Ay!! The Post-feature is working again! I was wondering, how do you all come up with a good/fun theme suggestion?

My suggestions mostly consists of one word, which can mean different things. I found out that those kinds of themes are the ones I vote for the most.

P.s. No reCAPTCHAcyet... I wonder if the bots will stay away.

This will be my 7th LD and... I think my 18th jam overall?

ETERNARC(LD51)'s unexpected success, hitting compo top16 overall and top8 fun, has motivated me to start 2023 with a bang by going for another round! Or two, with the upcoming GGJ :slight_smile:

Experience has taught me the importance of a good theme, and that I was wrong in my previous, similar post regarding restrictive themes. So for the sake of making LD52's slaughter survivors better, here are my...

Jammer's 6 tips to have a sexy and swole theme:

• A game concept or gimmick is not a theme. e.g.: You only have one, delay the inevitable, [...] is key. I consider this kind of theme to be the biggest "noob killer". They are imposing, do not inspire fantasy and visuals, and are extremely prone to overscope, especially for beginners (= most participants!). These are OK, sometimes great, for game designers, and absolutely terrible for artists.
• Similarly to the previous point, do not try to be subversive; leave that to the participants :wink: By trying too hard to be original, a lot of naïve themes actually appear multiple times every slaughter/jam. I'm looking at you, You are the villain!
• Situations as themes are not so good due to being too specific. e.g.: You are [...]. Lone verbs are better, things are best.
• Keep it simple. A theme is a creative spark, a seed. Both are tiny things, and depend on your fuel and nourishment. Jam games are small; short, primitive themes are easier to scope! I've found single-word themes to be especially powerful.
• Restrictions aren't themes. e.g.: Only 2 buttons. Don't be fooled by the saying! Restriction does not bring creativity, it makes it bloom! And blooming can only happen if there is a seed in the first place, which people are terrible at finding by themselves! Give them the initial kick, let them then find their own crazy boundaries to play with!
• And obviously, avoid current topics and ideological/partisan themes. Memes too, but these can actually, rarely, work out and produce extremely funny and surprising results when they do!

These tips are the result of a lot of brainstorming using different creative methods across multiple jams and seeing what did and didn't explode.

A lot of our peers are so good they will produce something great regardless of how bad the theme is. Rather, it is for the sake of everybody else, who does depend on a powerful spark to shine (or even to not drop the jam altogether!), that a good theme is important!

And to finish with some inspiration, here are a few example themes I consider to be good: Home, Mist, Unstable, Transmission, Regret, Audience, Fool, Horde, Traveler, Debt. Home and Transmission were excellent previous GGJ themes. Hope these will be a good starting point for you :smiley:. You can also outright steal them if you're drawing a big blank I guess but coming up with your own is a good exercise!

As for finding success with the jam itself: Be prepared and organized, sleep properly and think small!

Happy holidays! :christmas_tree:

Checkout our latest devlog as we journey into making our first steam release 😋

https://youtu.be/rdErEZ__R08

let's think of some themes that will spark the imagination in multiple different and exciting ways

What should I do if I constantly feel a sense of grief and even Igor doesn't help me drown it out? There have been a few events in my life that I don't want to share, but they really hit me hard, and I really want to learn from you how to feel like a normal person at last now, because, as I said before, even when I play various games. I can't stop forgetting and thinking about those thoughts that make me miserable.

I hope my suggestions are good enough, but I can't shake the thought that there's something wrong in them.

(I might change them later, no worries)

In previous editions, I often suggested single words with at least two definitions: "Forecast" can cover both fortune tellers and weather reporters, and "Rest" can cover the lack of movement and, well, the rest of things. But on second thought, those were a bit abstract. Well, those are also abstract (not that it's a terrible thing though)… but I don't want to constrain jammers too much with themes like "You have to build a bomb!" or "Cats taste like pizza now!"

So, if I wanted to continue on the joke themes, to "un-joke" them: maybe shortening "Good enough" to "Enough"? Or "The right amount", "Satisfaction", "Less is good" (if sentence themes are okay), "Overperform", "Overdo", "Too much/many"?

I'm working a longer blog post since there's so much to talk about, but with Twitter imploding (TL;DR mentioning other social media is now a TOS violation), if you use a Mastodon/ActivityPub compatible social media, you can find us over here:

• Official LD account: https://jammer.social/@ludumdare
• RSS feed: https://jammer.social/@ludumdare.rss
• Me: https://jammer.social/@mike

EDIT: What an insane weekend. Twitter has back-tracked on the new policy, deleted the tweets and knowledge base articles. That said, message received. It's definitely time we became less dependent on them.

So, I thought long and hard. Scoured my brain and my past seventy years of experience in life and have come up with these two powerful themes:

1. Arrows
2. Bounce

As the title suggests, simple, yet filled with endless possibilities.

Oh, and I also have some framework for games that match these themes.

Just sayin'

I would like to create something, but not a game - maybe a compiler, an engine, a graphical template, a proof of concept or something else. Why not?

This will be my 29th ludumdare in a row. xD i started at LD24, and am still here apparently. I’ll be using these this time:

IDE: Eclipse - Eclipse Foundation

Engine: LibGdx - Open Source, originally written by Mario Zechner

Graphics: aseprite/paint.net -david capello/Rick Brewster; Tiled - Thorbjørn Lindeijer; TexturePacker - main guy: Metaphore, also: tommyettinger, devjn, terafog, thefacecore, hangman and voidburn.

Fonts: FontForge - George Williams and the FontForge Project contributors

Sound: Audacity - Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg

Music: Cakewalk by BandLab

Timelapse: Chronolapse - keeyai

Good luck fellow Ludumdarians. oh, and Unicorns! As much as I'd like to know I wont struggle and fight my tools and expectations, I will enjoy the ride the entire time. Here's to hoping that the programming power equals the goofy art this time around. :D

My first game jam was LD51 a few months ago, and while it was a little rough (right in the middle of my college semester, got sick that weekend), I had a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to LD52, which I know is going to be insane as the submission deadline is 90 minutes before my first class of the new semester. How am I supposed to focus on capstone after that! What if there's a huge bug that I need to fix!

I'm probably working alone again this jam, and I'm gonna use Godot again as well (3.5? 4.0? Haven't decided!) and my main goal is to try and have better art that doesn't unintentionally look like,,,,other things lmao.

Good luck to everyone!

I mean, what else do you need?

the brain banks are running a little dry for suggestions this time around, so subject to change but also meh may as well keep them like this:

Anyway, hi, I'm in, I love Godot, & I'll be working solo. Aiming for compo as always, probably landing somewhere amongst jam, as always. Excited for the triple LD experience in 2023 & whatever methods of theme voting we get to use this time around, I remember something about the slaughter round going away in the future but is the future now? Who knows!

Not really sure if I'll have the time to participate this time around but if I do... - Engine: Godot 3.5 - Art: Krita and/or Piskel - Music/Sound: yeah, that's funny

Now that my streak is gone anyway, not too fussed if I end up missing out. I'm always down to see what else everyone else comes up with anyway!

NEXT LUDUM DARE.

Now i can't wait, the last one was so much fun, learned a hella lot and can't wait to do it again!

Have fun and chat with other game developers https://discord.gg/CyYZcFxxuR