Hey guys! Just updated version of my idea) Will be very appreciated to get any feedback!

https://wild-fat.itch.io/groundfromunderfeet

Its need to balance more ofcource, but it's an endless process ><

I hope you will receive some fun of it! Enjoy :)

Come chill with some cool beats in our upgradeable music video!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/study-lady-cookie-mix

Play Now

Mobile + Tweaked Web/HTML 5

Original Web/HTML 5

Some new shots ( note new death sequence for base destruction which took way too much time to make look bad in Blender!)

Due to the overwhelming positive response, I have decided to give the soundtrack to Tantric Adventurer a fresh coat of mastering and upload it to the game's page as a separate download! Thanks so much to all the people who have played my game and given feedback for your thoughtful words. I truly appreciate it. ADVENTURE! :fire: https://bucketh3ad.itch.io/tantric-adventurer

Fun for the whole family! This game is largely connected to music and impending DOOOOOM. Let the game do the shooting for you while you evade damage.

We will play any game in our comments. P.S. I highly recommend our shield upgrade

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/quadratorum

it is from the game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/genocide-greebo

Well, work among other things in life, did not give me the opportunity to participate last weekend, but since there is an extra format, to take advantage of this weekend.

Delay the inevitable... mmmm, what kind of game i'm going to make ? Let's go

Hello everyone, we are playing as many games as possible. Leave your link below (preferably web) so we can leave you our reviews!

I've just sent in my Ludum Dare 50 game! I'm happily surprised/impressed with my result, as I went solo and didn't even go till time was up! If you would, please play my game and give feedback on it! I know I won't get a rating as I was late to the party, but I would appreciate any advice I could be given! If you're interested, check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/the-adventures-of-slippy-joe

Thank you in advance to anybody who downloads it! :D

Crystalysis

Setting

This place has fallen victim to a strange corruption. Toxic crystals, like tumors, grow endlessly upward out of the ground, emanating a malevolent force that poisons and paralyzes everything around them. Trapped within them is the life force of the planet itself, slowly being stolen away. Stranded here, you must destroy as many crystals as you can, salvaging the life force within to recharge your energy, but only delaying your inevitable doom.

How to Play

Run, jump, and dash your way around the area and smash any crystals you find. As time passes they will spawn and grow stronger more rapidly. Some destroyed crystals will emit healing shards that will seek you out and recharge your energy. Last as long as you can.

`I've been slammed with work this week and haven't gotten to rate any games yet. I'm setting a goal of rating at least 30 games over the weekend, maybe more.

Please PLAY & RATE and I'll gladly do the same for anyone that leaves feedback!! Thanks. :smiley:

My TileMap liquid simulation system "WaterMap" is nearly ready for release! I will clean it up and release next week. I've tried to keep things simple but configurable. It will come packaged as a node you add to a TileMap. You can configure things like color, speed, mouse interactivity, area2d generation and more. I plan to add configuration options for things like viscosity and pressure calculations in the future.

This version of the system is much more flexible and more optimized than it is in my LD50 entry. I'm excited to get it released and into the hands of other Godot devs!

You can checkout how it works in its basic form in my LD50 entry here!

Follow me on twitter for future updates! (@garrett_makes)

Soon I plan to package and finally release my Leaderboard system that is used in all of my Ludum Dare games as well!

So I noticed it's pretty common practice to make a blog post about your finished entry, and I've yet to do that.

Mama is a high-score-based game where you play as a baby dragon desperately trying to keep your mother alive by feeding her the crystals you find in the forest.

Unfortunately for you, the forest has a strange energy about it and seems to be doing everything in its ability to keep you from your goal.

Play now to see how long you can keep Mama alive! Available in the browser and as a Windows download.

This is my second Ludum Dare 😄 I had a lot of fun during the last one checking out everyone’s games, so here I am again.

This time I have a Google form setup for game submission: https://forms.gle/YoHaMWiPmj63WiwL9. I'll prioritize the games of the creators who're viewing the stream =)

My stream will be playing at https://www.twitch.tv/msmiachar

Please also feel free to check out my team’s game at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/mias-bear-service

I look forward to playing your game and seeing you on Twitch 🙂

https://youtu.be/S0Dw04-y7wQ

Play the jam version here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/oncoming

https://www.twitch.tv/maxpowergd <-- playing some jam games!! feel free to enter and send your links to your games ^^ Also, try ours!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/escape-grades

This Saturday, around 20:00 UTC (16:00 EDT, 21:00 BST, 22:00 CEST, 05:00 JST) I'll be starting my play+rate session, live at twitch.tv/Outfrost. I wanna check out what you've made, especially if you don't have a lot of ratings yet, so please do swing by!

Feel free to put in your submission ahead of time. I'll be using a progressive raffle, and games with fewer ratings will get more chances.
https://forms.gle/Y5vKwvqqXLxMviem6

Also, check out our game, Re:Placement!

Taking ethical steps by providing you with detailed changelogs.

Taking responsibility and being 100% transparent about what we changed in our game after the jam has ended is an important thing for us. This is done not only to complain with ldjam.com guidelines but rather because we feel we should make changes clear to be also fair to other game jammers.

