The Artifact – Post Morten

I have been waiting to participate on a LD for the past 2 years and every LD weekend fell on an important commitment, so this was my first LD and I made it on compo because I don’t have talented friends or friends at all! 😛

For starters, I hated both themes.. I voted no for both of them and was very frustrating.. I was expecting Swarm or some theme were I can spawn tons of stuff on the screen. Regardless, I loved the challenge and it took me about 2 hours to think on a gameplay with the “Two Buttons and growing” theme as one.

My profile is more of a programmer than an artist or composer so I had to make a good game mechanics and fast so I can spend more time on art and sound. So I have decided to make a rolling ball that can only move right, the most primitive idea I could think of.

So I have worked on a simple level design just for a “demo” because I was very worried about the deadline. Initially I was going for pixel art but I never used any pixel drawing tool then I went to basic drawing and it looked.. different! Maybe took me around 4h to draw, scan and cut all images including the backgrounds.

I googled for fast music and I stumbled into this amazing algorithm generated music called CGMusic. A few tweaks here and there and in 1/2h I had good quality music! The rest of the SFX I made using SFXR.

All that in the second day with 18h left to spare, so I made a neat story with the simplest objective: “Get the hell out of here”.

All went well and now I have this cool game that I am very proud of!

Whan went wrong?

• I got lazy and even with a few hours left I was lazy to polish some FX and improve the level design (or even make more)
• The level was very challenging for some people
• The same level was too fast for some people
• The art have no color.. I wanted to make the scenery glow as The Artifact got upgraded but.. I got lazy.. o.O

What went well?

• The physics mechanics worked nicelly.
• My experience on games (player and developer) helped to make a simple game with no tutorial required.
• The art and sound fit like a glove.

What now?

Now I wait and see how people liked the game.. if I get as many positive feedbacks as I’m getting so far I’ll keep developing and maybe port to mobile. The possibilities for this simple mechanic are endless!

Play The Artifact if you haven’t already and let me know what you think!

I have this one man agency if anyone want to contact me directly: Niobium Studios