I'm flying solo this time around. Using my usual tools for game dev:

• Coding in C++ with SFML 2.5.1
• Using GIMP for graphics
• SFXR & BFXR for sound effects
• Abundant Music for music
• Trello

Based on past history of worst themes being picked - I predict sky pirates. :map: :palm_tree:

I have entered several times, but I don't think I managed to finish a game yet. I hope this time it will be different.

20 years, Ludum Dare 50. How could I not get involved?

No plans for the weekend so theme permitting I think I might make a short point and click adventure. In a classic 9-verb adventure gaming mood at the moment.

I've been working on a new NES tool over the past few months, and I'm thinking about using this next Ludum Dare to give it a trial run myself! I won't have the full weekend this time so it'll probably be pretty short compared to past entries.

If you're wondering what to build with, you're welcome to give it a shot too! The goal is to let you make a basic game in an hour or so. (And I'll be around on twitter and discord much of the weekend if you get stuck)

Here it is: NES Puzzle Maker

Was going to write a traditional "I'm in" post until I realised it's my 10th Ludum Dare! How time flies - by the way that equates to starting Ludum Dare in 2017, so another milestone: 5 years of Ludum Dare 🎉

Echoes

Because who wants to find a new wallpaper every jam :D

The inspiration for using elements came from @niterich's wallpaper, which seemed to be going for a similar style.

Nice to be here, lets go for and other game dev project !

First time in Ludum Dare. Game Dev is my hobby. I will participate with a friend. Using Unity and Blender. From Zaragoza, Spain. Have a nice Jam!

Bad news: Mate's got corona so no bachelor party for him. :( Good news: I'm now free for this LD Jam. :)

I just recently started playing around with some game development. I kept telling myself that I wasn't proficient enough to be able to make something over a weekend. But then I thought, if not now, then when? 50 is a nice anniversary to start my journey. I don't have any expectations except to have some fun!

Edit: anyone that knows where to find a link to the discord?

This'll be my 5th Compo, and my first one since LD30! It's been a while, and my gamedev skills are still a bit rusty, but I'm going to be using Godot this time so hopefully that'll help smooth over some of the rusty parts of my skills. I definitely feel unprepared and it's been so long since my last that I don't remember if I just always feel unprepared beforehand, so I'm ready to go!

At least this go around I can just use Itch for web hosting, as that was always a hang-up at the last minute. Planning on doing a HTML5 export as that is usually the easiest way for people to test a game out.

• Engine: Godot
• Graphics: Aseprite or Inkscape
• Sound: Gonna try LabChirp
• Music: Klystracker or Bitwig

from the jam-games I played and the game I made last time, window size is usually quite random, everyone uses what feels right. I understand that different games might require different resolutions, but in general what is a good practice to follow when choosing the size for your game's window so it works smoothly on everyones computer (I'm mainly talking about the size and not the resolution, because generally the resolution/viewport could get stretched to fit the size of the window)

Low effort version - I just copied out the SVG and created a high-res PNG, or just PrintScreen

https://johnnysix.net/hosted/ludum/

Hi! This is my 3rd time joining Ludum Dare. Got some free time, so might as well join in on the fun. Will be trying out the Extra jam, looking forward to it :smile:

Hey all, hope the excitement for LD this weekend is building nicely. I wanted to share part 2 of my LD49 let's plays, with the first game being a physical game to be played by dice which was made by @marcmagus.

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

I think its great that people make all types of games for Ludum Dare - and despite most participants making video games, I always enjoy a board game / physical game! The challenge is making it accessible for folk, though sometimes tools like Tabletop Simulator can help with that!

Hey everyone! I'm looking forward to jamming with you all!

This isn't my first rodeo and I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone makes!

May the best game win!

You can check out my social media and past entries below!

• Website
• Twitter
• itch
• Gamejolt

Ludum Dare 47

Fancy Trash

Ludum Dare 46

The Flame

Ludum Dare 45

Real-time Gardener

Ludum Dare 43

Dark Roads

Ludum Dare 42

When Life Gives You Lemons

Ludum Dare 41

Super Slime Slasher Ultra

Ludum Dare 40

Cult Classic

Hello all

I plan on joining LD50. I've been looking forward to it for a long time. I've participated twice before. I'll be joining doing the compo as it's the most straight-forward thing for me. I do a bit of everything, but outside of LD I write music, music for games, make video games and photography.

Tools

Music: FL Studio 20

"Art": Asesprite

Dev. tool: Construct 3 (if you haven't tried it, it's usually free during Ludum Dare)

Sfx: Usually end up being a mix of things I make in FL Studio as well as library effects etc.

Previous entries

For LD46 I made the game Eggbert:

For LD48 I made Wilford, which is still in development. The scope is much larger than the previous game.

Good luck to you all with the projects that will be born this weekend :)

I did a lot of game jams in the past 10 years and have more then 10+ Ludum Dare entries. Here are my 10 tips for you if you are doing a jam the first time:

1. Be prepared

It is important that you are starting prepared in a game jam. Don’t install the latest version of your game engine or IDE 5 mins before the jam is starting. Create and prepare everything you need before the jam starts.Doing those upgrades to late or in the jam can lead to time problems because you are more fixing your problems than creating a game.

2. Know your toolset

You are having only 48h to create a game. It is really important that you know your tools. Know your programming language, know how the tools you want to use are working, know how to export your game or how you have to use a version control system. If you struggle sit down before and practice.

3. Don’t think too big

People are really often underestimating 48 hours. Find a game that is doable in 48h. A tip can be to find a game idea with only one core mechanic. Not more. If you have time left you can add more stuff at the end.

4. Prototyping

Try when you are starting with your game to have a runnable and playable prototype working as fast a possible. Don’t spend to much time into the first feature of your game with polished graphics, nice sounds, etc. It happens too often that you have to change the idea of your game and throwing parts of it away. If you had then spent 5 hours into creating the best possible inventory system you can … this would be waste of time.

5. Have a timeline

48h is not much time. If you think about it then you will see that 48h are nearly no time. It is not only the character that has to run around. Think about points like Inventory System, Animations, Game Logic, Game States, Restart Level, Score Counter, Menu System, Interactions, Game Over / Win States, etc.

A good tip is to have a playable prototype done by the end of the first day. On the second day, you have time to do all the bug fixing, polishing, etc.

6. Work healthy

Get enough sleep and eat healthy food while you are in a game jam. People tend to not sleep from Saturday to Sunday or eating only fast food. In my opinion, this is the biggest failure you can do. Stay healthy and plan enough breaks over the day. Take a short 10mins walk outside. You will be surprised what these 10mins are giving to you. It is a game jam and should be fun.

7. Have a web version

This is not a must have but people underestimating the power of a web version. If you have only an installable downloadable version of your game people are sometimes not willed to play your game. They have to download it, extract it from a zip / rar file and then install it. People are afraid of getting a virus on their pc etc. If possible try to have a web version ready. You will see that you will get tons of additional comments/ratings when people need only one click to play your game.

8. One Minute Rule

Don’t forget that people are rating after the Ludum Dare tons of games. Normally more than 2000+ games are created over one weekend. Get sure that a person who is playing your game is able to understand your game in under one minute. If you are lucky the person will play your game maybe 2 or 3 minutes.

If people are not able to understand your game in the first minute they tend to not play it. The tip here is to explain your game mechanics and the game controls well directly at the beginning.

