I initially thought I would be working alone for this jam, but during a tour of local tech companies, I ran into a friend of mine and discovered that he, too, was interested in participating in Ludum Dare this time around. Since we had teamed up before, we decided to do so again.

Ludum Dare, when in teams, is a 72-hour jam. I did not realize this at first. As such I was scrambling for an idea and features that would fit a 48-hour scope. With jams, I tend to reach for simple and sweet. In other words, old flash games are a large part of my inspiration. They have a relatively short and repeatable game loop, so if the gameplay is sufficiently different each time, you can get a lot of mileage out of it. I went for a simple “Eat and Grow” idea, with some flair. The name “Gobble Ghost!” came into being.

The errant scramble for time ended up being great for the game, as we could dedicate that last day to polish and fix features. We also did not get the full 72 hours to work, so ultimately I’m pretty proud of what we accomplished. Thanks to some mutual contacts we were able to get adorable art and Halloween-y sounds, which makes a much better experience for a game like ours.

Here is a link to the jam page. The web link to play it can be found under the “Download and Links” header. Or, to skip exposition, you can play it directly on my site.