Also we would like to thank everyone who has already played our game! ❤️

Changelog:

v1.0.1 (2022/04/05) - Fixed sound effects

v1.0.2 (2022/04/05) - Fixed game freezing bug

v1.0.3 (2022/04/08) - Fixed resetting air pressure - Fixed sound effects - Fixed and enabled leaderboard (was disabled in the previous versions due to a CORS problem) - Fixed obstacle colliders - Fixed tutorial not skippable and added retry button - Minor game balancing adjustments

Thanks for also liking info posts!

--

Never heard of Paddle Panic - what is it?

Paddle Panic is a single player game in which your goal is to safe Günther from the deadly waterfall. Delay the inevitable - as long as you can!⌛

Günthers boat is in danger by various things like

obstacles floating towards you leaks in Günthers boat the damn boat that keeps losing air - clearly not made in Germany! 🇩🇪⛔

Come check it out and let us know what you think! We know we've got a long way to go, but we would really like to improve and release it on steam a little later for fun. Thanks for playing!

Hello there! I woke up early and I feel ready to test games. Send you links on the comments and my ratings can be tough.

If you want to you can also check our game ^^: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/1-man-6-bullets

Hi guys !

Come have a look on our game : walk of life, rellay short experience ;)

We also seek for new games to see :D

(We will rate people we see in comments first)

I just released a patch release for my game to fix mouse and touch screen support. Check it out here.

Run away from the Sensenmann, claim the topscore and leave a lasting impression in the gameworld for all future-players to see! In the form of your customized tombstone

All of this is possible in the unforgiving doom-styled-game: SensenCemetary!

(Now with a slightly less unforgiving mode :grin: )

Are you up to the challenge? Try to get as far as possible! :runner_tone4: Everyone who leaves a comment, will get feedback from me too ofcourse :smiley: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/sensenmanncemetary

This was my first Ludum Dare where I couldn't dedicate the entire weekend to creating a game... unfortunately I had work on Sunday. This removed about 7 hours that I could work on the project, this meant I had to be strict about scope, scheduling and had to be realistic about the amount of polish I could get done.

Fortunately, I really liked the theme this year, it felt full of possibilities and I enjoyed coming up with a concept on the Saturday morning. I settled on having a lumber jack trying to stop an out of control train by chopping down trees in front of it. While I thought about how this could be turned into a cool set of mechanics I got started on the art. After about half an hour, I lost the art I had started, meaning I had to redo the sprite for the lumber jack, I took this as a sign that such sprites shouldn't be taking so long so I switched styles from: To:

This also saw the switch from a Paper-Boy / Marble Madness angle to a more NES inspired look, this change in angle would hopefully make the gameplay more straightforward, rather than running down a hill diagonally, you'd run towards the bottom of the screen.

I decided that to chop down trees you'd have to throw the axe, but bigger trees would have to require the throw to have more momentum. Bigger trees would also slow down the train more. This meant the player would have to bump into the train in order to gain some speed before throwing the axe. I came up with this mechanic in order to incorporate the train into the gameplay more, being an active feature rather than it being like a progress bar.

I'd also thought about the possibility of having the axe return to the player, which, looking back, should have been a power up, but I'd decided not to, as the strategy would boil down to running straight down the track. I recognise now that it's frustrating to see the axe get caught behind the train and that's game over, so I definitely should have added the returning feature when it gets caught behind the train. This would have been balanced by the fact that you wouldn't be able to chop down trees while all of this happens, so the train would be harder to slow down... At least I know for next time to look out for these kind of things!

To add variety I also added in boxes that required the player to throw the axe at from behind to push them onto the track to slow down the train. By the end of day one, I had the majority of the gameplay down but I still needed a start and an end, music, sound effects, polish etc... and I didn't have much time to complete the game the following day. I woke up early on Sunday and created the music followed by the village at the end of the tracks, I also fixed a handful of bugs that were left from the day before.

I also noticed that if you got stuck behind the train it was pretty much game over, and while I wanted the train getting ahead of you to be the fail state, I wanted one last hope for the player to get them back on track (pun was maybe intended). I added in some speed-boost berries that spawn behind the train that gives the player a chance to run back in front of the train if they were able to get one quickly!

I rushed back from work and got started with a menu, which included the tutorial screen, and also the end screen displaying how many villagers were able to escape before the train hit. I made the thumbnail and the page design while Unity took its time building the game, with everything finally done at about 10 past midnight on Monday, what a great way to start the week... who likes Mondays anyways!

I really enjoyed this Ludum Dare and I'm glad I was able to get a working product online despite the extra time constraints, looking forward to the next LD! If you'd like to try the game out I'll leave a link here and thanks for reading! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/lumber-tracks I'd also be interested in knowing what other people's scheduling experience was like this year? Thanks again for reading!

I'm working on new features for my game "Last Moment", such as an AI player for the ball game and llama tower.

Right now you can only play the jam version, but if you want to get notified when the update releases, you can follow me on itch.io or on Youtube.

Itch.io: https://finn378.itch.io/last-moment

Here is a Devlog to my game (watch time 2 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWXJ781nJbs

And... Finally, we don't come empty-handed! We've rolled out a new post-jam build of Post Solis. During the last days we spent a lot of time testing, tweaking new features (and fixing old ones!), adjusting balance and other important things - sleep is traditionally not an option. :)

Try it now!

For all those who haven't played Post Solis yet - congratulations, you got the sweetest and most polished version of the game. Let's see if you can find ALL the Ludum Dare Easter eggs!