9. Rate games

Rating games after the Ludum Dare is an important point. Playing and rating a lot of games in the first 48h after the jam can be a good idea. Don't speedrun ratings. Take your time. It is also normal if you have rated a game that this person is also rating your game. Try to give constructive neutral feedback.

10. Listen

Listen to the feedback. The Ludum Dare community is a nice one. You have hobby game developers here and people who are doing this every day at work. Listen to the feedback people are writing as a comment under your game. Maybe plan to create a second version of your game after the Ludum Dare implementing all the feedback you got. This can help you a lot in jumping your skills forward.

I always get stuck programming the prototype - too much going on my mind, and I end up losing motivation due to lack of a vision.

This time around I've been thinking in using Blender to create rough sketches of places, mechanics, etc. Since that should give me a fast space where I can test my vision without creating code.

As a bonus, when I get to the implementation phase I'll also have something to work towards and compare!

And that got me thinking, what are your favorite prototyping methods? 😉

https://youtu.be/me7YSkYduio

I'm about to contradict some tips from people a lot smarter and more experienced than me, but here we go

1-Finish no matter what.

This may seem like a bad idea at first but theres a lot that goes into it

Your brain and body need to function to make a game

This means you need to be well rested, well feed, and well hydrated. If you dont get enought sleep and end up eating some junk food is not the end of the world, you've been a hard working/studying person that maintained healthy eating and sleeping habbits the entire year, endulge a bit! Have some fun!

You gotta actually finish something

This means dont overscope yourself. Make something you know you can finish. Do you have a wedding or grandma's birthday to go to? Lower your scope even more! Want to use this jam to test a new tool or learn something new? Prep in advance. Dont try to make a full fledged steam ready game, focus on the things that matter most for the game enviosined.

PLUS ULTRA

You can try and push yourself all you want but in the end, if the hero is down on the ground, he lost, the hero has to win in the end but not at the cost of his life. You need to have a game in the end and be able to stand up to present it to everyone. That extra UI polish can be left in the trash, dont die for it.

In the end

You finished something, you growed, you learned, you can be proud of that. I know that being healthy should be the number one thing for sure, but theres people out there like me that trive on having a set goal and pushing thenselves to see what they can do and become better because of it. So thats my goal: Finish something I'm proud of.

Hello! This will be my first LudumDare and I have a question about what we can do before the Jam start.

We can create the repository with a empty project in bitbucket/github before the jam start? (Or shared project in the case of engines that have this functionality like Unity3D?)

We're a small group of complete beginners, some with some existing blender skills. Learning as much unity this week as we can before the weekend. (We're working through the free Wireframe Build Your Own FPS (https://store.rpipress.cc/products/build-your-own-first-person-shooter-in-unity). Our goal is to have fun, and see what we can do. We're already thinking that we'll be using the "Casual" option ;-). Secondary goal is to start a local, in-person community for future jam events.

So ticking off the basics, got Unity and tools installed in our lab, and then started looking into options for collaboration between contributors.

We may 5+ contributors, so Unity's free builtin cloud tools don't fit. Looks like git + git lfs are our best bet.

All the free git hosts have some more complex file size limits with LFS (understandable), and I'm concerned that those who've never used revision control might "commit-spam" and blow through the free bandwidth limits pretty fast.

Right now I'm thinking this will be the best/easiest thing for us:

• a local installation of gitea with LFS enabled
• a pre-created repo with appropriate git dot config files for ignores, LFS file types, etc
• check in a new/empty Unity project with it configured for visible meta files, and other options enabled to make Unity more version control friendly
• have everyone check out the new clean rep and start from there
• where-ever possible, have people work together on one PC (we're hosting this live), partly with the goal to reduce the number of individual checkins
• keep a list of active files and whose working on them on the whiteboard (why merge when you can avoid it by talking ;-) )
• at the end, make a new repo on github and checkin a history-less version of the final submission- so we shouldn't hit any of the GitHub data caps

Does this sound reasonable? Setting up Gitea/linux/sys-op/dev-op stuff I'm ok with- just have ~zero Unity experience.

Or do we all just load the project from the same directory on a file server? I'm adverse to even try this given past experiences... but that was quite a few years ago, and maybe the tools magically work, and lock files properly, make it easy to clean up locks after crashes- ie it just works?!

Another plus for gitea is that it shouldn't be too hard to add Jenkins CI + install Unity for Linux in the future, for later jams.

Does this sound reasonable?

Any other recommendations or suggestions?

Thanks!

1080p (png)

4k (jpg to fit on LDJam.com)

Y

Going all in this time using Godot! Still newish to the engine, but got a bit of practice leading up to the jam. This time around I'll also have a few friends joining the jam to help out too! I'm excited to see what we can make. Also excited to see what other people make! The new longer format will be interesting to see results from too.

I heard of Ludum Dare for the first time 4 years ago and decided to join with some of my friends and ever since its been pivotal to my growth as a game developer. I wouldn't be the developer I am today without partaking in these Game Jams (although I still have mountains of space left to grow) and I pride myself in having partaken in 7 of the 9 Ludum Dare Game Jams that have occurred since I first joined.

I'm thankful for always having had such a great team to work with and this time is everything but an exception! We've also always made an effort to have as many as of us as possible work at the same location, which I think drastically improves our collaboration since communication becomes a lot easier.

Anywho, here are the game's I've been a part of making during the last 10 Ludum Dare Game Jams:

LD 49 - Unstabadome

A FPS shooter in an unstable arena with a very indecisive narrator who tends to switch everything up every now and then.

LD 47 - Loopback

A turn based top down shooter tactical game in which you plan your next action in an ever-growing loop.

LD 44 - Devil's Mining Co.

A platformer where you protect the gear of the Devil's mining corporation, utilising your own life force as currency for upgrades and gear.

LD 43 - Devilman Tossbaby

Play as one of the grim reapers and sacrifice people's souls to serve your lord: Satan.

LD 42 - Out of Space

A runner game in which you are running from your space station to return to the safety of earth whilst being chased by alien monsters.

https://youtu.be/CwqTd4QpuJE

LD 41 - Fight For Food

A Beat Em' Up game where you play as a chef hunting the ingredients for meals requested by Mr. Moneybags

https://youtu.be/FufJdOkCCSY

LD 40 - The More The Bloodier

My very first game jam submission! An arena fighter game in which you fight an increasing amount of gladiators until you can't manage any more (or you manage to break this very buggy game and gain near infinite kills ;) )

Hey everyone! I recently posted these packages over on github, they are some simple tools that I use during jams but I finally broke them out into packages that can be installed individually and added samples so you can see how I set them up!

Hopefully someone can find some use for these in the jam!

https://github.com/Snowdrama/SnowdramaUnitySpringTools

https://github.com/Snowdrama/SnowdramaUnityUIRouterTools

https://github.com/Snowdrama/SnowdramaUnityTagSystem

Samples can be accessed after installing the package through the package manager!

Springs!

1, 2, and 3 dimensional springs! Useful for simple animations!

https://github.com/Snowdrama/SnowdramaUnitySpringTools

Navigation!

A Simple but robust menu navigation system. Automatically stacks navigation history so you can navigate back through menus easily!

https://github.com/Snowdrama/SnowdramaUnityUIRouterTools

Tags!

