If you want to try a game that has...
Weird costumes and awkward conversatios? Check! Running from social interaction in a fun and challenging minigame? Check! Mental stability? Not here! The game? Oh right, the game: Ghosting the Party.
Our game turned out very hard! We combined some amazing ghost art with some story and a runner minigame that challenges hardcore gamers! Unusual combination? Maybe, but we hope you will like it (and don't be afraid of leaving a rating!). From the three of us, we hope you enjoy it. And we would love feedback, positive or negative! Everything helps :smile:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/ghosting-the-party
In this little tale I'm going to write now about our dear Ghost in the Party (try now and get a two for one in incredible art), I will expose some of our experiences, victories and failures (learned through your great feedback, hoping for more!). Also, Fer told me I should write more, because I'm the writer of the game. I guess I didn't write enough.
The first and foremost wrong choice was not making the game about this image.
(Art by the incredibly talented Dre)
Truly a missed opportunity.
The second one was not using all of our hefty funding for the game in caffeine for Dre, thus achieving the 72 hour no-sleep Dre. The Drefinitive Form. That might be biased, but if you haven't seen the art of our game, you're missing out!
First, let me talk a little bit about writing this game. Doing multiple-option dialogues in different characters was interesting (and difficult), not in just getting the tone of each character, but also about the dialogues being meaningful. I think all narrative in a game should serve a deeper purpose: either complement the game mechanics, or to make the context needed for the game clear enough. Of course, nothing is set in stone, but I try to adhere to it because, to me, that's the logic way of producing narrative that makes a game better. I'm not sure if I achieved my goals, nonetheless.
In this game, the balance between narrative content and game content was a little bit weird, and in hindsight, I think I should've been better at understanding the concrete importance of both aspects of the game. If it was going to be a narrative game, the dialogues were fine. It ended up being a demanding game, which gave more importance to the mechanics and flow of the runner. Then, shorter dialogues and a protagonist that only expressed theyself in the options would give more agency to the player, therefore making the experience more coherent. Either do that, or make the game less arduous.
Of course, take this with a grain of salt, because this is the first game that I write. So all feedback is appreciated!! (And sorely needed!)
All said and done, I really enjoyed this experience. They were 48h of fun and hard work (I joined in a little late), and seeing Dre and Fer work was wonderful. I learned so much, had lots of laughs, discovered that writer's block disappears if you start to punch random keys in your keyboard and have a closing timeline, and lost a lot of sleep! Hope all of you had a superb experience, and if you didn't, I really hope the next one will be doubly better!
PD: I'll probably write one or two more of this telling the other perspectives. Maybe. Perhaps. There's a possibility, definitely. In the meantime, you can play Ghost in the Party and tell us your thoughts!
Hello dear readers, here I am today to shamelessly plug in our game Ghost in the Party so I lure you to play it with an interview from our wonderfully talented artist Dre and our coding slave, ehem, I mean lovely team leader Fer. And just to be clear, I'm absolutely doing this because they're very interesting people, not because I wanted to share our game and ask for more great feedback, or because I told them to flatter me. Not at all.
Dre (@notaltright): It wasn't intended to be hard. The target was Manu's (qaeron) mom, so she could read his story without getting stuck in the runner levels and thus giving the real weight of the game to the narrative. But then I kept asking for it to be more difficult... sorry, not sorry.
Fer (@fer-gueler): I tried to make the game very easy except the last level, because I wanted the text-adventure part of the game to be the main focus. That's my best attempt at making an easy game, time to grind pals.
Dre: We were throwing in a lot of crazy ideas that would make the characters funny and really absurd. It would have ended up a mess and we knew it, so we were unsure and never wrote anything down. Then our savior writer came in and everything started to make sense.
Fer: I approached you on saturday morning after a few unfruitful hours of initial brainstorming with Dre and some sleep. And you saved our asses! We had the concept of the anxious ghost escaping the party already, but the game in our minds was a lot funnier and more lighthearted. In reality it was absurd and was going nowhere. After we explained you the concept you made your interpretation, spookier, more dramatic and sensible.
Dre: I enjoyed it a lot! And I think the time length partaked in that. Also, it was my second jam right after another, I was kind of sleep deprived and more loose thanks to that so I didn't overthink anything and just had fun.
Fer: It was so much fun with just the right amount of stress! I guess it would have been better to have you in the team from the start, although the mid-jam writer acquisition was good in terms of epicness.
Dre: I liked a lot of games, but the ones that still linger in my mind are Yura Yura (play it here!) and Revolver (here for that goodness).
Fer: There were so many amazing games. If I had to choose one I'd say Burning Ravager (check it out here!)
Dre: Marry me.
Fer: Thank you Qae, luv u.
This is all from us for the LD49! Hope you liked the game, had a lot of fun if you did one, and I'm eagerly awaiting to read all of your feedback!
PD: My favorite game was // OVERDRIVE, I had a lot of fun with that one. Go and try it!