I always enjoy taking screenshots of the game during development to see how much it changes through development. From mockup, to programmer placeholder art, and eventually to polished art from our lovely artist (@quack-doctor)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/aerofish-project

You can try it here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/aerofish-project

EDIT: We got it now! Thank you for playing!

We are a few ratings away, try our game. The gameplay is at most 5 minutes and it is a web build :)

Rate us here - ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/mafushi

You have to fish ingredients for your restaurant and then feed the clients.

a BIG thank you for every feedback and rating i got <3 it was a wild couple of weeks playing tons of amazing games- please dont hasitate to comment below your game !

for anyone looking for a last chance to rate: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/descend

Before LD47 wraps up for good, I just wanted to do a quick post-mortem of our (@baldurs and my) game, Into the Mousehole (which you can play in a browser here -> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/into-the-mousehole).

What went well?

• Our time management was fairly good. By choosing to keep the gameplay, art, music, sound effects, etc, to a limited complexity, it allowed us to actually complete the game to a standard we were happy with, while still leaving us time to work on other commitments.
• Us avoiding a traditional health system meant that players could have more time to get into the flow of the game and understand the controls early on with minimal punishment for mistakes, which I feel makes it more enjoyable! Once you get into that flow it's also hugely satisfying to chain a couple dashes into some rats, along with a few slams, to regain all your dashes.
• I might be biased (as the primary artist), but I'd say the art turned out quite well (especially the title screen animation, but you'll have to play to see it)! It was my first time trying to work in a (mostly) monochromatic style, and while I think I could have done the colouring a bit better, I'm still really happy with how all everything turned out! Especially this one frame from the rat animation which looks absurd until seen in motion: (Also oooh rats without the colour filter)
• Baldurs did a fantastic job with the music and really helped tie everything together! Unfortunately I don't know his process for it, but he really managed to enhance the energy of the gameplay.

What could have been better?

• Buuuut, as you would expect, time is still finite and we didn't have the time to finish everything we wanted. For example, there's no in-game sound or music mutes, which means people have to rely on their browser's ability to mute sound, so not terrible. However, we also didn't have time to implement high scores, which means people have to manually track their own scores. Neither of these are absolute showstoppers, but they still would have really added to the experience.
  • We would have added them, but to respect the sanctity of the deadline, we chose to leave any changes to the game until at least after the voting has concluded.
• I also did cheat a little bit with the 1-bit style. I tried my best to stick to it, but sometimes sprites turned out... odd, or I just needed to use a second colour to better convey the form. Like with the cat diving sprites:
• There not quite enough "levels". We opted to use a room picker for level generation, and while the system works great, there's not quite enough variety to ensure someone won't get bored, or obviously notice it, in the middle of a round. It can work in the favour of the game to allow people to keep guessing while ensuring some familiarity, but increased gameplay depth was a common point of feedback and I completely understand where everyone is coming from.
• And as you'd expect, there's a few bugs. You can get stuck between spikes if you get unlucky, and breakable blocks can get you stuck if you're already on the ground. While these are certainly fixable, as above, we wanted to keep the game in it's original jam state until voting was over.

So for next time, and in the future?

• I should be less strict with the art=style limitations. While limits breed creativity, I definitely pushed my limits on this one and found them. I would probably like to go back to the sprite to give all of them a secondary, "background" colour to allow for greater depth.
• Perhaps doing a QoL post-jam patch to fix urgent bugs and address more necessary changes, but as the game was mostly functional, we found that wasn't quite necessary this time around.

And in the future, I'd love to come back to this game to perhaps add more content, flesh it out, fix the bugs and sprites, and whatever else comes to mind. Though for now, I'm still super happy with how this turned out! Huge thank you to Baldurs for organising this, and being the main developer in terms of the code and content, and getting us across the finish line. This wouldn't have been possible without him! I cannot understate how much of a leader he was during this, and how much of a role he had in development!

Anyway, you've read this far, why not go play the game too? https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/into-the-mousehole

Edit: Also forgot to mention that we took a inspiration from Downwell (at least, Baldurs did, I mostly looked at the Steam screenshots after Baldurs told me about it). So similarities, like the 1-bit art style, falling down a pit, etc, are to be expected, though some of them more came up in hindsight, rather than by trying to pull from Downwell.

I will be doing one last marathon playing games in the Danger category. I figured I should prioritize games by people who are active so if your game is yet to reach the required 20 votes to get a rating I can help.

If you want to help back you could play games of other people in the comments or visit the Danger category.

Just uploaded a postjam version of my game with some improvements suggested by users' feedback:

• Enemies difficulty adjusted.
• Moving objects now cast a shadow to be aware of enemies view.
• Level 2 remade to be easier.
• Clamp camera position to level borders.
• Use R for restart a level instead of ESC.