A very simple system for tagging your objects and sorting them into lists to access easily! The tags automatically add and remove from the list when an object is enabled, disabled or removed.

https://github.com/Snowdrama/SnowdramaUnityTagSystem

Here's some info I shared on a forum during the last event about coming up with ideas. I hope it's useful!

__

The creative process is one of the hardest parts of the entire compo/jam, because it dictates everything you're going to be doing for the next few days. I usually don't make ANYTHING until I have a full plan laid out of what I'm gonna make, but deciding what you're gonna make can be ultra-paralyzing if the theme is too vague, or focuses too narrowly on some mechanics.

So here is some things I do to handle the planning side of Ludum Dare:

__

Situation: Theme was just announced Don't program anything yet. Don't make any art or anything. First you need to brainstorm really hard for a while, until you feel comfortable with an idea. Nothing sucks more than tying yourself to an idea you've changed your mind on halfway through the jam. What usually happens in my experience is that you either don't finish or you don't end up liking what you've made.

What I usually do is open notepad/xed and vomit out anything I can think of. I try to focus on mechanics and gameplay first and foremost, but sometimes you can get good ideas for mechanics from interesting situations and funny shit. Generally try to think of ideas you can make in 12 hours or less. Then you can spend the rest of the time polishing things up or adding more levels/music/etc. And if something goes wrong or you need to change something, you have enough headroom to do some refactoring.

Then once you have an idea, you need to make a list of all the things you want in your game, and what you will need for it to function. If you get some new ideas later you can always add on to it, or change it. But don't get carried away with feature-creep because

Situation: Theme is good, exciting even! Sometimes the theme gives you an idea right away, or the theme is fun enough that you don't really stress a whole lot on what you want to do. Sometimes you don't need to spin anything, and can make a very fun and engaging game without any wild alterations or interpretations on the theme. This obviously doesn't happen all the time, but basically try not to overthink too much. Keep things simple unless you can't.

Situation: Theme is vague or uninteresting. These are the WOOOORST. But it happens. So what I usually do is start thinking Why does this theme suck? What would make it more fun? Can I reword it without changing it too much?

Feel free to mess around with the theme as much as you'd like, while trying to stay faithful to it. Something dumb like tWo BuTtOnS can be deconstructed or made a small part of your game; like instead of it being a controls restriction, it could mean "these two buttons are the most important of these eight buttons" or "helping grandma find her two buttons she lost" or "you are against another guy in the game to see who can spam your button the hardest".

Situation: Theme is too specific and narrow. These can be harder to deal with sometimes. Tips from more vague themes work here too, but the goal is the broaden the theme out a bit to find some new angles to work with. A theme like "You Are The Monster" could be broken down by changing the context of what 'Monster' means, or maybe change what it means in the context of your game.

Situation: You're REALLY struggling with the theme. Ignore the theme.

Seriously, you can do this! The theme - technically - is completely optional; Theme is tied to a single rating that defines how close your game fits in it. You don't have to do the theme, but it helps to have it to give you a direction. If that direction is directly into a brick wall, then you can ignore it completely and figure something else out.

__

I hope these ramblings help give you an idea on some problem solving techniques you can use. This is easily one of the hardest parts of the competition because of choice paralysis and mechanics design, so don't feel too bad if you're struggling; Everyone is!

Hi Im Ricardo and I'm a portuguese student, studying electronic music and musical production. Gaming and music have allways been my life, so I decided to mix them both and start making music for games. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmYupJJyY9ILyJzuoqqdYew this is some of my music. My university provides us with really good studio gear so I can do sound design as well. My main focus is composition but im starting to explore the world of sound design, so I'm very hyped to do some. I also know how to work with FMOD if you want to do some musical mechanics for your game. This jam would be my first because im 19 years old. I've joined a jam before but my team did a board game so I didn't have a chance to do my thing. Wish you all the best of luck for LD, hope you have fun and learn some new stuff!

We are happy to take part in this worldwide adventure!

If you want to follow our project, from birth to shipping, live, click either of these links below: - https://www.twitch.tv/teauorent - https://www.twitch.tv/vileend

Last year we got together a group of friends to try our hands at creating a JAM entry for LD48 as a team of four, it was difficult, stressful but most importantly it was super fun! So now 50% of the Devilworks Development team (check out Paperload - Deep Bass Edition" on Itch.io, end of shameless plug...) are back with less time and worse preperation than last year but an even greater hunger for terrible spaghetti code! We've also been joined by another programmer friend who's never touched unity before, though we all know that ludum is the best way of learning Unity isn't it?

So! Workflow/Toolset - Unity - JetBrains Rider (<3) - Bosca Ceoil - Trello - Git - BFXR - Blender - Photoshop - Tilesetter (psst check it out, the dev is real nice!) - Ink Pen and good old paper.

Should we decide to venture into 3d we also have a blender artist/level designer on standby to boost our blender knowledge further.

I wish you all a wonderful last few good nights sleep and happy voting,
see you on L-day and good luck!

Well it's time for the big five O. Crazy to think I first took part in Ludum Dare #32 so long ago.

Ludum Dare #33 is probably the entry I'm most proud of, I've had to shift the hosting of it a few times since then :P

Excited to see what the theme is this time. I already have a good idea of what kind of game genre I'd like to tackle, some kind of city building game like Caesar 3 or Banished :3 Everything setting-wise is up in the air until we get that theme though!

Proper planning and preparation early in the jam have a massive impact on how quickly and easily everything comes together. The more people you have on your team, the more essential it is to decide these early.

Here are some game design decisions that your team should make in the first 3 hours of the jam:

1. Genre

What type of game is this going to be? Platformer? Puzzle game? Survival adventure? First-person shooter? This metaphor will give a strong mental picture of the general feel and conventions that should go into the game.

2. Key Gameplay Feature

What is the most important gameplay feature? Jumping? Shooting? Dodging? Exploring? Thinking? Decide which verb is the most important for your core gameplay loop. Everything in the game design should be aimed at providing the player with that core experience.

3. Camera Perspective

How will the camera show the game action? 2D side view? Top-down? 2.5D Sideview? First-person? Third-person? Picking the camera angle up front makes it easy for the gameplay programmers and artists to visualize their part of the game.

Share a single reference image with the team with the correct camera perspective.

4. Game Setting

Where will the action in the game happen? What locations will be present? Caves? Casinos? A boat? A desert? Underwater? Will there be more than one location in the game?

Share 2-4 reference images with the team to convey the idea of the locations.

5. Visual Art Direction

How will the world be depicted? Should the art be 3D or 2D? Low-poly or high-poly? Photorealistic or stylized? How will the characters be depicted? Is there a core color palette?

Share 1-2 initial reference images to convey the general art direction.

6. Key Character(s)

Who are the key characters in the game? Will the player have an on-screen avatar? Will there be a main villain? Or a love interest? In the initial design, you want all the key characters listed with their essential bits, though design, art, and coding will all happen later.

Share 1 reference image for each key character with the team early to help them capture the core vision.

That's what you want for a Game Design Skeleton in the first 3 hours of the jam.

• 6 Design Decisions
• 5-10 Reference Images

These are the important things to decide early that will make it easy to realize your vision for the game and provide clear direction for the team, even as everyone splits off to work on their domain-specific bits of the game.

