Evolution! The theme seemed destined to forever look on from the ranks of Ludum Dare’s final voting round only to see another take the honour; but this time somehow Evolution pushed past “Parallel Worlds” by the smallest of margins to finally get its weekend in the Sun. Surely after noticing this theme time and time again I would be full of ideas to crack on with. Well… not quite. I couldn’t really get past the whole “evolve your character to be gradually better” idea that I ended up rolling with. Turns out this was actually a really difficult theme to properly dig into.
So, my entry then is an arcadey little top-down shooter. I figured something really managed and mechanically straightforward was a good idea, and in a sense it probably was. I think the 2 main reasons I ended up a bit disappointed with this are as follows:
- I struggled on Saturday. I had a few drinks Friday night but it wasn’t that, I just got distracted easier than usual, for which I could blame a number of things not least the fact I’m moving into a new flat imminently and have a lot of stuff to arrange. But yeah, excuses excuses.
- I didn’t love the idea. I don’t think it’s enough to just have a small, focused idea. Not if you want to make something of real value. Everything was a bit mechanical with this and my motivation suffered for it. Next time I’ll try to take this on board and go for something I can imbue with a little more passion.
So there it is – mixed feelings but as ever with these things, I reckon I’m better for it. Back to Project Prophecy! (I really need a better name for that at some point…) Oh and here’s the timelapse from my time doing LD 24: