The Adventures of Rubberkid Backer Cards are Complete!

One of the levels from The Adventures of Rubberkid: help
the "too fat" and "too skinny" cheerleaders out as they cheer!

While the Kickstarter has ended, The Adventures of Rubberkid is still raising funds to help promote it to schools and libraries, as well as get it translated into additional languages. You can contribute with Paypal and still get all the awesome rewards for doing so here!


As for progress on the game, seven of the eight levels are now complete and the final one should be done tomorrow! You can always play the latest version of the game for free here :) Also, I'm starting to send out the backer rewards. Today, in fact, I finished the printable "Backer Cards".

Penny's Backer Card!

What are backer cards, you ask? There are 15 cards - one for each of the kids in the game, plus one for Rubberkid, one for Mrs. Bookworm and one for the bullies - each with a little info about each of them. There are also three "printing pages" with five of the cards each for easy printing and cutting out! They end up slightly bigger than playing cards and are colorful and fun, as well as excellent tools for bullying education!

Anyone who contributes at least $10 gets you a signed postcard, 5 signed certificate pledges (if you're in the continental US) AND all of the images! Plus, now that they're complete I'll make sure you get them the same day that you contribute!

Page three of the printing pages!

The Critterverse is on Facebook!

The Critterverse now has its own Facebook page! Check it out! Click on the little "Like" button at the top to show your love and your uberawesomeness :)

Make a Story is Complete!

9 stories, 50+ random categories and all kinds of fun! Make your own stories just like Mad Libs, but with much more specific terms such as "D&D style treasure", "your favorite food", "crazy verb, present tense" and more! Explore the legends of The Critterverse, or just make silly stories! And you can even write your own stories to be submitted, then receive credit!

CLICK HERE TO PLAY!

LD 18 Jam Complete!

So I got home right around 8:30 and fixed up lots of the bugs til around 9:30 or so, then got the game submitted! Apparently games in the Jam don't get voted on or anything, but it was still a great challenge to finish this game in 3 days, and I'm proud of how well it went. Some bugs went unfixed (if a critter is playing his animation and gets hit again, it simply stops its animation; the insults don't always bounce the right way, which includes sometimes making it appear the insult is simply continuing straight on), but the majority were fixed up, and some other things were improved on as well (the text in the game was improved a bit, and the insult bubble was fixed up quite a bit too).

Wanna play it? http://www.thecritterverse.com/downloads/Rubberman.html

You can also:

Download it: http://www.thecritterverse.com/downloads/Rubberman.exe

Get the Flash code: http://www.thecritterverse.com/downloads/Rubberman.fla

LD 18: Try it Out Thus Far

Here's the game thus far... Now I'm going to warn you, IT IS BUGGY!!! Yeah I didn't fix them all. Some are minor yet annoying (sometimes insults just freeze, when you win it may not clear it, on level 3 many of the critters vanish all at once), and some are drastic (can't play through a second time).

http://www.thecritterverse.com/temp/Rubberman.html (EDIT: NON FUNCTIONAL NOW!!!)

However, if you do play it, please comment here, or email me at CataclysmicKnight@gmail.com, or message me on Facebook or Twitter or just in any way you can, let me know your opinion (don't hold back, be brutally honest!) and let me know whatever bugs you may find, even if they're the ones I've listed above. I'd TOTALLY appreciate it if you do since I won't have much time to work on it after I get off of work. Also let me know how annoying each bug is so I can prioritize :)

LD 18: Now Jam, Not Compo

Ludum Dare has two different types... The competition is the 2 day event, whereas the jam is a 3 day event that is a bit more lax for its rules. I was really hoping to make competition (hence all the talk about 2 days of development), but due to several major bugs, I was unable to do so. Instead, I will be aiming for the jam, although the 24 extra hours doesn't really add too much development time for me. Here's how the next 24 hours goes for me:

10pm(now) - midnight or so: Enjoy my time with my Angel (since the whole rest of my day has been game development and all)

12am - 7:20am: SLEEP!

7:20am - 8:30pm: Work and work related stuff (get ready, drive to work, work, come home)

Leaves me with about an hour and a half of development time. But since there isn't much more to do with it, that should be enough time :) And I'm going to use this game as a demo for a fuller, deeper version as well!

LD 18: Missed Opportunities

About 67 minutes left... So many things I wish I could add but don't have the time! I want a boss fight or two, I wanted the enemies to attack each other, I want to fix some of these random bugs (sometimes the insults just stop when they are intercepted by Rubberman, and if a critter is hit mid-animation, it simply stops and won't go away.), and I wanted to add a little map between levels to show progress. And different levels would have different shooting as well, like a whole wall to defend instead of a little ring of critters. But it'll still be a game at least, and not bad for someone who's never made an action game before (I've always been a puzzle game developer, MUCH different believe it or not).

LD 18: 2 Hours Left... Level Setting Problems

It's going pretty well and now it's more a matter of level design than anything... But for some reason enemies aren't where they should be! DOH!

125 minutes left!

LD 18: Getting There!

