This is crucial for gameplay purposes. (joke)

Single player is done. Rushing to get menus in and finish multiplayer.

Hello! I've decided to start doing 'End of the Jam Bonus Time' inbetween the end of ratings and before the results are announced. Here, I will show off concept art, sketches, design musings, and other little bonuses.

Here we go... Baserackcanball! You can play it here, if you haven't yet.

Some Words...

I loved creating this game, and I'm super proud of what I accomplished. It only took me a few hours to come up with an idea, and it was mostly straightforward from there! The concept was inspired by the theme (of course,) memories of making up weird sports & fashioning stuff out of scrap wood and duct tape, my love of Autumn, and my time as a Blaseball fan. I did lose some time to a sudden dip in energy on Saturday, but I was luckily able to recover and finish the game before the end of the Compo.

The sound effects were made with a combination of LSDJ generated noises and jingles, along with real-life foley. Yes, a real-life can was real-life smashed to get that clink-clank sound! (Don't worry, I drank it first. It was pomegranate sparkling water...)

I used Aseprite to create the art. Fun fact: the character's top and bottom halves are separate sprites so they they can walk and use the bat/racket freely, blending together those 'states'. This creates, I think, a very fluid feel. :)

The cool 'critical hit' effect is accomplished by having the can create lots of little dust objects with randomized upward-movement and animation speeds as it flies. The 'fairy ring' magic effect is achieved similarly!

A lot of players had issues with the controls, and how the bat/racket ranges and states were conveyed- understandably! There's lot of ways I could improved things, but unfortunately just didn't have time. But, it could have been worse! Those big 'control reminders' were added pretty late, and I think the game would be even trickier without them. Huge shout out to my friends 'Jan' and 'M.' for playtesting multiplayer and giving great feedback, which lead to me implementing the 'control reminders', as well as me GREATLY improving the play balance. (Thanks to 'Adam' too, for testing out single player!)

Concept Art and Such

Characters! Drew this right after coming up with the idea. The second character here didn't end up playable, but she shows up on top of one of the old storage containers in single player along with P2. I was very happy to include her after all, because I don't like leaving characters behind.

Sketching out the bat/racket configurations and planning out how they would work.

General court, layout, gameplay, and GUI planning.

Placeholder sprites to plan out character proportians and feel

Initial design for the playable characters

Finalizing the bat/racket sprites

One of the WIP versions of the court

Fun glitches! Hehe...

Parting Words

This was a great LudumDare, and I'm excited to see how I did! Best of luck to all, and see you in April!!

Howdy! I’m Kirk Lindsay from the ‘USA’. I love creating and thinking about all sorts of games. (You may also know me from my old nickname HacksawUnit!)

LudumDare 50!! I've only been participating since LudumDare 25, but that's still quite the number... I am going to try super hard to make an excellent game this weekend! I have been warming up my development skills and I want to hit the ground running. Will I finally get a first place trophy this year, on the esteemed #50!? Well... probably not. Maybe! We'll see. Ideally, at least, I can make another great game!!

Favorite tools list:

🌯 Construct2: HTML5 game creation software!

🌯 Aseprite: Pixel art program!

🌯 GIMP: Open source image editor!

🌯 LSDJ and bgb: Authentic Gameboy synthesizer and emulator!

🌯 Audacity: Open source sound editor!

🌯 itch.io: Storefront/games host!

You play as this cool skeleton wizard guy, who has a pure heart...

He's jumpin'!

Just gotta add one more move and then I think I can make a proper challenge out of this. Oh, plus adding plenty of obstacles. ;)

I've gotten most of the 'level design' done, so I am shifting to art, music, story.....

I love adding cool stuff to my games... I adding some foliage and stuff to make things feel more 'real.' :)

I still have much to do but it is coming along!

Time Gem

| Volume 1 |

Hello! Here, I will show off concept art, sketches, design musings, and other little bonuses from the last LudumDare. This one took way longer than anticipated!

This time: Game About Trying to Gain More Time In A Time Cave! You can play it here, if you haven’t yet.