Now I'll briefly run through the list of fixes and changes. To be honest, we screwed up a little, and in the release version the factories did not consume half of the required resources. Now that mistake has been fixed, and Post Solis will play in new colors for you.

Bugfix:

• Factories now consume resources correctly (yes, it's THIS important for the gameplay experience!);
• Small tweaks to the accuracy of the base performance counters;
• Number of communication towers affects the number of drones;
• You can now build far to the north and south of the base.

Features and Mechanics :

• Use the mouse to zoom in and out;
• Hotkeys to control game speed and quickly call the build/help menus;
• The build menu now shows exactly what resources you are missing;
• The current date is now displayed: this will help correlate events from found notes/journals with the current time;
• Resources in warehouses are not destroyed if the warehouse goes dark.

Don't forget you can play Post Solis right in your browser!

1.Analysis the theme

When I see the theme, (My first thought is...masturbation :laughing: ?? That is really abnormal.) I begin to think intuitively, the ori's silver tree level, type or die, survival game... Well, these ideas, like endless zombies and unstoppable flood are intuitive, but they seems to be very generic. So I begin to focus on the evitable part, and try to think something new that is evitable. The explosion of sun, human's age, the explosion of bubbles, the gravity, the pinching wall, spending money, food decay , camp fire...

Then the bomb level of mario party comes to my mind. In a 2-split screen, P1 and P2 jump and strike the burning lead of a giant bomb to stop the bomb from explosion. So, I think use a time bomb to build the evitable part is really good.

2.Build the game

To make something new, I decide the player is the bomb itself, and you can delay your explosion by collecting lead.

Then, the game lacks a strong and narrow target(I dont want endless level), since you are going to explode, the explosion must be the end of the game, so, firstly, I thought the target should be a escaping person(which provides some shortcut game depth like the chasing flag level in mario3D.)

But there are problems. The chasing experince and collecting experience is a little controversial,and, most importantly the collecting part is the core loop and features "delay", which is not very attracting.

So I give up the chasing idea. I dont know why, but it suddenly comes to my mind, what if the enemy is a timebomb too? That sounds like a good idea. Player and enemies are all time bombs and they should pick item and fight for time resources, and the fighting experience could be something messy like smash bros.

And the last problem, what kind of props should be on the ground? Are they also bombs with giant knockback or some melee weapons like smash bros? I was very confusing at that part. But after several hours, I realize that the game is all about time rather than force and suddenDeath(in smash) or money(in RTS or MOBA), so the item should be some delay items. Webs that slows character down, baseball that dizzy characters, traps that blocks the way and lock characters, etc.

3.Summary

At the end, due to the lack of time, I really dont think the game reached the desired effect. If I have a little more time to build a tighter moving and attacking feel, add BGM and several items, some movable terrains, the game could be better.

Thanks for reading such long things :smiley: . You can check my game at:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/do-not-explode

Play: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/mr-second

We are 🔴 LIVE - Twitch!

I'll be prioritising some regular viewers/subscribers, but otherwise I'll be using the raffle bot I'd made for Elysia Griffin to choose who's game to play next.

You are able to submit your game here and you can see the submitted games here.

All the people want to sleep more, help our "hero" to continue sleeping! Delay the inevitable wake up hour!!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/dont-wake-me-up

Play "Catronaut", compare your Highscore to others and find out! :D

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/catronaut

Will play games in return! <3

Thanks for the feedback we received until now and congrats for everyone who participated (or is still participating in extra) !
We are still short of some votes for the 20 votes limit, so come play if you have the time :)

We just added a small update on krant to allow changing the font, which some found to be unreadable (understandable claim).

Also if some are into modular synths, here's our setup using voltage modular:

Hi all, hope you had a fine week! Time for a little update on our game Shadow Rush.

After having received some super helpful comments from a lot of you (and also after discovering some on our own), we decided we could fix some minor bugs that were bugging us (ha (sorry)). The main goal of the bug fixes were to make the game flow a little better. Fixing things like menus not popping up where they should, or sometimes randomly losing controller focus forcing you to grab the mouse in order to continue.

One important change is the fact that we added a WebGL build. So, have fun playing!

The exact changes we added are below: - Controller support for pause/start menus fixed - Added WebGL build - Custom Level fixed such that it does not save high score for different levels anymore - Fixed a bug where pause screen could go over death screen - Fixed a bug where opening the start screen during timer countdown would already start the level - Changed sound levels such that the sounds are less annoying - Fixed a bug where driving no laps would result in MaxLong value high scores - Fixed weird behaviour of the tutorial level where sometimes the death screen would not show up - Fixed wrong text showing on some level intros

I'm trying to make a leaderboard in my game using PlayFab. I use DispalyName as their in game ID. But now if player entered a name that is already been taken, it will drop an error says invalid input and the player's name would be empty. How should I fix this? how do I get to know if a name has been taken or not?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/say-no-to-goblin

Decided to do something goofy (and wacky) and compile a Linux AppImage of my Gob Game.

It seemed to work for me, but I am curious how well it works on different distros / setups since Gamemaker Studio's Linux (officially just Ubuntu 😬) support is still in beta, and you never really know, you know?

It's up on the itch.io page if anyone want's to check it out!

I just made some changes and uploaded them. There now are an explosion particle effect (That was probably a mistake) and more options for controls to make game more accessible. The score is now also shown after death. If you want to play the game without those changes to rate it properly, there are additional links marked (Jam). If you want to try the game with latest changes, use links with (Latest) mark.

The Game

Unapocalyptic is a survival-clicker where your objective is to survive as long as possible during a zombie apocalypse, nuclear war and survive during a meteorite fall.

Screenshots

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/unapocalyptic

The scientists at V.E.X. want you to look into this--some sort of "interdimensional vortex".

How long can you last in their experiment?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/the-vortexperience

Hi everyone! I have some time, so comment down with your game if you don't have yet 20 votes =) (possibly with HTML5 compatibility, since I can't download stuff on the work computer ;) )

If you have time, have a look at my COMPO entry! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/paper-plane

Hi everyone!

I'll be playing LD games over at my twitch channel in a few minutes https://www.twitch.tv/ladymistleaf

Come join if you'd like me to play yours!

LadyMistLeaf

Honestly, some of the games I've rated are quite easy, but I've run in to quite a few games where humor isn't really part of the game (nor do I think it was supposed to) but the Humor rating is still there. It kindda sucks because I don't like giving a game a low rating if it's fun to play. But it's not like the game attempts humor in any way.

Of course there's the flip side, where people will put up 2 or 3 categories, when the rest easily could apply. I don't know if it's because of copyrighted material or whatnot but still! it's aggravating that you can't choose which categories should apply to other peoples games (I'm sure there's cases where this could be abused though :/ )

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/mr-second

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/carrot-grove

Btw if you rante dont forget to write a comment, then we'll know to rate your game as well!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/carrot-grove

Playing the game is just a way to delay the fact that you will INEVITABLY FAIL to crack this simple code. Give it a try. Your failure is INEVITABLE, or is it. Try it for yourself

I will keep developing Cursed Unicorn. I released a post-jam version today.

• There is a 7 minute time limit. You "win" the game after surviving for this long. Let me not spoil what happens after 7 minutes.
• Game area is much wider and higher.
• Better story visuals
• Game is re-balanced, including health upgrade's healt increase.

TO-DO: - More upgrades

Game:

Cursed Unicorn is a Ludum Dare game that’s inspired from Vampire Survivors, but differs from it with side scrolling and flying mechanic.

Your objective is to protect the baby unicorn from evil spirits as long as you can. You fire projectiles at the enemies automatically. Each time you level up, you can either increase the attack speed or heal the unicorn. Oh, and you can fly!

Post Solis has a lot of cool features. We have already fixed some bugs reported by you in the post-jam version!

Some interesting facts about our game:

• You can watch in real time how drones move resources around and how factories work.
• Two different endings will let you examine the philosophy of delaying the inevitable from different points of view.
• As you play, you can learn the backstory of the world in which you have to survive!
• You can play in real time or by pausing and taking your time - the game doesn't limit you in any way.
• You can even circumnavigate the planet. Of course, if you have enough resources and time for this feat.

Try our game and let us know what do you think! We need your feedback to prepare for publishing it!

Never getting tired of this displacement shader we made during the jam, for our game Eldritch Crossing about an eldritch portal opening up in your basement, warping everything around it.

Go give it a try, if you haven't already: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/eldritch-crossing

Follow us on Twitter on YouTube on Itch

Today is an art day!! I'm so excited to push out some lineart and get these game sprites animated!!

Here is a look at my video game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyNSL5oUeA4

Quick start guide: - There are demons! - You shoot demons! - You harvest their energy - You add guns to your tower - You shoot more demons with more guns!

Video game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/bullets-for-hell

Hi!

A little french guy here, streaming some entries for the first time! Don't hesitate to say hi, and to send your game!

https://www.twitch.tv/bassmatthi

You can submit your games here : https://forms.gle/YBLpcHA6Lahop9U2A, or just drop it in the chat if there is nothing in the queue!

And I made a special interactive wordle game especially for the stream!

The Fain Maiden: Journeys of a Weary Vessel Athwart the Crypts of Yeowel for Spite and Vengeance (yes, that is the full title) was a fun game to work on! I'd never completed a 3D game in Gamemaker before, so there were lots of learning experiences along the way!

Huge shoutout to Salamichild and CrowBow for their art, and to Bibiki for his sound work. Stellar as always!

If you want to play, you can do so HERE

You might have heard of PICO-8, but have you heard about the equally awesome fantasy console called TIC-80? TIC-80 is an all-in-one platform for making and distributing 8-bit games. It has its built-in code, sprite, tile, and music editor which make it extremely fast and easy to prototype games, perfect for a game jam. Did I mention that it is also free and open source? TIC-80 does have some limitations from its 8-bit architecture (which can also be its charm) but that doesn't stop us from making some amazing games. Here are some of the LD50 entries that are made with TIC-80 (that I am aware of, and in no particular order):

Rise n Time by @alec

The Flower of Marasca by @f1krazy

Hex'd by @paroxysmal

Dyker by @lenaschimmel

Runic Moon by @pke1029 (me) and @starling

In open-source spirit, all of the games above have their source code publicly available, please give them a look! I hope this post inspires you to make something with TIC-80. A big shout out to the TIC-80 developers for making such a wonderful tool!

