my friend Andi McClure made a promise to me awhile back that she'd do all the coding for me if i decided i wanted to design a game of my own. i've always been really nervous about my minimal artistic ability, but the opportunity was too great for me to not finally take her up on it for this past weekend's ludum dare competition. half my motivation to finish this has been out of envy for all my friends who are game developers and have been doing stuff for years, but i've shied away from since the things i did in my teens. now i finally have something i can call at least 51% my own! though it would not have been in any way possible, if not for her complete patience in dealing with my utter confusion and lack of patience for any kind of technical fuckups.
i decided i wanted to make some kind of isometric action/stealth game kind of like D/Generation. out of crazy ambition she took me up on it and made an isometric engine from scratch past week. after looking at the limits of my artistic ability and all the things that it would be insane to try to implement into the engine to make any sort of action/stealth game possible within the time limit, and not being able to decide what kind of mechanics i wanted, i worked with what we had. it gradually morphed into a Yume Nikki-style exploration game (which is what i may have secretly wanted to do all along). some of the bug/features she added to the engine are really what made a lot of the coolest looking areas like the one above possible - and i've barely even scratched the surface for what's possible.
i won't talk much about the "story" of the game, because i think the mood is pretty apparent if you play it. i don't really think i could articulate it anyway. the experience is as much about the kinds of questions you might your friend in talking about your experience - "did you reach an area with a big blue tower?" "no, i totally missed that! did you interact with the eyeball in the beginning?" "oh, i didn't know you could!" etc, etc say more than i really could.
consider this v .001 of the game. there are a billion more areas i'd like to add, and some other changes i'd like to make in the next month or so, so look for that. in the meantime, though, enjoy what's there!
http://msm.runhello.com/p/644
and the ludum dare entry where you can vote on the game is here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=4987
"i won't talk much about the "story" of the game, because i think the mood is pretty apparent if you play it. i don't really think i could articulate it anyway. the experience is as much about the kinds of questions you might your friend in talking about your experience - "did you reach an area with a big blue tower?" "no, i totally missed that! did you interact with the eyeball in the beginning?" "oh, i didn't know you could!" etc, etc say more than i really could."
ReplyDeletethis is what im interested in, yess
same for goblet grotto
i got trapped on the giant robot face...the white and red one...hee
Nice work! I enjoyed what was there and definitely see how this could be expanded in every direction, with long dreamy tangents and a fully developed Liz-created soundscape.
ReplyDeleteI like the variable zoom of the camera from room to room, it was just as important to some rooms as the color and layout choices.
I wish I could find the place the eyeball showed me! The allure of the unobtainable ineffable.