... And it's a good thing since there are only 4.5 hours left til 10! The menus are all made, and the game pretty much works. Levels need made, and I need to create a popup to redo a level if the player loses, but other than that it should be good!

So I bring you... a screenshot of the main menu! Check it out up there!

LD 18: 6 Hours, Bugs but Engine Almost Done

Well the insults bounce right off Rubberman now, and they infuriate the insulting critters, and they even vanish in their rage afterward, but for some reason they eventually stop shooting, leaving some of the enemies alive. Aside from this, though, all that's left is to build some levels and sparkle it up!

LD 18 Checklist to Completion

Copying this from a previous post so that I know where I stand on everything. Will post times as I go. 10 hours left!

BLUE/PURPLE - DONE

RED - WORKING ON

1) Move Rubberman - DONE

2) Enemies Shoot - DONE (12:00)

3) Enemy fire damages innocents - DONE (12:27)

4) Enemy fire bounces back toward random insulter when hitting player and causes them to attack nearest insulter, destroying them both. If only the one insulter is left, he simply runs away. - DONE but changed a bit...

5) Game Over possibility (12:27)

6) Level Success possibility (12:31)

7) Create additional levels

8) Create menus (5:30)

a) Main Menu

b) About LD

c) Game Over

d) Game Win!

9) Additional touches where possible:

a) Display actual insults when they strike

b) Compliments

c) Power Ups?

d) A map and fuller story?

LD18 Progress, Slightly over Halfway

So the game concept has been pretty much solidified and a lot of the art made (although some may be changed later if time allows...). I've also gotten the engine to work for the most part. The overall pieces needed to make are:

1) Move Rubberman - DONE

2) Enemies Shoot - DONE (except it doesn't reset yet)

3) Enemy fire damages innocents

4) Enemy fire bounces back toward random insulter when hitting player and causes them to attack nearest insulter, destroying them both. If only the one insulter is left, he simply runs away.

5) Game Over possibility

6) Level Success possibility

7) Create additional levels

8) Create menus

9) Additional touches where possible:

a) Display actual insults when they strike

b) Compliments

c) Power Ups?

d) A map and fuller story?

Maybe some more stuff too... We'll see :)

The Adventures of Rubberman!

So to make a game based on using enemies as a weapon, I've come up with (thanks to Angel and my mom, Dora) a game based on bouncing back various insults hurled. The player plays as Rubberman, one of SuperCritterMan's alter egos, who must run around the people he is trying to save as evil critters hurl insults at them, which are fired much like bullets. Rubberman must intercept these insults, which causes them to bounce to one of the other enemies around. Once one of the enemies gets insulted, it goes berzerk and attacks the one who initially sent out the insult, destroying them both. If an insult makes its way through to the innocent critters, their happiness will drop until they become so depressed they can't take any more and just go home.

Compliments will be flung as well, and if they reach the innocent critters, their happiness level will rise. This also causes them to thank the critter, thereby turning them kind ("They appreciated my compliment?"), which leads them to simply walk away from the insulting, done with being mean. If the compliments are deflected, it insults the complimenting critter, making them mad, calling a friend or two to help insult the innocent critters.

The goal of each round is to get rid of all the mean critters and make it onward. If the player beats a level, they get a bonus for the happiness of the remaining critters.

As far as more specific than that (level development, possible power ups?, etc.), I'm unsure yet. I will create a rough playable of this and see how it goes. 25.5 hours to go!

What's to Come

So I've completed CataclysmicGames.com as well, feel free to check that out too! But the main reason for this post is to share one very important piece of information:

What's all this about anyway?

Well here it is!!! Directly off the "What's Next?" link on CataclysmicGames.com...

Mrs. Bookworm's Classroom

TruHangman isn't just a stand alone game, it's one piece out of five for Mrs. Bookworm's classroom! The other four are, in no particular order:

• TruWordHunt: Play word hunt puzzles with a twist - many require figuring out a hint to even figure out what word needs to be found. Each one has ten words to be found, and the faster you find them, the higher your score. See if you can get the high score on each one!


• Make a Story: Mad lib type stories! See what kind of funny stories you can make with your own words.


• Million Dollar Words: Quiz time! Each quiz deals with crazy words, see if you can figure out the correct answer from the multiple choices in categories like crazy diseases, definitions of words from bands and products or creative compliments and insults.


• Word Detective: Solve the mysteries by figuring out the words! I'll keep the gameplay of this one a little bit of a secret ;)

The First Big Adventure

It wouldn't be much of a "critterverse" if it all existed in a classroom now would it? Crush the Critters is the first big adventure for the critters, and will be your first chance to meet many of them up close and personal! Dark Lord Critter is up to no good, amassing a zombie critter army to rule the world, and it's up to you to stop him! You'll have to travel across much of the world to gain your own friends and equipment to stand a chance.

...And Beyond

There is a lot more to come after that, this is just the beginning! You'll be able to win tickets across all the games, keep them in your own profile and buy all kinds of prizes, make your own critter, earn rewards, even print out your own goodies to save! As more of this is completed, I'll reveal more as well.