My first game was a QBasic text adventure. Good ole, rusty, tetanus infecting, linear coding philosophy 
Or maybe it was in Game Maker 5 and used the same walls and backgrounds as the OP's first. Yeah, probably that. It was called UFO Chase; the player was a little astronaut chasing a UFO into space which eventually turned into the boss monster. It had the same pixel-perfect menu letters that are in the OP's game as well. And of course you'd snag on any wall that you got to close too, which was a real problem in the invisible maze (never make an invisible maze. there has to be at least a clue to the spatial puzzle of getting from A to B).

Ah, okay. I was imagining it fully animated in every direction.

I'm not an amazing artist so I fear that I wouldn't be much help to this project in that way. But something did come to mind when I read your list of needs.

64 way animations of vehicles is insane with the exception of pre-rendered 3D (which would still be a massive waste of VRAM). A while ago though I was experimenting with a "papery" method of showing isometric direction.

Here's what I mean: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9633551/inklake_paperbike.zip

Ignore the character talking to himself and press space next to the dirt-bike to ride it. You'll see that it skews in a way that appears to make it 3d but still flat. I was thinking that you could blend 4 or 8 directions like that instead of just 2 for a practically seamless (the "seams" would be slightly blurry I think because you'd be fading in and out two different directions) rotation. The weapons in that little prototype also work like the bike.

Sorry to be slightly off topic but it's something your potential artist will want addressed before reaching an agreement.

Cheers to many more days of being an indie game dev trying something crazy,
Zach

Ah, yet another helpful post from Cliffski. These make my day.

Also, it doesn't bother me, but I think you forget a 'g' on 'beg' and after the list say "PC" instead of "PR." It doesn't affect the message but I'm just letting you know.

A toast to this contest. 

Puns aside, this is an awesome competition. Ludum Dare and IGF aren't the only respectable competitions in the world.

And remember the saying,

design your game for hardcore players first, then make it accessible for casual players

- Derek Yu, who paraphrases, and attributes it to Mark Johns, who further attributes it to Blizzard
This is a great opportunity to make a deep experience and be recognized. I plan on starting a dev log for my entry here in May.

Nico's right, your answer depends on who you ask just as much as what you ask.

I'll add a cent too though. So now you're up to $0.03

Design school's advantages would be to give you materials, peers, a learning environment, and mentors to guide you. So replace it with those elements directly! You can find plenty of peers and mentors in places like here. A learning environment is every game you make. So make em'. And for materials I suggest reading Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design as soon as or before you start a game. It's a great book that's something like a table of elements for game design.

Thanks metaldemon for the in-depth feedback! It's really helpful. The tap spacebar element is supposed to only be present until you win a grapple-fight; but I can see how it might be good to leave it up as a reminder also.

Jcup thanks also, I'm so sorry about that. I can't believe it but that "2nd executable" is actually a shortcut to the correct one - but only for my harddrive. Apparently Windows doesn't allow relative shortcuts... So I've changed the name of bin to gamefiles to make it more welcoming and removed the dummy shortcut. In the future if I have to do that I'll make a launcher application and put that in place of the shortcut.

And I'm really glad you've enjoyed it 

This might belong in the announcements forum; do you have a video of gameplay or a demo that we can give feedback on? I would buy and give it a try if I had an iOS system to play it on.

I'm pretty sure you aren't even allowed to use Tetr- due to trademark laws. My thinking here is based on an article I read when I was only a wee lad on game trademark safety though. I think it was on gamedev.net but I'm sure there are better sources.

According to Wikipedia The Tetris Company was cited giving out cease and desist letters as recently as a year ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tetris_Company

Making this caused dream-stalking.

It's true, I was stalked by Slender Man in my dreams during the development of the game - complete with the camera effects happening to my vision, asleep, and awake in daydreams. That'll teach me to make a horror game where the AI requires lots of testing.

Anyway, here are some clips from the game; sorry in advance for the graphics Though some people have said they add to the scariness, tell me what you think.
Youtube Video



I was given 3-4 weeks to complete a scary game for a Halloween competition (during the comp orange08 started a thread here about what makes games scary), and this was the result. If you like weeping angels from Dr. Who then you'll be able to figure out Slendy's AI pretty fast, but I still find it difficult to make it through without blacking out at least once. So give it a play, tell me what you think!

Slender Man game page on my site

Direct Dropbox Download

Controls are WASD, left mouse button, and right mouse button. Use them on stuff  
Hitting escape will cause you to exit the game immediately.

I'd like feedback regarding the 'experience' you had, since it's a somewhat atmospheric game. Even just saying what happened, what you did, and how you felt is good, or an analysis of your own is great as well. Any other aspect you want to comment on is fair game too, that's just my focus with this experiment is all.

Baconman, a USB mouse is a good investment to go with a laptop - especially with a trackpad like that.

This game continues to impress  

I second using "W" to jump. There's some dim frustrating feeling I feel whenever I reach over to space with my thumb to jump.

Hello! This is my favorite indie game dev forum and I haven't introduced myself!

I also first learned to program from QBasic like Dale but now I'm pretty addicted to using Game Maker. I think from the turing machine viewpoint when I use it and anything else I end up having to go back to designing based on functions I know. I'm working on getting over that and at least learning Unity as well. I've made more freeware games than I have fingers but have never stuck it out to make something of serious length and quality and sold it. So that's one of my goals for this year.

I will now play you a song and act all dorky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNeyrUi7Ubs&feature=g-upl&context=G201d4b9AUAAAAAAABAA

jMonkey is pretty good  . When I took a class on Java I was trying it out on my own time and that was when it was 2.x, people were regularly making stable commitments to the SVN and solving problems and bugs within a week of being reported. And that version was being used for commercial MMO's already.

But what about the rule that

Entries must be made for the competition only

Also the other competition prevents me from releasing the full version publicly until the 31rst - the exact end date of this one. So can I privately send you the full version and then release it publicly that Monday?

Aw I'm making a game for a different Halloween competition based on an urban legend and this one started a week after this comp and ends a day before it..
That means I can't enter this with it right?