I finished my Ludum Dare miniLD game! It was made for a 48 hour game jam that I hosted (read more). The theme of the jam was “ALL TALK – dialogue and conversation.
It is called A Familiar Story. A “familiar” is a magic animal companion, such as a witch’s black cat. Familiars are used to boost the magic strength of their companions and have a history of being valuable allies. It was programmed using HTML5: CSS3, jQuery and PhoneGap.
[PLAY GAME!] [VIEW MY ENTRY ON LUDUM DARE]
Click the image above to play the game in your web browser!
Follow the adventure and friendship between two lonely young heroes. From humble beginnings, their partnership grows and soon they must save the village from an evil tyrant. Recruit allies and meet people and creatures along the way toward the boss battle.
This was created using art that I’d made previously. I created all the avatar art (cats, dragons and people) using Poser Pro 2010 and DAZ art assets. Most of the backgrounds were created in Vue 8.5 xStream.
I decided that my challenge for this weekend would be to build my first MOBILE game. Using Phonegap and jQuery, I created the entire game in HTML. Using Eclipse to compile a simple .java class, I packaged phonegap and my html sources into a non-signed Android .APK which is designed to be used on phones like the HTC Desire, or any Android 2.2 device with 800×480 resolution. It might also work on tablets and older phones as well. Because it isn’t a signed .APK, it is not yet ready for prime-time (it wouldn’t be allowed to go on the app stores, and you need to enable “debug mode” on your phone and “allow unsigned apps”).
For the Windows .EXE, I used Appcelerator Titanium to create a stub executable which is really just a chromeless web browser (using a variant of xulrunner).
For the web version, all I had to do was upload my HTML sources to my web server. The sound is done with soundManager2, which can use HTML5 audio but generally sticks with more reliable invisible Flash.
Although this is a very simple game right now – just some conversation and one battle – I am very proud of what I accomplished. As a tech demo for a future, more advanced RPG or visual novel, I think this is a great start. Perhaps I will flesh out the adventure, add a few more characters, implement game saves and inventory and a quest manager and craft a more robust RPG game like I’ve always dreamed. Who knows?
In any case, it was really fun working on this. Hope you enjoy it!
Hey I just played this! This was really fun and humorous, I really enjoyed the overall flavour of it and the 3D models were technically really impressive. The cat’s faces were priceless, too… =) Thank you!
says:
Thanks so much for making my day!
Fantastic little game! Although you complete it in 48 hours it has a high level of love and attention attached to it and doesn’t feel or look like a “quick turn around game” Great stuff!
says:
Thanks, Ben! Much appreciated! =)