Blog Post

Return to blog feed

Outpost: New World (Ludum Dare 31)

December 29th, 2014 (edited November 3rd, 2022)

Just a few weeks ago, Justin and I participated in the 31st Ludum Dare. The theme: Entire Game On One Screen.

We decided ahead of time that we wanted to make a game that was more action-packed and also more polished than our usual fare. I'm not sure we totally succeeded in overcoming our propensity for making fairly complicated simulation games, but we did manage to make our most polished jam game yet. Play it here!

Outpost: New World Screenshot

Outpost: New World

Our past experience with game jams lead us to decide that we wanted to be done with the core game by early afternoon of the second day (sooner than halfway through the jam). We would then use the second half of the jam entirely for polish. While we fell behind on that goal, finished the core game around 6 in the evening of the second day, that still left us the entirety of Sunday for polish. It worked out very well - I was able to put together a very dramatic opening cinematic, a generate a full range of sfxr-generated sound effects, and record some moody cello music (three elements that we usually don't have time for in jams).

While I'm not a huge fan of how the final gameplay turned out, others seem to be enjoying it much more than any of our previous attempts. We'll see what the results show in about 21 hours.