This was an interesting game jam because of the fact that my theme won. Although I didn't have any ideas for the theme. I was really hoping that one of my other themes would've won. Nature(one of the two) got 11th place.

My goal for this Alakajam was to make a game that was fun(placing high in gameplay). I somewhat failed at that because I made it too hard, although I still managed to get 4th in said category. I've been focusing on gane aesthetic for a while now, but this time I tried to do something different. I ended up placing 1st in graphics, so it seems like the graphics category is unrelated to the quality of the aesthetic in popular opinion. When it comes to aesthetic, my favorite game I've made was The Crushed Sky from the last Ludum Dare. I think the quality of the aesthetic can be seen in the mood category for the Ludum Dare. It would be really nice if aesthetic/mood were a theme in the AKJ.

What went well:

• the artwork
• visual fx
• mechanics

I think that the graphics were a clear success along with the visual fx. I think that I was capable of doing the visual fx better, but I didn't have very much time for it because I was busy on Sunday.

The mechanics felt really good in my opinion. I used a few platformer tricks to make everything feel nice. The one issue here is that the wall jumping system I used to make it a bit easier felt a bit unnatural to some people. A few people never figured out how wall jumping worked with my system even though it was clearly stated. I'm really not sure what a good way to do wall jumping is. The standard way would've resulted in a lot of pain in the fingers. One method that came to mind(which wouldn't work here) is how wall jumping works in something like King of Thieves where you just tap to wall jump. This relies on automatic movement, so it wouldn't be usable in a game like Lollipop Ninja.

What went poorly:

• level design
• music
• mechanics

The level design was obviously the biggest flaw here. Even though all the levels were linear, people would accidentally backtrack by dropping down to places they've been. It seems that I overestimated people's ability to tell where they are in a level. If you only went to places you've never been, there's only one spot in the game where there's a split path. Although if you look at it for a bit you can tell where you're supposed to go. @Aurel300 said that having to move so much makes it so you panic and can't pay attention to where you're going. I think there are some more subtle tricks I could use to show the player where to go though. One trick I plan on using in the update I'm working on is camera movement. For example: using the camera to show where you're heading.

The music was kind of a failure because I was too tired to figure anything out for it. I was working on it at like 4AM because I was running out of time, so I came up with some sort of drum track that gets played really quietly. I'm not sure what type of music would even make sense for a game like this. There's stealth and ninjas, but it also has a lighter mood because of the lollipops and the art style.

The final issue was with how the vision worked. The vision lines were slightly off(going from a bit up and to the left of the eyes of the people). Those still worked fine for the most part. The real issue was that you couldn't really tell where people were staring at you from. I assumed that since you could just go invisible and then hide in a smoke bomb that it wouldn't be a problem, but a lot of people would panic and not think to press X. This was something I fixed in the update I'm working on with vision lines.

Overall the game did pretty well. Even with its flaws, the people outside of the Alakajam thought it was very good(especially in the Pygame community). It maintains a 4.2 to a 4.6 out of 5 rating on Gamejolt and has been downloaded almost 1,800 times(this is after a couple weeks).

Try Lollipop Ninja Here

See ya'll next AKJ/LD!

I'm really happy with how Lollipop Ninja turned out. It's doing really well right now as it has reached 600 downloads already. I'm thinking about working on a post jam version, so please give me suggestions for what I should add if you check out my game. ^-^

GIFYGIFEROO:

Planned additions for the update:
-more polish and a stare indicator that shows where a stare is coming from(you can still get by fine without it just by going invisible if you don't know where it's coming from)
-timers for speed running as I myself would like to speedrun the game
-more levels(I'd probably add some levels between 4 and 5 and put 7 before 6 plus add a ton more levels after 7).
-movement tweaking to make it feel even better
-possibly fullscreen support
-saving

Please check out Lollipop Ninja!

It's availible for Windows and the source is in Python 3.x with Pygame, so you may be able to run it on Linux.

The game works with a controller too. ^-^

I need to make more levels then I'll just have polish and music left…

I've been making some pretty good sounds with my mouth:
click me

Also, a UFO crashed.

I have the base of my game done. I can make levels and eye candy for the next 27 hours. :D

After 12 hours I've already got this:

^-^

I spent a few hours on making sure movement felt as good as possible. I used some rather weird tricks to make wall jumping easy and easy to figure out(hold down 1 arrow key while spamming jump, you don't have to switch).

The ninja is only 10 images(technically 11, but the 11th one isn't shown in this gif).

Please tell me what you think! ^-^

EDIT:

I added a lollipop.

This will be my 8th 48 hour game jam. I've entered every Ludum Dare since 35 and the first Alakajam.

What I'm using:

• Python with Pygame as the graphics library(so no game engine)
• MS Paint/Px Editor(my own pixel art animation tool)
• Bosca Ceoil
• SFXR

My last Alakajam entry(Alchemic Archer):

While I think I did pretty well on the art for this game, but there were a ton of design issues that needed fixing.

My last Ludum Dare entry(The Crushed Sky):

This game did very well in graphics and mood, but once again the game was mostly just good looking. Although, that was what I was aiming for…

I'm hoping to make a game that is fun this time instead of a game with a good aesthetic like my previois two game jam games. I'm gonna aim for the top 10% in at least one category. ^-^

I was supposed to be practicing my skills in making music, but recently I've just been having fun with pixel art. >.>
This is something I'm working on right now:

Anyway, good luck and have fun!

I've been distracted by some other games. My attention span for making games isn't very long, so I lost interest in the project for the Kajam pretty fast. ._.

Distraction #1(making a pokemon game from the ground up):

Distraction #2(messing around with perlin noise):
https://twitter.com/DaFluffyPotato/status/928466402633232386

Distraction #3(making an online co-op shooter roguelike):
https://twitter.com/DaFluffyPotato/status/929481927756861440

I don't think these long game jams are a good idea for me, I switch projects constantly, so it's hard for me to actually care about a single project for that long. There have only been 3 games I've made that I never lost interest in developing for more than a month, and I've been making games for 4 years. 48 hour game jams are perfect for me though! ^-^

I'm looking forward to the next Alakajam! and I'll probably see some of you during Ludum Dare #40.

This is where I stopped on the project(also in my last post):

EDIT:
Just finished the first and second levels. There will be an actual enemy in the third level though.

(older post)
Now that I've finished my level editor, I've started working on the actual game! ^-^