll see, I’m especially interested to see if I can turn this mobile. That depends on how stable the new beta of Stencyl 3.0 is.

After over a week of thorough polishing and bug fixing, I’ve finally released the improved post compo version of my ludum entry Mad Princess! Play the new and improved game here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/608745
Check out and rate the original entry here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=11391

There are lots of improvements over the original, for example:

• Total of 21 levels, with the final stage being epic and tough final boss fight!

• There is now a proper tutorial how to use every trap

• Stage Selection and game saves progress after every won level.

• Hotkeys 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to pick up different traps!

• Traps don’t slide down hills anymore, but enemies attacking them will! Use this as your adventage.

• Agiles cannot run through Wall trap anymore and stop to attack them just like Regulars, but they deal half as much damage.

• Bombs can only be placed one at the time, but they explode little quicker now. They also won’t explode instantly when dropped on the princess or other traps. (except Spike Carpet)

• Most traps don’t destroy each other anymore, in fact, if you drop a trap on the same type of trap, for example, Wall on already existing Wall, the old one will be fixed!

• The princess now correctly stops if you manage to kill the enemy who has reacher her, so enemy touching her is not instant lose anymore.

• Bombs can be dropped everywhere with the exeption of Spike Carpet, which destroys the carpet and makes the bomb explode instantly. Good for sacrificing almost broken Spike Carpets to wipe out Spike Carpet immune Agiles!

• Enemies now flash when they take damage!

• Crossbows don’t shoot the instant they are set on the battlefield.

• Chain Ball appears much more often now and has reduced speed and increased HP.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013 at 1:26 pm and is filed under LD #25. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 
Persist is a tale of small spirit trying to reach a mysterious goddess to seek for forgiveness for his past sins, so he can move on to higher plane of existence. Unfortunately, the goddess isn’t feeling very helpful, and the further you travel in her sanctuary, the more sacrifices she demands from you in form of your limbs. Lose your arms, and you can no longer swim. Lose your legs, and you can no longer jump. As you trek deeper into the dungeon, you lose your skills one by one, making your quest more and more dangerous.

Can you reach salvation? Or are you doomed to lose all hope, and your whole existence, in the deep and dark sanctuary?

I’m making the game using Stencyl. The first area seen in the first screenshot is finished. As well as the cutscene the second screenshot is from. I am currently working on the remaining 3 areas and cutscenes. Stay tuned! and follow my twitter @AdventIslands

Check out the game: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=11391

About:

I finally finished my LD game Persist. It’s a platformer with simple graphics, I tried to aim for something similar to the night levels of Super Mario Bros on NES and used limited color palette. I also wanted to bring out the minimalism theme in the gameplay: The further you get in the game, the more of your various body parts and skills you lose. And the gameplay and traps keep changing along with them. Can you survive to the end of the road, when your whole existence is in danger of fading away?

Story:

Persist is a tale of small spirit trying to reach a mysterious goddess to seek for forgiveness for his past sins, so he can move on to higher plane of existence. Unfortunately, the goddess isn’t feeling very helpful, and the further you travel in her sanctuary, the more sacrifices she demands from you in form of your limbs. Lose your arms, and you can no longer swim. Lose your legs, and you can no longer jump. As you trek deeper into the dungeon, you lose your skills one by one, making your quest more and more dangerous.

Can you reach salvation? Or are you doomed to lose all hope, and your whole existence, in the deep and dark sanctuary?

Screenshots:

AdventureIslands joins the brawl for the 5th time now! Nooo pressure at all! Oh boy, hope this LD will be as successful as the previous ones. Good luck everyone!

My tools of trade:

• Stencyl as the game engine
• Photoshop for graphics
• BFXR.net for sounds
• CgMusic for random music generation
• Audacity for music editing

My previous LD games:

Persist
Mad Princess
Tiny Evolution Adventure
Tiny Island Adventure

Follow my gamedev stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/adventureislands

Greetings! It’s AdventureIslands joining LD for the 5th time now. I’m currently working on a game called Duke Dashington!

Duke is a fearless treasure hunter, who accidentally sets a trap that causes the whole ruin to collapse.. even before he has even set his foot in! Duke is determined to get the treasure, and dashes in disregard that the ceiling is going to collapse at any moment!

In the game, you use WASD or Arrow Keys to dash, you keep moving to the direction you dashed till you hit something, so you need to carefully plan where to move, and be quick about it too, as you have only 10 seconds to clear the room before it collapses! Can Duke reach the treasure and escape?

Screenshots: