Worked on this for a little while now. Feel free to check it out here!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=29311

Tools used: Game Maker, Sfxr, cgmusic, MS Paint

Here's a bit of insight into the development of the game, and where I think I fell short. Overall, I think I bit off just slightly more than I could chew, and this resulted in a game I think is pretty neat in a lot of ways but definitely has a few rough edges.

⋆ ★☆ THE CONCEPT ☆★⋆ The idea was simple from the beginning, have a platformer with procedural levels. I went with a super cute (and easy to implement!) style to get people pumped about exploring. The "Going Deeper" theme inspired the drill mechanics. The way I did this from a gameplay perspective was also as simple. There are four kinds of level chunks in the game: -Starting Platform -Ending Platform -Keyless Platforming Block -Key Challenge Block The latter two have two different difficulty sets it draws from as waves increase. At higher floors, Meteors have a chance of falling from the sky as well depending on the floor count. The player has a weapon that defeat enemies from a range and also aid in collecting items and platforming.

⋆ ★☆ THE PROCESS ☆★⋆

Creating assets for the game was a simple process. You might be surprised to hear that Zbrush was a part of the pipeline for a Jam game. One of the things that's sort of a taboo in 3D art is using ZRemeshed (auto retopologized) models for realtime rendering I think. But since it's a jam game we can just go ahead and do it! In this example, I spent 10 minutes making a vaguely bat-shaped blob then manually adding the finer details by hand.

Every 3D asset in the game (save for special effects) gets its colors from a singular texture! This was actually one of the first things I made for the game. I think I picked some pretty good colors, but there are some missing.

The game itself is obviously made in Unity, but there is one store asset I started with that forms the basis for collisions with every character. It's a popular asset, but I recommend checking it out: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/physics/kinematic-character-controller-99131

As for the music, it wasn't made by me... but by: https://twitter.com/CFY98 ! Check him out! He's great.

★Missing Mechanics★ There's a number of things I would like to have added but didn't have the time for. Here are some of the more important ones I didn't have time for: (and full disclosure, I have no idea if these would actually make the game any better without testing)

-Speed Increase while drilling if the button is held for more than a half second or so

-Alternate, more powerful attack made from finite, but collectable resources

-More level chunks

-Different floor objectives like a time limit or a little guy who flies around and harasses you

-Power-ups

-A "Hard Landing" state for the character that lets them shave off unneeded momentum as they platform.

and most importantly...

-Options Menu

Overall, I think I succeeded at most of the things I was going for at the time, but there are some exceptions we'll get into...

⋆ ★☆ PITFALLS AND FAILURES ☆★⋆

Now for the fun section. Here goes.

★Bad decisions/ implementation★ Here are some mechanics I would have had second thoughts about provided I had more than the three days of development time:

-Killing the player upon falling into bottomless pits is totally unfair and messes with the risk/ reward value proposition of deciding to take on certain level chunks

-Putting so much effort in presentation took away from development time needed to craft more interesting levels and mechanics

-The camera sensitivity is way too high and without an options menu it can be debilitating for certain players

-Not doing semi-frequent builds led to me fixing bugs during the submission hour and I even missed a couple that didn't exist in the editor

-The aiming/ moving mechanics should probably have been a more traditional strafing/ mouselook system, as moving and shooting can be overly difficult

-Some Level chunks cannot be completed as designed, but are doable with jank.

⋆ ★☆ LESSONS ☆★⋆

A good takeaway from this is I should do more frequent builds. This is the first Web Build I've done for anything I've released and some things just break when porting to certain platforms... Also, allowing the players to have a small options menu is important, even if its just like three sliders or so.

All things considered I think we did a good job here and I hope you'll check it out!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/super-drill-diver

A new version of the game is up! This version has quality of life features including:

Options Menu.

Falling off the map deals 1 damage instead of ending the run.

Tighter movement mechanics to aid with precision-platforming sections.

