My Little Planetoid ranked 24th in Theme and 85th Overall from 1402 games in total, which is a very good rating. I'm also happy about the 94th place in Mood. This is also the 4th time in a row I'm the first place in coolness, which is cool, but was kinda expected.
Here are the full results:
Coolness
100%
#24
Theme
4.10
#85
Overall
3.66
#94
Mood
3.40
#116
Graphics
3.78
#124
Audio
3.28
#185
Fun
3.25
#256
Innovation
3.30
#437
Humor
2.20
I'm also pretty sure I would've gotten a very good community-rating, if that category still existed.
There are currently 1402 games in Ludum dare. Going through games can be difficult, especially with the high number of them, so here are some noteworthy picks. (except mine, which already is awesome :P)
Last Thursday and Friday was the A Maze Indieconnect in Berlin, the first prominent Indie-meetup in Germany (and most of Europe). It consisted of two days of interesting talks, discussions and workshops.
The talks were interesting and mostly great. Martin Nerurkar elaborated on f2p-gamedesign, which can be a useful basis, even if the game isn't actually free-to-play.
Douglas Wilson talked about basic gameplay and "decorative things". While Indies often care about the basis, they sometimes tend to neglect the stuffing, which could increase the meaning and fun of a game exponentially.
Most of my pictures suck, so here's one courtesy of Jana Reinhardt.
Vlambeer hit it out of the park with their elaboration on the "sensible nonsense" and fiction in games. As it turns out even minimal games without story or narrative should have some sort of fiction (even it is unmentioned in the game), to base the game on.
Two workshops were held in parallel, one about implementing interesting sounds using LibDB, the other on creating geo-location-games. I took part in the latter, and my concept "Super Insane Fun Challenge" rocked the floor. It's basically about trying to accomplish challenges, which might kill you. It's fun.
A large part of the second day was spent playing an impromptu set-up session of Johann Sebastian Joust. Us newbies mostly failed against veterans who have been playing the game at conferences for years. I think I even managed to take someone else out, but mostly I fragged myself. It was glorious.
Here's me trying to play First-Person-Joust. It doesn't work AT ALL, mostly because I need my left hand to defend and attack, and am quite exposed with the controller in front of my face.
The Amaze-Award, this lovely gelatinous cube, was awarded shortly thereafter. I entered Unstoppaball in the competition, but didn't make it to the final round.
It wobbles. Does [generic award] wobble? I think not.
It was awarded to the artsy Proteus by Ed Key and David Kanaga, who won against a fierce competition of frankly brilliant and beautiful games.
I hope next year they'll have multiple cubes in different colors. I want a green one (and I will get one, mark my words :P ).
So what was the best thing? The talks? The award? The surprisingly good coffee served?
No, it was meeting other Indies. It mas truly magical, suddenly being face-to-face with people I already knew online, exchanging stories, and realizing that we're not so different, them and I. I even got recognized multiple times, and the "I played your game!" "I played your games too!"-exchanges were magical.
So I'll go again next year. I'll go again if they actually make the monthly (or tri-monthly) Amaze Light. I'll enter my games again, and I would surely participate in a jam, should there be one (and kick ass).
Last weekend I competed in Ludum Dare and created My Little Planetoid in 48 hours. Read on to find out what I thought afterwards (a post-mortem, if you will).
What went right
Genre/Setting
This is both a science-fiction and city-builder game. The combination itself is rather rare.
Building stuff
It just feels awesome. And I love the "Build now on moon"-gag, which I think is quite good game-design.
Timelapse
According to people this video is "intense".
It might be due to the orchestral music, but probably because my facial
expressions during Ludum Dare varies between "frown" and "manic
laughter".
Soundtrack
I composed this over the course of the 24
hours. The first idea of the music I had immediately after I decided on
the idea, and it grew from there. It has been quite well received, with
many people saying they like it and find it relaxing.
Also, the idea of a space-banjo is just awesome.
Graphics
Having empty space as background meant I was able to concentrate more on the 3d-models in the foreground. And while they could be improved a lot, you'll notice there's a lot of detail to be found.
Mood
The combination of the somber soundtrack and the space-y visuals worked quite well, which people also remarked positively.
What went alright
Theme
This time I actually prepared. I made a list of ideas for every possible theme. Tiny World was the one where I didn't have anything brilliant ready, so threw in an idea I already had before. After the announcement I developed more of them, but threw them out when I saw others made them first.