Some Words…

I think this was one of my most ambitious entries ever, and I'm pretty proud of it. I really wanted to tell a bit more of an obvious story this time around. I have a LOT of stories I want to tell, but games with those more obviously deep stories have ended up taking the most time. I'm pretty sure I came up with the idea for the story first, and the gameplay emerged mentally after thinking about it for a good while. Oh, and, for anyone who got invested in the story... I don't think this is the last of the skeletons' adventures! I think they'll probably find some way to carry the life prolonging magic of the cave with them after a few years of having to go thru the cave. Or, does that ruin the poetic ending? Haha... interesting to think about. At any rate, the world of this game pre-existed it, and more games will take eventually place on the same planet, so please stay tuned for the long-term future.

Anyway, as I developed the game I thought it would be cool to iterate on fixed jump arcs, and make that something that felt interesting and fun to use. (This isn't actually my first experiment with fixed jump arcs and that sort of thing- besides my internal experiments, check out 'FROGS...') I think the 'short' and 'long' jump concept was good, and I think I did a good job with most of the level design. The 'time gem' checkpoint concept was a little controversial, and I'm not 100% sure it's 'good game design'... but it was fun trying it, anyway! :D

Visually there was a lot more I wanted to do, especially with the general feel and tileset, and the 'cutscenes', but I did what I could with the time I had. I'm really happy with how the character's animations look though- did you notice that he has a separate set of left and right facing sprites, because of his outfit? It's true!

Lastly, really really happy with the audio! The ending theme was actually something I sung improv-style and then transcribed in LSDJ, which I think gave it a bit more of an organic feel. I also think the main cavern theme is one of my most catchy tunes yet!

Concept Art and Such

All of the below sketches were made early on during the jam.

Some of these were intended to be cutscenes before I decided to draw it all in Aseprite due to time. I tried drawing what the skeletons looked like before they were all bones. (In this particular world, living skeletons were once living humans...) I don't know if this is exactly how they look, but something like this. The 'friend' in this image is someone who helped transport the two wizards. I think she exists in the world even though you never see her in-game.

Little peek at early level design progress.

Parting Words

Not much else to say, for now at least. I'm glad I followed through on this even though it's super late... See y'all at the end of September!

Howdy! I’m Kirk Lindsay from the ‘USA’. I love creating and thinking about all sorts of games. (You may also know me from my old nickname HacksawUnit!)

It's finally here, once again... LudumDare! There's supposed to be a big storm this weekend, so hopefully my power stays up most of the time and I can do my best. Feels like it's gonna be a standard LudumDare, beyond that! Hoping to make something great and have fun as usual. :-)

Favorite tools list:

🧄 Construct2: HTML5 game creation software!

🧄 Aseprite: Pixel art program!

🧄 GIMP: Open source image editor!

🧄 LSDJ and bgb: Authentic Gameboy synthesizer and emulator!

🧄 Audacity: Open source sound editor!

🧄 itch.io: Storefront/games host!

In a steam-punk-y world, someone is testing circuit-board-like things with a little robot, but due to how the power of this world works (sort of steam powered... kind of) she needs to get each 'test task' done under 10 seconds. Every circuit-board-like thing will be 'procedurally generated'... and there will be all sorts of tests to be done! Here are some brainstorming concepts...

Got a major mechanic in- tubes and 'bridges'! This games requires being able to move around quickly, and tubes are a helpful- if limited- way to do that.

There are three 'test' types that can be performed, one assigned every 10 seconds. Finish early to progress faster, but take too long and your robot will start overheating.... !

This is still really early, but happy with progress so far! (That gear was a bit of a pain to get moving...)

Finally got the main stuff in and randomizing! This only seems so easy because I haven't made any challenging levels yet.

One of the tests is to grab a loose gear. This is tricky, because the gear can hop gaps, but the robot cannot...

Howdy! I’m Kirk Lindsay from the ‘USA’. I love creating and thinking about all sorts of games.

This LudumDare snuck up on me, so I'm entering last minute. We'll see how it goes! I started using a 'DAW' called FLStudio recently, so I might end up using that as well this time around, too.

Favorite tools list:

🥦 Construct2: HTML5 game creation software!

🥦 Aseprite: Pixel art program!

🥦 GIMP: Open source image editor!

🥦 LSDJ and bgb: Authentic Gameboy synthesizer and emulator!

🥦 Audacity: Open source sound editor!

🥦 itch.io: Storefront/games host!