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[ChevyRay]

The Ludum Dare voting results have been announced.
Big thanks to everybody who voted and enjoyed the game!



B E A C O N


A game about hope, reliance, darkness, and some other pretty creepy stuff.



Download

ZIP (3.36 MB) [VERSION 1.10]
RAR (3.13 MB) [VERSION 1.10]

To fully enjoy the experience, I recommend you play it in full screen mode!




This game was created for the 15th Ludum Dare competition, in which the goal is to create a game in 48 hours with a theme chosen by the community.

This was the first Ludum Dare in which I have participated, and the chosen theme for the competition was CAVERNS. So everything you see in this game (that is NOT mentioned as a 1.05 update in the CHANGES.txt) was made within the 48-hour contest period. You can find Beacon over at its entry page.

I had an extremely enjoyable time, and I encourage you all to check out the rest of the entries over at the Ludum Dare website, and see what people have cooked up!

NOTE: The version for download here is NOT the same as the version I submitted to the compo (Version 1.00). I've made some difficulty tweaks and added a save feature since (recorded in the game's CHANGES.txt). If you want to see the game as it was, get it from its compo page! But I personally recommend the newer version for playability's sake.

[sergiocornaga]

Having played through the original version, I can say this is some truly excellent work. What you managed to achieve in 48 hours is incredibly admirable. Any secrets to how you handled your time?

[Xion]

Secrets. Yes. Tell us them.

This is an amazing thing you have done, Chevy.

[ChevyRay]

The thing that probably saved me the most was my level editor/setup. I made several of the things "automated", so I wouldn't have to worry about them while making rooms for the game. For example, all corner tiles are automatically chosen and placed, all I had to do is decide where to put solid walls and where not to, the rest was done automatically. I did other things too; for example, each room has an associated bezier path which is what the Beacon takes. Instead of having to manually assign each of these paths to the room, I just had it so that the path chosen was the one that contained the same # as the room name you occupied. Little things like that, which (especially the way I set them up) probably weren't the best in programming practices, but made things SUPER streamlined to produce in the time limit.

I could get away with not having too many details in the land because most of the time you can hardly see it, so I concentrated more on the simple silhouette creatures that appear and flee from you, because they required no coloring (the harder part of pixelling) and I could animate them easily, and they would still have a nice in-game effect.

The lighting was the biggie. I knew what I wanted my game to be the moment I read "Caverns" on the Ludum Dare website when they announced it, but I also knew that I was going to have to overcome a technical hill to get it working right. I wanted it to look nice, just like I wanted my WHOLE game too look and play nice, and not rushed (like it was). So the lighting was the first thing I did, and I created some greys-scale gradients to represent the alpha mask of the lights. The circle one was used for pretty much everything, I just scaled it at different sizes. By drawing a black canvas over everything, and then subtracting that grey-scale mask from the alpha-channel of the canvas, I could pull off pretty effective lighting, because the different lights would combine in areas very smoothly, and it helped smooth out some of the more rugged aspects of my pixel art, helping the game's polished-look in the long run.

Lighting and level-editor/system took a good chunk of the first day. The platforming engine was easy, since I'd done many of those before, and could probably code a bug-free one in my dreams. So I took a 3 hour sleep, then woke up (my alarm still had 3 hours to go, I woke up out of excitement!) and immediately started pumping out levels. The first 8-9 levels were really fast, since they were both easy and short, and didn't require much testing. After just about every level, the whole game concept started to build in my head (I knew what I wanted the ending to be right from the start), and the relationship that I could build between the Beacon and the player became so effective that I decided to toy with that knowledge. I decided to make rooms that took the Beacon away, rooms that made it seem to forget what it was doing, forget you were there, and take an alternate route because it doesn't realize that you can't follow, etc. Sometimes you get frustrated, but most often I wanted the player to feel scared, worry that they'd lost the light, that they might not get it back.

The excitement of this developing concept made level design a breeze, because the ideas were coming faster than I could possibly churn them out. I'd already decided that I wanted the game to have a really easy learning curve, so lots of people would play it and my chances in the competition would probably improve, but I also wanted to put in a tough level, to test out some of my engine's capabilities and see if I a frantic player's skill would match up to the obstacles presented. I ended up making it a bit too difficult for the compo version (which has been fixed up in 1.05), but I was still ridiculously proud of what I'd accomplished.

After I'd gotten a good set of levels finished, I decided that I didn't need more, because the concept and repeating terrain would become tiresome. I contemplated several things at this point, such as putting in waterfalls, or adding more varied tile types, but I didn't, deciding that it was too much, and I wouldn't finish the entry in time if I kept adding things on. Instead, I focused a good 4-5 hours on the ending scene of the game. I wanted a really powerful ending, because most of the LD games endings are RUSHED because that's the last thing done. I had 8 hours to spare when my game was done, so I took my sweet time making it as well-presented and pretty as possible, so players would leave my game with a smile on their face.