Hey y'all!

Enemy sprites in Darko were rendering incorrectly, giving them a "see through look" that was only meant for the shopkeeper. This has now been fixed.

If you haven’t played it yet, Darko is an eerie, fast paced first person platformer where the name of the game is using your enemies as a method of traversal by slicing through them and making your way throughout randomly generated levels!

Darko is available for Windows and is also playable in your browser! You can find it here.

You can check it out at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/red-giant

Please feel free to rate my game, I did rate about 50 and left feedback on most of them, yet my smart score is still in negatives. I need just 5 more ratings ;)

Which option do you like better? https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/mr-second

Little menu concepts.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/1-man-6-bullets

I'm trying to help as many indie devs as humanly possible this year – and collecting and giving out data assets is part of that.

Here goes!

What:

• Web articles – and the authors!
• YouTube videos – and the channels!
• Twitch streams – and the streamers!

Why:

• 🧙‍♂️ Find Ludum Dare and game jam enthusiasts & influencers!
• 📃 Build your PR and outreach lists for your upcoming full-releases!
• ❤️ Make friends!
• Learn more about marketing!!

Want the full report & data in your inbox?

• 👀 Check out the full report – you'll find an option to get it after results are in! 🙂
• 🔗 https://impress.games/ludum-dare-50

Sample (in progress):

Yes, you can pat the lizard.

🦎: Blep

To feel the joy of petting a lizard, check out our game The Lars Mission: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/the-lars-mission

Version of the game with bug fixes: https://weewsa.itch.io/weak-bridge-bug-fixed-version?secret=QU260vzDSNZV6Zp1sv2Qt0AsEI Ludum dare: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/weak-bridge

What are you waiting for, a whole crystal power tchernobyl like reactor is waiting for you !! Use your brain to figure out what to do with all those blinking colorful lights and hopefully you'll stay alive long enough to .. idk, not die ? maybe ? perhaps, you'll see. Let's Krant it up youhouuuuuu !!!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/krant

I would post some screens here but i dont have any available on this device sooooo trust me and give our game a shot, cya <3

...hum...yes...it's obvious...but this one won't let you quit so easily!

And here the games I enjoyed the most for now:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/1-man-6-bullets

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/22h38

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/farm-dog

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/click-to-continue

Live now playing games. :arrowright: https://www.twitch.tv/tigerj

Ya'll have games in my list, they are probably going to be streamed today: @jamieok @shawn-moore @gustavo-doo @thalisson @eduardo-kolody @arthurds @etrealjunior @filgru @fractal @eli-delventhal @sylbie @kepsert @garazbolg2 @ds-nahogara @koolruz @martynas @helzinko @tadas-migauskas @gummibot

One of the most common things I've had pointed out to me recently is the size of my Ludum Dare team. We started as a small team of 4 (An artist, UI designer, Muscian, and Programmer) and over the last two years we've expanded threefold as friends see what we're doing and want to get involved themselves, so I figured I'd drop some insights into how we run things that may help others out as their own teams expand just so you don't end up with a "Too many cooks" situation!

The Team

Our team structure is simple. We have three key directors; a creative director, an art director, and an audio director. These three directors take charge of key aspects of the project and manage several team members all at once. This ensures the people with the least experience all know who they can ask questions to and nobody is having to worry about work being done outside of their own sub-team.

Our skill levels vary wildly across the team. Some of us have several years of experience, while others did literally one day of Blender training the day before the jam started. We want this to be a fun 0 pressure learning environment for everybody involved, and it's a great way for people to get hands-on game development experience in fields they've wanted to experiment with.

The Project

Step 1: The lead-up

We plan our next jams ahead the MOMENT one finishes. This ensures we can all book time off work and align with eachother to ensure everybody that wants to take part will definitely be taking part. I encourage a process of iteration and improvement, so we discuss where the pain points of the project were and make a plan of action to offset these in the future. This has so far taken the form of bringing new people into the team, shuffling the team roles around, changing elements of our workflow, and finding educational resources to help improve skills that caused a block in the project workflow previously.

Generally the next few months are quite quiet in the project Discord. A few posts here and there on our non-LDJam projects, but we try not to stress about the next jam.

This changes when the final month approaches. This is a month of steady planning and preparation where we decide which tools we'll be using, and doing a double check on the full team make-up to ensure we DEFINITELY have the full team aligned and we can mitigate if key players are missing. Calendar events are set, source control is set up, a OneDrive folder is shared to the team, a whiteboard template is created, a Trello board is prepared, an empty Unity project is templated with our usual tools (LeanTween, Peek, UModeler) and a scene for each Unity developer to build their components in isolation, and everybody ensures they're on the same version of Unity. Strong preparation means the moment you have your idea in placed, you can all get to work.

Finally, a wishlist is put together of all the things people would LIKE to end up making with the hopes we can align our final game idea to match. This very rarely pans out, but it's nice to know where everybody's passions or worries lie.

