The Making of a Game in which you Ram Into Trees

As far as I remember, the Ludum Dare never took place in January before. I am more of an Autumn person regarding this jam, so how did it go in the middle of winter?

Results

There were 424 participants in the compo this time. Here are the game's results:

Overall: 30th
Fun: 71st
Innovation: 30th
Theme: 56th
Graphics: 29th
Audio: 21st
Humor: 52nd
Mood: 92nd

Pretty good, especially in the art categories! Although Fun and Mood aren't very high, Fun probably because of the clunky controls, and Mood because of the interface and/or the disembodied shopkeepers maybe?

In any way, that was a good performance, for a game with elements I'm unfamiliar with (3D, semi-open world, survival elements).

How it went

Back to right before the beginning of the jam. As usual, when the final round of themes is up, I note down at least one idea per theme. And for "Harvest", the idea was…

You are making ant proteins. One day, some suspicious individual wants to work for you, they're actually 6000 ants in a trenchcoat.

While this sounds original and kinda hilarious, I didn't think of adding a game mechanic to this idea, so it's more of a story idea. In the end, the only thing that will remain will be the ant (and then only in the New Game+). So, I started working on something else.

By the way, I should probably release all my final round ideas some time.

Gordon Kart II?

If you recall (and/or have played) Gordon Kart, one of my previous low-poly racing games, maybe you thought Ramming into Trees was a tiny bit similar. That's partly because one of the planned features of a Gordon Kart extension was harvesting resources for driving.

With an intake attached to its front, the all-terrain kart would need to drive through fields of wheat or sunflowers to make its fuel. Also, if the vehicle is human-powered, one can assume Gordon would prefer eating a different food than just those crops. And to repair his kart frequently, some kind of trading item would be required.

Those three elements would give in the end: olives, apples, and lemons. I chose fruits (because making trees is cool) of different color and shape (to make the player's time easier).

I don't plan anything more for Gordon Kart for the moment. Turns out making an open world is actually pretty hard. And to truly feel like we are in the countryside, that world needs to be very, very open.

Planned features that didn't make the cut

- Vehicle repair: if you ram into trees too often, you would need to pay for repairs. Or possibly buy repair kits.

- Pollution: if you use your engine too much instead of pedalling, trees would start to give less fruits or, in the extreme case, they would die.

- Some kind of flying vehicle. Originally, the protagonist would be a chicken and you would need to escape your vast, but closed garden. Now that would be a bit complicated to make. But a chicken-controlled biplane, how cool is that? I should keep that in mind for future games.

- Character selection. Instead of the mouse and bonus ant, I planned to reuse existing characters from my games, such as Death, Old Roger, or Gordon. With different stats and abilities, of course.

- Full touch support. For now, you still have to drive with the arrow keys/WASD (or a joystick IIRC).

Happy tree ramming, and see you on the next one!