And that's pretty much my 48 hours.

If you missed one sleep in there, it's because I didn't take it. Night 2 was an all-nighter, so I basically got 3 hours of sleep for two days. Boy did I crash the night after! :D

But yeah, I guess my biggest secret was just that I loved the concept, and every thing I added to it, I loved it even more. So I kind of got lucky, but I also managed to stay motivated and encouraged myself to accomplish something new, bring something fresh to Ludum Dare so I could make a good first impression, and that motivation pretty much drove me...





... that and lots and lots and LOTS of coffee

[ChevyRay]

Fun fact!

I even made my own font for the game during the contest period Feel free to use it yourselves.

[Terrorbuns]

Played it, beat it. There's only one ending right? If so, ._.

Great game though. It was very nicely made, smooth and everything. Can't really complain about anything. Though if you wanted to add to the creepiness factor, some sound effects when you get left behind in the darkness would be fun.

Also, I walked into some spikes that faced up, and died. I suppose this is suppose to happen, but oh well.

[Gold Cray]

It's almost a very good game, but at some point it crosses the line between challenging and frustrating.

It feels great to finally get a room, but the long pause between dying and trying again slows things down a lot and doesn't go well with the short average life span. It also seemed that when the rooms got long enough, I'd end up just getting through 90-95% of the room over and over again.

[moonmagic]

I just played this yesterday and I love it. The last fall really provides an excellent sense of depth.

I also liked the exposition. It's really difficult to handle sparse impression-based writing in a way that doesn't feel like LiveJournal. The pipes were a nice choice for adding ambiguity and creating space.

My favorite death message is "A sharp pain | blood?"

[ChevyRay]

It's almost a very good game, but at some point it crosses the line between challenging and frustrating.

It feels great to finally get a room, but the long pause between dying and trying again slows things down a lot and doesn't go well with the short average life span. It also seemed that when the rooms got long enough, I'd end up just getting through 90-95% of the room over and over again.

Could you possibly show/tell me which rooms/parts it was that you had trouble with? I'm still working to effectively tweak the difficulty to get rid of this point of frustration, but not matter how much easier I make it, there seem to be gamers who always have a problem, and gamers who think the difficulty is perfect as-is.

[Pietepiet]

The difficulty was fine as-is if you ask me. I got through most rooms on the first try. Only a few of the final rooms gave me some real trouble.

Great game. I absolutely loved the atmosphere.

[ChevyRay]

Okay, uploading 1.07 now.

• Spikes no longer kill you when hit from the side.
  
  
• Some more difficulty tweaks made to the later rooms.

[pgil]

Played it to the end. I thought the difficulty was fine. I died a few times, but I never lost my motivation to keep trying.

I like how there was no music. I think it adds to the creepiness.

Did you use Game Maker for this? If so, I'd be interested in hearing how you saved and loaded level data. Was there an array that saves every tile, or just a list of objects, or something else?

[ChevyRay]

Level data wasn't externally saved. I justed used Game Maker's (horrible) built-in room editor. I wouldn't have finished the game on time had I used my own, heheh.

Played it to the end. I thought the difficulty was fine. I died a few times, but I never lost my motivation to keep trying.

Yeah, this seems to be the general response I'm getting. Still, 1.07 made it so there were less difficult pitfalls around the end of the longer levels, so that Cold Cray's issue doesn't happen too often.

If you've died several times in one room, chances are, you're at the very last level. If I make it too easy, I fear I risk taking away the reward of beating the game and seeing the ending. I could be wrong, though, it's hard to say. Which is why elaborating on your feedback really helpe me improve the game so special thanks to the people who've done so!

[Gold Cray]

but not matter how much easier I make it, there seem to be gamers who always have a problem, and gamers who think the difficulty is perfect as-is.

This is true. I think that the difficulty is fine for the most part. It's just that the ratio between the time I spend playing and the time I spend wait to play is too small, and I think that contributes a lot to the frustration. The random text things are nice, but after the first few deaths they're just a barrier between me and the gameplay.

The first room where you spend significant time away from the beacon gave me some trouble because I didn't realize that I could pass through the dark areas between crystals.

One of the first rooms with a red crystals has a platform that's not visible, and it was by pure luck and I found out it was there and then by pure luck that I managed to use it again.

In the room I'm on right now, it took my a little while to realize that there was a ledge I could jump to just above the glow of the crystal. I just assumed it was a tall vertical passage for decoration (here).