• Are there other key design decisions that you think are incredibly powerful at the start of the jam?
• Do you use artifacts besides images for references?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Hello everyone. After the last LudumDare session in which I participated with a weird project named TakeYourMedsDarling (overall #90), I have continued its development. Now the last release is very different with many other things and features. You can find it on itch.io - for free. If you liked the first one, I guess that you will appreciate this strange and innovative puzzle game in impossible space. I wish you the best for the next LudumDare session. Have fun - and stay safe ++

https://geckoo1337.itch.io/take-your-meds-darling

Since everyone is sharing tips now, I decided to add some of my own. I have finished LD around a dozen times, most of that with a team and tried a lot of different things, even a multiplayer shooter once (did not end up well, don't try at home, kids)!

Preparation

Coming into the jam prepared can save several hours of time and, most importantly, nerves. Most of these are pretty obvious, but a good check list always helps

• Update all necessary software (including rebooting Windows)
• If using, setup a Git repo and share an empty project with all team members
• Install any plugins or assets you're going to use
• Do a test build, upload it and have someone test it
• Learn or re-learn workflows for the most important apps
• Check a few places for assets, even just for placeholder ones

Concept & Planning

First off, check out these tips.

Second, a thing you can see a lot of people doing here is coming up for an idea for each theme. That takes some off the actual jam and gets you going faster. Also, you can use the same ideas for multiple themes.

Deciding a genre beforehand

This is somewhat depending on how you approach the jam: if you really want to go in theme-first, it will mostly dictate the genre, but if you consider the theme more of an inspiration or a guideline, it can be useful to decide upon a theme or even a mechanic or two beforehand.

The advantage of this approach is that regardless of the theme (and as someone commented on the post linked above: the theme always sucks), you'll end up with a game. And that is the main purpose of Ludum Dare anyway. I also find it quite motivating.

Depending on your engine of choice, of course, you may need to do this anyway. Twine or RPGMaker lend themselves best to certain types of games and even with general engines like Unity make certain things easier than others.

Platform

My platform of choice has always (my first LD was in 2009) been Web, which mostly now means WebGL for games. If you want as much feedback as possible, it's the best choice.

• Multiplatform without extra builds and hassle
• Safer than downloading random games
• Fastest to get playing

The best place for distributing web builds is Itch.io, as its no hassle, no ads and reliable. Additional things to consider:

• Check that your game fits the window without need for scrolling at least on 1920x1080 resolution. I usually use 1024x576 but a bit larger window sizes should fit too.
• Have an option to turn sounds off.

Unity Tips

Here's a bunch of small tips for those of you using Unity: * 3D real-time is the most native way to do things. Sure, there's plenty of support for 2D too and making a turn-based game just needs some extra scripting, but you're also giving up things like NavMesh agents. * Make use of 1st/3rd Person Controller (pre-install!) * Unity Events are hand for level scripting, make a few general scripts that use them * Choose a font and at least placeholder UI assets early on so you don't need to waste time later to replace them * Especially important to test WebGL build before the jam, since there can be hiccups

Misc Tips

Start From the End

I know this sounds like a theme, but it's something I've been thinking about recently. Basically, when you test the game, the further you go, the more you have to play through the early content, or throw in some debugging options to skip that, which takes a lot of time that adds up during the weekend. So, if you make the ending first, and build back from that, you'll only need to test the new content (except occasionally, of course).

Onboarding

When judging, people play a lot of games and seldom have time to commit to a single one more than a few minutes, which makes player onboarding all the more important. Don't just throw all the info to the player in a single image or wall of text in the beginning, make it available as it becomes relevant, or, at the very least, have an option to review the how to play and controls.

Keep It Short

As said above, people don't have time to dedicate even an hour for every game, so make sure your game delivers its main selling points within 10-15 minutes. If it's a story-driven game, the whole story should be playable in this time.

In Conclusion

There's plenty of more I could prattle on about, but this post is already getting quite long!

In any case, the most important thing is to have fun! Making a complete game, even a small one, is an incredibly rewarding experience and the community here is quite amazing, so you'll get plenty of good and encouraging feedback.

See you at the finish line!

I'll be joining forces with @xellaya once again for LD50, entering the Jam division (no extra mode for us, I have a trip coming up after LD).

As usual, I'll be using Godot along with my godot template project, which also includes my common library code. I'm declaring these for the sake of rule compliance, but I wouldn't really expect anyone else to get much use out of them.

A few updates on the state of Godot for any fellow devs who are using the engine:

Godot 3.4.4 was released just last week and appears to be working just fine for the most part.

In 3.4 there have been some additional settings added with regards to frame deltas which you may wish to look into if you're interested in making movement/visual updates look smoother.

Unfortunately, there's not been any updates on cross-origin headers required for SharedArrayBuffer support on itch.io (see various threads like this one), so if you plan to publish on itch, you must use a Regular (not Threaded) HTML5 build. The main downside here is performance with regards to audio playback, so attempting to use lower audio latencies will result in buffer underruns (crackling, stuttering) depending on browser.

If you are self-hosting, you have the option of using a Threaded build instead assuming you've got the appropriate headers configured, which will allow you to lower the audio latency settings. If you are deploying on both, like me, you either need to make two separate builds, or suck it up and use a non-threaded build. =(

For reference, the default web audio latency is still set as 50 in godot's project settings, which is...relatively high, though not terrible. Action-oriented games and UI feedback sounds will most likely feel a bit delayed, or at least less "snappy".

The good news is that Godot 3.4 includes an improvement to the current single-threaded behavior by using a new AudioWorklet implementation, so you can potentially use a slightly lower latency with a single-threaded build and still be ok. I don't think this is a magic bullet; from my testing a latency of 15 still resulted in audio artifacts, so you probably can't be too aggressive with it.

I don't have any particular goals in mind for LD50. I've been thinking about approaches for top-down/RPG-style tileset design, as well as musical styles that might work well with my partner's work. I've been utilizing a lot more reverb lately along with some more acoustic instruments (soft piano, guitar, etc) for my "chillhop"-type experiments so that may be something that I lean into. But everything's up in the air until we hear the theme and get an idea for a game.

See you all at the starting line!

Edit: I've just seen now that there is an experimental flag on the itch.io game settings page that allows you to enabled SharedArrayBuffer support -- huzzah!

Edit #2: Ah, I've spoken too soon. It looks like in order to maintain the functionality of the site, itch has opted to use the credentialless option instead of require-corp for COEP, which unfortunately will only work for Chrome. So I suppose non-threaded builds are still what you want for itch.io.

https://github.com/weirdybeardyman/gamedevresources

When Round 2 voting started, I was jokin to a friend we'll see Echoes in round 3 as well. Now she joked "I bet it will win, someone is flooding the voting system with bot votes"

I think she might be right. Started plotting my Echoes ideas, what are yours?

Personally I would be the most excited for "Infestation" or "A single resource", but those other two are also pretty interesting. I like my 0 picks too, I just had to sort them into a different tier.

Almost every -1 vote from me was because it made me think more of "places" than "actions", except for "Combine"; which I wanted to be a smidge more limiting than it was.

I always love making a little StrawPoll to get a sense of what people are voting for, just for fun. Rarely do the results of these polls reflect the actual theme that is chosen, but I have fun doing it anyway. Click the link, select the themes you voted +1 for, and see how your votes compared to everyone else!

TAKE THE POLL!

