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Thursday, January 9, 2014

Digital Toilet World and LD28 Updates

Hey all,

So, out of 1284 entries, "Digital Toilet World," placed #111 for humor and #282 overall in Ludum Dare 28! Originally, I was a little bummed that I didn't make the top 100 for any category, but considering how rough the game is, I'm still happy that I ranked so high regardless. It deserved the placement it got.

Next time around, I definitely need to hold myself to higher standards, and appropriate myself more time to work. Most of the highest ranking entries had quality graphics, sound, and UI - I purposefully skimped on these attributes in DTW, thinking that it would be forgivable for a jam game. I also didn't have Friday evening/Saturday morning to work on the game like many developers did - that was a lot of valuable time I could've spent fixing bugs and improving the presentation!

That being said, I still managed to cram a lot of content into the game with the time I had, and managed to tell a decent little story to boot. Oh, and having completed a game, period, is still a great achievement. At the beginning of 2013, I hadn't finished making a game in years. By the end of it, I had made two. It's a great feeling.

Someone asked me to port this to Mac, and I started just to fix some bugs and a typo for it, but I'm now also implementing difficulty levels and plan to add music - the most prominent criticisms about the game were its lack of difficulty and music. So, "Digital Toilet World Plus" will be coming to you soon! I don't plan on replacing the craptastic graphics and audio, or an expanding the game in any other way - I really don't want to dedicate too much more time to this project - but I do want to fully realize the original vision I had for the game.

Thanks for playing, and for the meaningful criticism!

Oh, and I had said earlier that I was going to list a bunch of my favorite picks from the competition. Sadly, the record of games I rated during the competition has been lost - but here's a bunch that I remember:

From the 48-hour compo:


The Day the Laughter Stopped - Interactive fiction game about sexual violence. Trigger warning. Really powerful - and it couldn't be any more powerful if told through any other medium. If you play one game from Ludum Dare, play this one.



You Only Get 1! - In which you are in a Japanese gameshow and must accomplish three tasks with one object. Very amusing!


The Foodcourt - I won't spoil it. Apparently it's funnier to Swedish people - there's supposedly a pun that I can't detect. Still, really funny.

From the 72-hour jam (with teams)

Titan Souls - Is fucking unreal. It's Dark Souls meets Shadow of the Colossus. It plays great, feels great, looks great, and sounds great. You wouldn't be able to guess that this was made in 72 hours otherwise.


Mama is Sick - Simulation game in which you are a schoolgirl in a third world country, struggling to care for her family with only one dollar a day.


Impressive Dog - Is cute as hell.


Wilhelm's Escape - Brilliant, short, and good-looking point-and-click adventure in which you die in amusing ways.



You Only Get One Pig - Great series of pig-related minigames.


Going Down - Your plane's going down, and there's only one parachute. Have you ever wanted to play a game in which you beat people up with a suitcase? Now you can.

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