HTON Post-mortem

This spring Ludum Dare 55 happened. The theme was "Summoning" and I participated Compo as usual. The final game is narrative minimalistic novel with loops called HTON.

I knew that summoning diabolic things will be major usage of theme but decided to make a twist that player plays as ancient entity that is waking up from eternal dream to fulfil someone wishes. Originally I wanted to make novel/roguelike but in the end the game become too linear.

The title is based derivative of Russian's 'хтонь' that means much more then just evil spirit but emotional depressed feeling too. Also sounds like lovecraftian name that is suits for the game's need where you play as an ancient god. Not just god but dark entity that summoned by weak people. They offer sacrifices to you, one by one, and you can accept or not.

Summoning my shit#ludumdare #indiedev pic.twitter.com/8TH6EAXkJE

— Denis Kazantsev 🌳 (@JokerDen) April 14, 2024

Gameplay is simplistic too. Originally was built around idea of unusual text-based roguelike but finished just simple dialogue tree of few branching. One answer always leads to the beginning, the void. And other answer moves you further on a global purpose to eliminate eveything.

Game contains few violent scenes and whole theme is dark. It was just my associations to the LD theme and also crossed with some back-time near depression condition. The game didn't ended well by player's choices, not only because of topic but also poor usability and primitive gameplay. Unfortunately my idea of unwrapping mystery is not very readable but I like that still game have kind of emotion inside.

Visuals are built around the idea to imitate Playdate game console. It was like a personal challenge to design the game within poor boundaries. The console screen resolution is just 400x240 pixels and each pixel could be just black or white.

In the end I'm having one more game on my page and I'm not ashamed of it. Different problems that made a game not reached by the players are only motivate more to become better game developer. Soon next Ludum Dare is coming and I hope I will participate again. Have a nice day everyone!

PUNCH Universe

A lot of thoughts I have about PUNCH. The game I made for Ludum Dare 54 (was mentioned at last summary article) and got really good results.

Some people was keeping telling me that I need to do that and that about the game. And everything was accumulating in my head for a while for bigger picture.

In the end maybe this article would help to relieve and never come back to that game – as it usually working with plans when you sharing it and never complete because you are getting people reactions already and no need to finish project for that.

The picture starts giving me a tic

PUNCH should become universal game, consisting of different game modes. Ludum Dare original simple physics and controls should become a pillar, game law, rule if you want. It should be customizable, platform independent, who knows maybe even open-sourced in the end.

To find the game modes or other values, where I should to put my efforts, is one of the most difficult tasks I have. «Limited Resources» is my personal ludum dare theme for whole life. Work smart, not hard, people saying. Anyway I'm trying just work, my minimal barrier. Low-key it called I think.

For now, the most clearest vision for nearest future I have, is having multiple modes, at least 3-in-1:

• original linear levels from compo version, it is already contains entities like bosses, bonus levels and learning curve;
• PvP arena, that is already released on itch.io and standalone downloadable/web version;
• infinite rogue-like or "survio" game mode, some prototyping already started on that direction.

And that's it, in short. Thank you for reading.

Well, after sharing all this thoughts I'm already feeling some relieve. I also felt relieve few days ago when I finally published PUNCH on GooglePlay that is kind of proof of concept for mobile version of the game that challenged some UX. And I was mentioning platform independence – ideally PUNCH mega app should be almost equally playable on mobile, desktop and console with it all game modes... Oh, my wet dreams.

Also coming with cool or fun titles is such a mind gum. You already saw PUNCH ARENA for PvP version. And so on: PUNCH MOBILE, PUNCH X, SECOND PUNCH, PUNCH BALLS etc.

PUNCH 2/II, when?