Scope in fiction
My Little Planetoid has a somewhat weird range of buildings. You start out with houses and farms, which could position this game anywhere in the past or future. Then you quickly advance to Science-Laboratories and advanced-space-stations. So while it is a progression through technology, I feel it could've been more focused.
Scope in design
In design-terms My Little Planetoid is huge. It has more unique features/elements than any of my previous games. It has multiple complex 3d-models. It has a somewhat extensive GUI. And, most importantly, a huge web of each other influencing resources and variables.
I was even glad when something emergent happened, but there was lot of potential for bugs and unforeseen combinations. Which led to...
Balancing & bug-testing
I literally coded in something 10 minutes before the deadline. There was no time left for dedicated balancing and bug-hunting, only what I noticed during test-plays myself. The resource-balancing now kinda works, but it does feel off sometimes.
In the end the basic resources become abundant, so you aren't really thinking about them any longer.
Textures
I used a basic pixelated diffuse-map on all things. Sadly there was no time to take care of UV-maps, but it doesn't really show unless you really look.
What went wrong
Failure to realize how bloody huge this project is
This led to a (frankly mental) development-speed in the last hours, and the incomplete balancing.
All in all
This was an awesome and fun gamejam. My Little Planetoid is right now one of the most-played games, and people really enjoy it. The general consensus is that this could be huge if further developed. And so I will :P
Let's finish this. After Lara already explored the jungles of India and the faraway place called Nevada, she moves closer and closer to her final destination. Whatever that was anyway. I forgot.
General things:
The game still does that thing
where it spawns a boulder right behind you that you can't avoid it
unless you already know about it.
There are 6 outfits in this game,
3 have bare midriffs, 2 are skin-tight. I think I like the
Antarctica-gear best, it's practical. ..mostly
Cannibals!
Amputations! You know, for the children.
There is a
missile-launcher/bazooka in this game, which insta-kills every
enemy, but there's barely any ammo for it (I think maybe 5 missiles in the
entire game), which makes them a valued commodity. The rockets look
yellow-black, and immediately stand out everywhere.
Tomb Raider 3
massively toned down the "spawn enemy in your back"-issue,
although it still happens sometimes. It will have an embarrassing
return in Tomb Raider 4.
One
render-graphic shows Lara with a belly-button-piercing. It is never
referenced again and treated like it never happened.
You
don't explode if you enter the cheats incorrectly. Awwww
The dinosaurs (small and large) are still terrifying. Has something to do with the clunky controls.
I've
always subconsciously marveled at the minimalistic interface. Your
ammo is displayed as a simple number in the corner, your health is a
red bar on top, breathing-air is a blue one. They are only shown when
actually necessary, so you never feel like they are in the way.
You
can sprint in Tomb Raider 3. When you do, you get a third bar on top
(a green one). The sprint is really useless though. You can only run
straight ahead, it's very short, and only marginally faster than
usual running. So far I know it's only used in a few puzzles, some
of them optional.
Unlike
sprinting, crawling does make sense and is fun. It feels a lot
better suited to the environment to crawl through tight passages,
and you're able to explore vents. VENTS! Imagine that.
In
Tomb Raider 2 dropped items spawned at the feet of the enemy. In TR3
they spawn in the middle of the next ground-tile, so a medkit might be
within a dead guys' torso.
Hey there, flamethrower-guy. ...Lara never gets a flamethrower.
All
items already in the environment are in the center of a square too.
This takes away a lot of possibilities for item-placement. In TR2 you could, for example, have
to carefully balance to an edge of a platform to get something.
In
TR2 items are sprites, here they are 3d-models. I think this
might be the reason for the tile-placement.
You
can walk slowly through deadly spikes, but you don't really notice
or learn this until far into the game, so might make a lot more complicated
jumps than necessary.
Lara references Jeff Goldblum in a cutscene. Wait what.
The bad guy is Finnish. Who would've thought.
The cave-ins and eartquakes feel like classic Star Trek action, as in "shake the camera while I pretend to fall sideways".
On to my ongoing exploration:
There is a bonus-level which I
never played. You can access it after the end of the game if you
have found all secrets.
Just accicentally pressed quick-load instead of
quick-save and landed 3 levels back. See, it happened again.
There are some
kayaking-sections that are just awful. I never managed to
make it through them, so I cheated me some medpacks and gulped them
down whenever I got the into the damage/kill-zones.
The bad guy in
TR2 jammed a dagger into his heart and gained superpowers. This guy
here just jammed a dagger-shaped rock into his heart and gained
superpowers.
Why is
everyone so polite? Stranded in the middle of the jungle, with no
supplies, predators everywhere, they go "Good day to you, Sir!
