Who else is excited for Ludum Dare 57!? I know I am. I've lost count of exactly how many times I've done this, but I can see at least 15 Ludum Dare repositories in my GitHub. Looking back, I am incredibly proud of what I've done in that time.

The first game I did was probably lost to time, but the first I can find was Ludum Dare 34. That was "Bouncy Blob" - a flappy-bird inspired game about bouncing a blob through a bunch of obstacles (https://github.com/seurimas/ludumdare34). "Two Button Controls" and "Growing" were apparently the theme, so you would grow your blob with one button (sending you towards the ground faster) and you could dash with another. It was full of a bunch of cute details I sometimes forget to make time for in modern Ludum Dares.

A few jams later, I tackled Ludum Dare 39 with "Mystic Power". The theme was "Running Out of Power", and you would have spells that ran out fairly quickly (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mystic-power). It wasn't the best game, but it was a fun exploration of using the Elm programming language for game development.

Now firmly in the modern Ludum Dare era, Ludum Dare 47 was "Stuck in a Round". Very close to the theme of "Stuck in a loop", the conceit was that you were stuck in a "Round", a style of repetitive music (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/stuck-in-a-round). You'd have to run around and grab a scale of notes while the songs played obstacles raining down upon you. This was the first game where I really tried to lock in with the scope, and I think the results were pretty clean.

I did some Jams over the years, but, mostly, I've stuck to the Compo. I get some really cool games I'm proud of in these past 5 years: LD49 Kinetic Space Mining was pretty clever and complete (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/kinetic-space-mining); LD51 10 Second Tower Defense got my best Fun score at #67 (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/10-second-tower-defense-1); LD53 I impressed some people with an innovative runes system in Signs of Corruption (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/signs-of-corruption); and LD55 my auto-chess battler, Summoner Chess, got my best Overall score at #147 (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/summoner-chess).

I'm not sure what I'm doing for Ludum Dare 57. Sometimes, I go into a Ludum Dare with a mechanic I really want to use (the runes in Signs of Corruption), or a genre to explore (auto-chess for Summoner Chess), or just a library to kick the tires on (physics in Amethyst for Kinetic Space Mining). Some of that kind of thinking has been kicking around in my head lately, particularly with a few new tools in my toolkit I'd like to showoff. Looking back on this history, though, I just want to make a cool game I can be proud of. Here's hoping it's a great jam, for me and all of you!