Step 2: Ideation

In my opinion this is absolutely the most important part of any game jam project, so getting a process down that encourages creativity and speaking up from every member of the team to lock in an idea as soon as possible is key. We all hop on Discord and Figma on the morning of the jam, nice and refreshed (This time the jam started at 2am, so we all got to work planning at 7am instead of staying up). We handle our ideation in several steps, and try to keep these steps within a time limit:

• Locking in an initial idea, 30 minutes - 1 hour: Depending on the theme, this idea can be locked in either straight away, or a best possible idea from the pool of pitched ideas will be selected after an hour has passed so we don't waste too much time trying to come up with a PERFECT idea
• Pillars Discussion, 15 minutes: What IS our game? What ISN'T our game? By selecting 5 pillars and 5 anti-pillars, we keep Gameplay, Music, and Art discussions on track without introducing too many chaotic elements or feature creep.
• Finalise Music, Art Style, Gameplay Features, 1 hour: A choice of direction for all of our teams is locked in, as well as any stretch goals being marked as a middle or low priority task that we can pull from if we run out of work that needs doing early.
• Task allocation & Greyboxing Plan, 15 minutes: The directors hand out tasks to the team, populating the Trello board and assigning people to each card. A plan is set in place for how we can have a full Greybox complete by the end of Day 1

Here's a look at our Figma whiteboard from the LD50 session so you can get a look at how we landed on Stone Sabbath. I think we did a great job sticking to the pillars for the most part!

Step 3: Development

I'm pleased to say that development mostly goes off smoothly. People know who to talk to, problems are isolated and ironed out quickly, and communication remains a constant. There are often 5+ people in a discord channel working together at any given time, so emergent problems are quickly known to the whole team. We try to hop on for a 9am meeting on the next two days of the jam to discuss the day's plan and mitigate if problems are foreseen. Our plan is always to go:

• Day 1: Greyboxing: Barebones art, levels, and gameplay
• Day 2: Minimum Viable Product: Ending the day with a game we would be happy to submit, even if it's janky and messy
• Day 3: Polish: A whole day dedicated to cleaning up rough edges, making things look nicer, adding features from the stretch goals, and getting things ready so we have a game we can say we're proud of.

Of course, things don't always turn out this way. With our previous games Burst Vein and MIFFED there was absolutely no time for polish, as getting those games across the finishing line took our all in the first place. I'm pleased to say that our process finally seems to be refined enough to get the polish day we've always wanted with Stone Sabbath, and I like to think that the final result really shows the fruits of that day.

Step 4: Wrapping up

Once the game is submitted we all take part in Play+Rate as a unit, sharing the coolest games we find with each other in the Discord and just having a really fun time with it. I encourage the team to drop a post-mortem report of:

• What they enjoyed
• What they found challenging
• What they disliked
• What they felt they did well
• Where they think they could improve
• What they would do differently next time
• What they would like to change about our process next time

This information all helps to smooth out the edges and makes sure we don't repeat the same mistakes. There's also an optional step where people will ask me for a personalised performance review, which helps them to isolate their own weak points they might not be aware of. The improvement from jam to jam is absolutely undeniable, and I'm extremely proud of every member of the team. With how well Stone Sabbath went I truly believe that the team is ready as ever to make a full-scale game outside of a jam environment.

Step 5: Conclusion

A look at how many Discord channels we use for organisation

When managing a team for a game jam, no matter how professionally you attempt to run it, it's absolutely imperative that things stay fun for your team. Remove pressure wherever you can, design the project around people's strengths, and don't force people aggressively outside their comfort zones. Don’t encourage all-nighters, make sure people are well rested and getting sleep, breaks, and support when they need them, and overall just be nice to be around. If you're the main organiser of a full team of people it can be very easy to let things get on top of you, but you need to maintain perspective and remember that this should be fun for YOU as well. If you're not having a good time with your friends you're just making a dry professional portfolio piece, and there's no joy in that whatsoever.

Thanks for reading. Maybe go check out our game Stone Sabbath! Also let me know in the comments your own experiences with doing a jam in a big team, would love to know if there are any unique challenges you've come across that we have yet to learn of

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/stone-sabbath

Next post will be a selection of concept art from Stone Sabbath

Hey friends! Me and my pals decided to join this LDJam and our game unintentionally became REALLY hard! By the nature of how the game makes sure that your loss is inevitable it makes for some very intense moments, especially near the end of your run. Let me explain the game first:

In this game you try to help your magician friend to escape a spooky ghost! By collecting pentagrams you find in the forest and giving them to your friend you can delay the ghost from catching up to him! However, not only the ghost get faster over time, you do too!

Just reaching 1500 points is quite the task and none of us developers have made it beyond 2199 points. Think you have what it takes to beat our highscore? We'd love to see how far you people get, so try and share! And if we can do anything better for our next jam we'd love to hear from you!

In addition to giving feedback and Rating games, I also interview ever developer over Discord while playing their game on my stream!

Drop by to get indie developer insights, find out how others built their games, or submit your own project to the stream:

https://www.twitch.tv/bluishgreenproductions

LIVE now!

Just put up a Post Mortem for my game The End Of Days! Just me talking briefly over some gameplay about some of the decision making progress. Going to upload another video going over the project in more detail as well.

https://youtu.be/YCQesWWuX80

If you haven't played my game yet you should do that first! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/the-end-of-days

The end of the world is a dish best served cold. Serve some customers and fend off the zombie invasion!

I know this comes quite late, but I'm still wondering about it.

As rates start with 1-star, the middle would be 3 stars. But out of 5 Stars, the middle would be 2.5 stars.

Thoughts?

