Ludum Dare 48 April 24–27, 2021

Post Jam update

Thanks again to everyone who played and rated Crashdown during the rating period. During that same time we've been taking notes of your feedback and making an updated, more polished version of the Ludum Dare prototype. This project was a ton of fun, and we all learned a ton. If you get a chance, please check out our version 1.1 and let us know what you think. You can also follow us on twitter to see whatever we all end up doing next!

https://koboldskeep.itch.io/crashdown/devlog/255315/post-jam-version-11-is-out

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Red Stranding Post-mortem

Well this LD was certainly a ride!

Intro

Our game was a Strand-like, meaning that players can partially see each other's changes to the world. The core gameplay is simple open-world exploration, arranged in a highly linear fashion moving from north to south.

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Scoring

Check out our results here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/red-stranding

We didn't very high ratings, and we think we know the reasons.

  1. We simply didn't finish everything we wanted. The game is very incomplete, and it's obvious while playing.
  2. The artwork is kinda ugly. We didn't have a lot of time to polish the graphics or sprites or anything.
  3. The new player experience is very poor. This is elaborated in the Data Analysis section below.

Data Analysis

Since our game connects players to each other via a database, we can see rough analytics about playtime and completion rate.

Note: We gave players the option to play offline, and some did choose to do so, so these numbers do not include those players.

  • 64 total players
  • 24 made it past day 10
  • 6 players (other than us) made it to the goal, Grandma's House
  • 22 players never made it past day 3

Day 10 is important to us, because that's when a player becomes maximally connected to the other players. It's a gradual process that starts with zero connectivity on day 1.

So, from these numbers, we can see that about 1/3 of all players likely never encountered another player's effects! Given that this is the core premise of our game, this is quite bad.

However, about 1/3 of all players did make it past day 10.

Special thanks to @ruruie, @cievers, @gcake, @wouter52, and @jitspoe for providing key feedback and testing the game to its full extent!

New Player Experience

Given the data above, and from watching people play our game, we can safely say that the new player experience was quite bad. We probably lost a lot of people early on, who never got to see the Strand-like features. Our ratings almost certainly suffered due to this.

So, what could we have done?

A way to showcase the game's features during the first minute of gameplay would have been nice. We have considered a few options:

  • Have an area near the starting house that always shows changes from all players, kinda like a shared sandbox area. This would give players a chance to try out the online features without breaking the game's balance.
  • Introduce an item to the game, available from the start, that boosts the player's connectivity rate to the maximum for a day. This would ensure that everyone trying the game for only a minute or two would get to experience the full effects of the online system.
  • Do a better job of explaining things in-game. Players who didn't fully understand the online system seemed to become simply confused whenever another player's structure became visible to them.

Cut Features

Time was not friendly to us this LD. We didn't meet a lot of our goals.

  • We were planning on having a much larger open world to explore. This was by far the most ambitious part of the project. This did not get finished at all. We completely ran out of time and had to implement the entire level in just a few hours.
  • We were planning on having more structures and movement abilities that would help traverse the landscape more easily.
  • Enemy AI was cut entirely, and the enemies just move straight towards you. This was primarily due to limitations in Godot's tilemap-based pathfinding support.

Future Plans!!

Yes, we're planning to continue working on this game.

In fact, we've already started working on our first post-jam version, which we plan on releasing in the near future.

Here's a sneak peak of the updated visual style:

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If you are interested in playing this post-jam version, please follow the itch.io page, and join our new Discord server!

Discord Server

It's a bit empty right now, but we've made a community Discord server for the game. We intend to use this server as the primary source of feedback on the post-jam version of the game.

Join it here: https://discord.gg/wVXhx7CCQr

Grandma is waiting!

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Expanding on your LD game? Drop your socials so we can support each other! :D

I was one of the creators for "A Taste of the Past" and we are planning on releasing a full build sometime later in the summer! We'll be brushing up on some of the animations and narrative, as well as fixing bugs and implementing cute new features! :smile: :ramen:

I know a lot of you guys are planning on polishing your LD48 projects and I would love to send you all some love! Feel free to drop your game dev socials so we can follow each other through this process! :smiley:

If you're interested, here's our socials: Discord Twitter

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A new updated version and my personal summary

I updated a new version. Mainly added sound effects and some suggestive stuffs.

Also added a copyright-free music as BGM.

GamePage:https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/digaway 屏幕截图(11).png As my first entry, Ludum Dare was as interesting as I thought.

I learned a lot from it. I hope I can do better next time and give feedback to more games (and learn English better!).

Thanks again to everyone who played and rated my game :)

Aftermath v2.1.1 Is (Almost) Live!

The Linux32 and Linux64 builds are downloading right now, but once they're done I'll have Aftermath v2.1.1 up and running! (If anyone actually cares to try my Compo submission's new version)

The list of improvements currently is:

  • Made the text actually readable (sorry about v1.1.1)
  • Added randomly generated stars to the background of the world so the sky isn't boring, and it's different every time you play! ✨✨
  • Made a better walking animation (still my artistic weakness)
  • Added backgrounds to each of the endings
  • Flashback images for a slightly more immersive experience, sarcastic yay
  • I took out that incredibly stupid 10 second decision timer and made the text advance on input, not every X seconds
  • A couple of very minor art changes you probably won't notice unless your screen is 480p, meaning the game will be at the intended resolution instead of upscaled
  • Now that the protagonist has a name (shoutout to @alprog), the story has been rewritten in third-person instead of first-person (there goes the RPG element, but at least a character of mine has a name for the first time ever 😄)
  • Much-needed bug fixes (no more falling off the edge of the world, sorry)
  • The source code file is actually somewhat comprehensible now, I added some //comments as I made adjustments
  • Added a credits screen you get to read after unlocking an ending
  • Probably more changes, but I'm too stupid to remember them all
  • Oh yeah, and I did some layering and texturing and stuff and now there's a fun lighting effect when you're near a burning house in the background. That's actually one of the originally planned features that got scrapped really quickly since I only managed to make it work for the first time a few days ago, when I was working on the post-Jam "version" of last Ludum Dare's game

Yeah. The game was so incomplete since I intentionally overscoped that allllll of that is the improvements of one version. 😅

Since Ludum Dare 48 is over, I'm working on moving all of my projects to Itch.io, and this is only a fun project and not a commercial release game like the post-Jam game I'm working on for last LD's game, I'll only have the HTML5 version active for one more week, and the post-Compo version is currently download only! You can play it in your browser if you want, though, just download the source code and open it up in Construct 3. Even the new update is open source, have fun doing whatever the heck you want with it. (Don't steal my publisher name and logo, though. 😜)

If you actually want to play a game by someone who does everything themselves, meaning they're not incredibly talented in any areas at all,

You can play Aftermath v2.1.1 on Windows, MacOS, or Linux! (32- and 64-bit options available for Linux and Windows, since I try to support as many platforms as I can)

memories.io - A Post-Mortem

This LD was truly special for me because I did not think my game would resonate with anyone. I never expected it to do well in ratings, but I'm happily surprised I hit the top 10% in Audio and Mood. :v:

I tried to make an experimental art game. You know exactly what it is: the kind of game that you think "alright, it's a thing, but hot damn that dev is pretentious." I wanted to make a game that says something without an actual narrative, I wanted a symbolic game where the message is conveyed more by its mechanics than by words or story.

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I think I kinda succeeded? What I did succeed at is making a game that I consider finished, which is rare for a game jam. It holds on its own and found, even if meagre, some audience. I hope it inspires more people to try and tell stories via game mechanics and gameplay rather than relying on the usual narrative techniques from the other media. I think games are so unique in that they can truly be experienced. We have the chance of contributing to one of the youngest art medium, one of the most innovative and with so much room to grow and explore and figure out what games are. Let's not waste it, let's try new stuff, let's create and dream and continue to be absolute nerds about it all.