You will wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. You somehow already know you are going to hate the chosen theme and even though it doesn't make sense, you know in your heart of hearts it's my fault. If it wasn't for me, a good theme would have been picked and you would have made the best game that won first place and everyone would finally know how awesome you really are. If only...

Sweet dreams my jammers.

Personally, I think I'd like to see 'A single resource' win. There could be a LOT of variation with such a theme; what resource you have, what you do WITH that resource, and what your ultimate goal involving that resource is.

Despite me saying this, I know I'll be grumpy in the beginning, if that theme wins. If a different one wins, well, hopefully it's not one of the bad ones ;)

on the other hand, is anyone else an absolutely inconsistent voter

slaughter round I vote yes to basically anything that makes me laugh or has vibe of "I can work with that"

first 3 rounds I use a lot of neutrals or yeses to again, "I could work with that"

final round I'll be like "no I hate it" even if I upvoted it in the first 3 rounds lol

closer I get to finals more choosy I get lmao

Welcome to Ludum Dare 50, and the 20th anniversary of Ludum Dare!

Yes, we ran the very first Ludum Dare 20 years ago, back in April of 2002. That's a lot of caffeine ago. :sweat_smile:

Without further ado, lets get to it.

Final Round Theme Voting has begun

Cast your vote here: :ballot_box: /events/ludum-dare/50/theme

For rules and other info, visit the event page here: :trophy: /events/ludum-dare/50

If you don't want to figure out timezones, the theme announcement is when the clock (top-right) reaches zero.

TIP: The ldjam.com website gets really busy before the Theme Announcement. We recommend you follow the official Twitter account, and sign-up for the E-mail Newsletter.

NEW: Extra, the new casual Ludum Dare

I'm thrilled to announce that Ludum Dare has a brand new format!

When submitting your game, you can now choose between the Jam, Compo, or the new Extra format. Extra is Ludum Dare's casual format. There are no winners in the Extra format, but you get to choose your own schedule. Create and submit your Extra games anytime between Friday April 1st and Thursday April 21st--that's nearly 3 weeks! Submit early, and you still get to be a part of Ludum Dare's feedback process: Give feedback, and get feedback.

Learn more about Extra here: /events/extra-the-new-casual-ludum-dare

Rules updates: Extra format, optional Theme, Unfinished games

We'll be publishing a brand new version of Ludum Dare's rules soon. The main difference is the inclusion of the new Extra format detailed above, but there are few other changes I'd like to highlight:

• You can now optionally opt-out of the Theme category. This is not required.
• Please only submit finished games using the Jam, Compo, and Extra formats.
• If your game isn't finished, choose Unfinished instead.

That's everything new this time.

We will continue to evolve the Extra format over the next few events. See the future section for a sneak peek of what's to come. We'll have more to share in September/October for Ludum Dare 51.

On chat communities, and future plans

I shared a short Twitter thread the other day. The TL;DR is that I've been told several times that some folks don't feel welcome on the chat servers that represent Ludum Dare. We don't run any, but that may have to change. This unease is in part due to the "male skew" of gaming and technology, but also because nobody is really trying hard enough. If you'd like to share your experience, my inbox is open. Sometime after LD50, I'd like to engage and chat privately with folks about it.

I don't use public chat rooms, so I don't have ambitions to create some "ultimate" chat server or anything, but it has become clear this isn't something we can ignore. I've always intended for Ludum Dare to be a welcoming and inclusive community, a place for creators new and old to come together. Chat rooms play a vital role for many.

I'll work out the details in the coming months, but my intention is to hire someone to run and moderate an official Ludum Dare chat and help channel, someone that isn't a cis-white-dude like me. I do my best to be conscious to the issues, but I could do one better, and bring on someone with life experience. Their job will be to run and moderate the chat (a potentially quiet chat between events), and they'll have a direct line to me for anything that needs escalating. I'd like to find other ways they can help out, if nothing else, steering me in the right direction when it comes to issues a cis-white-dude might be blind to. I don't have a huge budget for this, and I don't expect them to be glued to the chat, but I'd like it to be worth their while.

Again, I have no interest in dethroning or replacing any of the chat servers out there. I just want is ensure there is a place everyone feels welcome and safe talking about Ludum Dare.

NEW: the Ludum Dare & Game Jams Twitter community

Twitter recently launched "communities", a new way for groups to tweet about a shared topic. Naturally we created one for ourselves. Community feeds are public, but interactions within the community (tweets, comments, likes) are limited to members only. To start, it's wide open and anyone can join. If we need to restrict or moderate it, we will.

I also decided to cast a wider net with it. Right now, Ludum Dare events only happen twice a year, over a couple 5-8 week periods. That's a lot of inactivity. So because "why not", I decided to try and make it the community for Ludum Dare and other Game Jams on Twitter. They key is that we (Ludum Dare/Mike/Interactive Snacks) are taking responsibility for it. If it becomes something, we'll give it the attention it deserves.

Join the Ludum Dare & Game Jams Twitter community at the link below.

twitter.com/i/communities/1509183497361104896

NOTE: Be sure you're logged in to Twitter, else this link will fail.

Keynote: Keynoter's Reunion, 20 years in the making

At long last, it's time for your featured presentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC2KGu__2Ws

Thank you everyone that contributed to this. :wink:

Wrap-up

That's it for me. See you Friday for the main event.

Teleportation - Teleportation is just cool. Its kind of hard to mess this up unless it is just taken for granted as a passive mechanic. Folklore - Tell or retell a story, with an implication that the story is kind of epic. Road trip - Lots of ways you could go with this, as long as there is a road. Garden - There are lots of kinds of gardens, and lots of ways you can think of a garden. I have more than one idea I like for this one.

I think of these teleportation is the only one that got me somewhat excited consistently, and most of my favorites didn't make it. Still the fun part of themes isn't necessarily whether you like the theme but whether you can make something you like out of it.

Still, no Sky Pirates or hot t-rex. :slight_frown:

It disappear...
disappear...
...

Fragile: Out of all of the themes here, this is the one I want to win the most. It seems like it's pretty much the ideal theme for a game jam, in the way that there's no one obvious way to use the theme and it has near-limitless possibilities.

Make connections: This one is a pretty good theme too, I think there could be a lot of unique ways to use this theme, from obvious things like visual novels about friendship or romance to action games with amazingly unique mechanics.

Folklore: I gave this theme a -1 when it appeared in Round 1, I get the feeling there would be a repeat of "Deeper and deeper" and a lot of games would be pretty much the same thing.

Shelter: This could be good for story-based games and games where you have to avoid taking damage from something (thinking of a level in New Super Mario Bros 2 for the Nintendo 3DS where giant rocks are falling from the sky), but I do question how this could be used creatively.

Road trip & Tunnels: Both received -1's without a second thought, not only are they so similar I'm criticizing them at the same time but I expect a lot of games would practically be clones of each other, especially with "Road trip"!

Garden: This was actually one of my Theme Suggestions, despite having said yes to it in the Slaughter and voting for it in Round 1 I'm only going to give it a 0 in the Final Round. Seeing how much better some other themes are than "Garden" (I'm hinting at "Fragile" and "Make connections") I think it's better to only give it a 0.