Auto Aim to help with killing enemies that are just out of the reticle's actual sight

Fixes to certain challenge blocks.

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For the sake of the jam, we're offering it as a download while the Jam is running. If you're rating for the Jam, you should Play the previous version, or the Web version.

If you haven't played it yet, check us out! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/super-drill-diver

Thanks!

Our game Yura Yura! is complete! Still working on the presentation at the moment, but go ahead and give it a try! It's a physics game where you have to fight for your life for 60 seconds on a suspended disc which rocks and sways depending on what's on it. You win when the clock hits zero.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/yurayura-tidying-up-the-tilting-tower

Refer to the above post instead :D

Since that feature is fixed, I'll redo this:

You can check it out here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/yurayura-tidying-up-the-tilting-tower

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/yurayura-tidying-up-the-tilting-tower

Good luck!!

"Just Roll With it!" is obviously our entry for LD51. It's a fast-paced platformer where you steer a constantly moving character named Lina around on large platforms where your speed increases every 10 seconds. The player has to collect a certain number of Gems on the level to complete a stage. Here's an overview in terms of what I think we did right and wrong:

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⋆ ★☆ WHAT I THINK WE DID RIGHT ☆★⋆

-Presentation
    For starters, I think it was awesome that we were able to get a few different walking animations onto our character, that trigger after every other, other speed increase. I think it sells the fantasy of moving quickly. The HUD is a little big, the but menus make nice use of value/ color and have tweens attached to a bulk of the buttons and texts which makes it look pretty polished. The graphics are simple, but have multiple distinct backgrounds and tile colors which look nice I think.

-Overall Design
    Our goal for this was to build a game where the player would have to route a path through "diamond" shaped levels where more of the stage would open up as the player's speed increased. I think we achieved this, but not without qualification. The shape of the level is fattest near the back since the player will be at a faster speed at that point, Typically the end of each level will have a route that leads closer to the start of the level or at the very least above it.

-Soundtrack
    The soundtrack was once again done by CFY, whom you can find here: https://twitter.com/CFY98. Compared to previous releases, he added a bit of guitar to the tunes which adds a distinct "radical" flavor to the game and also suites the core fantasy of moving fast.

⋆ ★☆ PITFALLS AND FAILURES ☆★⋆

Now for the fun one, haha. 

    -Strict Gem requirements.
        I think the gem requirements for each stage probably could've been dropped by 5-10 on every stage. What we were going for was for the player to feel a bit of stress as the speed level ticked up that would hopefully convince the player to route their own optimized path through levels after a death or four, but having the gem counts be so tight over emphasized this aspect.

    -Rushed level segments
        I think for the most part our levels were pretty thought out, but certainly not perfect. One issue that comes to mind for me is that on some levels, going the opposite direction through a segment might not have a way to return the player to the elevation they came from if they drop down after a platforming sequence. These were due to a lack of testing.

    -Unpolished, quickly-implemented mechanics.
        Wouldn't be an action-focused jam entry without some of these. While the running and turning in our game works pretty well, there are a few interactions missing from it that make it somewhat less-ideal. As an example of something not-so-great, If you get caught on a corner, the character will keep running in that corner until you turn away from it, and if the corner is on a small platform, the exit speed can be difficult to respond to. Another example would be the grind rails, which are built to only work if the player is totally on top of them when they collide with them.

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Anyways, thanks for reading whether you read the whole thing or just looked at the pretty pictures I appreciate you checking this article out. I'd also appreciate it if you went ahead and check out the game!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/just-roll-with-it

If you'd like to give it a try, we'd appreciate you checking it out here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/just-roll-with-it

We launched our game, "The Orchid's Edge"! It's a combat action platformer about a dryad stopping the souls of the forest from being harvested by a horde of mechanical foes.

We'd appreciate it if you checked it out: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/the-orchids-edge . . .

. . . You can try it here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/the-orchids-edge