..

Play at http://finegamedesign.com/dotdot

By Ethan Kennerly

A game jam with the theme voted for "Connected Worlds" during Ludum Dare 30 (Weekend of August 22 to August 24)

Post compo features:

• Score.
• Tuned illustrations.
• Connect animation and musical notes from a song by Jade Brewer.
• New name ".." (DotDot).

Playtesters: Diana Salles, Jennifer Russ, Bethany.
Post compo playtesters: Anders, Aubrey, Kerry. Inspired by conversation with Matt and Diana at http://themade.org

Post-mortem

What went right:

• Memorizing: Dots to connect is surprisingly challenging even at your own pace.
• No words: Matt suggested connect the dots and Diana had ideas about constellations. Jennifer and Beth also playtested, which clarified the tutorial. No words needed to play.
• Drawing: Exported Flash drawings to Adobe Illustrator format and wrote a Python script to parse them into a JSON-like object. Clean separation of model and view.

What went wrong:

• A bug that showed another drawing after the end of the game cost hours.
• Wasn't satisfied with 8-bit sounds, so didn't add sounds post-compo version.
• Dots were too exact until post-compo version.
• Wasn't clear about a scoring system until the post-compo version.

Built With

• actionscript
• javascript
• lua
• python
• viml