I think it's my favorite theme because there is just so much ideas arround it. I feel like if folklore end up being the theme we will see quite a lot of variety

this is a bit of a silly post but i just felt like sharing this, This is actually my first game jam, as I've always been running away i have decided to step out of my comfort zone and just make something for once, I'm actually pretty nervous and excited at same time all in all, Let's have fun

Hello we are a team of three 2D artist and one Dev, we are looking for a sound designer to participate with us on this adventure, so if you are interested you can contact us :)

Bonjour nous sommes une équipe de trois artistes et un dev, nous recherchons un sound designer , si vous intéressé pour rejoindre notre aventure vous pouvez nous contacter :)

I am pretty happy with some of the themes in the final round! Both of my favorite themes managed to get through :)

What I usually look for in a theme is something that isn't too restricting and can be used for every genre.

Folklore

This is the theme I am looking forward to the most, we already checked out some of our local folklore and found some interesting ones that could be used for a fun game! It isn't too restricting either, you can make a puzzle game or even a shooter depending on which folklore you use (you can even combine multiple folklores to create your own story!)

Roadtrip

This theme could be interpreted in a couple of ways; A game about traveling (what conflicts are on your way?), A management game where you manage your friend group from ruining things (Maybe similar to the business minigame from Yakuza 0?).

A single resource & Space is limited

These two can be used in a lot of ways too! Maybe a game about a shrinking room; win or be squashed. One battery; where to use it and when?

Not my favorite themes as I am not sure if every genre could be applied to these themes (Single resource shooting game?).

Conclusion

Looking forward to this weekend!

If you'd like, tell us about your favorite themes, or maybe some concepts you are thinking about!

Since quite a few people having posting tips and advice I thought I'd share my main advice from over 10 years of game jamming, and it's fairly simple:

Make a really small game, and finish it!

I know I'm not the only person peddling this classic which should prove how important it is. I would say this especially true for new jammers, but trurthfully as a more experienced jammer that's often led to ambition and hubris that has left me without a finished game at the end of a weekend.

If you target a game you can make in half a day, then I think realistically you're going to find it's going to take a lot longer. Then if you do finish in a day you'll have a whole extra of day to polish and make it really special.

Finding a way to get yourself to the finish line is much more important than the "learning experience" you get from another failed project. I've already got the learnings from countless unfinished good intentions. Every time I finish a small project these days there's a lot more satisfaction sharing that with everyone than there would be from a bigger game I couldn't finish.

Ideally by the end of day 1 you're playing your whole game through in some rough form. So if you find yourself at the end of day 1 with something that's a long way to go still, I would strongly encourage you to start cutting like crazy. Get the scope down as much as you can.

Now that's all said, as a disclaimer most advice is autobiographical. I'm preaching to myself and my own past mistakes more than your unique circumstances. If this doesn't fit you, do what you want, as long as you have fun then the whole weekend should be worthwhile no matter how it turns out.

Ok, let's say the truth... im not an super dooper game dev, but im inside this world, and I always wanted to participate in this LDJam's... so... let's go!

It's been ages since I joined a LD! Planets have aligned and this weekend I might be able to join, so I'm quite excited. Tools I will be using:

• Pico8

That's it, it has everything one needs for a game jam. I've made four games and a few prototypes already with Pico8 and I love it!

Hey everybody! This LD will be the second time I'm participating in an LD, but the first time I'll be doing so by myself.

With that said, I feel like I have an important announcement to make:

Whatever this LD's theme will be, I will somehow incorporate giraffes into my product.

Thank you for reading this very important announcement.

Given the themes, it will not be this time yet that i will be able to make a stealth game...

Better late than never. The last few days have been full of virtual machines, linking and compiling. Apparently you can't simply move a file onto another PC and expect it to run. After some tweaking I finally managed to put together a system for creating a single "AppImage" for my games making them a bit easier to distribute, at least on GNU/Linux.

Here's a hello world in a virtual machine with zero dependencies installed

Maybe I'll also have web builds next time around but that will require a bit more work. Windows builds I had to skip entirely. That just didn't work and that dreaded g++.exe still gives me nightmares.

On another note, I also had some success with a raspberry pi (ARM CPU) and also in theory this all should run on a Steam Deck but that one I can't test because I don't own one.

Hey there, Godot devs! I've maintained a project starter template on github for quite some time now. It has pre-made scenes that you'll need (title, how-to-play, credits), scene transitions (fade to and from black), a pause menu (shows on escape key) and a game over dialog (see repo readme for how to use). Plus it comes with the ability to take screenshots to make animated GIFs with, and a utility scene for creating properly sized GIFs for itch.io covers.

The github repo page is https://github.com/jhlothamer/godotprojectstarter

The repo page also contains instructions on how to use and override some basic things, but unless you run out of time you'll want to revamp the title and other scenes to your liking too.

If you're more in the mood for a video about it, I've got ya' covered!

Godot Project Starter

I also made a helper pack with even more useful utilities and components. You can checkout the github page for that here: https://github.com/jhlothamer/godothelperpack

The helper pack has a github wiki describing everything in the pack. The two things I use in every project are the SignalMgr (lets you connect signals without needing to use get_node or node paths) and the ServiceMgr (sort of like and IoC/DI container for GDScript). So you might want to check those out if you're curious.

All repos are MIT license and free to use, no attribution required or necessary. I just hope they help!

I'm a bit stressed since i didn't join a game jam since forever. Hopefully i'll manage to make something playable in 48 or 72 hours :sweat_smile:

Toolset: * Engine: Unity * 3D Art: ProBuilder, Blender * 2D Art: GIMP, Krita, Aseprite, paint.net * Audio: Bosca Ceoil, Bfxr, Audacity

I hope everybody's gonna have a great time and I can't wait to play these wonderful games that you'll create.

ps. rip echoes ;(

mine would probably be "Make connections", sorry for anyone who likes that theme lol, but I've been working on a game about connecting nodes in a graph for the past few weeks and I'm Sick Of Connections. what do you think ?

Now that @0x-void-x0 was looking at single worst theme you wanted to vote out ....

What's your absolute favorite of the final bunch of themes?

hangout and chat with other game developers who are in Ludum dare or just share what you are working on https://discord.gg/CyYZcFxxuR

I was gonna make a new Godot diorama for this LD, but didn't have the time. This one's still here though :)

It could be your wallpaper, animation for your jam music compilation video, or something :smile:

Animated (MP4, executables) and still (HD & UHD PNG) downloads:
https://github.com/outfrost/composition02/releases

I would love to know how you do it!

I usually begin by googling up the theme and watching pictures related to it. Yes, depending on the theme it can be hilarious or disturbing, but that's also inspiring. Google, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube... whatever. The more the merrier. Jot things down meanwhile.

Then I usually take a piece of paper and bein drawing a mindmap - you know, the theme written in a bubble in the middle, then nodes coming out from it with different ideas for stories, mechanics, feelings, whatever. I write anything that comes to my mind. IF I already have a genre in mind, perfect. But it I don't? Well, this step can take longer.

Finally I pick two or three promissing ideas and draw a mockup, see how they could look like, expand them a little bit, and 'roleplay' how it would play. The best one wins.

What about you? Do you use some proven method to come up with ideas you find interesting to work with?