I especially wanted to thank the below for their support and their kind words. If you've enjoyed the game and want to support me further, please come watch the devlog and consider subscribing to my channel. It really does help.

https://youtu.be/O0YTtjdOuJk

@littlegamer - for sharing my game on the last day of ratings amongst their favourites. There were some truly amazing games in that selection and I'm honoured you included me. :star:

@judgezedd, @moski, @limbo, @tombuston, @not-as-artistic, @zhi, @c3ll256, @lelulagames - for really "getting it" and letting me know you did. i feel less alone now, thank you. :two_hearts:

@kevinworkman, @fatebreak, @goodwincek, @petrroll, @geckoo1337 - for your thoughtful feedback and observations. It means a lot that you took the time to dig and the care to help out. We need more devs like you. Thank you. :gift_heart:

@icoso, @giovannibarrottu, @rouge-dragon, @frogmen, @tauheed-game-dev, @felo07, @collin-visser, @woolchara, @wallkysek - I am pretty sure I owe you folks the Audio and Mood high rating, thank you. :heart:

@fictions, @liam, @zimny11, @virimine, @freezerbot, @the-neon-shark, @verygenuinecraze, @gao-ming, @phealsout - for getting lost with me in a sea of memories. Thank you. :heartpulse:

Made my first devlog!

Took a while but I finally made my devlog about my LD48 Game: Ninja Descension (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/ninja-descension)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sZkRe4oFXw

Game Reviews and Feedback - Mondays on twitch.tv/HonestDanGames

Got a game you're currently developing that you want feedback on?

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I stream game dev regularly on Twitch in my spare time. Every other Monday I host Honest Feedback - a stream dedicated to giving feedback to games that are actively being developed. The idea is to give feedback to games that are still in the development process that can feed into the games continued development. It isn't a "live" queue system like LD streams, but instead I select 3-4 games to give feedback on from the queue before each stream. I email the developer before hand too, in hope they can attend the stream as we give feedback.

For more information and to submit your game, visit the Submission Form!

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I'm extremely salty

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LD48 seemed like my best entry yet, but it has the worst ratings I've ever gotten for a completed game.

just wanted to vent. :slight_frown:

Sentiment Analysis of LD48 Comments

I've always been a bit skeptical about the usefulness of sentiment analysis, but Ludum Dare comments are basically reviews, which are essentially the canonical setting where sentiment analysis is supposed to be meaningful, so I figured it might be interesting to take a look at the sentiment of comments from LD48. I downloaded all comments via the ldjam.com api, and measured their sentiment using VADER via NLTK.

As you've probably already noticed, the vast majority of comments are positive:

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The average sentiment is 0.668 (where 1 is most positive, -1 is most negative, and 0 is neutral), and only 7.5% of comments are negative (sentiment < 0). The sentiment is slightly lower among anonymous comments, but even then the average sentiment is 0.336 and only 21.4% of comments are negative. Moreover, there are hardly any anonymous comments (only 112 out of 82973 comments, or about 0.13%, are anonymous).

So, given that comments are overwhelmingly positive, is sentiment (as measured by VADER) a meaningful measurement? Well, it does seem that the average sentiment of comments on a game is correlated with the game's final score:

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So there is a signal here, but it's not particularly strong. However, if we restrict our analysis to games with a larger number of comments, the correlation becomes a lot higher, presumably due to the Law of Large Numbers:

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For comparison, here are the correlations between the overall score and various category scores:

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So if you have a very large number of comments, VADER sentiment can be about as relevant to the overall score as people's actual numerical reviews in categories like Audio, Innovation, and Graphics. But for the vast majority of games (i.e. about 90% have less than 40 ratings) the signal is about as meaningful as the Humour score, which is the least important of all category scores.

Game title is too long so blog title must be long too but here only 80 charac...

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I just tried to have fun making jam game, but "No matter how deep you are I will find you and revenge my kitty" gets 14th place in humor and 99th in fun. I really happy about my work can make somebody smile or maybe even laugh.

So just want to say THANKS everybody who rated my game.

P.S. I really want to release this game in future, but here a very big work to do so I will be happy to get some extra feedback if you have 10 minutes to play my game.

LD game page

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My ratings (finally)

Format of ratings: x/x: (ranking as seen on website)/(estimated total games rated 20+ (in category you submitted to)) x%: (position in ratings, percentage form, with 100% being 1st place and 0% being last)

Note that the rating percentage is only a rough guess. ┌───────────┬───────────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┐ │ LD │ Game │ Overall │ Fun │ Innovation │ Theme │ Graphics │ Audio │ Humor │ Mood │ ├───────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ 44, jam │ The Healthy Gladiator │ 914/1169 - 22% │ 931/1169 - 20% │ 701/1169 - 40% │ 720/1169 - 38% │ 956/1169 - 18% │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ │ 45, jam │ Trick or Retreat │ 910/1189 - 23% │ 545/1189 - 54% │ 916/1189 - 23% │ 1038/1189 - 12% │ 938/1189 - 21% │ N/A │ 325/1189 - 72% │ 798/1189 - 33% │ │ 46, compo │ Beware the Dark │ 802/1288 - 37% │ 601/1288 - 53% │ 610/1288 - 52% │ 980/1288 - 24% │ 715/1288 - 44% │ 295/1288 - 77% │ N/A │ 111/1288 - 91% │ │ 47, compo │ Pi's Great Escape │ 559/ 712 - 21% │ 498/ 712 - 30% │ 328/ 712 - 54% │ 499/ 712 - 30% │ 533/ 712 - 25% │ 416/ 712 - 41% │ 217/ 712 - 69% │ 525/ 712 - 26% │ │ 48, compo │ Backwards Quest │ 742/1079 - 31% │ 721/1079 - 33% │ 440/1079 - 59% │ 782/1079 - 27% │ 760/1079 - 29% │ 441/1079 - 59% │ 228/1079 - 79% │ 596/1079 - 45% │ └───────────┴───────────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┘ (Made with https://github.com/LoneWolfHT/ld-results-history)

I seem to have beat my previous records in Innovation and Humor, my game was still incomplete too so I'm happy.

I tried to make a post-jam version but my idea was a little too ambitious considering the base Godot helpers I have in place right now. I have other bigger projects I must spend time one

Next time I'll try to lower my sights and prepare more code that'll get all the things like scene-state-persistence, proper scene-independent-data, and etc out of the way

Thanks to everyone who rated my game! I didn't return one rating because it was Windows-only and didn't work with WINE, they had 20+ ratings already though so I don't feel too bad

My Ludum History So Far!

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Kind of makes me nervous for the next one, but we'll see if we can maintain the pace haha By the way if anyone is interested in our ludum dare 48 game, u can try it on my page or check out the steam page there as well! Feel free to link any projects you guys are working on and i'll be happy to play them and leave a review

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"Post-ld" changes in Compo Winners?!

Even at the rate stage, I marked for myself some of the participants with "post-ld" fixes. In some cases, these were separate links, but many simply left one link to the game. And this does not apply to fatal blockers, but ordinary improvements and bug fixes. And, as it turned out, such works in fact can take a prize. I certainly do not want to talk about the quality of the games themselves, these are amazing works with cool ideas and implementation. But isn't this a direct violation of the most important rule of jam - time limits?

Personally, I spent some of the time fixing bugs, which I could spend on adding new functionality to the game. So that later, after the jam, you can calmly fix all the bugs and correct the balance. This can go very far.

Is a simple "changelog" really an excuse in this case? Do you often see this? Can an ordinary participant do something about this?

Dome Romantik Post Mortem

My Video4.gif Together with my wife Anne (who does all the sprites) i joined Ludum Dare a tenth time for LD48. We wanted to make a simple game that is polished and appealing, instead of something very experimental. We moved between both ends in the past, but we were so satisfied with how our LD46 Blackbird turned out (where we had the same “simple and polished” strategy), that we wanted to try it again. Back then it was out of necessity - we have our infant daughter at home whose care took a lot out of the day back then. Luckily, my mother was able to visit us this time to care for her, giving us more time to work.