May I offer you some biscuits?" The polite mercenary without a leg
isn't even supposed to be British.
"And a splendid day to you, young Miss!"
Some level
have multiple paths through them. They usually split very early, and
then both ways arrive at the last room. When I played the game
14 years ago I was intrigued that there was another way to explore I
never even knew was there, but it has some downsides. Some
goodies/secrets can be seen from one path, but never accessed from
it. It didn't feel like an incentive to play again, more like a
"fuck you" to the player.
Just met the
King of the Mole-people, with thug-bodyguard. All posh and polite.
Another polite
bad guy. WHY IS EVERYONE SO POLITE. It's worse than The Avengers. Not the Marvel-one, the crappy Uma-Thurman-one from 1998.
In the first level in London,
right before the end, you can find the "cathedral-key". In
the next level it has disappeared. I never figured out what it does (turns out it's for the bonus-level).
I think this is where they
realized there's hardly any raiding of tombs. Conversely,
Tomb Raider 4 is set entirely in Egypt. Lots of tombs over there.
Correction:
The shotgun can be found in London too, but it is very easily
missed.
In
Antarctica you get the warmth-mechanic, which limits the time
you can spend in water. It isn't really fun and will never be used again.
The
mine-level in Antarctica scared me too much the first play-through,
so I cheated my way through it back it. Let explore it now!
In the last
level the bad-guy Willard mutates into a freaky spider. I was so
afraid of this scene that I had to wait a year before I had the guts
to confront him.
It's still creepy as hell.
(If you look closely you can tell it was a person once)
The giant
spider has only one attack, which insta-kills you. Not fun.
Final
cutscene: Lara goes outside, evades some guards, steals a helicopter
and has an aerial battle with another helicopter. What. The
final scene, the final climax of the last 20 hours, is Lara
destroying a foe/obstacle that has been introduced just 30 seconds
earlier? This is worse than Mass Effect 3.
For 3 games the formula has changed very little, and the cracks in the TR-formula become more and more apparent. Tomb Raider 4 will deviate from that is some significant ways, including a new inventory, more item-mechanics, less globe-trotting, and a more personal plot.
This weekend was the 10th anniversary of the Ludum-Dare-Competition, with the goal to create a game within 48 hours. The theme chosen was "Tiny World", which was unique and quite challenging.
I created My Little Planetoid, a city-building-game set on a small planetary body. You can build houses, factories, and send satellites and rockets into space.
Last time in this retrospective I discussed the gameplay and level-design of the by now 14-year-old Tomb Raider 3. How will it compare to "modern" games? Did it do some things brilliantly, while embarassingly failing on others?
Read on for the thrilling conclusion.
More general stuff:
You know, I think Lara is evil.
She kills members of endangered species (tigers, dragons, octopi), steals for
her personal gain, and murders hapless security guards, monks and soldiers.
Winston the Butler is back! He
follows you around! You can lock him in the freezer! You can shoot
him!
This is one of the loading-screen-collages. Bask in its glory.
Tomb Raider Legend (the seventh
game) has the most "ordinary" boobs. They were quite
pleasant compared to the anti-gravitational orbs of Tomb Raider 3-4.
A lot of the "new" guns
are actually re-skins. The MP5 already appeared in TR2 as the M16. The Desert
Eagle, new in TR3, is a revolver TR4 (because the standard guns are
Desert Eagles then, presumably).
It just dawned on me that both TR1
and TR3 begin with a meteorite striking the earth and
bringing some alien artifact with it. Aliens apparently were in this
from the beginning.
Medpacks have a green cross on
them instead of the classic red. I thought this was a nice touch.
Good god the German
synchronization is just awful. It's full of the useless germanisms like
"tja, I don't know what to do then" *shudder*
I literally have no idea who that is, and I watched the cutscene thrice. I think Lara doesn't like her.
I think the bad guy is inefficient
because the player never confronts him at the beginning. Oh, Lara
does, in a cutscene. It doesn't happen in gameplay, which would be
1000x stronger.
TR3 does
introduce a bad guy early on, but he's a lot less memorable that
Marco Bartoli from TR2. See, I even remembered his name.
There are vehicle-sections in this
game, which require a lot of precision. The sections in TR2
were a lot more fun, what with the boat-jumping and
snowmobile-machinegunning.
There still is this fun bug, that
when you quick-load within 0.5 seconds after having quick-loaded
already, all the textures are garbled. It's fun because Lara is
breathing letters.