This is my contribution, I hope it won't influence other's opinions :-)

hello, dear participants! first of all, i want to wish all of you good luck on ludum dare 50. i hope that it'll be fun and unique experience for all of us, especially if it's your first ludum dare (like in my case). and let's hope that the theme would be nice and also, i have a question which i haven't found in an old rules: am i allowed to use any tutorials during the development of the game? for example, if i want to create a system, that i don't know how exactly to do, am i allowed to use any existing tutorials or videos (without using of a source code, of course)

But, maybe I can use Sky Pirates for any of these themes :thinking:

Mutation: Sky Pirates that mutate into slug pirates if they get too close to clouds!

Tunnels: Sky Pirate racing game barn storming some tunnels in a giant rock island

Overgrown: Sky Pirates battle giant venus flytrap island to get the gold

Garden: Sky Pirates growing food on their flying fortress blimp!

My friend that is sitting next to me is trying to use Construct but when he presses play, it breaks his computer. Now that I have went to check it, it stopped going crazy.

Hey! If you're doing the compo, you'll have to make some music. I've seen some LD devlogs and a big problem that pops is that you don't know how to make music. You could choose the path of using the ugly Bosca Ceoil, or using BeepBox (which is much better for sure), but these options are limited. I've found a MUCH better option that enables you to make some banger music. You can use Bandlab! It has amazing packs of loops that can be used and you can also use separate loops. It's also free and can be downloaded on mobile ^^

https://www.bandlab.com/

Here are some examples of music I've made with Bandlab completely with loops.

https://www.bandlab.com/chickagyy/untitled-2a332b54?revId=1a60ca14-9267-ec11-94f6-a04a5e79a6b8

https://www.bandlab.com/chickagyy/untitled-da5081ba?revId=1eba2a22-3695-ec11-a507-0050f280e91e

https://www.bandlab.com/chickagyy/untitled-4c56a033?revId=6b7ec6ab-3d67-ec11-94f6-a04a5e79a6b8

I hope you all have an amazing jamming session. Good luck!

Hey friends!

I just moved abroad, so I have a lot of time to spend. What best opportunity to partecipate to LD50? This is the fourth time over the years I will partecipate to the jam, but I never delivered, mostly because those factors:

• Overscoping: I have to marry the idea that I can't create a masterpiece in two days. Keep the game simple and self-contained, don't overthink it and be aware to scope creep.
• Theme drift: sometimes I get so attached to a specific mechanic that I ram the theme into it until they fit, creating a game with a compromised mechanic and out of theme. I should start with the theme, then extrapolate a good mechanic from it.
• Lack of motivation: the tools you use could not collaborate, it happens. In that case I have to fix (or go around) the problem instead of giving up.
• Burnout: working for two day straight is not good for you: you will be energy deprived and unmotivated very soon. Instead plan your sleep, your meals and maybe also a walk. It's very useful when you are stuck!

I'm defining the tools I will use this time, I already use them and I trust them (don't betray me please):

• Engine: Unity, the swiss army knife for me. I would like to go for Godot, but I haven't really the know-how on the latter.
• Text Editor: the one and only Visual Studio Code. For notes I think I will use Notion or Obsidian.
• Image Editing: Photoshop, Krita and Tiled. Wanna try Tilemancer, looks really cool.
• 3D Modeling: Blender with Substance Painter for textures. I don't really want to do 3D stuff, but you never know.
• Sounds: BFXR or my voice and Audacity filters.

The big hole is the music. I know about Bosca Ceoil, but I'm not really a composer and I don't want to waste too much time on making music. I think I saw a tool that generates loooong and eerie ambient sound, and if it does not exists, someone should create it :joy:

Guys and gals, if you have any suggestion about music generation, I'm all ears! :v:

Besides the huge amount of source material for inspiration, open to so many intepretations, I love how it doesn't restrict mechanics at all. I have more ideas for that theme that any other before:

• A pet simulator where you need to take care of a Griffin or Cerberus.

• A Pac-Man style game where you play as the Wendigo from American Indian folklore, chasing down people to eat them.

• A stealth game where you need to avoid a Minotaur as you escape the Labyrinth.

• An idea I had for "Mirror" was a game where you're hunting Medusa, but you can't look directly at her, only her reflection around corners.

• A racing game like Mario Kart on Rainbow Road, where you're chasing a Leprechaun to the end of the rainbow to steal his pot of gold.

• A Pokémon Snap style game where you're trying to snap pictures of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.

• A quiz game featuring the Sphix.

• A sea battle simlulator where you need to fight off a Kraken.

• A simulator where you're a Mermaid having to do Seaworld-style tricks.

• The Monkey King of Chinese folklore could have mechanics based of either the cloud he rides on, or his shrinking/extending staff.

• A hunting simulator where you need to track and kill a Jackalope.

• A sumo game where you play as Paul Bunyan competing against Goliath.

Those are just what I came up with in about 5 minutes.

I know this may be unpopular with most people here but it would be really nice to have a theme that's more story-based than mechanic-based, for once. I know, you can always include a story but I'd love to see what people create with it as the focus. There are a TON of fun stories you can take and mold into a game (including Robin Hood, Cinderella and many others, which are public domain too, btw).

This would be a more challenging theme for me and maybe that's also what attracts me to it.

That said, I upvoted several other themes as I have many I like.

Can't believe these were the themes that made it to the final round... Really!? Not even gonna vote.

Anyway, very excited for my second Ludum Dare

EDIT: I might have been too harsh... Folklore is actualy a very good theme!

I already made an I'm in post but forgot to state my base code, so here it is, feel free to use it too!
https://github.com/Erkberg/UnityLibrary
On another note: I'm really lookin' forward to seeing the endless stream of your creations during the jam, it's always such a wonderful source of inspiration! :sparkles:

If you're struggling a bit with recording your game, I just published a little Unity tutorial to help with that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7qaOeIm7wo
A picture is worth a thousand words, they say.
If that's true, then how much are videos and gifs worth? :open_mouth:

its been a while doing game dev, jam .. Jams provide some focus to work on cool ideas

Planned Tools :

Engine : GODOT

Language : GDScript

Art 2D : Krita, Paint.net

Art 3D : Blender

Server : python or nodejs

Audio : lmms

Getting my tools set ready for the Jam.. Have Fun

Now that I have your attention: @Deakcor and I are looking for 2D & 3D artists (& a Sound Designer if it's not too much to ask) for this Jam. We use to make our arts by ourselves but this time we'd like to build a bigger team so we can focus all our energy on the coding mecanics.

About us

Our native tongue is French but we are both able to speak English, we're on GMT+02:00 (it would be more practical to have a similar time zone, but we accept any motivated people).

Our goals

We aim to take part in the Jam (as we wouldn't have a lot of time during the next weeks) so it will most likely look like a rush than a marathon.

It would be nice to synchronize the team before the LD50 starts, we'll have a Discord to communicate and use Git to share sources (we can teach you the basics if necessary :smile: ).

Our Dev stack is Godot, of course we don't have requirement on your own tools as you are able to export your files in the formats we will need in the end !

You can check our work here

• Deakcor's Itch.io page
• My LD participations are on my profile
• Some of our shared projects

Contact us

You can reply on this message, I'll try to be reactive. The best would be to contact us on Twitter (@Deakcor & @Number6406)

:wave:

Hey! Sadly, don't think I have the time to enter for this one.

However! I did publish something already.

Something that literally NOBODY asked for.

:link: https://impress.games/ludum-dare-50

A page that is tracking all Ludum Dare 50 coverage across YouTube and the Web!

