A week or two ago I decided to join TrueValhalla in the 555 Challenge. The challenge was to make 5 HTML5 games in 5 days.
Boy, was it difficult. The challenge was designed to teach the devs how to find a simple idea, prototype it, and polish it into something playable in less than 24 hours. This last step is what killed me, I could never get the polish on before the time limit.
Day 1: The Line
This was my only completed game, it is a simple puzzle game designed to require minimal user input. You are only allowed to press one button, once for this game. You can play it over at the prototypes/experiments part of the site.
Day 2: Utter failure
Day 2 I ended up having to stay late at work and by the time I got home I didn’t care enough to make anything playable.
Day 3: Speedi Mathias:
On the third day I made a running game with a unique art style. Some of the parallax stuff gave me some problems, so the game is a bit unpolished, but it is playable. In the future I plan to add in high scores that you can post to twitter, and fix the graphic glitches.
Play Speedi Mathias
Day 4: 60min
On the fourth day I was under a heavy time constraint due to work so I gave myself only 60 minutes to work on a quick shooter based on shapes. It is playable, but needs some balance. If I ever get a highscore system going, this game will support it too.
Play 60min
Day 5: Nada
On day five I actually needed to attend a surgery. (Not mine, don’t worry. It was a work thing again)
After the five days I learned a lot about my game dev style. I am hoping to use this knowledge to improve. For the 555 challenge I used my own custom HTML5 game engine, and developing a wide range of games with it highlighted all of the small issues I had not noticed. I also found that I want to create a highscore system for future use. Finally, I want to get better at this polish thing.
There were a couple other devs doing the challenge at the same time and I recommend that you check them out:
TrueValhalla
Oracizan
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