I think the bad guy in the first
act ("Tony"?) might be a riff of Colonel Kurtz
from Apocalypse Now. The kids will love it!
Let's continue exploring. This time I go to the mythical land of "Nevada".
The
option to chose the order of levels is a weird one. As a
first-time-player, you don't know what the levels are like and
probably have no preference, so it's effectively random. As a
veteran of the game you've already made up your mind about the
order. As a kid you probably don't even know what the symbols on the
globe mean.
And the game
drops me off in my new chosen location, again without comment. I'm in Nevada
now. Lots of tombs to raid. I guess.
I
always went for Nevada first. You lose all your weapons in that
chapter, and I didn't want to be at a disadvantage later in the game
in case I wouldn't get them back.
Oh, flying
enemies. They are not at all annoying.
In Nevada is a huge canyon filled
with water. There are items hidden and a lot of opportunities to
climb around, so you usually go exploring. Then it turns out the
bottom of the canyon is a giant dead end and you wasted all your
quicksave-points in it.
At the end of
the chapter you enter a spaceship in Area 51. It's bigger on the
inside, which is a nice gag.
Next to the
spaceship is my favorite "secret". There's an entrance in
the wall that leads to a corridor with moving lasers, which you have
to avoid. At the end is a pool with two orca-whales. For no reason
whatsoever. The whales never appear anywhere else. Oh, and there's a
medkit in the tank.
That is actually some of the better texture-work in this game.
I've lost all my
guns. I love these scenarios, they force the player to think creatively
and turn all rules upside down. Now how did I get out of this
cell....
A side-effect of losing your weapons is that you can't cheat anymore, so I'll play this level for real.
Oh right: A
guard comes in and tries to beat me up / rape me. I counter by
running around like an idiot trying to lose him.
In
my cell are security-lasers. IN the cell. I can trip them by walking
around. WHY
I let a
terrorist/murderer out of his cell, who promptly kills the guard.
All is well.
In one of the room
are 3 crates. All 3 look like the moveable crate I used before, but only one of them actually is. /Sigh
Pressed a
button which flooded the crate-room with water. What. Why? Why would
you even have such a thing? What is the purpose of flooding said
useless room with massive crates, that could never fit through any
of the doors?
My friends from the high-security-wing killing a dude, I mean, helping me raid tombs.
There
are surface-to-air missiles and a F117-Stealh-Bomber in this “prison”.
Oh,
look, a 1-pixel-wide dark red laser that insta-kills you and you'd
never be able to spot the first time. How fun!
Giant
water-room with lots of invisible currents so you arbitrarily can't
go in some directions. Woo, more fun.
Oh, I found my stuff. It's in this easily skippable room off to the side.
The longe you play this game the more you realize it moves away from the core-formula. There are barely any tombs anymore, and instead of fighting a central antagonist Lara has to deal with multiple people. The desert-levels around Area 51 also highlight how insane the level-design has become, with less and less care for plausibility. This will turn out disastrous in Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (pt. 6, the failed reboot).
There will be one more part of this retrospective, in which I'll take apart the final chapters.
I've already chronicled my thoughts on
Tomb Raider 2. Quite recently I've had some cravings to go check out its successor
again, and so I fired it up. How has it evolved? Will the future
(i.e. “the now”) look kindly on it? Read on to learn all these
things in part 1 of this retrospective! (turns out I have tons of material, so I'm turning it into a trilogy)
I'll chronicle my thoughts like last
time, i.e. In bullet-point-form. For your convenience.
This is what it looks like, btw.
Here are some general observations:
Lara's breasts feature
prominently. Almost every render-picture has them, and they seem to have grown since TR2.
There are loading-screens in the
PC-version now, but they are some of the most hideous ones I've
ever seen. Basically they are collages of drawn pictures and render-scenes,
while a small map in the corner shows the location where Lara is supposed
to be.
The loading-screen for London shows Lara's location to be the
middle of the North Sea.
The mansion/training-level is
still fun. There's loads of stuff to do and to explore, even
more than in Tomb Raider 2. There's the attic, the shooting-range,
the hidden trophy-room, the jumping-course, the obstacle-course,
the RACETRACK, the hidden keys, the bug that lets you walk on the
roof, the maze, the walk-in-fridge, etc.
The hidden trophy-room with stuff from previous games. The dagger! The sphere-thing from TR1!
You can exit the premises of the
mansion this time, which you couldn't in Tomb Raider 2 (well, you
could, by exploiting a bug). When you leave you, end up back in the main
menu, which is a nice gag.
The rotating inventory is still a
thing of beauty.
