I’ve first started coding this weekend I think (it’s all in Python). Before that, I did learn in a mostly structured manner, but this LD has kicked me in all the beginner’s places. Either way Rotten Robber is playable, with a villain hero who’s a downright scumbag too.

you can play ROTTEN ROBBER in your browser (just not IE or browsers from yesteryear, basically).

As a robber without much ethics, you’re made to choose between killing hostages in the banks you rob to get the safe combination, or just trying to crack them by guessing the combination. Except the more you wait or the more you kill, the more likely the cops are to show up. Lucky for you, the cops can be escaped, but most importantly they can kill and/or capture you crew, making future profits on bank robberies higher (less sharing). And if you shoot your captured crew before they talk, the fear you inspire will grow. Which, seeing as the whole armed robbery business is known for quick turnover, can’t be a bad thing on a business card.

BS, I felt it was important to make this game is choices and consequences, so as not to just be gratuitous bloodiness. Nothing with having fun with that in a game, mind you, it’s more of a momentary reserve I guess. Somehow, with the Newton massacre on the news, I couldn’t bring myself to go for a completely evil game logic, so I tried to balance choices with outcomes so that the villain gets retribution for the stuff he pulls, and then some. And so, sorry, but you might just have to die more than one way if you play.

So I coded 7 (8?) different endings, and I’m fu*{ed if I know whether they can all actually occur with the current balancing. Not being able to debug fast enough is my big frustration here (and balancing took a hit as a result). Also I guess I went for something too complicated, which is ironic considering that I am much more cautious about programmer’s time when I’m just being the game designer at jams, and now that I was the programmer, I completely overloaded myself. Still, it’s playable, though without any art whatsoever. It’s developed in codeskulptor, which was probably not the most adequate tool in use this weekend. However, since this is the tool with which I learned Python on Coursera (awesome awesome awesome class, if you people around you looking to jump into OOP, this is great). So, that’s enough yapping for now, good night / nap everyone, and here’s a little graphic sweetness:

(I pretend this is a UI and not a glorified debugging console btw)

One idea has stuck with me even though it’s a bit strange. It’s a design based on the mecanics of a disease (cancer) and the ways to fight it, using a snake as the base mechanic (because two buttons). This disease is a very high stakes cat and mouse between a tumour and both the immune system and possible therapies. So for example,eating will become risky real quick for the snake, and so will moving. Win conditions will be taking the snake out, or if I do a mode playing as the snake, it’ll be reaching a given size, or managing to send parts out of the field (metastasis). I’m thinking it might be doable to do offense mode, defense mode, and possibly do local multiplayer too (hot seat).  I do feel weird using a disease and its therapies as inspirations though. I’ll start on it anyhow and see if this can be a fun game to play despite its underlying topic. Thoughts?