We are back! Woo woo! :train:

Also, happy spooky month! We're finally doing an October event in October! :ghost:

Please excuse the mess, any little glitches you may notice here and on https://ludumdare.com. :sweat:

Final Round Theme Voting

Is that an echo I hear? Perhaps I'm having deja vu?

Final Round Theme Voting has kicked off! Cast your votes here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/theme

Invitation code

If you're new and you don't yet have an account, use the activation code Welcome2LD56 during sign-up. Join us! :smile:

Upcoming events

Dates for Ludum Dare 57 (April 2025) and 58 (October 2025) to be announced soon. :trophy:

Hey Mike! What's up? How's it going?

Hi uh, hello! :sweat_smile:

As some folks know I started a company a couple years back (Interactive Snacks Limited), then pivoted that company into something focused on supporting Ludum Dare, all in an attempt to make running things a bit more sustainable. This was during the early COVID-19 lockdowns, some months after I left my previous job at "Tiny Titan Studios". At the time I'd intended to "get out" of video game development, but when all of my work leads started drying up due to impending lockdowns, it made sense to me to just "do my own thing" in lieu of finding a stable paycheck.

Reaching a point where we would officially accept sponsorships was so incredibly nerve wracking, we'd gone nearly 20 years without it, keeping the lights on via the generous support from my Patreon backers and Paypal donors. Special nod to Tom Fulp and Markus for their especially generous contributions. :heart:

Nerves be damned, we finally did it! Ludum Dare accepted its first sponsors for the October 2022 event! :fireworks:

Lifestyle wise this was a big deal, as the company could now offer my wife and I (my fiance at the time) health benefits. Not to bore you with politics, but in Canada, while it's true we have "universal healthcare", dental and many medications do still need to be paid for out of pocket. There's often talk about widening the benefits offered to Canadians, but these things move at the speed of politics, so the average Canadian is in a better place with additional health coverage (AKA benefits).

Now that I was effectively paying for benefits (well, the company was paying for them), I felt obligated to use them. Most importantly my wife pushed me to seek treatment for my ADHD, among other things. In hindsight, I only regret not doing it sooner. :sweat_smile:

How am I doing? Mental health wise today, really great, but that's an even longer story. :slight_smile:

What's not doing well however is the company, and honestly that's okay.

Frankly I'm awful at asking for money. Despite it being obvious to some, I struggle to see what I do here as "worth paying to sponsor", so I feel super uncomfortable reaching out to companies. Of course I've done it a few times, successfully I might add, but I die a little inside every time I do it. I tell myself that once I fix items X, Y, and Z from the infinite todo-list, that I'll feel better about it, but I forgot about item "W" and I need to drop everything and focus on that. :sweat:

I make stuff, and I'm happiest when I'm making. If you're a regular, you're probably the same. Doing paperwork and networking is the last thing most of want to spend our time doing.

So earlier in the year, the company ran out of money. This wasn't the fault of anyone but my own. I was extremely unhappy playing the "beg for money game", so I let it happen. I'd never tried it, but funny thing, if you stop paying your bills, things stop working. :sweat_smile:

While I've resolved most of the issues, if you're curious why the Twitch streaming widget in the sidebar is broken, that's why: CloudFlare nuked our DNS configuration once the domain defaulted. Similarly, Ludum Dare's Mastodon server went dark when the credit card payments started bouncing. :sweat:

Luckily, without ever mentioning things with the company were in trouble, GameMaker swooped in and offered us a really easy sponsorship. Not only did I love that they were shaking up their business model, that deal gave us more than enough to pay off the companies outstanding debts. All that's left is to properly shutter the company, gut the mentions and references from the Ludum Dare websites, and to decide what I do next.

Weirdly, there's not really any reason for me to stop running events, so yes Ludum Dare will continue into 2025! I have some tentative dates for our April and October events, but I need to double/triple check them first, and I'm juggling a few different things right now.

One of those things is finding work for myself.

As mentioned I've been looking to "get away" from game development, but to clarify I'm looking to find work outside of the trenches building games. Working in tools/middleware is something I'd be happy to do. That's actually my professional niche anyway: Low level, system and workflow/toolchain development, Linux stuff, etc. Hearing the news that the Godot foundation was hiring, I'll admit that was something we pursued. Alas, it was a tricky situation, as even though I'm interested I'm almost disgustingly overqualified. They honestly do have a fair budget to hire someone, but I'm an elder in these spaces at 44 (sorry for the call-out fellow olds), having jumped from risky venture to risky venture without a financial win, having burned through my savings, that frankly I do need to choose gigs that pay well enough I can save for retirement (buying a house is out of the question now, thanks a lot Ford).

At the moment I'm doing a small graphic design gig for a friend :slight_smile:, one I'm hoping to wrap-up next week so I can get back to applying for interesting jobs as a weirdo overqualified systems nerd. :yum:

So that's where I'm at, why things are a little messy here. :slight_smile:

The fact that so many of you keep coming back, keep sharing your stories and successes warms my heart. It's a thrill and my honour to continue to keep this olde bucket kicking, even if all it does is kick. :blush:

Thanks for reading, and indulging the writer in me once again. :smile:

If you haven't done so already, go vote in the Final Round Theme Vote!! :ballot_box:

PS: My sincerest apologies for the mentions of things like "See Twitter for announcements" and invitation codes spread across the website. The Brazil thing happened a bit too recently, but if you need an invite code code, read above!