Sunday was tough.
I had finally settled on an idea, I had already made a handful of (very) small prototypes to test gameplay mechanics, Stencyl and I were beginning to understand each other, but the thought of working on my game didn't excite me like it did the previous 36 hours.
I was worried that my game wouldn't be any fun.
I'm sure thoughts like these aren't unique to me. I imagine all game developer's run into similar thoughts, probably constantly, throughout the lifespan of their respective projects. It's a tough wall to climb over. I hope the wall gets shorter with experience, but my motivation took a pretty hard hit upon this first encounter.
Will my game be fun to play?
I couldn't think of a way to answer this question without first building my game out into a playable state, so that's what I did. Slowly.
I knew the player character's abilities would improve and evolve over time, so I made a list of abilities I wanted to include:
- Running speed
- Jump height
- Climbing (as in climbing up vertical faces)
- Sliding (as in sliding down vertical faces to prevent death from falling)
- Flying
- Speed of movement underwater
- Ability to breathe underwater
In hindsight, this list was ambitious. I managed to squeeze in jumping and flying, but I scrapped everything else.
Another scrapped idea: I wanted to group NPCs into villages with each village specializing in a specific ability that would benefit the player.
Regardless of how short I fell of my ambitions, at the end of the weekend, I was damn proud of myself. On Friday night, I set out to make a game, and by Sunday night, I was playing it!
That's it. That's my Ludum Dare experience. The way I've documented it, you'd think I had made something magnificent. I don't expect anyone else to share my feelings, but when I look at my game, I do think it feels pretty magnificent.
Cheers,
Danny
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