#klappermann

All right, let’s do this. This is the first part of a coverage of the ludum dare projects, which I participated in.

I won’t explain the whole meaning of ludum dare, but it represents a online-only competition-like event with game developers (designer, writer, coder, sounder, ...) around the world. They meet to develop, jam and jam with the goal to create a game from scratch to finish. After 48h (solo) or 72h (team) you have to stop working and submit your creation for the voting process. Most games are experiments and prototypes of cool ideas, which sometimes get expanded into a full-fledged game (i.e. Evoland and McPixel). You can get a pretty decent impression of the vibe on GameJamCurator.

I was very happy to meet the “Spieleentwickler Osnabrück” (Game Developers Osnabrück) in my home area, a group of game developing enthusiasts, which decided to meet in the real world. :D

So we were motivated for our first ludum dare jam and started developing on the weekend from August 22th to August 25th, 2014 . The main team consisted of me, Tilman G. (@OhHelloTilman), Jannes N. (@JannesNagel) and Henning H and we gathered in Jannes and Henning’s welcoming and spacious commune.

The theme was Connected Worlds and the process started with a shader effect, Jannes was experimenting with. The ground below a game character changed the texture from a cozy green meadow to a sinister lava ground. With this base, we began to develop ideas about an evil character, who was planning to occupy the homeworld of some white priests. With the luck of having a very talented 3D-Artist (and Audio-Artist!!), the model and animations quickly came to life: Der Klappermann was born!!

The general gameplay changed constantly over the short time, but we wanted to have a real challenge and some AI, which controlled the enemies. With the power of the Unity Engine, we shortly had a moving character and some haunting enemies. Sometime around midnight, we got stuck at pentagrams as a sign of the white priests. And with your power of connecting to the evil world, you have to weaken it and then hunt the priests. A nice idea and so I had fun with my first Unity game project, designed some parts of the game world, the AI and fixed anything.

Despite the hard deadline, we had a good team-spirit on the last day (monday) and worked till 4 in the morning. Especially writing the description of the ludum dare-entry was a great fun for me.

All in all, it was a experience with no regrets, because I learned much about game development, the Unity Engine and a creative workprocess. And you know, the modern world is all about data. So the voting process and comments are very valuable to get a impression of the funquality of your ideas. Our position of place #159 in the category Overall(Jam) has yet to be beaten. ;)

I can recommend anyone to gather some collaborators and participate in a jam! :D