Out we came with Dome Romantik, which is a small mining game where you mine resources and bring them back to your dome. There, you invest it into powerful upgrades and try to defend against the wave of monsters that arrives about every minute. Design wise, the focus was on smooth gameplay, upgrades that feel intense and useful as well as the goal conflict between mining and defending. This is all displayed in a minimalist, moody pixel art view of 320x180 pixels.

33.png Dome Romantik was a real surprise hit to us. On itch alone about 7.500 people played it. As is tradition, the web version also got “pirated” by some sites, so the player numbers are actually a bit higher. We ranked place 9 overall (despite having a high amount of ratings, which seems to harm the score slightly) which is our highest ever. So, let’s see first what went wrong here!

What went wrong

End Goal unclear

Many games don’t quite make it clear what the end goal is. Having it written in the games description or start screen is not enough - the players will forget, or at least some of them. I fell into this trap too - it’s not like i had time left to do it, but i would have prioritized it, if i had known the consequences. minimapexplain3x.png In Dome Romantiks case, i consider it especially harmful. The game is balanced to provide 10 or fewer minutes of fun, where you mine and most of the upgrades. When you get the last ones, the game becomes very easy - at that point you are supposed to drill down into the core of the planet and see the end screen. Quite some players didn’t do that, but kept on playing, eventually getting bored, wishing for more upgrades, weaker final upgrades, or a proper ending. That was a missed opportunity. I think this can only reliably “delivered” to the player, if it appears ingame at the right time, and not through a text or panel at the start or pause menu. Did you find an elegant way to incorporate the push into an actual end in your game?

No Music

I opted for a old school sound scape and tried to find fitting, free music for this. I spent maybe 2 hours doing that, but didn’t find anything that would fit the very low energy mood of the game. I put in some ambience noise, and that was it. After the rating phase ended, the great @cameron-paxton made some amazing tracks that really elevate the mood. Having him on board would have been great, both saving time and improving the game a lot - music is so powerful.

Cut Content

I lost about 6 hours (15% of the available time) due to having external meetings for work and for the “long night of computer games”, a stream event where we were invited with our previous game-jam-entry-turned-full-game Of Mice and Moggies. I enjoyed being there, but i lost quite some time which led to the cutting of a dearly missed element: the flying monster. Originally, we had the idea of adding two walking and two flying monsters, to attack the dome. We ended up with only one walking monster in total, which made the combat a bit simplistic. Many people suggested a flying monster, which was right on track. But it came down to having the flying monster or having sound, so the decision was clear for me. double.gif the flying monster and double laser we released after the rating phase ended

Web Build

I exported Dome Romantik natively for all 3 major OS and for the browser. The browser had a ton of issues. First of all, the audio had a really irritating crackling to it. Many small texts became unreadable when playing in a lower resolution than 1920x1080. I tried to fix that, but accidentally broke the tutorial panels (they were out of screen, faulty position calculation), which left some players wondering what to do. All in all, this did not deliver the best version of the game to the players. I think it’s no coincidence, that jam winners often only have a downloadable version. Still, web reaches so many more people, and after all we’re joining Ludum Dare to have people play our games and get feedback, not to have the highest score.

If you use Godot and got crackling sound: Export with "Threads" enabled. It won't run on some browsers in itch though.

No one dedicated to sounds

I don’t think i need to tell you how important sounds are. They take time, skill and dedication to get right. Like usual, we had no one to care for sounds, so i had to do it on top of game design, programming, playtesting, directing the art and keeping up with the community. I try to do my best with free sounds i can find, but it always takes about 6 hours, which i dearly miss on other parts (like communicating the end goal, or creating flying monsters).

Making a good jam game with only 2 people is so hard, that i have immense respect for anyone making a proper game alone here. Wow, you folks!

What went right

Graphics

Anne made a little sketch early up with about 320x180 pixels. I was very sceptical of that and i often pushed for higher resolutions in the past. This time i fully trusted her with that as she seemed confident about it, but also because she has grown so much as a pixel artist the last year. The first concept i dismissed and asked Anne to make some different types and colors. She quickly came up with something we both immediately liked, and it stuck and ultimately was very well received. mockup_combi.png initial sketch on the bottom right

As you can see, the "winner" got iterated upon, with a pretty nice feel of depth to the dome.

An additional benefit of having such a low resolution and minimalist style was, that those sprites are made and animated rather quickly. The monsters are shapes of a single color with eyes, for example.

Simple but polished

Honestly, i was so surprised when i didn’t get a ton of feedback in the sense of “oh, another mining game, and it brings nothing new to the table, great!”. We purposefully went for something we thought of as pretty obvious (and i still think it is), and not something hugely innovative or intricate. But we knew we wanted to make it really well playable, and that worked out well. Maybe we’ll do something more experimental next time, but i learned something i was always a bit scared of: It’s okay to make something obvious, as long as it’s fun. You don’t have to be clever with it.

That was a bit freeing, as i always discarded the obvious game ideas even if i had nothing better in my mind. I wonder if you disagree with that, or if you had instances the same thing happened to you.

Tutorialization

This is one of the most important and most difficult parts of making a jam game: how do you teach the game to your players in a way - that’s not annoying - that is effective, as in the players apply what they learned - is not boring, or even fun - or even better, not necessary at all (by being self explanatory)

Overall that wen’t pretty well for Dome Romantik. This goes way beyond having explanation texts. I made a little post about that some time ago, check that out if it interests you :)

Of course it wasn’t perfect. What haunts me is one thing: In the game you can collect water, to turn into fruits that let you fly faster. I intended this as an early game changer that adds fun and complexity. But it seems, most people did not understand at all what is supposed to happen there and took the trees as decoration. I simply did not explain it properly and somehow thought, the players would notice it and try it out of curiosity. Turns out, when you are under time pressure your curiosity shrinks a lot.

Time to playtest

I spent more time ever before playtesting the game, making dozens of runs on monday. I think that showed in balancing, power feeling of upgrades and appropriate game length. I also found out about a few things i had to simplify, which i described in the Tutorialization Post.

It was also the one if the first times Anne actually had fun playing on of our games :D Ain't that strange? It might feel strange, but actually and seriously playing your game will probably be better for it than adding more features and content. I rarely did this in the past jams, because i never felt i had the time for it. But now i'd rather cut content and play more.

Up Next

Ok, that’s it for now. We are happy to say we will continue to develop Dome Romantik into a full game (but with a name change, most likely), where you go on runs across different planets. If you want to keep close to development, please join our Discord. I’m actively seeking your feedback and value it a lot. domes2.gif new worlds for the full game

We also set up a Steam Page for it, i’d love to get your feedback on it (Trailer will follow!). We’ll also release on itch, love that platform.

Sorry for the long post!

Streaming Dare Games

Hey, we just started trying out LD48 games! I'll leave comments on the ggames as well but feel free to drop by! We'd love to get your thoughts and opinions!

twitch.tv/egechu

Some Pixel Art Fanart! Part 1

Last Ludum Dare I made some fanart with a touchpad and Windows Paint 3D and it was kind of.... really bad. I've honestly never figured out how people can draw so good on a PC without a touchscreen or pixel art, I'm just so bad at digital art.... 😅 Major respect to those who can actually draw with a mouse or touchpad.

Recently I've been improving on my pixel art skills, since I've been working on pixel art for my upcoming PC game. Limiting one's self to merely black and white is a bit harder than standard pixel art because you don't get shading, you don't get color, etc. As is demonstrated by the fact I intentionally overscoped my Compo game despite using several mostly-untested tools, I like a good challenge. 😁

Part 1 of my fanart giveaways has begun!


"Thothev - VTOTV" -- Vast Trivia Of The Void, by @jorgegamedev, @moski, and @zachary-blystone

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A present to Whales And Games for making the only Ludum Dare game I've ever played for over 6 hours! 😬😆 It's nowhere near as good as @moski's official art, but at least it looks like Thothev. (Also a bit of a "thank you" gift for @moski's mindblowing sketch of the protagonist of last Ludum Dare's game from Peace Of Cake Games)

(Oh, and the thing that's so blocky it's kind of hard to tell what it is is the Monetization Man playing piece, more or less. I love Monetization Man!)

