During jam, we didn't have time to draw all the different hand animations, but what if...

look at cool hands

You control a ship surrounded by drones that help you fight endless waves of enemies. Collect metal, buy new drones, and try to survive as long as you can.

This was my first real playable game, and it was super hard to finish in time, but I learned a lot and had a blast making it.

▶️PLAY NOW!

▶️PLAY NOW!

▶️PLAY NOW!

I made a gameplay video of my game, Piggybank Goes Forth for your enjoyment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIWMMQbRTt4

Found a simple but fun game where you collect stars. Super cute 2D graphics and really enjoyable. Check it out!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/star-collector

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/star-collector

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/star-collector

Today I played several games and encountered games that were even more alien than my own alien creatures.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/bulkup

Really, compared to its super destructive power, our invasion plan is still too gentle. 💧🐱

By the way, I just wanted to mention that I slightly updated the game's description, and it now has more noticeable hints. This should be the biggest debugging I can do outside of the tutorial documentation.

I can watch myself complete it. Hmm, earlier I watched a Twitch of someone playing, and they finished it twice as fast as me! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/title-here

https://youtu.be/Yo47H7-e2Dg

Bring more delicious games, I’m going to rate 100 other people’s games.

Hey, you can still play & rate my entry here!: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/corpse-collector

There's a timelapse of me coding here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgIf1-PTLZA

There's also a gameplay video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHk8INuGsBI

Corpse Collector Postmortem

So basically, here's a post-mortem of sorts of my recent LD entry Corpse Collector. I try to write these type of posts after finishing a project because they allow me to reflect on things and grow. Or sometimes it's just funny to read how I make the same mistakes, all over again. 😅 Read on, maybe you'll have some thoughts about the issues I faced as well, or similar experiences.

Idea

"Collector" was not my favorite theme.

I usually google the theme to find some inspiration, but I didn't really want any AI (showing up in google answers) to do my creative work for me so uhh... yeah, the idea of collecting corpse parts is mostly from my head. I guess recently I did watch some horror movies and listen to crime podcasts... 🙈 So yeah, I'm otherwise a normal person, I promise.

Compo timeline

I fully intended to finish the game before Compo timeline ends. After all, I did make time arrangements (sent nowife and kid on a short trip, ordered food in, wasn't really available during the weekend), prepared some music playlists, basically tried to remove all possible distractions.

But yeah, I already knew on Saturday it's going to be tough, because after couple of months away from Lua, I just forgot a lot of nuances (and basics) related to the language. Not the best setup for attempting to do a puzzle game which I hadn't tried before. And on Sunday when I fought with a particularly stupid bug (i.e. I was the stupid one) I was about to give up - fortunately, I decided to push through. I made whatever time I could on Monday, and I am so glad I did...

What went well

I am pretty satisfied with the progress I made, comparing to my previous entry, which used the same engine. Whereas my previous entry was more like an experiment than a game, this current one feels a little bit more game'y, yet still was an experiment for me.

I'm going to stick with PICO-8 for a while, I think. I love it. It's simple - but can be complex. It's easy - but not trivial. IMHO there's a great value in its limitations, and although the spirit of Lua wasn't really on my side during the competition, most of the problems I've encountered I must attribute generally to myself. I hope that next time I'll prepare a little bit more, a little bit better.

I think the graphics went quite well. The level generation - even if it doesn't show, is done in a robust way and I could easily generate bunch of any-size, any-shape "stashes" for players to go through. It's basically a string-encoded map and I was very glad when I finally was done with it. It did took unreasonable amount of time though.

I am extremely glad I did not resign, even though on Monday it still wasn't clear if I would submit under the "unfinished" (I decided I'd do that if I'm not satisfied with my entry enough). This was somewhat similar to my previous LD. I really think the last 4 hours of work (on Monday evening) were extremely productive, though. I'd like to find a way to channel this effectiveness next time into the full Compo timeline.

