[Espy]

ngl Coda, I'm *still* constantly mucking around on your Nonogram.

[Coda]

Not exactly a "game by Coda" but I did the pixel art for this one and provided some technical assistance, so I'll go ahead and share it:

Loading Zone

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/loading-zone

[Coda]

I realized I never bragged on my son's games -- he participated in Ludum Dare a couple times, and I'm hoping to talk him into trying again next time (September 29 - October 2) now that he's taken some real programming classes.

________

Ludum Dare 42 entry: Running Out of Space
His first jam ever, and the kid scored better than I did! Shows the power of a good idea. He was 11 years old and did the vast majority of the work. He picked out the graphics and sound effects by himself and did most of the programming. I provided technical advice, including teaching him some techniques along the way.

There are physics glitches. They are intentional. He thought it was fun.

________

Ludum Dare 44 entry: Game Over
He didn't try as hard on this one. He was really proud of the effects that he built, but he didn't care about fleshing it out into an actual game -- he got bored and decided to go play instead, so I roped him back into it long enough to get it submittable.

[Coda]

Ludum Dare 54 entry: Adrift

(Play Game)


A rough trip through the asteroid belt has knocked out your main thruster and your navigational computer!

Your tiny space ship has limited space to store supplies, so you’ll have to put on your space suit and go out to collect resources from the asteroids in order to build replacement parts. Watch your oxygen levels! Take your suit off when you don’t need it! Keep your shield charged to protect the ship.

When you’ve built a new thruster and a new navigational computer, you can fly back to base for proper repairs!

Controls
Move: WASD / Arrow Keys
Interact: Z / Space
Close Window: Escape

How to Play
* Oxygen depletes as long as you’re wearing your suit.
* Use the switch on the top level to exit the ship.
* Capture asteroids and carry them back to the hatch to collect resources.
* Space is limited: Click items in your inventory to jettison them.
* Asteroids that hit your ship will deal damage!
* Use the stations to refine resources and build components.
* Most crafting requires hydrogen fuel.
* Combine four Thruster Parts to replace the Thruster.
* Combine four Circuit Boards to replace the NavComp.
* Build a Thruster and a NavComp to win!

[Coda]

Ludum Dare 55 entry: Call of Aether



In pursuit of the Great Work, you have learned to call upon elemental spirits using runes and magic circles.

Learn from the spirits and exchange gifts with them, and combine runes together until you can summon Aether, the spirit of perfection.




This one has a lot to be happy about. It's my best-looking game to date, jam or otherwise. My son did the 3D modeling. My wife did the 2D illustration. I did the graphical effects and dialogue.

It was a bloody headache to get all of the bugs fixed at the end because I REALLY rushed the development process... I wasted a lot of time early in the jam playing with the visual effects and didn't leave enough time for actual implementation, but I did it in the end!

[Espy]

It unfortunately does not feel like running on my browser.

I wasted a lot of time early in the jam playing with the visual effects and didn't leave enough time for actual implementation

That is an *entire* mood.

[Coda]

Huh. That's weird. I've had people say it doesn't run well (the circle-drawing gets all kinds of wonky if it lags) but I haven't had any complaints about it not working at all. I've even tested it on my phone.

What browser are you using?

[Espy]

Oh wait it does now. Odd.

[Coda]

Ludum Dare 57: Marianas Miner


(Play Game)

Controls:
* Arrow Keys / WASD: Move
* Space: Shoot Harpoon
* Escape: Pause
* To dig, press against the rock with the directional controls
* Navigate past the top of the map to win
* Extra life every 25,000 points
__________________________

This got off to a rough start. The theme was "Depths", which was one that I really didn't want to do. But after some brainstorming with my wife (who drew the amazing title card! <3), shower thoughts gave me inspiration. The phrase "you dug too deep" came into my head and it tied together a bunch of the ideas we had come up with.

And then once a day had passed out of the three-day time limit, I discovered that my "html52d" game engine that I built myself and have spent hundreds of hours improving and polishing... is now painfully flickery. I haven't changed the code, but something has changed -- maybe in Chrome, maybe in my computer hardware, maybe something else entirely... I already knew that it suffered from a little bit of flicker on iPhone but now it's affecting desktop. I tried to fix it but I couldn't figure out the problem. It's heartbreaking...

Given the deadline, I switched to Unity. But the Unity editor has gotten very heavy since I last used it -- my laptop has 16GB of RAM, and Unity was using 17GB. It was making Slack completely unusable and Chrome and Discord were occasionally having internal crashes that forced me to reload pages/chats. And for whatever weird reason, it isn't consistently picking up changes to assets anymore so I had to get into the habit of manually telling it to reload. (And even then sometimes it would miss things...)
__________________________

But I'm happy with how it came together in the end!

What I came up with is inspired by Pac-Man and Dig Dug. It's fast-paced and shouldn't take particularly long to play. I tried to balance the gameplay to be accessible but challenging to try to make it fun.