I know that it is late for such a thing, but I still will give it a try. It was my first Ludum Dare, as also was for many others. My first mistake was using only the first 24 hours of the contest to finish my game. That was because of the fact that the game got more and more detailed in time, and it began to get harder and harder to test the game, which ultimately resulted in me getting bored.
What did the design consist of: A post apocalyptic world, the ability to build hotels, oil wells and gas stations, fighting different types of mutants and enemies, a story which allows the player to take two different paths, increasing difficulty, the ability to empower your gun and get more and more guards(which had a bug), gambling(which I ultimately removed) and random encounters.
What went wrong: It was just me, I think. If I had used every bit of my 48 hours, this game would’ve had turned out to be great. But the changes in design and UI pretty much made the game unplayable except me. A programming error in guards which caused the game to crash when there were no enemies was the only critical programming error, I believe. The rest were just results of laziness. The tutorial also was incapable of teaching every aspect of the game.
There still is hope: I am still developing the game and the engine further. This time, the game will take place in a low fantasy world. The map is now more detailed with randomly generated names, towns and quests, as well as loot. The boring battle part is also removed from the game, to be succeeded by a old prince of persia-like fighting system (I also plan to implement a guitar hero style swordfighting mode). It will eventually be released, though not in this year. It is to be named “Sanity’s Eclipse”.
Every single time I moved there were more monsters, so I couldn't really get through the game. It was also a little too hard to kill the monsters - one hit kill would be better, then just have more of them.
Got an error that killed the game on the first fight where enemies had guns (some kind of game maker error about an unknown variable).
This is an impressive work for 48 hours, with the different play modes and story and buying stuff. I think there are a lot of little bugs in there though. I had 15 guards on every fight, so once I realized that, I just dumped all 15 every time, and never had to even shoot. Also, I tried to buy a gun upgrade with less than $1000, and it just took $100 from me and did nothing. Lots of other similar small things (when in town, it shows Ammo instead of Guards, possibly only after buying an upgrade, since that's when I noticed it).
Like the others said, the repetitive fights really made it drag out. Scattering the mutant fights instead of one on every square would've been a big help. Very interesting though.
Great game, had a real post-apocalyptic feel that I enjoyed. I liked the story, things made sense, great tutorial mode. Battles with monsters were a bit unsatisfying, because when you shoot them there isn't feedback until they died. But cool game!
It was fun playing. Bad things were when you died you had to start over and there was no way to click through the stuff you already saw. Also, some text would disappear before you could read it. Overall, cool game and you had music too!
hmm. Just got about to playing this now. Good idea. I like the two-layered game-play. Had gotten fairly far into it, and then
___________________________________________ ERROR in action number 1 of Step Event
for object bodyg:
Error in code at line 2: direction=point_direction(x,y,enemy.x,enemy.y)
at position 38: Unknown variable x
:( Don't have time to give it another go, I'm afraid.
Lack of save points in a game like this is pretty glaring. Music was good. Graphics were ok. The smaller game was pretty repetitive though :/ (it would need serious sexing up - maybe if you worked on the tactical side of things a bit more?)
Comments9
Could be improved: monsters a bit too repetitive
This is an impressive work for 48 hours, with the different play modes and story and buying stuff. I think there are a lot of little bugs in there though. I had 15 guards on every fight, so once I realized that, I just dumped all 15 every time, and never had to even shoot. Also, I tried to buy a gun upgrade with less than $1000, and it just took $100 from me and did nothing. Lots of other similar small things (when in town, it shows Ammo instead of Guards, possibly only after buying an upgrade, since that's when I noticed it).
Like the others said, the repetitive fights really made it drag out. Scattering the mutant fights instead of one on every square would've been a big help. Very interesting though.
I found the monster fights a little bit too long and too slow.
___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event
for object bodyg:
Error in code at line 2:
direction=point_direction(x,y,enemy.x,enemy.y)
at position 38: Unknown variable x
:( Don't have time to give it another go, I'm afraid.
Lack of save points in a game like this is pretty glaring. Music was good. Graphics were ok. The smaller game was pretty repetitive though :/ (it would need serious sexing up - maybe if you worked on the tactical side of things a bit more?)
Good idea, must have taken some amount of work.