* Find cool new YouTubers and writers who love game jams as much as you do. :heart: *

One to bookmark for later. :slight_smile:

Happy to take any feedback on the page!

Going to try using Solarus Engine, I briefly tried it out nearly a year ago but got frustrated with how annoying it's level editor could be but I think that was mainly due to me trying to do maps with bunch of verticality. https://www.solarus-games.org/

Looking at the remaining theme options I feel like I can do something for each of them though for some them theme would just be story and setting based. I probably should figure out how to do cutscenes or something in Solarus.

Howdy! I’m Kirk Lindsay from the ‘USA’. I love creating and thinking about all sorts of games. (You may also know me from my old nickname HacksawUnit!)

LudumDare 50!! I've only been participating since LudumDare 25, but that's still quite the number... I am going to try super hard to make an excellent game this weekend! I have been warming up my development skills and I want to hit the ground running. Will I finally get a first place trophy this year, on the esteemed #50!? Well... probably not. Maybe! We'll see. Ideally, at least, I can make another great game!!

Favorite tools list:

🌯 Construct2: HTML5 game creation software!

🌯 Aseprite: Pixel art program!

🌯 GIMP: Open source image editor!

🌯 LSDJ and bgb: Authentic Gameboy synthesizer and emulator!

🌯 Audacity: Open source sound editor!

🌯 itch.io: Storefront/games host!

I'm in, my tools this time: - Code: x86 (x64) assembly, interfacing with OS APIs. - Graphics: generate triangle and texture map (for fonts, for example) data directly with Vulkan. - Audio: I might write a custom utility to interface with OS specific audio APIs.

Of course I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm just using Unity as always.

Hello everyone, I've never participated in any jam before, so I'm a little nervous, but i think it's more of a pleasant nervous

I hope everyone has the strength and patience to complete what they start, looking forward to playing great games!

This year marks Ludum Dare's 20th anniversary, but also my 10th anniversary of doing Ludum Dare, back in 2012 for LD23! :tada:

To celebrate I threw together a quick highlight reel of all the games I've made so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIdSMDdkEwE

Looking forward to doing this one! I'm thinking I'll probably code up a game in TypeScript without any framework but as usual I'll see where the theme takes me and whether I'll a different tool. And looking forward to seeing what others create too!

I've been checking folklore stories from different cultures including my own in preparation for the "Folklore" theme (I'm trying to come up with ideas for all themes), and it seems almost all of those stories have somthing to do with fear [ghosts, crazy murderers, mosters...] I mean think about some folklore in your country, chances are it's probably some kind of figure that you don't want to encounter. why is this the case ? and why I never noticed this before ?

Getting super excited thinking about all these themes! Here are the results from my poll thus far after 146 people have voted. If you haven't voted yet in the theme poll yet, CLICK HERE!

Howdy! My name is Arseniy and i'm from Ukraine. It's my first Ludum Dare i ever participate, and i already decided to make my life hard by choosing Compo without having much experience in gamedev (i made only three games for local jams which takes from 4 days to 2 weeks long) ;) I hope it'll be fun and i will make game in time.

Good luck for everyone!

UPD: As everyone tells there which tools they gonna use, i also will do so. My tools: - Unity as game engine - Blender as 3D editor - Aseprite as sprite and (maybe) texture editor - Reaper as music and SFX creation software

Hey! I've joined the LD community during the LD49 and I've decided to join again, this time with a bit more experience! I honestly love all the themes proposed and can't wait to start this challenge

My tools will be: - Unity, my go-to game engine for game jams, simple and with a lot of resources - Sfxr for some simple quality SFXs for my game - Bandlab, a website that i recently discovered and that I'm going to use for my game's music ( no, this time i won't publish a completly silent game ) - Visual studio, also my go-to IDE - Pixelorama for the occasional sprites - Google, the developer's best friend; I'm gonna use it for libraries, resources and inspiration

~~Sorry for my bad english~~

This is my first LD game jam! I hope will be able to finish! Here are my tools!

Tools:

1. I am planing to use haxeflixel but might use Gdevelop depending on the theme
2. piskel for pixel art
3. sublime text for code editing
4. tiled (if using haxeflixel) for levels

using chromebook with crossover beta

I hope I will be able to submit a game this year!

Year 4 for me and I'm rearin' and ready to go!

Still flyin' solo on the Jam and gonna be streaming as much of the process as my internet let's me! Don't know which program I'll be using yet this year, it'll depend on what the theme is and what I come up with for it but here's a general rundown of what I have used/plan to use:

Tools of the Trade: - Clip Studio Paint Pro for custom art/animations - Ren'py Possible Game Engine 1 - RPGMaker Ace Possible Game Engine 2 - Twine Possible Game Engine 3 (that I always forget about whoops) - Unity Possbile (but very unlikely) Game Engine 4 (I still have minimal experience with Unity outside of vrm edits) - Music? who knows

I'll be streaming over Twitch HERE

LET'S GOOOOO!!!!!

Last time I lost, but this time I am determined to win! Hope for a fair fight. I wish everyone to complete their project to the end. glhf

Can't wait to get into the swing of developing once the jam gets started! I'll be using game maker 2, same as my previous entries and (depending on the theme)I plan on remaking s game I made on scratch when I was 11. Here's my tools:

engine: Game Maker Studio 2

art: Aseprite

music: To be made by Sample Motion (Unless they are not available, in which case I will use FL Studio)

sound effects: SFXR

Here's a link to the game I might recreate if you're curious (Although I must warn you it's BAD)

And I'll be trying to stream as much of my process as I can on my Youtube

Of course I'm in! So far I've been in 5 Ludum Dare jams, and the first one was a few years back. I hope a good theme will be selected, I like making games with systemic gameplay. So far, I've only made 2D games with pixel art, cause, you know, that's the easiest and quickest way for me to make a game. This time, depending on the theme of course, I'd like to experiment with 3D a little. It will be a huge challenge, and perhaps I'll go back to 2D.

My tools of trade, as always:

• Godot engine
• Aseprite for pixels
• Sfxr/bfxr for sounds
• (I never really got to adding any music into my games)
• Perhaps Blender if I decided to go with 3D

I still need to set up my Vim to work correctly with Godot and provide autocomplete...

Hey everyone this is my second go at the jam I felt Unsatisfied with my from last time as I was super busy. This time I plan to do my best, I think I’ve grown as a programmer and as a developer since last time and am ready to win. Well maybe not win but at lest do better than last time lol…

This year I'm super tired from a thing I had to do~ BUT this will not stop meeeeeee~~~~ LET'S GOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Is there someone here excited about jamming in Unreal Engine? I know I am.

After about four minutes of deliberation, I have decided to put off the hike I had planned for this weekend in order to participate in the 50th Ludum Dare.

As usual, I will be doing the Jam for this one. Unlike previous jams, though, I am decidedly going to make a 2D game this time, to try and keep things as simple and completable as possible.

Although I've come to loathe Unity as a development platform, there is nothing else that I am familiar enough with to be confident about making an entire game in a weekend, so I'm going to be sticking with Unity for this jam. I should probably learn GameMaker at some point, but that's definitely not going to happen between now and tomorrow evening with all the work/personal stuff I need to take care of before the jam starts. So, Unity it is.

I'm looking into using some pre-created graphics and audio, so that I can focus on the design and gameplay of the game. If a good sprite artist and/or sound designer/musician happens along, though, I would be open to teaming up.