What should be improved

Most important things that I view problematic are related to the core gameplay:

• it should be clearer to the player that I did not intend them to be able to fill each stash in 100%; it's an optimization game and I thought this wasn't necessary when generating levels - this was also the reason to provide more / different shapes than player actually needs; while this was a conscious decision on my part, it probably isn't visible to most players because the game does not convey that in any way
• because I decided on the above, and didn't support shape rotation, and decided to penalize carelessness (through removing points / bodyparts with purge mechanic) - I could have done presentation of the available shapes in a better way, because when there's a lot of them, it's hard to figure out which one is actually being picked
• there's too many levels and not enough game mechanics to make the game a "fun" experience; I started producing levels in the last 3 hours of the Jam, and the lack of time was mostly behind the decision to drop the intention for the player to be able to do a 100% fill on each stash - which I view as a mistake on my part
• I considered this when planning, but decided to not do mouse support, because I wanted to stay more true to the PICO-8 experience; maybe that's a purist thing - but even without the mouse, I should have made the cursor move a little bit faster

Honestly there are many things that I noticed only after finishing up - some of which were pointed out in the comments, and I acknowledge most of these are true. I think all of them boil down to lack of playtesting on my side. I just didn't have time to actually play through the game couple of times. If I did, I definitely would notice some of the issues above.

Some additional remarks

Ludum Dare is a special event for me, because I rarely have time to write games, and to play truly indie, often experimental stuff. I enjoy pushing myself and experience the creativity of others. I think it's just fun to see what people came up with - I still remember some games which made a big impression on me during earlier LDs - they're part of my memories now. It's great that I can still find some entries like that.

But LD is an event having a time and place. And sometimes I'd remember real-life events that just happened.

Coffee-spill and foreshadowing

I made a cappuccino on Saturday morning. I was ready to start coding.

I usually drink espressos - but nah, I wanted to indulge myself a little bit... Why not drink it in front of the monitor? Surely nothing wrong with that?

Uhh, yep. Talk about bad luck - it spilled before I even started it. It was everywhere. It took me like 30 mins to handle the damage. It was sort of foreshadowing, because whole Saturday was just... well, bad. I've had problems coding, thinking, fixing bugs - not the usual me, really.

Timelapse and videos

I am glad to have prepared a timelapse setup for this Ludum Dare. I always enjoy watching how other people code - but this time I also included the camera view. It's a first time, and a big step for me because I'm generally a very private person by nature - yet I feel there's some value in preserving the whole process as a video.

While I'm not that fond of watching myself, I really do enjoy watching timelapses of my old projects (especially the ones which don't run anymore), and that applies to ones of other people as well. It also adds to my original LD experience, from many years ago, when I did it with chronolapse.

I used OBS to record (2 FPS), ffmpeg to speed up. I've had this soft light for photography so I used it for night captures. And I did have a Sony Vegas Pro 18 bought from one of the Humble Bundles. Wasn't too complicated to use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgIf1-PTLZA

Statistics and itch.io

Oh yeah, I have set it up. People can still play through LD site, but e.g. mobile experience is just better on itch.io. I also have some better real-life stats there because I've attached Google Analytics.

Very cool. If it were a commercial project, that would be extremely useful.

Conclusion

As always, the LD is awesome, frantic and crazy experience, and I really enjoyed myself. 🥊 Now I go through a lot of the games submitted to review them and  I enjoy observing the creativity of others, and having a blast! 🔥

As usual, thank you all for being here! ❤️

A little collage of how we approached this jam!
 This time it was just the two of us, so we had to keep the scope small. We also didn’t have access to the design tools we were used to, so we wanted to find a visual style that we could build entirely with Figma.

Day 1

We decided on the concept fairly quickly, mapped it out with a few post-its, and prioritized what mattered most. 


At the end of day one, you could already paddle around a bit and test the basic movement mechanic.

Day 2

We dropped the map feature (which you can see on the first sketch in the bottom right) early on and tied buffs directly to the collectable items, shrinking the scope even more.
We also realized that less lighting actually made the game more interesting and less chaotic.