"Dome Romantik" -- Dome Romantik, by @rongo-matane and @idinakloppstock

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A "good luck with your post-jam version!" present for Bippinbits! The funny thing is, this image is roughly around the size of the actual original art, so it's basically a prototype version of Dome Romantik in only 2 colors. 😄


I'll be back with some more artwork soon! Just those two took a couple of hours (that's what I get for using a touchpad), so it'll be another 24 hours or so until the next batch is ready. 😴 Who knows, maybe your game will be the next one to receive a fanart, reader!

Post-Jam version

Hello everyone, thought I might as well share the post-jam version of my compo entry. I am still working on it and aiming to flesh it out to a proper game. Thank you to all the participants, organizers, testers and voters. Cheers!

LINK https://tiltaghe.itch.io/micanthul-ld48

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A Shining Sparkle at the Abyss! Vast Trivia Of The Void’s Ludum Dare Results!

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Another Ludum Dare season has come to an end and the show’s over! However, we still have our results to look at! How did our game, Vast Trivia Of The Void, perform this Ludum Dare? :whale:

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Game jam results are always interesting to analyse. Should we be worried if we went down on stats? Do the ratings show actual improvement? What can we learn from the results we get at the end of the jam?

Before we do that though, we want to thank every single one of you! Whether you played our game, submitted questions for our trivia, or just did your part to keep the Ludum Dare experience running, you’re amazing! Thank you for making this a great experience for us all, and regardless of your own results, we hope you’re proud of the game you’ve created! :clap:

Now then, let’s see what happened this time around! :point_down:

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Not bad at all! We got over 100 ratings on all the categories, which means that the results should accurately portray the average jammer’s opinion towards our game. In previous jams, we have made a Google Sheet with all the results we’ve got across Ludum Dare, so let’s add in this jam and compare how we stack up!

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Our highlights this time around were Graphics and Audio, and the Overall is pretty fantastic! The Theme rank was admittedly a complete disaster, making it the first time we’ve landed ourselves a sub-1000 rank. But to be honest, of all the categories, that’s the one we tend to concern ourselves the least about. The most important thing for us is to have a game done at the end of the jam, even if the theme’s interpretation is a bit of a stretch!

But the important question is, how do the ratings themselves stack up against our previous entries? Did the lower ranks mean that we didn’t do as well as on previous jams?

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Turns out that Vast Trivia Of The Void actually scored the highest rating of all our previous Ludum Dare games in four categories: Overall, Fun, Audio and Mood! Basically, when it comes to design, programming, music and sound, our team knocked it out of the park.

For a more fair comparison, in our sheet we’ve added a new average that weighs only Fun, Graphics and Audio. We can associate these with the tangible skills of the team: Programming, Art and well, Audio. With that average being of 4.36, Vast Trivia seems to be our best constructed game for a Ludum Dare to date!

This is why it’s important to always take into consideration not only your ranking, but also your ratings! If we only look at the ranks we’ve got, it would seem that our performance was not as good as previous games. However, when we look at the game’s ratings in context, the improvement becomes clearer and much more measurable

The lower ranks don't mean you did worse, but rather that there were many more high quality games this time around!

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Nowadays, a lot more games that are created during Ludum Dare make it to commercial releases in the post-jam, regardless of the ranks and ratings they had during the event. Did you know that both Dorfomantik and Friday Night Funkin’ started as Ludum Dare entries? And look at the massive following they have nowadays!

If you’re proud of the game you have and want to continue working on it, please do! Take the feedback from the comments you’ve got, and push your game even further! :muscle:

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All things considered, we had a great time seeing what you and the community have made this time around! Genuinely good stuff left and right! Seeing all of these inspiring submissions and community is always a treat!

Finally, we’d love to stay in contact with y’all! Some of you have already dropped by our Discord server to say hello, but everyone is welcome! But if Discord is not your thing, we have our Twitter profile as well! We’re really eager to show you more we’ve got in the plans for this year!

Thanks a lot for reading! Here’s hoping to see you around next Ludum Dare! :sparkles:

Published to mobile! Just send it!

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Had a lot of fun with this! Pushed my little entry to the App Store too :’) I’ve realized I’ll never be “Finished” enough with my apps, as there’s always so much to polish and it can always be ‘better’ Trying to get over perfectionist tendencies and just.... send it xD

IOS; https://apps.apple.com/sg/app/now-you-see-me/id1566539533

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Haiyoooo.NowYouSeeMe

LD really inspired me to make small polished games Thanks everyone for playing!

It was fun!

This time I finished almost 100 places higher than the last time, so I am very happy with my results. Thanks to everyone who played, rated and commented on my game.

Congratulations to everyone who participated and...

See you all in few months!!!

Darn Mouse! -- Pixel Art Fanart Part 2

My mouse's middle scroll wheel button died in the middle of these (there goes scrolling), but I'm back with two finally complete fanarts!

Commence Part 2 of fanarts!


"A Taste of the Past" -- A Taste of the Past, by @julia-lee, @johnnywan, @caiojmini, @isabelle-szeto, @lancival, @kelvin-nguyen, @jaimi, @emily-pitcher, and @carolinewang !

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😭 is basically the emoji that describes me after playing. Easily one of my favorite games I've ever played; good luck on your Steam release!


"Lenny G and Leopold" -- Far Side of the Mirror, by @xellaya and @ddrkirbyisq

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As usual, a solid and polished entry from Cocoa Moss! I just had to draw Lenny G and Leopold, I love those guys. (I am forever in Leopold's debt for giving me a weird rock)


Part 3 of my fanarts coming soon! Stay tuned if you like 400 x 250 pictures pixelart-drawn in exactly 2 colors.

Thank you, everyone!

Heh, I keep meaning to say something, but it's all felt really surreal. Like, when first saw my game Fallumns up on the results page, I thought, "Oh, it must just be a bug. Soon it'll finish calculating everybody's scores and show the ACTUAL winner." And it still kinda feels that way?

But I'm extremely grateful! Thank you everyone who's played and rated and enjoyed my game, and to everyone who made so many awesome games this time! This is the 10th time I've done a Ludum Dare, and I think it's the most fun I've had yet, both with making and playing things!

Finally made a Youtube video about my game DigWorld

Which is basically same as the text version: https://kuviman.itch.io/dig-world/devlog/255566/so-i-made-an-mmo-in-48-hours

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoqOEtr6jRc

Happy!

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This thing got 12th in graphics, and it makes me very happy. I mean it doesn't get you any insane amount of attention or marketing potential or anything, but I've been struggling with graphics for the last four years (or so), and it's nice to see people rewarding the effort with 4+ star ratings. Thank you all!

Отслеживаем зарождение новых Нотчей! Playing LD48 top games in O

FinalemLD48/emStream.jpg Ну вот все посмотрели свои результаты, подивились на результаты остальных. А я приглашаю всех заценить топ игр LD48, сегодня поиграем в игры финалистов в категории Overall. Смотреть тут https://www.twitch.tv/runuchok !

DEEPER Post-Jam Update!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/deeper

Added particles around pickups, Made pickups more common, Slowed game down a little to make it easier, Added heart / life pickups, Maybe fixed bug with invincibility timer, Increased invincibility time, Added particles when taking damage, Added cool down to game over screen.

Thank you for playing!

3ef41.gif I had a lot of fun creating the 3D art for this Jam. If you want to play the latest version, we uploaded it to itch.io here: https://jam-a-llamas.itch.io/the-space-between-us.

Thanks again, and let me know if you plan to take your games further. I want to follow your progress.

Thanks for playing A Taste of the Past!!!

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Thanks to everyone for all the great ratings, we couldn't be happier with how our game turned out!

"A Taste of the Past" is a 2D sidescroller meets Cooking Mama meets a heartwarming story about loss, grief, and hope and we are currently polishing it for a full release! if you're curious to know more about our process, our writer and project manager @emily-pitcher made this vlog about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rFSFnXkBrc

4th in innovation, thanks!

