Ludum Dare #37compo
Taffer
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Taffer is a medieval first person torch janitor game, where you must keep the lights from going out and survive until dawn. Run around and re-light the torches that someone very sneaky keeps putting out. Can you survive (for 2 minutes) until dawn? Can you avoid the boxes someone left around? The stools are the worst!
Made in under 48 hours for the Ludum Dare 37 compo.
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This is my first time participating in Ludum Dare or any kind of a game jam. I kind of purposefully went in without preparing to get a baseline of what to expect, though afterwards I guess I should've prepared a bit :D
I already knew I wanted to go for "One Room" before the theme reveal, but I kind of was expecting for another theme to win to give me some extra inspiration. I went in blind and started programming in the fps controls, doing models and came up with cool torches. I really needed to get an actual game going too, so I just went with a reverse Thief: The Dark Project (hence the name).
There's some crazy physics and really pretty particle torches (that would look better in full resolution instead of the pixelated look I went with, heh). Definitely would like to use this style for a proper game down the line, too.
In the gameplay department, it's not too exciting, but I really like how the game ended up looking visually. I am, however, very impressed that I could actually do it under 48 hours without any preparation, and most importantly, I had fun either way!
Tools used:
- Unity (5.4.1f1)
- Visual Studio Community 2015
- Blender (2.72b)
- Adobe Photoshop CC 2015
- Audacity (2.1.1)
- Korg EMX-1 for the "music"
The only external resources used were the fonts "Thief" by The Riddler as well as times.ttf.
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The OPTIONS menu has SKILL SETTINGS hidden away in it. The game launches on the easy setting by default (survive 2 minutes with relatively easy enemy and match flicking delay).
If you miss a torch with your match, but the torch is on the ground, you could try kicking it to the match or vice versa :D
CONTROLS
- WASD to move
- SPACE to jump
- Mouse to look around
- Mouse Button 0 to flick a match
- ESC for menu and Enter to release mouse in case you might need it :o
FULLSCREEN recommended for WebGL! NOTE: the Unicode tickbox doesn't show in WebGL for the Invert Mouse option, but you can still click it to toggle it, defaults to OFF.
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Taffer is a medieval first person torch janitor game, where you must keep the lights from going out and survive until dawn. Run around and re-light the torches that someone very sneaky keeps putting out. Can you survive (for 2 minutes) until dawn? Can you avoid the boxes someone left around? The stools are the worst!
Made in under 48 hours for the Ludum Dare 37 compo.
---
This is my first time participating in Ludum Dare or any kind of a game jam. I kind of purposefully went in without preparing to get a baseline of what to expect, though afterwards I guess I should've prepared a bit :D
I already knew I wanted to go for "One Room" before the theme reveal, but I kind of was expecting for another theme to win to give me some extra inspiration. I went in blind and started programming in the fps controls, doing models and came up with cool torches. I really needed to get an actual game going too, so I just went with a reverse Thief: The Dark Project (hence the name).
There's some crazy physics and really pretty particle torches (that would look better in full resolution instead of the pixelated look I went with, heh). Definitely would like to use this style for a proper game down the line, too.
In the gameplay department, it's not too exciting, but I really like how the game ended up looking visually. I am, however, very impressed that I could actually do it under 48 hours without any preparation, and most importantly, I had fun either way!
Tools used:
- Unity (5.4.1f1)
- Visual Studio Community 2015
- Blender (2.72b)
- Adobe Photoshop CC 2015
- Audacity (2.1.1)
- Korg EMX-1 for the "music"
The only external resources used were the fonts "Thief" by The Riddler as well as times.ttf.
---
The OPTIONS menu has SKILL SETTINGS hidden away in it. The game launches on the easy setting by default (survive 2 minutes with relatively easy enemy and match flicking delay).
If you miss a torch with your match, but the torch is on the ground, you could try kicking it to the match or vice versa :D
CONTROLS
- WASD to move
- SPACE to jump
- Mouse to look around
- Mouse Button 0 to flick a match
- ESC for menu and Enter to release mouse in case you might need it :o
FULLSCREEN recommended for WebGL! NOTE: the Unicode tickbox doesn't show in WebGL for the Invert Mouse option, but you can still click it to toggle it, defaults to OFF.
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Comments9
Originally you were throwing torches around instead of matches, and it was actually more fun. It would've completely broken the game and I couldn't come up with a better gameplay idea in the allotted time. Though in all fairness, I should've kept the torches in regardless, because it was more fun.
Haha, yeah, everything is made out of wood, would've actually been nice to add some sort of stain decal that the fire would've created everywhere. Maybe I'll add that in the post-LD version!
Yeah, I've I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the collision. The colliders are there and objects never go fast enough to completely clip through, in theory anyway. Didn't feel it was a huge issue since you can survive even just on 2 torches. I'll look into fixing it for the post-LD version.
It was fun to play around with the physics for a bit, but unfortunately I found the main mechanic of keeping the torches lit to be fairly boring.
Having said that, this is definitely impressive for a first ever attempt at a game jam!
Hey, thanks! I was actually most concerned with the gameplay, since it's not necessarily a game I'd personally want to play, but due to the time limitations I think I got most of everything done to support it. I had some bonus ideas like time attack mode for lighting all torches and a random starting location. Glad the atmosphere ended up okay :)
@martincohen
Thank you :)
@Sean
Thanks for the compliments. Yeah, I personally wasn't fond of the main gameplay mechanic, either, but I just went ahead with it so I could at least produce something. Definitely need to prepare better for the next LD, think about the possibilities for all themes :D For the theme, I think it just barely hits the mark. It's basically a reverse Thief game that takes place only a single room. It's a bit of a stretch :D
Huge thanks to everyone for the comments. At least one aspect of my game worked really well. Also I think I'll survive the next LD with better results, knowing I should definitely spend some time thinking about the themes and gameplay implications for them. Cheers!