You can play YoTowlr here in your browser

In the two hours leading up to the beginning of Ludum Dare 14 I decided to do a towlr compo warm-up to get the coding juices flowing ahead of the big theme announcement.  I posted my intention in the LD IRC channel and a few other developers signed on as well for the friendly towlr warm-up.

One of the themes on the list for voting for LD14 was Recursion (specifically, Yo Dawg!) which by a weird glitch had actually made it into the 5th and final round of LD14 theme voting.  No one thought this theme would make it that far yet alone have a chance at winning.  It was with that in mind that I decided to do a towlr game on the recursive yo dawg meme which had been already making the rounds on the LD blog.

I had actually not encountered the yo dawg phenomenon yet by some miraculous aligning of the internet planets.  Members of the LD community were happy to fill me in through with some very informative links.

For those of you not familiar with what the heck a towlr is well that is hard to explain as well as they are better experienced.  It was something that came from a previous Ludum Dare entry by PoV and since has gotten legs of its own.  Here is a snippet from the Towlr Media Group’s website:

Towlr are puzzles. Contrary to conventional design wisdom, the towlr games come without instruction and without explanation. Your job is to discover their secret, and score deliciousness. Yes, every Towlr game can be completed.

Towlr are complete audio/visual experiences. They should be played with sound at a reasonable level, and computer monitors turned on.

Towlr may frustrate you. This is normal.

I instantly fell in love with the bizarre and frustrating experience that was towlr.  So, when looking for something to warm up on ahead of LD14 I felt it was only natural that I combine Yo Dawg with Towlr and thus YoTowlr was born!

I spent the weekend competing in the tri-annual Ludum Dare 48 hour game competition.  This was the 14th competition the site has hosted and there was a record turn-out!  121 games where created and submitted in a 48  hour period.  The theme was Advancing Wall of Doom. This theme was picked by the community through a system of voting during the week leading up to the competition.  Once the theme was announced on Friday night participants had 48 hours to create an entire game from scratch.  All content had to be produced by the participant during the competition.  The event ran from Friday night on April 17th through Sunday night on April 19th, 2009.

Fleedom is the game I managed to finish as my entry.  It is a Flash game so you can play it in your browser here. I’m fairly happy with how it turned out think it is a great base prototype for further improving into a really great game.  I will continue to work on it and turn this prototype into a finished Flash game.  I won’t know the final results for two weeks on how it did but the competition is so much fun that the results aren’t really the point.  I have participated now in about 5 or 6 of these 48 hr Ludum Dare competitions and I am the most happy with this game than any of my past ones.  I actually enjoy playing this one a lot so that is a good sign indeed. Creating a game in under 48 hours can teach you a lot about game design.

One of the last Ludum Dare contests I entered was a smaller version called a “Mini” Ludum Dare.  These happen in the 9 off-months that aren’t hosting a normal Ludum Dare.  They are hosted by veterans of the LD community and can have customized house-rules depending on the host.  A prototype I created for the theme Cryptozoology eventually became my first published Flash game TurnStyle.  So, I hope to take Fleedom Flies into a similar published future.