My concept uses dialogue characters as ammunition. I’m working with XNA. I started with the dialogue itself, split into individual characters that can move and rotate independently. Next, I made the player, inspired by that new BB-8 robot from Star Wars. I figured it would be fun, look cool, and be significantly easier than a running animation. Now, I’m almost done with the letter display at the bottom. Since characters are used as ammo, individual characters deal damage according to the letter’s relative frequency in the English language, with Z being the rarest (and therefore most powerful) letter.

Top hat and monocle strictly required.

I’m happier than I thought I’d be with my progress so far, even though I only did a little yesterday. Once the display is done, I’ll add enemies and firing.

Hi! Going along with my idea of dialogue as an unconventional weapon, I added a book enemy. It flaps its pages like Cheato from Banjo Kazooie. Books appear in multiple colors and quote famous literature passages, providing you with ammo. Books start showing their cover and then flip open when the player is close.

I’m really proud of how this game is looking so far Getting the pages to work properly and look visually satisfying was harder than it might look. I would make a gif, but I’m not sure how.

Flap flap flap.

Well, my game is taking longer than expected to finish. That always happens, I guess. I was hoping to submit to the compo, but I’ll try to submit to the jam instead. It’s tough for me to focus intently for a long time without starting to feel burned out, which unfortunately isn’t ideal for something as time-constrained as a game jam, but I’ve been taking breaks and making good progress. Not exactly what I had hoped for, but I’m still very happy with what I have, and I’m excited to see what I can do with one more day

I added tiles! There’s the foreground tilemap and the background, which uses parallax. I went with a grayscale background because it’s less distracting than the colors I had. Overall, I’m going for a library theme. I hope that came across?

It’s a very sophisticated library. Because of the top hat and monocle.

Well, it’s just about the end here. I’m not going to submit, which sucks. First, as expected, I still feel the game is unfinished. Second, I ran into XNA publishing issues I wasn’t expecting, so I wouldn’t be able to submit right now even if I had a fully finished product. I could keep trying over the next hour, but I’d rather be finished for now. I’m disappointed, but still pretty happy with what I made, and I’m planning on posting what I have to other places. I’ll try to write up a bigger post mortem once I’m more relaxed, and I’ll try again for LD 33.

Congrats to everyone else! I’m looking forward to playing your games.

My game is called The Pen Is Mightier Than The Laser. The concept is that you use enemy dialogue as a weapon by absorbing text characters and firing them back. That’s the unconventional weapon.

I didn’t end up submitting to the compo or jam because I ran out of time, but I’m still happy with the progress I made. Here’s a screenshot of the final product.

So sophisticated.

What went well:

• This was my first Ludum Dare, and I made it all the way through, even if I didn’t finish the game. I didn’t give up, and I’m pretty proud of that.
• My art was better than I’ve done in the past. I’m especially happy with the flapping books and the player.
• I think my core concept was interesting and unique. I felt excited to make progress, not just because I felt I had to.
• I used XNA and Visual Studio 2010. I made textures in Paint/Paint.net. I’m very familiar with all of those things, so I felt I had control over what I was doing.
• Throughout the event, I posted a handful of things to this site and Twitter, and looked at other people’s stuff and left some comments. Decent social media involvement, I guess.
• More than anything, I think I paced myself well, mentally and physically. There were times I could have worked longer or slept less, but in the end, I finished and didn’t feel like jumping into a big hole. The game isn’t finished, but I feel good.

What went badly:

• Although my core idea was good, I didn’t plan out what would make the game an actual game. As is, I have some neat mechanics, but you can’t win or lose. There is no good start or end state.
• There’s no music or sound at all. That was intentional because I haven’t practiced making music and sound very much, but that’s exactly the problem. For future games, I need to do music and sound.
• My level design needs a lot of work. That was partially the time constraints of Ludum Dare, but I still need to practice.
• I need to get better at animation too. In this game, I avoided traditional animation by having the player be a ball with a top hat and monocle. Rotating sprites is easier than animating them.
• Although I came out of the jam feeling good, I probably could have pushed myself harder. For something like a jam, maybe I’m not supposed to feel amazing at the end, but feel proud later of what I accomplished.

What I have is available from Dropbox here. The C# source code is available on GitHub here.

Congrats to everyone who participated! I think my first Ludum Dare was a success, and I’m looking forward to the next one.