Try it here: https://betovf.itch.io/cadet-mizuno-post-ld57

Play and rate original sumbission here.

Almost at 50 ratings!

So close! Thanks to everyone who's checked out my game so far.

Link to my submission: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/into-the-deep

Link to my submission: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/into-the-deep

:heart: :heart:

Hey, Just wanted to let you know I'm doing my last LD play and rate stream of this LD!

Hop in the chat if you want your game played. I'll check this post during the stream, but I'll give priority to those on stream <3

Thanks to everyone who came and gave my game a spin!

Had plans for an in-depth postmortem as well as a post-JAM version with fixes and additional goodies, but having a little too much other stuff on my plate right now. Hopefully I'll find the time and energy for that later though...

Didn't have much time to play other entries either, but I've stashed some that I came across which I'll definitely will be trying out later and dropping some feedback!

At the end of the evaluation stage, we would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to the Ludum Dare community! 57 LD was our first experience participating in such events and It was hecka fun❤!

We share the development diary and impressions of our sound designer :)

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyPosHUUM-k

Game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/deeper-into-the-black-hole

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to write a short thing here. This jam was the first time I ever participated in Ludum Dare, so the idea of people I've never met giving me feedback for my work was intimidating. The response I have gotten have blown me away. Thank you to anyone who left any sort of feedback for the game I worked on, Cinderseed!

If anyone who played the game, and specifically listened to the sound, wanted to know the thought process I went through, be sure to check out my full write up on my personal site:

alexnstudios.com/2025/04/09/cinderseed-a-ludum-dare-57-game-jam-game/

Again, thank you everyone! Looking forward to seeing you all again in a future jam :smile:

Special thanks to Arancia for making this!

We also seem to perform well on the ratings!

Thank you everyone who already rated the game and who left their feedback as this helps us improve :heart:

And if you want to check it out too, here's the link

Flatline

We made a small upside-down cat platformer, available here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/slipping-away

Sadly we've been busy so we haven't had much time to rate other people's games, which also means that our game is still away from the minimum requirements! We'll try to play more games tomorrow, but we'd really appreciate it if you could check out our game.

As a fun fact, here's the inspiration for our game's protagonist—one of our artists' cat Theo:

Hi there

I need just one more person to rate my game to get a score in every field.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/the-cloud-cities

I would also love to get feedback on the “story” part of the game (accessible from the main menu).

If you have a moment, please would you consider taking a look at my game 🙏🏼

Hello, friends! If your mobile friendly game (looking at you, Pico-8 crowd!) is compatible with mobile, drop me a link and I'll play it. I wanna help as many people get ranked as possible!

If the thumbnail above catched your eyes and you want to play a First Person Submarine Horror game, check this out:

Play Fear of Sea

The game just recently reached 20 reviews so my thanks goes to everyone that tried it and left feedback!

Initially, Darkest Depths did not reach the development level I really wanted in the first 72 hours - as it always happens. So post-jam, I focused on trying to materialise and manifest the vision I had in my mind for what I wanted the game to feel and play like. I included this as a separate V2 to the original jam version. This felt like the true satisfying completion capstone!

Also a highlight for me is that I'm pleasantly surprised people enjoyed the music at all, since it was my first time getting into music theory and making tracks! Definitely want to do more of this in the future :)

If you still want to give the game a shot, I'm always happy to hear more feedback and thoughts. I'll also be going through some more games today that I saved from this timeline (there were some really amazing posts right after the jam finished).

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/darkest-depths

Hello everyone! I want to thank everyone who checked out and followed our project. We found time to fix all the bugs! Also, based on your comments, we noticed that many struggled with understanding whether a tooth was clean or still dirty. So, we tweaked the mechanics a bit, and now there’s visual and audio confirmation when a tooth is clean! 😊 The game is now a bit more player-friendly and looks great on 4K and 5K monitors. The Cleaner of the Depth

The Game Jam is over, and we’re really happy we managed to carve out time to focus on something we truly enjoy. But everyday life caught up with us quickly — even though the biggest task is still ahead: Rating games.

We really want to give thoughtful, quality feedback. The Ludum Dare community stands out for being especially kind and supportive, and we love how everyone lifts each other up. After a kid-free weekend (shout out to Grandma and Grandpa!), it’s been tough to find time to dive into other entries. However we somehow archieved more then the required 20 ratings and we are very curious about how it turned out.

A big thank you to everyone who gave us feedback — and special thanks to @alvaron for even showcasing our game on his Twitch channel

Thank you for playing Deep Fry! I had a lot of fun this Ludum Dare!