About the Game

Third Dimension is a game about a 2D robot that needs to travel into the third dimension. You control the two-dimensional plane and the robot itself so it can venture deeper and deeper into this third dimension.

(the game doesn't exactly fit the theme, but hey at least I tried something innovative and interesting).

Screenshots

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Thanks for playing The truth in the darkness !

i don't really have a lot of time sine i am rn revising for my exams, But i want to say Thank you so much for everyone who rated & played the game, it still feels like a dream that my game is one of the first 100 games in the mood, & that the ratings are good, Thanks for playing the game, & i really appreciate all the feedback everyone gave me,

Thanks :D

Thank you all for playing Stock!

Thank you all for playing our game -- we were blown away by your response. This was our first project together and we loved every second of it. We plan to update the game and add it to other online platforms. We'll update you when we do!

Interview with creator of Nuclear Blaze; Sébastien Bénard of Deepnight Games

Here's an Interview I conducted with Sébastien Bénard of Deepnight Games, discussing his entry to Ludum Dare 48; "Nuclear Blaze"

We discuss his process for developing the game, tools used, and how he plans to make the game playable for his 3-Year-old kid!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH7Hoi6NRkw

Thank You!

Thank you everyone for playing and rating my game! This was my second LD jam, and my first entry didn't get enough ratings to be scored. So I'm really happy, that this time I did! :smile:

Here were my results:

Overall: 212th

Fun: 150th

Innovation: 598th

Theme: 160th

Graphics: 201st

Audio: 245th

Humor: 436th

Mood: 382nd

Check this software development services

Starting software development, you gain access to a massive pool of qualified engineers who aren’t outsourced help, but a value-adding extension of your business. They will be a part of your business for years going forward, enabling you to take on more projects.

Menu creator - concept feature for making menus with a click of a button

Hello, I am working on my set of tools for unity that I've already used in many games and our beloved LD48. It has proven to be very useful for creating things fast, but I realized that even with so many features I've spent 4 hours on the menu in the previous jam. That's a lot of time for such a simple thing as the menu. Later I've also realized that some things weren't working in the menu, but that's not the point for today.

Concept

Screenshot 2021-05-29 110730.png In the image you can see the menu from Power Station Beta (ld48) and how it could have been made faster with the right tools. With the menu on the left you are able to customize things such as: style (use buttons or simple text), colors, options, layout and padding. Most menus are just a list of buttons on a background. It does the job, but it still takes a long time to create. With adding components, navigation, menus you are wasting a lot of time.

Creating settings

Screenshot 2021-05-29 112108.png In qASIC I've created a very complex and easy to use settings system, where you call setting names instead of having one giant script to do everything. Still it would be cool to have a big button that says: POPULATE MENU. Making sliders and other things takes time and having to copy & paste a bunch of them and change some text seems rather stupid.

Complexity

Just thinking about how somebody would use this: it would be cool to have a way to assign your own sliders and not sliders and to not have to change every single button, or dropdown to your liking. In that case: many people like to have an object with a label and the slider, which would make it impossible to use in this tool. So then I would have to scan through every GameObject in every single object. But then what if there's TWO!? MULTIPLE MENUS!? It is just starting to hurt my brain.

Will it come out?

I don't know. For now I'm focused on releasing qASIC v0.1 and going on from there. Please tell me if I should try making something like that, or if fe. there's already a tool for that (it wouldn't fill out qASIC options though and change labels). I will probably try adding little updates and maybe I will even try to replace the Input System, with an actual from scratch Input System (instead of relaying on the legacy one). Anyway, I hope this sparked your interest. I personally think that more games should have more options and menus, even in jams. Thanks for reading through :)

Music from the game.

Recorded a video showing the music tracks from my ld #48 entry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3sTK9bIWFU

I Added Endless mode to my game!!

almost all the playes requested that, an Endless Mode!! and i added it now!!

Go ahead and try it!! https://fire-soldier888.itch.io/deep-fall

aaa

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I need help!

Is there a way to browse the feed by date cause I really need to find a game I saw on LD46 but wasn't finished so its not published and is there a way to find the posts I commented on or liked? If not and you're a good programmer please make me some sort of code I could type into the chrome console to find this stuff :laughing: thanks!!

Getting Started with a Serious Project

Hey Guys!

Our team has made a few jam games, but we are hoping to get into a slightly more serious project (something a bit larger in scale than our jam games, and hopefully something we can release and sell). Looking for any resources you guys would recommend for project management, marketing, communication/dev blogs, etc (or even just some tips from fellow devs who have built and released commercial projects). This is our first time really trying to take on a serious project, so I just want to make sure we're heading in the right direction and aware of as many hiccups as possible beforehand!

Vacuum Kingdom: Monochrome Steam Release slated for the end of this month

We are giving the Kingdom a face lift, stream lining some processes and making a cuter UI thanks to some artist assets. Please keep a look out for us on steam, will be releasing the beta real soon (like in a few weeks)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz5S-NlBgak

Mini Pets - a new digital pet game NOW released on Google Play Store!

Hello, this is my second game app created & released in Google Play Store :)

Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.godotengine.minipets

Kindly download and review my game, thanks :)! Mini Pets is a digital pet game where you raise a virtual pet by feeding it, playing with it, and cleaning it every 8 hours.

As you feed, play or clean your pet, it will gain levels. Upon hitting certain levels/milestones, it will evolve and change color. Will you be the lucky one to unlock the SUPER RARE secret pet?

Enjoy!

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New Sprites (hitting a road block with controller support)

We have everything visually done...just looking to re-write codes for the game. Your probably saying...why not just update the ldjam version?

When you are re coding systems: Coding tends to be faster Can implement new features Can avoid pitfalls you missed previously.

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Chuck Yeager's Jet Janitor - a postmortem

The theme for Ludum Dare 48 was "Deeper and deeper". I created a dogfighting game for the compo—solo, from scratch, in 48 hours—where your goal is to deliver jet planes deeper and deeper into cold storage. It's a mashup of Luftrausers and… shuffleboard.

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I'm really pleased with how it came out! It's fun to play, has a fresh game mechanic that actually works, and is definitely my kind of quirky. I'm not disappointed about any obvious weak spots. Here's what the game looks like:

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Development

  • 2000 lines of pure JavaScript using Phaser
  • 34 pieces of art in Aseprite on iPad with Pencil, using AdamCYounis’s Apollo palette
  • 14 sound effects in Chiptone
  • 4 songs in Abundant
  • 101 todo items checked off in OmniFocus
  • 400,149 keystrokes
  • 3 Twitch streams totalling 31 hours (the vods are 28GB)
  • 10,881 screenshots (13GB) for the time lapse

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Read the rest here on my blog!

Steam/Itch.io Ship incoming!

Controller finally working. Next we start introducing: -Enemy Spawns -Element powerups -XP System

New Updates 10 Set Levels 90 Randomized Levels Artifact collection Boss Fights

Coming very soon. Animated GIF-downsized_large.gif

Have you jumped the gap yet?? (#1 Innovation in Compo!)

Hey all, I just published a post-jam quality-of-life update to Press Space To Jump The Gap!

Now's the time to try it out and see why this dinky mario clone game got GOLD in Innovation:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/press-space-to-jump-the-gap

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Update changes: - Made zooming easier and smoother - Quieter zoom sound - Added keyboard shortcuts - Fixed flag collider showing up on scenes without flag - Tweaked victory message timings

Further development of my LD48 game

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Now it is an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's short story "The Martian Way".

https://christiancorro.itch.io/3021-a-space-odyssey

New Version of LD48 Game Released on itch.io

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Itch.io Release. Will be updating and releasing soon to Steam. Greatly appreciate any donations, but if you are strapped for cash (which I understand) enjoy the free download and comment. Link Below:

https://profsuarez.itch.io/vacuum-kingdom-monochrome/devlog/262819/launch-day-d

Pixel Art Fanart- Scratch That, It's Delayed, Here We Go Again With Me Talking

If you enjoyed seeing my 1-bit pixelart fanarts, you may have noticed that it has been a whole 3 weeks since I did anything. What is going on?

