Ludum Dare 24 Theme Voting: Round 2

Here's my voting on round two!

Castles are awesome, but I voted them down because I don't want to try to draw one, let alone more than one :P

Loneliness and Companion are both fun topics that would really let a person play with the art value in games...

The Impossible is kind of redundant, since a good game in 48 hours pretty much IS THE IMPOSSIBLE!

Some of the others could be fun or could be really rough... We'll see in a few days!

Today's question: Which of these themes would you most want to make a game about? If you aren't a "real" game maker, just think up a fun idea around it. Everyone is a game designer to some extent, be it video games, board games, party games, mind games... Life is just one big minigame collection!

Ludum Dare 24 Theme Voting: Round 1

So, Ludum Dare 24's voting started today... I've decided to track my votes, both to see which of them actually make it to the final round as well as to easily remember them all later. I think it would be a fun exercise to come up with a fun game concept around each theme; something that may not actually be doable at all, just something fun...

For example:

Kittens Concept: You are King Reginald III, kitty extraordinaire, who is beloved by his humans... So much so that he becomes a huge, lazy, rotund cat, hardly able to do anything for himself. One day, the humans decide to go on vacation. The person who comes to cat-sit is as lazy as Reginald, and dares to call him "little Reggie". You'll have to learn to move around on your own (rolling even!), climb, get food and regain your rightly-royal status as ruler of the house!

My question to you is this: what silly game idea can YOU come up with? Comment it below the blog! Let's get a whole bunch going!

The 48-hour FGL Game Development Challenge!

Wow, it's been a year and a half since I did all of this? Good grief!

This last weekend was the FGL Name Change competition. It was my first 48 hour challenge in quite some time, and I rarely have anything playable after this amount of time. The challenge was also particularly rough because the theme was something that the developer had to pick! Normally when the theme is announced, it's something crazy like "enemies as a weapon" or "darkness". This time, there were TWO challenges:

1. MOUSE-CONTROLS ONLY!!!! Wow, that was rough... I almost ALWAYS require both mouse and keyboard. It's a flaw, sure, but it's true.
2. Create your title using the initials FGL. For example, Flying Goat Lizards or Figuratively Great Lightning. Not only was this to be the title, it was also the main theme the game had to center upon!

Whenever a contest like this starts, my brain immediately goes to games that I want to make, that are much bigger, but I can make a small part of for the competition. Then my brain goes to the same types of games every time - moving back and forth catching items as they fall, shooting things from a turret in the middle...

After some time, I decided it'd be smarter to come up with a fun name and make a game around it. Here are some of the games you COULD have played if I would have been braver:

Forbidden Grind Limit: Level up over and over, grinding through enemies, approaching the Forbidden Grind Limit!

Forward, Gassy Loser: A man with a low sense of self-esteem must overcome a horrible enemy, his gas issues AND his lack of confidence!

Flannel Goblin League: Who knows? It's got goblins and flannel, so who cares what else???

Final Giant Lollipop: You have the very last huge lollipop in the whole world, you have to protect it! 

The best of all would be if you were the gassy loser who had to fight off flannel goblins with the giant lollipop, leveling up toward that grind limit!

Anyway, with Angel's help suggestion, I came up with Found: Ghastly Language! Gumshoe must prove herself in her day as a Probationary Grammar Officer, checking various Crittervillian businesses Facebook-like status updates and image posts. See, the world's grammar has fallen so far into disarray that the first move to fix it is to fine businesses for each error. As businesses get better, people will finally have a good example to follow!

You have 8 minutes (one second per game minute) to check 35 randomly-selected pieces. Each has ONE error, you simply have to click the improper word! Get at least 70% correct and you're an official member of the Grammar Police!

I was going to add photos of signs as well (like McDonalds-type signs) and also inter-company memos, but I didn't have enough time my brain was completely fried after creating the Vale monitor and all of the Facebook images and almost 50 posts that I ended up dragging and didn't make it in time.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ENJOY THE GAME, CHECK THIS LINK OUT! http://www.thecritterverse.com/secret/fgl/Found%20Ghastly%20Language.html