how i tried to make this demo game

So during LÖVE2D JAM 2025 i decided to do a simple looking iddle like rpg game for fun! The idea is straightforward. Maximus got a letter from king about princess being kidnapped again. So he needs to travel the land with friends that he finds and defeat all the obstacles either by sword or wits. But, the idea proved difficult enough for me to finish it in time at least to the princess quest. And this is why it failed.

1.Code I really invented and small upgrade for the API to make objects faster and assemble it as an puzzle like definitions of rooms, enemies, items, skills. This was done, with few mistakes and code hogwashing. I can tell that the object definitions are good done and the folders are nice organized. In the folders there are files that i use as object definition, animation images (no splitting textures this time) and animation.txt definitions that tell me how the animation looks like. Everything is done so, that i put less code into the game and stay in touch with the story. But it proved hard to the IDE which has no idea what every object.lua is connected to when using folders as names for enemies.

2.Inventory This one i did not finish and the story ends on the troll bridge where you are unable tell how much money you have to pay the troll. So no inventory even for potions and upgrades on armor/weapon kind. Not done at all. Had some sort of radial menus in code that i put into the screen when player is touched.

3.Graphics I’aint no graphics master to do the style correctly till the end. Each room is painted by hand on 192x72 px resolution that is so low rez i almost cry how hard is to make it look good. But in the end i can tell i had no reason to solve any collisions or use any tiled editors to break my taste to finish it in time needed. Also the font is home made by my hands so it is unique and really small resolution using outline even.

4.Fight Ugh, it is not finished and it does not look good. How hard it was? Harder as cooking spaghetti for 10 people. The annoying bugs when switching states and it still does not know how to heal other friendly character on screen or do a many at once fireball. Yet the healer and mage is prepared to join the party of four adventures.

5.Dialogs They are simple text lines i put when entering screen into a queue like list. When player wants he will read it by clicking or skipping the dialog when there are waypoints visible on screen which i think was a nice touch to the game to not provoke players to read the messages everytime the screen is visited. ** 6.Compilation** The game is surely exported to a html or a mobile. On html you can not save and this is not wanted so it would be just a demo to watch and try. On mobile i expected later when more story was done that i could sell it for profit and it looks nice and uses only touch to respond to dialogs, fights and inventory.

7.Expectations And what did i expected from the JAM? To win of course at least an RASPBERRY PIE ZERO for doing more games on this small computer. What a nice machine btw.

8.What i loved on this project The most loving thing was that i do not need to make animations for walking, beating and dying. So just few iddle and death like frames to at least look cool. And no collisions, this thing does not walk in Mordor it will skip screen by screen to finish the level after beating each screen enemy. To get experiences you just need to walk around and not think about the story unless you face a monster which needs an item hard to find during loot drop phase or hidden somewhere on a lonely misty perhaps like place in the game.