Initially after my last fanarts, "Darn Mouse! -- Pixel Art Fanart Part 2", I had struggled with making a good drawing, since everything I made looked like trash. Finally I had a breakthrough and was on the way to finishing up a special surprise, and then.... out of nowhere the file containing everything I've drawn digitally became corrupted and cannot be used any more, making the fanart I had almost finished be rendered useless. Now here we are, with me struggling to recreate it from scratch.

This one is special and dedicated to the entire Ludum Dare community, so I will do my best to have it recreated soon!


On a side note, I have also begun working on an open-source shooter game that, once I am done, I will be encouraging using the code to make mods (I can even make the best of them official mods on the game's page), graphical enhancements, and more. If you're interested in it Construct 3 users will be able to make mods and share them and possibly make them official mods, and those of you who do not use Construct 3 can share some assets and I can build the modded version for you using the provided replacement assets and a description of any changes you would like to make. Three cheers for open-source mod-friendly free content! Itch.io page coming soon.

Now on Steam

Hello everyone. I've been working on my game, Wilford, since LD48 took place and it's now on Steam as an early access title. I'd love it if you gave it a try and told me what you thought :smiley:

If any of you are still working on your LD48 entries, share them in a comment so I can check it out.

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Join us for the upcoming 48-hour Alakajam!

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The 12th Alakajam! week-end will be held on June 25-27, and the theme selection phase is already ongoing. If you've never heard of the jam, the schedule is as follows:

  • The two weeks prior to the jam are dedicated to an original 2-step voting system (Week 1 = submission/voting, Week 2 = shortlist ranking)
  • The jam itself lasts 48 hours both for solo & team entrants, and launches at 7pm UTC (Europe-friendly times). An underrated unranked category also lets you have a relaxed approach to jamming: you can work on a long-term project of yours while still taking part in the karma/coolness system to get valuable feedback.
  • Two weeks of community voting then take place until the winners are crowned :crown:

Feel free to check out the results from our previous jams to get a feel for how things are run. We hope to see you there :smiley:

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Knights and Foreigners

Just released my 5th indie game, took me 4 months but I finally managed to finish it. https://zack-bazzle.itch.io/knights-and-foreigners

Mini Pets - a hypercasual pet game available on Google Play Store & Itch.io now!

Hello, this is my second app created :)

Google Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.godotengine.minipets

Itch.io link: https://melvinng.itch.io/mini-pets

Kindly download and review my game, thanks :)! Mini Pets is a hyper-casual digital pet game where you raise a virtual pet by feeding it, playing with it, and cleaning it every 8 hours.

As you feed, play or clean your pet, it will gain levels. Upon hitting certain levels/milestones, it will evolve and change color. Will you be the lucky one to unlock the SUPER RARE secret pet?

Enjoy!

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online SFXR!

I just found this right now. It's not mine, but it's definitely awesome and I'll use it for now on. It offers permalinks that re-generate the effects so you can just bookmark them instead of save as a file or browser cookies.

EDIT: I almost forgot the actual link. Here it is: (https://sfxr.me/)

I'm trying to release something

Who could have thought releasing a tool was going to be hard. Anyways I'm trying to publish qASIC (simple tools for unity) and that has been a wild ride of it's own.

Website

A lot of things require a website now. As I didn't know much of HTML (except some things we did in school. Actually what I did in school, as IT teachers suck) nor CSS I decided to still not use a website builder. It was fun learning the basics, but probably I will have to redo some code in the future. It's already live, so you can check it out if you want: https://qasictools.com/ Screenshot 2021-06-21 162947.png

Unity asset store

As most things unity I need to release it on the asset store. For that I need a website (which I've made) and a demo scene (which I will make). I also need promo material: screenshots, videos, etc. I've setup a really basic page at the moment, but I still have a lot of work

Trailers

I've implanted qASIC into some of Unity's sample projects and tutorials. While doing this I've been recording my screen so I could use for a trailer. At first I made some cool logo animations, but they were to cluttered, so now I'm probably will use a simple header with description approach many people use (old example below) Hnet.com-image.gif

Polishing the tool itself

I thought I have done everything. I was wrong. Recently, I've added some many features to the audio manager, that I can't even count, fixed things with console, added a debug window and even expanded Console Configuration. Just thinking about how will people use it makes you want to adjust some things more. For example the audio manager now cannot play sounds when it's paused (globally pausing would disable only the currently playing sounds) and you can ignore global manipulation all together. Things like the scene command can now be disabled (changing scenes randomly can break certain games). I still think there's much more, but for now this is just beta, so I'll improve things in the future. Screenshot 2021-06-20 162947.png

Demo

As I said, unity requires a demo scene. I wanted to test and try making a small walking simulator where you could view different aspects of qASIC. It would be great in testing out it too. For now there's not much to say.

You can check out the website now

(roast me about it's design as much as you want)

Taking a break from developing Vacuum Kingdom

Thanks for all the support, play the free version here. Web browser version, itch.io exclusive. Very Happy with the final results. Went from game jam to game damn! THIC! Looking forward to creating a new IP soon.

https://profsuarez.itch.io/vacuum-kingdom-monochrome

My new game in Monogame!

I just finished my first game in Monogame! - https://eboatwright.itch.io/blaster It's a Megaman like platformer, and it's VERY hard. :smile:

Game design learnings based on Roots Puzzle #postjam

Hi! In my previous post I was writing about how to start and plan your work while developing post jam version of a game. For last few weeks I was working on improving my game based on players feedback. Here I will share most interesting problems from my ludum dare entry, and how I handled them in the post jam version.

1. Game difficulty

Problem: Game is too hard

I got a lot of feedback that game is too hard, as not everyone is fan of hardcore gaming. Some people have big satisfaction because of that, others gave up much faster. I didn't want to use standard "please choose your level of difficulty" because of: - players have no way to guess which level will be good for them upfront - lowering game difficulty while playing the game is not a nice feeling to everyone - each player have different perception which level is hard for them

Solution: Let player decide difficulty dynamically based on the reward

I used ~~star~~ apple system known from many mobile games. So instead of loosing the game, when you run out of resources, you can buy a resource using apple (up to 3). Your final score of the level depends how many apples you used. Players can decide themselves if they are satisfied with the score, and go back and replay the level when they master the game. AppleSystem.gif LevelCompletedApples.gif

2. Game response to players actions

In roots puzzle there is a simple economy mechanism: - water tile gives 10 Water - mineral tile gives 10 Minerals - leaf tile gives 2 Co2, but cost 1 Water 1 Mineral - root tile cost 1 Co2 + 1 Water + 1 Mineral

I could write all of it in a game tutorial but didn't want to, because: - I wanted players learn this rules themselves by just playing around and observe changes in the resources panel - reading text is boring

Some players liked it and learn it in the first minute of a game, others were not able to completely work it out till the end. My conclusion was, that changes of resource might not be enough response for player's action. Therefore in post jam version I display popups with exact numbers of resources gained (10, 2), like in a picture below: Tutorial.gif

3. Unfair game mechanisms

Problem: There is no fun in counting tiles, just to know if you have enough resources to reach the goal

That was clear for me from the beginning, although I thought players would not mind just try & die approach that instead of counting whole path you just follow the algorithm: 1. try path A 2. lose and restart 3. try path B 4. win

As levels are quite small and fast to rerun there was no big pain in restarting the level. Although I was wrong. Some players see learning by loosing as a unfair mechanism.

