Howdy! We made a little game about attempting to upgrade a town and placate a bloodthirsty Eldritch God at the same time. This was my first Ludum Dare (I have another listed but was a non-factor on that team), as the main artist for our game. During the last day push we spent a lot of time trying to polish up the game a bit and keep it smooth, but forgot to add a decent tutorial, unfortunately. You'll find a brief overview of that below this nice little title card meant to entice you to play, and hopefully rate, our game :3 - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/hellhole

~ Welcome to mini-Tutorial ~ The goal of the game is to level up all your buildings to Level 5 (maximum), which gives the place enough strength to defeat the God (nice ending animation for this made by me). - To upgrade a building, you'll need enough Wood and Stone (which are created by the Quarry in the top left, and Lumber Mill in middle left (upgrading these will increase their production rates)). - Your total population (determined by level of the Town in the bottom right) will increase all buildings' production rates, BUT, having a lot of people requires a high-leveled Farm to keep them fed (bottom left).

If you hover over the ? in the top left, it will display your current resources, population, and your God Anger/Hunger levels. - God Hunger will increase by a scaling amount every turn, and can be reduced (to 0, if you so wish) by Sacrificing people at the Bridge (bottom middle) when they walk over it. Sacrificing will also raise the Madness Meter in the bottom left. Raising your Madness Meter to full will spawn the Tribal Pillars, which will automatically summon the God to destroy the town after a few days. - God Anger is the total God Hunger you have, plus the God Hunger you will acquire the next day. If it reaches 100, the God will briefly attack and de-level a building to 0 (and also adds 50 God Anger anyways). 5 God Attacks will cause the God to appear himself and end the game.

Good luck! And thanks for playing, you're so nice ;-;

Well! Certainly a welcome surprise for the first game jam I really participated in (I'm credited with another, but nothing of mine was actually used in that one), and a fantastic entrance to the New Year for all of us in the team (@Fusionnist, @Essence, @Distorter). The first day of the jam was slow, and we only had time to come up with ideas. All but myself are from a European timezone, so Fusion, Essence, and Distort were in bed nearly as soon as they began thinking up ideas. I was, actually, on a date that night, and so the brainstorming was left to them. Essence made a great little mockup for a game about sacrificing people at a bridge and sending missions of adventurers to scout and loot from the surroundings before heading off to sleep. Fusion and Distorter laid the frameworks for the game's code. I tried to sleep with a guy but couldn't handle the scent of an aftershave that had an aroma of sour cream.

After staying up until 4am, I awoke the following morning (the first to do so, being in California), and took a look at what the team had come up with. The mockup and ideas that everyone had were solid, but weren't fleshed out, so when Fusion came on later that day, he had a text wall of my mechanic ideas to wade through - of these, we prioritized those which gave us a working, functioning game at the minimum. The mockup Essence had started us with was well-set, but needed an overhaul to get it to where I thought it could be, so I opened it up in Paint.NET, made a fresh layer, and sat to think.

https://twitter.com/DmitryDeceiver/status/1053843925696425984 Deceiver's work popped into my head immediately (he's one of my favorite artists and is a huge influence, of course). The small, grayed, stacking houses worked perfectly on the 2D cliffside, and I had a style locked down. Lucky color selection on the first few tries gave me a great palette and a wonderful mood to work with, which Fusion later supplemented with some efficient, thematic, and menacing Lovecraftian tunes. The second day nearly finished, I turned my thoughts to an ending we had discussed - a huge Eldritch God rising from the depths, and throwing the terrain to pieces. Thoroughly exhausted, and with a slim, single day remaining to wrap up the game, we slept well, determined.

Day of Reckoning - From the moment I woke, it was back to the drawing board. The previous night, I had blocked out the basic shape of a multi-armed God, but I still had to find a way to texture it, and find a way to show mass fear and destruction in an animation that I only had a single day to do. The first draft of the beast was a success and more than satisfied the needs (smooth first drafts were really the only way we managed to get everything done on time) of the God appearing. Essence worked diligently on a font, the title screen, and a few choice animations, the "hover" animation influenced by the Dark Souls Locational notifications, but rather, starting from the middle and growing out in a bright light.

Fusion's coding was bug-free and solid, which blows my mind (I specialize, so anything that isn't pixels and colors scares me). However, multiple layers weren't possible in his iteration - how would we show the God being behind the mountains, if he wasn't there to begin with? No worries, just put the mountains on top of the mountains.

We were almost there, and all I had to left to do was the endings - one for where the God wins and destroys everything, and one for where the Player destroys the God. Working quickly, I sketched out a decent chaos ending and animated it with dirt particles flying to and fro, and another where the God is eviscerated by a holy beam of light. Great!... But, what about the transition? We can't just have the animation play suddenly from one screen to the next. Well...

Why not put the fade-to-black on the actual animation (lmao) ?

All said and done visually, we packed it up (my eyeballs tingling from 27 hours of staring at a screen), and sighed in relief.

"Do you think we need a tutorial?" "Nah, it's pretty straight forward." It wasn't that straight forward.

Thanks for reading all this, and thank you so much for 1st place in Graphics and 11th in Mood! I want to give respects to Lanternal, https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/lanternal-a-mages-sacrifice , for being amazing (and if we had been more diligent in getting Ratings, probably would have beaten us!).

If you'd like to play our game, head on over to https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/hellhole (but I highly recommend reading the tutorial on the page). Thanks everybody! <3