Castle Escape – Post Mortem

Hi! This is my forth game here at LudumDare.
After the theme was announced, many game ideas have gone through my mind, but they all had in common the frenzy. From “Frenzy” to “Escape” was a short step. But an escape, with no puzzles to solve it is not worth to be played.
In recent times, I wanted to get away from the classic platformer with a side view, so I switched to a top view camera, which allows me to create, among other things, puzzles in the Zelda style: a game I love. At this point then, ten seconds could represent the crossing time of a single room.
As a background I chose a castle because I love medieval environments. Puzzles was strongly inspired by a lot of other retro-games. So you can push a crate and insert it into a hole to pass over.

The first half of the first day was spent in creating the graphics, tiles and sprites. The second half I started to write code, using ActionScript3 and Flashpunk. There was no story yet, so I focused on level design. Spears, crates and buttons were my first game elements.
The next day I created few rooms to test the game mechanics, and immediately I noticed that 10 seconds were really a little gap of time. After a room restyling, they became beatable, really hard, but beatable.
At first the game was meant to be a compo entry but some “annoying commitments” on the 2nd half of the 2nd day have prevented me from finish the game in time.
But “every cloud has a silver lining”, so I decided to convert my compo entry in a jam entry, and, asking for some help, I found a talented musician (Werto), who created for the game some awesome tracks! Another collaborator instead, Skab Graphix, was the creator of the beautiful title screen (with in-game graphics).
In the third day I add a plot (minimal but effective), that you can read on the next chapter, holes on the floor and the possibility to insert a crate in a hole. I also painted some falling animation for knight, crates and floor itself. Music and sounds were added a few hours before the dead line.

Story

You are a generic brave knight (I give him no name yet) and you have just found a treasure in an abandoned castle. Unfortunately the lord of the castle, or rather his spirit, doesn’t want you take his gold. In addition, he wants to do with you a strange deadly game. You have only 10 seconds to pass through a room, before the floor collapses under your feet.

What went right

• Graphics: I love pixel-art and I like to produce new characters and environment tiles. These are not my best works, but they are still good for a time-limited LD entry. Animation of the knight is nice, especially the side view.
• Sound: I really love Werto’s tracks, that enrich the game very much!
• Get rich or survive: this aspect has amused me very much because it seems many players wanted at all costs to take the gold that lies at the center of the first room, but, overloading the knight, appeared virtually impossible for them to complete the game. Many of them rage-quitted the game (and that’s not so good :( ), others enjoyed this freedom of choice. :)

What went wrong

• Difficulty: as I have read in the feedback, certain rooms were very difficult for many people, and that made me sad because I think he had an influence on the overall opinion of the game.
• Level Design: I wish I had more time to put many other rooms into the game.

Walktrough

Since a lot of players think the game is impossible I want to help them to complete it, providing a walktrough!
WARNING: This is a walkthrough video and it includes ending sequence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7tG7sM0H5k

Vote

If you have some free time please check my game and gimme your feedback, I will appreciate your opinions.