Friday Night Funkin' (Ludum Dare Prototype)
The Ludum Dare Prototype of Friday Night Funkin' is the first and original build of the game originally made for Ludum Dare 47, a game jam event hosted in October of 2020. It was programmed by ninjamuffin99 with a soundtrack by Kawai Sprite and artwork by PhantomArcade and evilsk8r. It was released on the 5th of October, 2020 and is still playable on its Itch.io page. This version can also be downloaded on Windows, Mac and Linux.
The premise of the game is the same as in later builds: the player plays as the main character Boyfriend, who is trying to get approval from Daddy Dearest to date Girlfriend who greatly disapproves of their relationship. The father challenges Boyfriend to a rap battle in order to prove himself worthy to date his daughter with the intent of killing him should he fail.
Differences from the Prototype
Start Screen
The prototype had a very simple main menu screen of the brick wall background from the levels in the game with the old Friday Night Funkin' logo made by evilsk8r going up and down. The menu theme, Start Screen (Itch.io Build), would only play once, leaving the start screen silent after it finishes until players pressed the enter key to start. This would play the ending to the start screen theme, but gets cut off about halfway before transitioning into the game.
The start screen would receive a massive overhaul with its Newgrounds release with an intro sequence with opening credits, an updated logo, a new menu theme and a proper main menu screen after pressing enter.
Gameplay
Players play as Boyfriend, the protagonist, who is facing off against Daddy Dearest, the antagonist, in a singing battle. Girlfriend, Daddy Dearest's daughter and Boyfriend's romantic partner, watches the battle between them on some purple blocks while bopping her head to the song. The battle takes place on a stage.
The theme of Ludum Dare 47, Stuck in a Loop, is somewhat apparent with the gameplay: the antagonist always starts the song first, hitting a pattern of notes. The player must then repeat back the same set of notes. This continues until the end of the track.
The first level uses the song Bopeebo. Given its simplicity, the track eases players in and allow them to get a grasp of the game's controls and its gameplay loop. The track doesn't seem to have been mapped in its entirety as a portion near the end is empty, leaving players to wait until the next level started. During the track, Boyfriend would perform his V-sign pose at the end of his set of notes.
The second and final level uses the song, Fresh. This track would serve to challenge players a bit more with denser sets of notes being thrown their way. This track was fully mapped. During the track, Boyfriend would also perform his V-sign pose but it was a lot more buggy in execution since it can sometimes come out too early and get cut off by another note.
After the second track is complete, players are sent back to the start screen menu.
At the time, weeks were not yet a feature of the game and there were only two levels for the game. Dadbattle nor Tutorial were made for the game yet. Girlfriend, as stated earlier, sat on some very basic purple blocks but would later sit on speakers after a fan's suggestion on Twitter. The background for those levels remain untouched in current builds. Boyfriend's V-sign pose would be removed from Fresh, leaving Bopeebo the only track to have him perform that pose up until update 0.2.8. which would later add it to the tutorial as well.
Game Over Screen
Upon losing, a transition would lead to a black screen with the word "Lose..." crashing down and the word "Restart?" very slowly floating up and down. The level's music would switch to their instrumentals and continuously play them on a loop. Players restart the level after pressing the enter key.
With the Newgrounds release, the Game Over screen would be changed drastically with the screen being replaced with Boyfriend having his skeleton suddenly appear visible with cracks all over and two pulsating blue spheres located around his groin. After unceremoniously dropping his mic, his brain would appear as well, shaped as the word "Retry" while the Game Over music plays. His brain and blue balls pulse to the music and his hands continuously twitch. Players have the option to retry, which would play a short animation of his brain flashing, or quit and go back into the menu.
Pause Screen
The game did not have a pause screen or an in-game menu of any kind. The only way to pause the game was to click out of the game's window.
A proper menu with options and its own music track were added in the Newgrounds release.
Controls
The controls function the same as to how it works with the current builds of the game: use the WASD/arrow keys to hit the notes. Volume controls were also present: use the - and + keys to lower or raise the volume, and use 0 to mute the game.
The key for instantly triggering a Game Over (R) was not in the game until the Newgrounds release. As stated earlier, there were no buttons for menus.
Health Bar
The health bar functions the same way as it does in the current builds of the game. However, penalties for missing notes were much harsher comparatively, with health loss being almost double compared to now. Boyfriend’s character icon on the health bar would remain the same until later builds eventually replaced it with one that better matched his in-game appearance.
Boyfriend's old character icon can still be seen in current builds of the game after the update that changed it by simply pressing the 9 key.
Combo
Combos used to function differently. After a set of notes, a message would appear next to the word "combo" along with a set of numbers representing the amount of notes hit. This also meant that hold notes were tracked differently as they were counted as multiple notes rather than a single note like it does now.
The Newgrounds release would change it to instead track the number of times players hit notes without missing. Hold notes were changed to only be counted as a single note. However, much like it is was before, it is just an aesthetic feature.
Score
The prototype of the game did not have any sort of traditional score counter. This feature was added some time after the Newgrounds release of the game. The messages from the combo system (Sick!!, Good!, Bad, Shit) would be repurposed as a visual for players to know how well they hit notes, with the positive messages granting a high amount of points and the negative ones granting a low amount of points.
Notes
- Many of the assets from the prototype have now gone unused and can be found here.
es:Friday Night Funkin' (Prototipo Ludum Dare) ru:Ludum_Dare_Prototype