I woke up from a nap at 3:30PM and jumped on ldjam.com to check the theme. “Start with nothing.” 30 minutes into the competition, I fired up Atom, and opened the love2d wiki.

I had a perfect idea. Kasane Teto starts with nothing. Just like she did when she was created. No friends. People thought she was a joke. She had to sing her heart out until she was accepted as a UTAU. With this in mind, I thought I’d make a one song rhythm game featuring a chibi Teto in the lower right. As the player hits their arrow keys to the beat and successfully progresses through the song, Teto wins friends. Other UTAU and VOCALOIDs would begin to appear and join chibi Teto.

I have not done much work with Love2d. I spent about an hour figuring out how to animate a damn sprite sheet. I quickly realized something I tend to realize every Ludum Dare– I don’t like coding video games.

I usually stick to the game creation suite Stencyl. That’s how I made one of my most interesting games, a johnyboz parody cyber monday clicker (https://github.com/insanity54/johnyboz)

I have to have a perfect vision to stay with it long enough to finish a game. I’m just not feeling the Project DIVA clone at the moment. I think most game devs make games they would like to play themselves. The only games I play anymore are Squad and Project DIVA. I don’t want to make a crappy clone of a game I already play.

If I make a game, it has to be unique. My favorite game creation to date is AGENTS of DECTILE: The Rotchford Incident (https://github.com/insanity54/ld36). I love the story’s atmosphere. Too bad it was a CLI game with a terrible story and much too difficult gameplay!

What do I do now? I’m not feeling motivated, even though the clock is ticking. What is my vision? What can I make that is unique and a game I would actually want to play? I could remake Agents of DECTILE. That has been a thought for several Ludum Dare jams. Another thought is to ponder the topic until I have some sort of inspiration. That seems like the best idea at the moment.

Excelsior!