Solution: Let's make counting easy and fun

In post jam version I added a distance measure tool that you can unlock. So players who prefer to make ideal plan from the beginning of the game, have tools that will make this process more fun:

TutorialDistanceTool.gif

4. Visibility of Game progress

In original version, you have no indicator of how many levels game has(aside of description below the game, that nobody reads or remember). Players have more motivation to finish the game, when they now how many levels are waiting for them, and how much progress they already made. Together with changes for game difficulty it was a perfect moment to introduce a board when you can see, select and unlock all the levels:

SelectLevel.png

5. Players are different. Fun, difficulty and fairness is subjective

This point might be the main conclusion from all my learnings during this project. I could observe different people having completely different reactions while playing it. I could also see a small argue over my game between 3 different players, about which of game mechanism/improvement suggestions are good or bad. I needed to think and check how one change will increase fun for one person and destroy it for another. Therefore while looking for fun in a game as a single indie dev don't count just on yourself. Try to get as much valuable feedback as you can.

Thanks for reading, if you want to try my post jam version you can play it here: https://wdebowicz.itch.io/roots-puzzle it's still in development so would love to get your feedback.

Mini Pets - now in Google Play Store & itch.io!

Hello, this is my second app created :)

Google Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.godotengine.minipets

Itch.io link: https://melvinng.itch.io/mini-pets

Kindly download and review my game, thanks :)! Mini Pets is a hyper-casual digital pet game where you raise a virtual pet by feeding it, playing with it, and cleaning it every 8 hours.

As you feed, play or clean your pet, it will gain levels. Upon hitting certain levels/milestones, it will evolve and change color. Will you be the lucky one to unlock the SUPER RARE secret pet?

Enjoy!

photo1.JPG

Download Mini Pets on Google Play Store & itch.io

Hello, this is my second app created :)

Google Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.godotengine.minipets

Itch.io link: https://melvinng.itch.io/mini-pets

Kindly download and review my game, thanks :)! Mini Pets is a hyper-casual digital pet game where you raise a virtual pet by feeding it, playing with it, and cleaning it every 8 hours.

As you feed, play or clean your pet, it will gain levels. Upon hitting certain levels/milestones, it will evolve and change color. Will you be the lucky one to unlock the SUPER RARE secret pet?

Enjoy!

photo1.JPG

Farm and Mine is being developed further, after LD48

At LD48 the theme "Deeper and Deeper" gave us an inspiration to combine a farming simulator (where you dig potatoes and carrots) and a mining simulator (where you are reaching the core of the Earth). We continues the work after the jam, and now we would like to invite you to the beta test. Here is how the game looks like now: https://youtu.be/SmHsWq-fUy8

It is an incremental idle game with a big shift towards tycoon genre. The things which (as I humbly think) differentiates this game among the others, are: - it has embedded auto-clicker, just press an object, and continuous clicks will be applied to it - 2 currencies: "money" and "workforce" are used to upgrade 2 sides of the game. Money upgrades productivity (output per single cycle), and workforce - automation (speed of workers, number of simultaneous productions) - custom prestige bonus: on restart the player can select, which aspect of the game should get the boost from the prestige points. There are 6 of them: Tap effect, Housing capacity, Population growth, Prices level, Production efficiency or Transport capacity - 3 interconnected systems: agriculture, industry and population

Android (Google Play): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airapport.farm.mine.idle.ludumdare48

PC (Itch): https://airapport.itch.io/farm-and-mine

Discord: https://discord.gg/qpDbwpF5un

I would also like to invite you to exchange video first impressions. If you record your very first play session of 5-15 minutes and show me, I can do the same for you. Watching such recordings is really useful, as it lets the developer to see how will the fresh player behave in the game

Below The Ocean - Chapter 2: The Cardinal's Grail

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Below The Ocean's first update is here! Return to the ocean's deepest depths in search of "The Cardinal's Grail"!

ITCH: https://ismaelrodriguez.itch.io/below-the-ocean

This update brings along a few major features

SAVE POINTS: Some air tanks will have a ribbon tied to them, these tanks are checkpoints AND save points, so you can suspend a "dive", and return to it later.

Chapter Select: Keep track of each expedition's progress.

Speedrun Mode: Once you complete a chapter, you'll have the option to start a new dive in Speedrun Mode; which makes all the diamonds look new. Perfect for those 100% diamond speedruns!

In the works:

Chapter 3: The Nobleman's Crest: I'm obviously working on some more levels for Chapter 3. The main challenge for each update is to think of new and different ways to use the tether mechanics for platforming AND puzzle-solving.

Unlockables: I'm planning on adding unlockable treasures, starting with player skins. Probably color palettes too. You'll be able to find some treasures hidden in the levels, as well as unlock them through challenges/achievements.

Fast Travel System: fast travel across save points. Good for treasure hunting!

On my mind:

EXTRA HARD LEVELS: One of my design objectives for Below the Ocean is to keep the level design easy enough for my wife Kelsey to complete each chapter; I usually round down any sharp corners she runs into. But this approach can also be extremely limiting, so I'm considering some more difficult areas as an additional side challenge. It's on my mind for now, because I'm going to focus on my "main quest" first, but eventually I want to make some REALLY REALLY hard levels. We'll see how that goes. I'm aiming for Chapter 3 release date of August 6th 2021, wish me luck!

Hopefully yall are enjoying Chapter 2 for now! Thanks for all your continued support!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ishyrodriguez

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA1CRCU98iHXfMrn1Bsd48Q

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TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CpRlEzrXpA

HTML Game: Nanna 2

Those of you who played the smash hit Nanna (1,761st overall) during LD48 may be interested to know that the game lives on. Its latest incarnation is The Witch, the Moon, and Alice.

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To make a long story short, Nanna was converted into a framework, REPLICA 2D. REPLICA in turn was used to make a game for Alakajam 12, including a post-jam version, AKA "Nanna 2." You'll see a few similarities between the original Nanna and this game — a lot of trees, for example, along with an evil witch who spoils everything.

Music credits:

Brian Cavanaugh (@bcav) (cave music, victory music)

John Bartmann: memory-shores-master, profound-mystery-master, back-to-the-mountain-master, dystopia-master, nubia-master, and lurking-deep-master.

Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and support for Nanna.

Dahla's Journey goes mobile!

Dahla's Journey is now available for MOBILE on ANDROID!

Check the new game page on https://kryptopixel.itch.io/dahlas-journey and make sure to follow KryptoPixel for future games and updates.

You can play Dahla's Journey for free in your Android Phone by installing it from the Play Store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kryptopixel.dahlajourney).

You can still play the buggy, LD-48 version by downloading it from the old Itch page (https://pijamar.itch.io/dahlas-journey).

Download Mini Pets in Google Play Store now!

Hello, this is my second app created :)

Google Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.godotengine.minipets

Kindly download my game, thanks :)! Mini Pets is a hyper-casual digital pet game where you raise a virtual pet by feeding it, playing with it, and cleaning it every 8 hours.

As you feed, play or clean your pet, it will gain levels. Upon hitting certain levels/milestones, it will evolve and change color. Will you be the lucky one to unlock the SUPER RARE secret pet?

Enjoy!

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Goop Loop Rolls Out of Early Access

Goop Loop, the game I originally made for LD47 with the theme "Stuck in a loop" has been completed, with a substantial amount of new content and improvements, and is now out of early access on Steam!

Here's the launch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKRnevJsId8

And here's the steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1454550/Goop_Loop/

Also, on the off chance any press read this, here's a press kit as well: https://gooploop.lonewulfstudio.com/presskit/

My Apologies, Anyone Looking For A Free Font

Remember how I had promised one last fanart several weeks ago? Sorry everyone, but what was going to be a pixel font slightly based on Ludum Dairy as a gift to the entire Ludum Dare community has been completely rejected by a series of unfortunate issues. First the file it was stored in became corrupted, and then the laptop I use for game development had a hard drive failure and is still out of commission.

(Self-plug for a game that doesn't even exist yet) I also lost the project file for the open-source shooter game I had been working on every day for over a month, so apologies to anyone interested in free open-source games.

Is anyone from Chernobyl still alive?

Contrary to reports that the three divers died of radiation sickness as a result of their action, all three survived. Shift leader Borys Baranov died in 2005, while Valery Bespalov and Oleksiy Ananenko, both chief engineers of one of the reactor sections, are still alive and live in the capital, Kiev.

LD41 jam entry Toodee and Topdee becomes a full game! AND IT RELEASES IN 2 DAYS!