Two rooms back, I think, I also had some trouble, but it was just because everything had to be perfect, so I died frequently and waiting to start again got to be pretty annoying.

[ChevyRay]

but not matter how much easier I make it, there seem to be gamers who always have a problem, and gamers who think the difficulty is perfect as-is.

This is true. I think that the difficulty is fine for the most part. It's just that the ratio between the time I spend playing and the time I spend wait to play is too small, and I think that contributes a lot to the frustration. The random text things are nice, but after the first few deaths they're just a barrier between me and the gameplay.

The first room where you spend significant time away from the beacon gave me some trouble because I didn't realize that I could pass through the dark areas between crystals.

One of the first rooms with a red crystals has a platform that's not visible, and it was by pure luck and I found out it was there and then by pure luck that I managed to use it again.

In the room I'm on right now, it took my a little while to realize that there was a ledge I could jump to just above the glow of the crystal. I just assumed it was a tall vertical passage for decoration (here).

Two rooms back, I think, I also had some trouble, but it was just because everything had to be perfect, so I died frequently and waiting to start again got to be pretty annoying.

That ledge you mentioned has been fixed already in the 1.07 upload. I think a bit of patience is required to really enjoy the game, as I was aiming at creating an atmospheric experience that slowly got more and more anxious and hectic to build you up until the end. Some gamers dislike the beginning immediately because they can't run ahead and beat the level, which has something to say about their insight into the themes I'm trying to push with the game, because there's nowhere to go other than to the Beacon, to its illuminated range of safety from the darkness.

It seems that it becomes evident to most players that you can't enter the darkness pretty quickly. Some people have complained that they didn't know this, but part of creating a minimal game like this with barely any text or instructions is the beauty of playing it to figure it out. More casual gamers won't enjoy the later, difficult levels (which is why I'm trying to take care to make them easier without ruining the fun of the challenge and the sense of anxiety I build up), but they do tend to enjoy the beginning. Right off the bat, in the shorter, earlier levels, they experiment more (because they have less pre-conceptions of what will kill them, what's good, what's bad, and how a video game should be played -- eg. to get to the next "level") and end up enjoying the experience a bit more than those who rush through it and see it purely from a technical standpoint.

The latter is definitely also important, though. For example, the spikes-from-the-side issue was unforgivable, as was not having a save feature. Also, Melly has given me several points of feedback on some of the level design issues, such as the one in the screenshot you posted.

I should mention, also, in the first post that the game is very dark, and that it is BEST played in full screen. Not just to enjoy the experience more, but also because it makes it easier to see things and play the game in general.

The random text things are nice, but after the first few deaths they're just a barrier between me and the gameplay.

So you think, after a few deaths, I should make it so that they don't appear anymore, and the screenwill just fade to black? That could work, I suppose, but some people have enjoyed reading the messages, and I think you're actually the first to mention their being a hindrance. But I'll still consider it.

Thank you SO much for the feedback and crits I'm making another list of future to-change or to-consider items to further improve the game and experience.

[Gold Cray]

Thank you SO much for the feedback and crits I'm making another list of future to-change or to-consider items to further improve the game and experience.

Thanks for listening. It's a great game overall, and the atmosphere and the beginning is spot on. At this point, I feel a bit like I'm just nitpicking, but it seems like it only takes a few really small things to turn a fun and challenging game into a frustrating one.

I haven't had a chance to try the new version yet, but I will.

[Terrorbuns]

I didn't really have any problems with the game, but I said that earlier. Just wanted to add that, after reading your recent post ChevyRay, that now that I think about it, the last levels had a sense of desperation and panic to them, since they got harder, and it was easier to fall into the darkness.

As for I, I read the topic first then played, and I thought it was kinda obvious to stay out of the darkness with the beginning text.

And there's only one ending right?

[ChevyRay]

Thank you SO much for the feedback and crits I'm making another list of future to-change or to-consider items to further improve the game and experience.

Thanks for listening. It's a great game overall, and the atmosphere and the beginning is spot on. At this point, I feel a bit like I'm just nitpicking, but it seems like it only takes a few really small things to turn a fun and challenging game into a frustrating one.

I haven't had a chance to try the new version yet, but I will.

It's alright, I think I've already got all the major things, and the difficulty is getting closer and closer to that fine in-between that I want it to be at, thanks to "nitpicking" feedback like yours. I can't appeal to both extremes, but I'd like to find a really good place between atmospheric art game and classic platformer that can reach both audiences to some significant degree.

[Curseman]

It's amazing that you pulled all of this together in 48 hours.  Very nice job.  Excellent atmosphere.

[Aquin]

ChevyRay, are you planning an updated version of the game?  Because that would be pretty awesome.

I really hope you win the LD15!