I took part in my first Ludum Dare compo, number 26. For those that don’t know, LD is a competition that challenges the participants to create a computer game in 48hours. There were ~1700 participants this time. My entry was called Ninja Flare and has received lots of praise from the other entrants for the graphic style. A screen shot of the game can be see below.

I was not sure what to expect before entering the compo, but I had an absolute blast taking part and I learned more then I could have imagined. I always felt that art was my weakness as an indie developer, but the positive reception has really pushed me to spend more time learning how to create and animate pixel art in my tool of choice, Photoshop.

I got load of really great and usefully feedback from everyone who played my game. It seems that the controls for my entry were universally criticized. I actually love that because it really motivates me to explore why people thought they were so terrible, and eventually I want to have the most smooth controls possible. I did not think the player was too hard to control but for whatever reason people expected something different then I did so, it will be interesting to explore this as I continue development.

Going forward, I want to move the game away from the infinite runner genre and mold it as a hardcore platform game instead. I also want to develop the best grappling hook in any game out there. I already have lots of plans on how to do this.

Since the contest I have been hard at work on the animations of the player character as well as the design of the next iteration of the game. Here are some of the animation for running on flat and sloped ground. I changed the colours and added a little depth to the main character so that is might visually read a little better.

The player can also slide down walls, run up them for short bursts and do some wall jumping. Here are some work in progress animations of this. Ignore the speed of the animations since they are not correct at this time. Towards the right is also a smoother animation for the transition between jumping upwards and later falling back downwards.