We worked on the full version for a little over 2 years :)

Here's the release trailer!

https://youtu.be/LCP27N9kJy8

Here's how it looked like in LD48!

https://youtu.be/hZQUJWnSXlM

If you'd like to support us we'll really appreciate it if you could drop us a wishlist!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1303950/ToodeeandTopdee/

What news affects Forex?

The most important high impact Forex news release are central bank meetings and interest rate decisions. With a mandate to control inflation and ensure the value of the nation's currency remains steady, central bank meetings have the highest impact on Forex market volatility.

Which app gives loan instantly?

LendUp is a Top-Rated Cash Advance. App LendUp offers a mobile-optimized site that's fast, easy, and responsive. Our quick online payday loan application can be completed in less than five minutes, and, in most cases, you'll get an almost instant decision on your loan.

Download Mini Pets in Google Play Store NOW! 900+ downloads reached :)

Mini Pets has reached 900+ downloads! Thank you all for your support! 🎉🎉🎉

Google Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.godotengine.minipets

Itch.io link: https://melvinng.itch.io/mini-pets

Kindly download my game, thanks :)! Mini Pets is a hyper-casual digital pet game where you raise a virtual pet by feeding it, playing with it, and cleaning it every 8 hours.

As you feed, play or clean your pet, it will gain levels. Upon hitting certain levels/milestones, it will evolve and change color. Will you be the lucky one to unlock the SUPER RARE secret pet?

Enjoy! photo1.JPG

Our LD Entry is on Steam Early Access now!

Hi wonderful people,

We, the Nebulate.me team have recently released our first game to Steam Early Access! It's a strategic multiplayer puzzle about quick planning, pacing, bluff and towers. Lots of towers, in fact, the only way you wage war in this game is by building really aggressively! And it's really important to keep the one you're sitting in, too, so that's why it's called Keep the Keep!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1126110/KeeptheKeep/

Since publishing the game and getting it running is a hard business, we are looking for: - Publicity - Feedback and bug reports - Hate and love - Better graphics and more features - Advice on the game design - General support And in exchange, we offer is a unique opportunity to directly participate in this game's development to its final state, talking to us the developers and getting your names on the Credits page (which will be added soon to be sure 😃 ).

Simply join this cosy Discord server and we shall give you free keys to check out the game and all the attention and impact you'd never get as a player in AAA titles!

https://discord.gg/Cd6mzubbfP

keepthekeep #indiegamedev #madewithunity #earlyaccess

Unique customised socks

Looking for a unique gift or have a design idea you want to be printed on socks?

Add a flag feature!

The main page of Ludum Dare is getting worse and worse...

It's really time to make people able to flag spam posts

Join my second game jam!

Make a hypercasual game in 72 hours that fits a theme and restriction! https://itch.io/jam/hyper-casual-jam2

Our Ludum 48 Game has a trailer!

Our Ludum Dare 48 Game that got 1st place in Innovation has come a long way. We have a trailer up on the steam page and production is going very well! :D I would love it if you guys checked it out Animation.gif

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1626280/Explory_Story/

The tool that I used in my Ludum Dare games has been released!

Hello. After ~1.5 years of development I've released qASIC - a collection of simple tools for speeding up performance on the Unity Asset Store.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-b-uGYumO0

Ludum Dare

You can see me using qASIC in my LD games since Ludum Dare 47. At the time it wasn't much but on my most recent game Power Station Beta was praised for it's accessibility through settings and remappable keys and it's hidden quirks available through the dev console. Me and my team were able to create it quickly using the dev tools while not having to worry about accessibility. Of course, there were bugs, but that's expected in any game :) Screenshot 2021-05-17 142330.png

Available now on the Unity Asset Store

Jammin' all the way

I've participated in a few other jams recently.

Thought I'd drop this experimental little thingy I made for LowrezJam2021.


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They keep saying that it's rather dark and weird in tone... :newmoonwith_face:

They may be right! But I myself am also quite happy how it turned out in such a short time!

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But yeah... Not much time till october, folks! :leaves: :fallenleaf: :mapleleaf:

After a month this place not gonna be so quiet anymore!

:regionalindicatorl: :regionalindicatord: :four: :nine:

950+ downloads for Mini Pets! Thanks for the support!

Mini Pets has reached 950+ downloads! Thanks all for your support!

Google Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.godotengine.minipets

Kindly download my game, thanks :)! Mini Pets is a hyper-casual digital pet game where you raise a virtual pet by feeding it, playing with it, and cleaning it every 8 hours.

As you feed, play or clean your pet, it will gain levels. Upon hitting certain levels/milestones, it will evolve and change color. Will you be the lucky one to unlock the SUPER RARE secret pet?

Enjoy!

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Awesome Gamejam Tools

:star: Awesome Gamejam Tools and Resources :star:

Last year i created a list of tools and resources for game developers! I think it is a fantastic way to find new tools that you may need to make your games better :grin:

Feel free to add your favourite tools to the list by commenting or by creating a pull request!

https://github.com/wujood/awesome-gamejam

Deeper Tales Update

Thank you for everyone who played Deeper Tales during Ludum Dare 48. We decided to port the full version (currently inactive in development) to Windows 10/11, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S!

How do you attract people to gambling?

These groups also claim casino advertising tends to use glamorous images and beautiful people to sell gambling, while other advertisements for lottery tickets and slot machines depict ordinary people winning loads of money or millions from a single coin in the slot

iLoop has reached close to 300 downloads in Google Play Store!

iLoop has reached 250+ downloads! Many thanks for your support!

Kindly download my game, thanks :)! iLoop is a hyper-casual 2D endless runner game about a robot who has been sent on a special mission to collect food for the army warehouse!

Can you unlock the special rank, which is only achievable at a certain high score? Try it now!

Itch.io link: https://melvinng.itch.io/iloop

Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.godotengine.iloop

Enjoy!

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Ludum Dare 46 game WAVER is out now!

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Hi folks!

Some of you might remember WAVER from Ludum Dare 46 - a quirky and colourful rhythm/typing game in which the theme "Keep It Alive" refers to maintaining the 'wave' as it travels through the crowd at a sports stadium.

After some lovely feedback during the jam, we decided to continue development of WAVER, and this weekend it has been released on Steam! It's also opening to a 40% release discount, so check it out quick.

Thanks to everyone who played WAVER during Ludum Dare 46 and gave us the encouragement (or even the request) to continue developing it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1393690/WAVERATyping_Adventure/

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Ludum Dare is hiring a Senior Developer in Canada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=797kSGXZzjY

Technically my company and I are hiring, but the position is as a developer on Ludum Dare. Yes this Ludum Dare, the website you’re using right now.

This is a full time, remote, salaried position, with flexible 30-hour workweeks, and benefits. To start, you’ll be working with just me. I’m here to direct and to get you up to speed, but I need to hand off to you as many development responsibilities as I can. This will include occasionally working with open source contributors, and anyone else we hire.

You must be based-in and able to work in Canada. Hiring within Canada makes us eligible for government support and tax credits.

Indie game moonlighters are welcome!

You can find the job posting here: https://interactivesnacks.com/jobs/

Comments

commanderstitch
23. Aug 2021 · 21:54 UTC

This is awesome. There's so much like, desire; alas, i am not in Canada. GL with the search!

kuro
24. Aug 2021 · 14:20 UTC

Nice! Too bad I'm not from Canada. I'd love to work on LD.

IC Rainbow
24. Aug 2021 · 20:14 UTC

Meanwhile, please add something to address the spam problem. This is getting out of hand ):

Peace Of Cake Games
24. Aug 2021 · 22:23 UTC

This is basically the coolest job a developer could ask for.... getting to work on the Ludum Dare site with the Mike Kasprzak? Huge congratulations to whoever eventually gets the job!

LDJam user 2036
25. Aug 2021 · 22:52 UTC

Oh to be a Canadian. Best of luck in the search buddy.

LDJam user 74221
31. Aug 2021 · 13:44 UTC

Commodore!!!!!

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