I haven’t used this blog in a while, mostly because all my recent work has been for my Woodsy Studio projects. If you want to see what I’ve been up to, check out our latest games over there and definitely take a look at our Kickstarter for our next game, which we’ve had a hell of a time publicizing.

This weekend, however, I participated in my first Ludum Dare and, since it was a solo event, I figured I’d write up my experience here. Ludum Dare is a game jam-style event held (worldwide, with no specific location) three times a year. There are two branches of LD, the Compo and the Jam. The Compo is 48 hours and has far stricter rules–only one person per team, all content must be made in the 48 hour period–while the Jam is 72 hours long and allows for premade assets.

I chose to do the Compo for a couple reasons, not the least of which is that we’re busy with work on Echoes of the Fey and the 48 hour time limit was appealing. However, as someone who is, shall we say, a little lacking as an artist and very lacking as a musician, the need to create all my content was somewhat intimidating. I figured I would only go forward with it if I could come up with an idea from the theme quickly, because time would be lacking if I had to make my own textures, music, and sound effects.

The theme was “The more you have, the worse it gets” and I almost immediately know what to do: a collectable score-attack game where each pick up decreases the fidelity of the game itself. During Echoes of the Fey Episode 0, I helped optimize the game, made in UE4, to run (looking ugly) on a laptop with integrated graphics. I figured I could use some of those tricks to intentionally restrict resolution, texture quality, and frame rate no matter the system quality.

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