By the end of day two, all the core elements were in place — ready to become an actual game.

Day 3

We worked on the level layout, pause- and end screen as well as item visuals.
 We weren’t totally happy with the paddle interaction and animation, so about an hour before submission we changed the main character.

Still not perfect, but hopefully good enough to get the idea.

Takeaways

Keeping the scope tight and focusing on the core mechanic made a huge difference this time.


It really helped to revisit priorities mid-jam and cut features before they became a burden.

Figma worked surprisingly well for quick asset creation, and bringing everything into Godot was smoother than expected.

What's next

For the game jam, we went with a time-based ending, but we’re already thinking about turning it into a small adventure version with a couple of well refined features like maps and different clues, what do you think?

Try Glow Below

We’ve received lots of ratings and great feedback and we're incredibly thankful for everyone who spent time to leave a review. If you have any thoughts on Glow Below, your feedback is always welcome!

I woke up to find we passed 30 votes on tiny expeditions! Thanks everyone!

I'm so grateful to everyone who played and all the kind words. I'm glad so many of you love it!

I've been taking the feedback and working on updates to the game so that I'll be able to release a good post-jam version after all the voting ends. Thanks for all the suggestions! I will try to rate everyone's games back if I can.

I will try to put out a good post-mortem for those who are wondering how I built this all in GM1... hopefully this week sometime!

Thanks again! Happy voting!!!

Very clawful, much clawesome!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2vSiaRsADM

Clawing time?

Get down to monkey business in my submission, BANANA CRAZE! Play as a hungry monkey collecting bananas in a maze! Be careful though, there are predatory leopards hunting you in the maze, and they'll stop at nothing to make you dinner! After finishing a level, you can use your bananas to purchase upgrades in the shop to try and get a better time. Good luck and have fun!

Play & Rate My Submission Here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/banana-craze

There are things I wanted to do during jam rhat I just didn’t have time for, but a talk with my wife and we’ve come up with a great way to expand the game and include sol the world mechanics I wanted to, so development is definitely going to continue over the next year

BonksAreUs is searching for more fanart to add to their collection of collectables.

We'd love your fanart of our characters! The resolution is 650x650.

This is what your fanart will look like:

Check out our collection game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/1-card-collector

BonksAreUs needs you!

Earlier, I started another round in infinit mode in our jam game. Some people commented on our game that they tried to push a points tile as high as possible. Actually, I had never tried that during testing at the jam and wanted to see how high it could get. This is my record so far. :) I'm sure it can go even higher. If you want to try it too, feel free to check out our game and send us your scores! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/hex-to-the-max

Some people commented under our game that they had tried to collect as many points as possible on one point tile. Since I had never tried this during the jam, I wanted to see how high I could push a tile. This is my highest score so far. :D I'm sure it can go much higher! If you feel like it, try to beat my score and send us your highest tile. We could start a scoreboard with the highest scores. :D https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/hex-to-the-max

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/spore-scout

We have received lots of feedback lately — and it's been so gooooood :starstruck: We are all so happy :sparklingheart:

We would love to invite you to have fun and we :heart: your feedback and ratings :raised_hands:

https://meowmeowliteraryclub.itch.io/the-raven-job

I made the video where I play 15 random games so you could see more games and save your time. Enjoy watching.

🎥 Video: https://youtu.be/w2grJeU7Khw

P.S. If you like any game and wanna try them yourself, I have add links all of them in the video description.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/cat-swords

Youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UyB65Ax8lg

LD page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/lunar-burden

To everyone who descended into the bunker and survived long enough to collect a few cans — thank you. Your feedback (and screams) helped us patch what the lights couldn’t burn away.

We’ve just updated Canned with a new poster, fixed a pile of haunting bugs, and smoothed over the rough edges that kept some survivors from sleeping soundly. If you played before — you might notice the walls don’t hum quite the same way anymore. If you haven’t — the cans are still waiting.

🎮 Revisit the bunker. Test your sanity again. See what the lights whisper this time.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/canned