After my last post, I continued writing down ideas and creating sketches.
But then I got an invite to participate in a chat with some of the people from the original LD community, and it was fantastic. I had a great time catching up and/or getting to know people, talking about how far things have come, and also expressing gratitude that all of us were still here.
But it also meant I was not working on game development, so I eventually jumped out of that virtual chat and got back to work.
For lunch, I scarfed down some leftover veggie pizza.
I felt like I needed to catch up, so I put together a paper prototype and tried playing through a bit. I did get some insight and realized I was missing something key, but I don’t think I’ve done nearly enough to explore this design.
My wife had taken the kids out for a trip, and she brought me a veggie croissant sandwich and chips for dinner when she returned.
We chatted a bit, then I jumped back into my office.
So paper prototypes are great, but I definitely wanted to get something playable as quickly as possible, which means I needed to start implementing things in digital form.
I put together the title screen earlier, using the concept art as the background. It felt temporary at the time, but now feels likely to become permanent.
I drew a few icons and sprites, but I implemented the HUD first.
You can see the main stats include your money, your population, how many days until the meteor inevitably hits the planet, and how much anti-meteor R&D you’ve got left to do to maybe make things not so inevitable.
Then I wanted to draw the city, so I created a tile-based layout. So far, I only have a river tile to start with.
What’s not obvious in this still-frame is that the water is animated using a flipped version of the water tile. It’s not fancy or time-consuming to make, but it does make it feel more alive as a game.
My intention is for the monster to emerge from the water, as you can see in this mock-up.
There is now less than 24 hours in the compo, and I’m about to lose some of that time to a good night’s sleep. I wish I was further along than I was, but I need to focus on getting that game play in more than ever.