If you graduated in computer science or computer engineering, you have, at least once, thought about writing a computer game.

And if you are like most people, and like me, you never went through with that idea. What a shame, I know how it feels.

But this weekend, I was vindicated. I decided to plunge into the Ludum Dare. The Ludum dare (or LD48 as it is also know), is an open challenge to develop a game in 48 hours. The game must be done from scratch: code, graphics, sounds, everything. Also, each edition has a theme, that should be followed. The theme this time was “Alone”.

Since I’ve never completed a game before (and I suck at GUI programming), I was not very confident that I would be able to complete the dare. Fortunately, that was not the case at all. Not only I completed my game, but I was also rather proud of it, given the constraints, and I also got very excited about the whole LD48 community.

I think one of the big things that helped me along was having a friend do the dare with me. My Milked Eek, from the Mafia Scum Forums, participated in the Dare too, and we would exchange messages every time we had a problem, or reached a milestone, or just had a lol-worthy thought. That helped me keep my motivation up in those 48 hours.

It was a great experience. I managed to learn a lot about Java, and about Slick, the gaming library that I used. I gained a lot of confidence in my programming skills. And I made a game! I made a gaaaameeee :-)

So, here are some links:

Maze Explorers, my Ludum dare entry. You run it with Java. Works in Linux/Mac/Windows

A time lapse video of me making the game

Courage Quest, a fantastic entry for this edition of the LD48. If I didn’t tell you, you couldn’t say that this game was made in 48 hours.

Stay tuned!