Ludum Dare 39: Theme and Concept
30th July 2017
The joy of working as a teacher and having such a long summer holiday is that I’m guaranteed to be able to participate in at least one Ludum Dare game jam each year. However, as circumstance has had it, the July/August jam is indeed the only one I’ve been able to participate in in the last year, my previous efforts being during Ludum Dare 36.
As with last time, I’m once again participating with my brother, and this time the theme for the event is Running out of Power. We had a quick brainstorm on Saturday morning, and my brother already had half an idea about giving the theme a liberal interpretation and making it about a monarch struggling to grasp to power.
We had quite a productive morning brainstorming ideas, bouncing off each other until we had a pretty solid idea that we were both happy with. The general concept is that you play as a king trying to maintain your power and rule by appeasing people as they come to visit you in your court. Your decisions influence how much you are loved/respected and how much money you have. Some decisions are better than other, but it’s not always obvious what the best course of action will be. You lose when either your ‘love’ meter drops to the bottom (meaning that you are hated) or your ‘respect’ meter drops to the bottom (meaning that your people have lost all faith in you). Loss is inevitable; the challenge is to see for how long you can cling to power.
Similar to our last collaborative effort, I’m largely focusing on producing the graphics, although I’m also doing the bulk of the writing, as the game is extremely text-heavy. My brother, meanwhile, is actually creating the game using the Unity engine.