Writing the music for this game as been an adventure of his own. Since I was not only dedicated to the music and SFX for this jam, but also had to show unity to one of our programmer, program stuff and do UI. I had a lot of job to do and little time to put into the music itself. However, I really tried hard and manage to make the music approximatively 4 hours.

I started with the music for the final cutscene. I had this idea of a string quartet or trio playing a sad music when the ship is sinking to make a reference to the movie. For this part I really knew what I wanted to hear and the idea popped up really fast in my head. I wrote the score in less that 20 minutes and since I'm a violin and viola player. I also recorded myself instead of using computer sounds to play. That way it would feel more organic. And than, under one hours the music for the final cutscene was done! Here's the score for curious people :)

After that, I still had to write the music for the main scene of the game. I knew that I wanted something upbeat to convey the feeling of stress the game is suppose to give you. Although I knew what style I wanted to do, I sat for like one hour just trying to find a theme I would like. I finally came up with something and than I got that genius idea. What if I hide the theme of "My Heart will go on" as an easter egg in the music? So I did! I have hidden it all over the song although you can hear it more easily at the beginning of the second part of it ;) The real challenge was to have an original song and not copy the titanic music.

For those who played the game or will play the game, try listening to the instrument in the background that plays a melodic line under the main theme. There's a variant of the beginning of my hearth will go on in minor. And at the beginning of the chorus, the flute plays the beginning of 'My hearth will go on' chorus. try and see if you hear it ;)

For those wondering which tools I'm using, I like to write my score on Finale and to render the playback, Note Performer really do miracle with little to no work for those kind of game!

To try out our game, go here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/definitely-not-titanic

Peace! :)

Hey guys, I will be streaming today the Ludum Dare Games again, so bring your games to me and tell your friends too! If you guys wanna play my game too: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/will-there-bee-another

Here is my Twitch link: https://www.twitch.tv/gabstche

https://www.twitch.tv/pomothedog

Thank You!

To everyone who left a rating, and to everyone who left a review I truly appreciate the positivity.

If you're looking for a game to review, try it in your browser today: Hotel Lazarus

Hey I made a devlog for my Ludum Dare 50 submission. I talk about my thoughts, my experience and of course show what the game became. Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpHN6wZulE

If you like how the game looks I'd appreciate it so much if you played and rated the game.

Can you delay getting caught? :thinking: Try It. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/chase

Hello! It is second edition of me streaming YOUR games from LD on stream. Last time we clocked 15 games and today we will be playing until 23:00 (GMT+2) It was a great fun and people were happy so don't wait, submit your games using form and check our game while waiting The Ultimate Martian Roulette

My Twitch - HaaYaargh

Starting NOW!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/apocalyptic-romance

Though pixel art is not my style, I wanted to tackle twisted looking creatures for our game Somnipathy.

We were trying to imagine what something looked like in the dark, to try and push the shape of our household items. @WhiskeyBadger made some great strides to get the pixel art where it is now. I really wanted to make a lamp look like a cat, but I needed to find a way to make it maniacal. In the end, this is how he was sketched out. And c’mon, every game needs a cat.

The stove seemed like another item that could look quite posessed, but figuring out what it would look like was my next challenge. I stretched and morphed its geometry until I came up with this concept. My favorite part is the eyes, which are gas stove grates!

Thank you for such a memorable week LDJammers. If you haven’t had a moment yet, see how your sleepless score measures up to the LD50 community at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/somnipathy

just wanted to say that i really appreaciate this community!! everyone is so helpful and kind :) in my experience that's pretty rare for such a big community like this! the last few days have been a real joy for me. it makes me think that i should have participated in ludum dare much earlier than i have now <3

OSTRO is a sandbox system-based investigative mystery.

In OSTRO, the player is tasked with investigating a suspicious corporation through internal servers.

What will you find? Can you stop the Collapse?

Try it out if you like hacking games or a good mystery!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/ostro

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/ostro

For more updates, follow us on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/TotteriStudios

Hello!

This feels like a strange, arbitrary number to start at for a thank you, but it's as good as any! It is wonderful to see the positive response Bitboy has gotten from others so far in the jam, and it only felt proper to show gratitude for it. To everyone who has given the time to see where this journey goes, * *thank you! **

Due to being busy with life stuff, I haven't gotten through all of the games of people who have reviewed my game yet, but I am making progress on going through and rating all the games of people who have did so for mine.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew

https://youtu.be/35l3wYgoiaU

Try to save the ski lodge from its inevitable destruction by a daily avalanche in Ava-launch !

Build ramps to divert the flow of snow and try to hold off the inevitable for as long as you can.

We're considering expanding this concept into a more complete game, so it would be great to get a few more ratings and reviews to help us know what works and what doesn't.

Check out submission here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/ava-launch

The final boss of our game!

Hesitated to show him before because his hands got swapped around and looked broken as a result :sweat_smile: We're finally fixed them so now you can see Dracula in his full glory!

Will you be able to reach the last floor to fight him?

We encourage you to try! Go play DOWN the DUNGEON

Cards of Life is a point and click adventure with the goal to live a long and happy life by choosing the correct cards.

Would be a pleasure if you test and rate our game :slight_smile:

LD Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/cards-of-life

Big thanks to @yngvarr for making a video of a partial playthrough of our game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I06Ghitr7mU

We still need lots of votes so if you'd like to check it out please do!