Flares are so much fun. Pop
one, light a room. You can carry them, you can drop them. You can
throw them down chasms and into water. If you pull out your weapons
you automatically drop them.
The best thing about flares: The
T-Rexes you encounter will run towards them. It's lovely.
I've wanted to buy some real flares
to play with them for a long time. Turns out a single magnesium-flare costs about 10€,
and lasts for ~2 minutes. But they can light a stadium, and they
burn underwater.
Unexpectedly, I can set a
resolution of 1440x900 without problems. I'm almost sure that
resolution wasn't even invented back in 1998...
Cutscenes still play, but in a
horrible resolution.
The model used for Lara's basic
guns changes from time to time. For the first 3 games it's 1911
Colts. In Tomb Raider 4 she wields Desert Eagles, and USPs appear in
later games and movies
There is a mini-addon
called Tomb Raider 3: The Lost Artifact, akin to the "Director's
Cut"-extra-level of Tomb Raider 1 & 2. I've never played it HNNNG MUST HAVE IT
Enough generalities. On to exploring and raiding tombs then:
The game drops you off in India,
with no explanation whatsoever. Actually it drops you off "in the jungle". I'm not even sure "India" is mentioned at all. Tomb Raider 1 & 2 had much
better introductions.
The very first scene is so ham-fisted,
I will need multiple bullet-points to explain.
You start off at a giant slide,
the probably largest in all of the Tomb Raider-games.
Right to the left, hidden under
the bushes, in a small spot, is the shotgun. This is the only place
to get it in the game.
You can reach it by jumping
precisely (and I mean precisely) on the small spot where you won't
slide down. This spot is hidden under leaves, and will require
multiple attempts.
You'll never be able to figure out
there's a hidden weapon under there unless you already know about
it.
This. This is were you can get the shotgun. Can you see it?
This game is brutal, it
insta-kills you often. It took me 12 tries to reach the bottom of
this slide.
Spikes. 3 times. You can barely
see them, and they kill you.
A monkey! Well, an evil monkey.
It'll try to kill you.
The monkey has purple blood, a weird
symptom the German release and concern about "violence".
Surely the discolored blood will put parents at ease. Humans have
purple blood too.
Down the slide are 2 hidden
extras. To the left are ammo and a medpack, to the right is a
Sims-like green octahedron-crystal. You can only reach one of these,
and only if you prepare for it and jump all the way to the
right/left.
The crystals are "save-tokens"
in the Playstation-version. Collecting one gives the player the
option to save once. In the PC you can save without restrictions.
The crystals remain, but are now "insta-medpacks". They
still feel weirdly out of place.
The levels are huge, and appear a
lot larger. There are tons of spaces to explore, and
ammo/flares/medpacks are hidden everywhere.
Every level in Tomb Raider 2 has 3
hidden dragon-statues, which are the "secrets". If you
find all 3, you get a special item (like the grenade-launcher in level 1, which otherwise is only accesible after level ~12). In Tomb Raider 3 a level can have a variable number
of secrets, which are just stuff. The aforementioned
shotgun was a "secret", and things as mundane as medkits
can be too.
Funnily enough, the next game to use this color-scheme was Far Cry 6 years later.
The game tells you in the
statistics "found 3 of 5 secrets", but this is a lie.
There often are more secrets than shown, which is partly due to the
large levels and multiple pathways through them. A level with 5
secrets might have actually 9, but it isn't possible to get all of
them in one attempt.
To advance from the bottom of the
slide you have to press a button that's almost invisible against the
wall behind it. I stuck around for an hour before consulting a
guide during my first run back in the day.
You meet a mad explorer/mercenary
in a cutscene at the end of the level. He closes a briefcase, then
holds it by the wrong side, where there shouldn't be a handle. This
always bugged me.
The game is split up into
locations, and you can chose in which order to play. You start of in
India. After that you can chose to go to Nevada, London or Pacific
Islands. After those are completed, the game ends in Antarctica.
Tomb Raider 2 feels like the
better game overall. The narrative is more gripping, the locales are
fun and varied, and there are some good pay-offs. TR3 isn't as good,
but still competent and fun.
This weekend was Molyjam, where hundreds of developers worldwide found themselves together to each create a game in 48 hours based on a tweet by @PeterMolydeux, who is constantly spitballing new ideas and concepts.
So of course I signed up.
The idea I chose to develop is
"Imagine a game in which you have to join protests to make changes to the rules within the game's world."
You join protests and change the world (literally). Weather boring you? Protest for a new one! Irritated by the movement-controls? Protest!
