Game Jam – Ludum Dare

During my last trip out to GDC, I met some awesome indie developers.  One of them was a developer from the Starbound team, one of my favorite indie games.  I also met the team from Plants Vs Zombies who was there too.  Anyway, Bart suggested I try my hand at the Ludum Dare Game Jam and since I already had the VS thing still in mind from meeting George and Laura, we decided to take a bunch of ideas and jam them together.

Dan and I decided to try our hand at our first game jam which was just a Mini-LD. The theme was Pong, so we took the theme and inverted it.  We then went and created some cute characters and art and tried to come up with some interesting VS idea. After some debate, we decided to go with Pirates VS Planets.  The basic gist is simple,  the Pirates are upset that the moon keeps messing with their Tides, so they decide its time to bring it down.  The moon of course must defend itself from this attack!

The moon of course isn’t defenseless.  With all that mass the moon is able to slingshot asteroids and control itself in the night sky.  Its a simple game, took me about 40 some hours of programming, and a couple days worth of Art on Dan’s side.  I think it came out well, the balance is still a little wonky, but the mechanics seem to work.

For the pirates, you must shoot a harpoon at the moon and tie it down.  While the Moon commands its asteroids to try and knock pirates off the ship.  For every harpoon the moon moves slower, and for every pirate lost, the ship moves slower.  After 10 – 20 seconds the pirates can be picked up from the water.  Likewise the moon can break the anchor points by aiming for them instead of for the ship.  The winner’s reward is the destruction of their opponent in the most OP way possible.

I will say, this is our first finished game and I think it came out really nicely. Xbox-Controllers are supported, or you can use WSAD + Spacebar for the moon, and the Arrow keys + mouse for the pirates. Controlls can be swapped at the top. Give it a shot:

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