THE FAIN MAIDEN

Key memories help the cat. He begins to remember where to look for the fox.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/the-gallows

Game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/mr-second

I'm gonna stream and record playthrough of your games here https://www.twitch.tv/caudatecoder/ for a couple of hours

Come submit your game!

We've gotten a lot of good feedback already and we're still looking for more thoughts and suggestions! We're hoping to make a new and improved version. We try to return the favor and play the entries of everyone who comments :)

GoDS: RAgnarök

Interested in trying out now that I have my Headset plugged in!!

Who cares about the game, the UI looks cool (and lags behind the camera when you move it).

Admire the UI here

Thank you! To everyone who played our game, thank you, both for your kind words and your really good suggestions. It's because of you that we've decided to continue our Ludum Dare entry and turn it into a full game!

To everyone else, here it is! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/rifthoppers

Since your suggestions have been so helpful, we've decided to open our development server to the public. We intend to release weekly WebGL builds to show off our progress, and get direct feedback from whoever is interested in following our journey. We're looking for YOUR ideas, criticism and suggestions! Anything that'll help make our game more fun, but importantly also fresh for a long amount of time. We want our game to be fun, but also stay fun. Getting a lot of opinions together, especially of my fellow devs, will definitely help us achieve that. We're eager to meet you!

https://discord.gg/CJZmFT3u

That's enough about our game, anyway. As an exchange for reading through all this, what about I play your game? Just leave me a link as a comment! I'll do my best to give some helpful general feedback, or if there's anything specific you want me to reply about, I can totally do that as well! :slight_smile:

We would like to add press killer

Game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/mr-second

Display all games you rated in this and previous jams. Just go on the website, log in with your LD account, done.

Share it with other jammers and leave a like if you found it helpful.

• Self-hosted @ https://ldjam-tools.live/ratings.html
• Source @ https://github.com/themelektaus/ludumdare-tools

I stream game development.
You can post your game and I will give you my thoughts!

Join me on Twitch. https://www.twitch.tv/zm5j
💎 Help me reach 20 followers! 💎

Check out Mow Bot and try to solve all 9 puzzles!

You don't like puzzles? Maybe go for some fast times then:

Feel free to post some of your best times:

~~Hint: you can tap both WASD and arrow keys to go even faster.~~

Hey, thanks for feedback!

We are very happy that you like our game :heart: :hearts: :heart:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_VCft0CyuU

It was a delight to join @bluishgreenpro's channel for an in-depth interview about our team's LD50 entry Battery Low. Please check out the ~30 minute interview for a deep dive on the development process of the game, cut content, and future plans.

Watch the interview on Twitch!

I have received a lot of great response to my Narrator for my entry The VortExperience. I am beyond pleased, because I definitely leaned into this aspect the hardest. I had been wanting to incorporate voice lines into a game jam, and with a spark while brainstorming this idea, I realized this was a prime opportunity.

Many players have picked up on the inspiration for my Narrator ('Cave Johnson' from Portal 2). I felt that adding a punchy narrator would add a colorful backdrop to a game mechanic that, while solid, was repetitive. I wrote the script over time as ideas came to me while working on the game. I knew that the lines would be a mixture of progression (triggered by specific events) and banter (triggered by the passage of time), and I organized it into phases of the game. I also knew that I wanted to incorporate (limited) captions, so I identified which parts of the lines would be "extra."

Recording the lines was fairly simple, and I had a lot of help from Audacity's labeling and 'Export Multiple' feature.

What remained was to decide on the implementation. I have a habit of writing code generically for re-use, but that can lead to overly complex systems that are not easy to debug inside a game jam. I took some advise from a friend and focused on more bespoke implementations, even if I couldn't resist a bit of inheritance. Here's the structure I ended up using.

Overall, I'm part surprised and partly pleased at how well it worked out. Using this system, I was able to easily add voice lines that would either auto-advance after a certain timeout OR would wait until a certain event trigger had been received by the specific Script Manager (these were handled by a switch statement of cases where booleans were checked). Even though there were still bugs I encountered, I was able to work around them for the jam.

If you're curious to see the implementation for yourself, I have just recently posted the source code to my git repository.

In Conclusion

Did spending time writing, recording, and implementing a conditional script player take away from other mechanics or plot events? Most definitely (just peek at my Trello board). Was it worth it? I'll leave that for you to decide :) Personally, I think I struck a good balance and I am happy with the experience I crafted for the jam. Above all, these are usually exercises in scope management for me, and I think I did well this time.

Thanks for reading! If you haven't played The VortExperience yet, I would appreciate your consideration!

- Hawkin

There's a lotta games to choose, so put your games to be played and rated by me. Please only post if your game is a game n=that doesn't need to be downloaded, as I need my file space. I'll be checking this later, so put your games here soon :)

https://ldj.am/$287038 Update 3.0 is here! After countless sleepless nights, I've made Tax Fraud gamer. Thank you everyone for the reviews and feedback! Updates include but are not limited to: new screamer, fixed sounds, better UI, added Tax Man, difficulty scaling and much much more... I believe that no pro gamer can go a day without tax-evasion, so why should you? And besides, the Tax Man will eventually find you :)

This is our first project but many will come soon enough, try it out!

I hope that this is the final version...