Other Games

My second Ludum Dare has come to an end, and it's time to reflect on the process & the results. I had a delightful time playing a lot of great games - my stats say I tried out about 88 of them! - and added some new favourites on my itch.io. Here are some of the best ones I played:

1. The CUTEST one: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/packed-to-the-gills

2. The best take on and old classic I ever saw, and best AUDIO for me: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/cyber-serpent

3. A pixel adventure for a COZY experience: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/homeward

4. Really fun little game with CANDIES: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/candy-catcher

5. A BOARD game I printed out and had fun playing: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/packing-for-dracobeach-the-limited-space-conundrum

6. A cozy game with the most adorable bird and HOME DESIGN: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/leaving-the-nest

7. Most interesting take on the THEME for me: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/homeonaut

8. Mechanic I enjoyed the MOST: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/under-the-spot

Process

~ I learned Twine for this Jam, and didn't have time to even check it out before. So the Jam started, I decided to use Twine and downloaded the latest version. While learning how to use it, I realized it's not the best choice for me as I want to add a TON of pictures. I switched to version 1.4.2 and spent my remaining time on learning the engine, working out the plot&world, drawing pictures and CGs for the endings, writing the text, developing mini-games and bonuses, working on the game page, etc.

Proudest moments + I am most proud of my "construct a poem" mini-game. I am not really a programmer, so making it work with pretty simple code and realizing it has 256 possible combinations made me incredibly happy <3 + In my opinion, I did grow a lot as an artist since my last LD jam, and I am pretty happy with the drawings I did in that limited amount of time. + I made music myself in BeepBox, even though I have no ear for music, and it was mostly received well (it was said to be repetitive, but nobody said it was horrible to listen to xD) + My main category, MOOD, has seen an improvement in ratings: + I received a lot of great feedback and even the CUTEST fanart from one of the jammers!!!

by https://ldjam.com/users/fupi

Room for improvement + It seems I have created expectation for more branching in the story by implementing six endings, when my initial idea was to create a more unique and personal playthrough for the player to experience & enjoy without trying to go in for the second round. I definitely have to keep it in mind if I work on a multiple-endings-game again! + More experience in coding will allow me to create more memorable gameplay and more interesting UI - that is definitely one of the goals for the next time. + Art definitely has to keep developing, I am aiming for higher marks on my art for sure, but there are still ways to go! >v< + Keep working on Mood as my best category!!! (I wish there was one for Writing/Story/Worldbuilding but ig that's all going in mood?)

Plans for next jam

I am going to continue making games, learning new engines and programming languages, as well as developing my art skills. My next project is a Yuri Visual Novel for https://itch.io/jam/yuri-game-jam-2023 and I've already started working on it!

Wow secret is out I made an Undertale boss fight

If you somehow managed to not get spoiled about it from all the streams and stuff, yeah is an Undertale bossfight

Its quite hard and inspired by the harderst boss in Undertale, so thats your difficulty warning on that.

If it sounds like your type of thing yeah do give it a go even if the jam is over, I think is quite good

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/a-pawfect-date-pomos-cozy-romance

Hi all! We would like to express our deep gratitude to those who appreciated our game. We are very pleased with the result. This was our first experience at ludum Dare. Thanks to all(:

P.S. Our game ^_^ https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/moksha

To begin with, I've never made a sequel to any of my Ludum Dare games before. I mentioned to some friends at the start of the 48 hours that I'd be making a sequel to Ribbon, my LD47 entry, and I was warned that making a sequel might not be the best idea. Ribbon was my first game to earn a trophy (2nd place in innovation) and a lot of people started following my LD games because of Ribbon. It's a game with a legacy, and if I were to completely fumble the sequel I'd be tarnishing that legacy. So the stakes were high this Ludum Dare... let's see talk about how it turned out. This is my postmortem for Ribbon 2!

I like to take notes for next time in these postmortems, so let's review what I wrote after my previous LD game. "I think I need to focus on simply making the game more intuitive" and "...(in the future, I should be) getting feedback before the deadline, and testing a build of the game frequently during development". Those were the big takeaways, but I also had some other goals. Here's the bullet points we'll talk about in greater detail:

• Live up to the quality of the original game
• Intuitiveness and address feedback before the deadline
• Notes from prior LD games
• Add an acapella track
• Smooth sailing into submission hour
• Holding the wrong hands

To begin with:

Live up to the quality of the original game

First things first, I'm not going to just re-use the old game's code. It was incredibly messy and it barely worked. To make the ribbon rotate around in the original, I had a series of 128 nested rectangles that all rotate slightly. gross.

I wanted to "do it right" which meant constructing a single mesh that bends and curves.

Furthermore, I had some ideas cooking for this sequel that the original game couldn't do at all. I had plans for the player leaving the ribbon and running around in a 3D space. The original game is a 2D game, that can steer around a 3D space, but since the Y axis isn't really used, it loops back around to being 2D again. For the sequel, I want you to be able to jump, and you need to drag the ribbon along in the Y axis too!

To make a long story short, the core idea I came up with to separate this game form the original and expand on the concept was entering/exiting the ribbon, and ribbon customization. Entering/Exiting allowed for some fun puzzles with buttons and doors, and the ribbon customization would showcase how I could expand this game in the future. With those features combined, I think it would be even better than the original, thus living up to the expectations of the sequel.

Intuitiveness and address feedback before the deadline

This was the key point of failure with my previous LD game. As a recap, in level 3 of "Inbox Fool" the player needs to toss a bomb at a magic tile, and the bomb needs to make contact while the player is at the apex of their jump. This was NOT explained, and it made level 3 (which is supposed to be an introductory level) way harder than I thought it would be. The difficulty curve was ruined.

To prevent that in Ribbon 2, I needed to hold the player's hand as much as possible, but hopefully not to a degree that ruins the puzzles. The puzzles in "level 1" involve buttons and doors, and while I assumed the puzzles were super easy, just in case the player forgets to use the core mechanic of re-entering the ribbon, I added a textbox that reads "You can press shift to re-enter the ribbon" if the player has walked around for 45 seconds without doing that yet.

Something I learned last Ludum Dare was to build the game and test it in a built state frequently during development. To my surprise, the shader I created to make the trees sway in the wind was completely broken in the built game (but not the editor)!

I simply decided to remove the shader (after putting in way too much time to fix it).

with about 6 hours remaining, despite the game not being done yet, I gave a build to my roommates. Watching my roommates play the game revealed something I thought was intuitive, but wasn't! One of my roommates struggled while customizing the ribbon, despite the text "Click on the ribbon", they were clicking on basically everything except the ribbon. The solution: Add a text box that says "The ribbon" with arrows pointing to the ribbon. easy fix!

What I later found out post-submission was that one of the bonus spools, which required jumping into the bouncy ribbon, was harder to collect that I initially though. If you let go of the jump button before the apex of your jump, you intentionally lose a lot of momentum. this allows for "short-hopping" but this also completely destroys the momentum needed to reach the bonus spool. Whoops! I guess I still have much to learn about explaining mechanics to the players.

Notes from prior LD games

Previously, I've made the decision to focus the gameplay on a single mechanic and worry about the story (if any) later. In complete contrast to that note, I felt like the game was lacking while designing level 2. I couldn't just make every puzzle have the same solution of "go here, enter ribbon, viola!" so I made some mini-games. The shape tracing game felt like a great use for the ribbon, though issues arose with the other ideas. The other spools, namely the "hidden box" and "chase game" spools could exist in any game, whether there was a ribbon or not. All the cool ideas I had were way out of scope, but I'm still glad I was able to add something to fill the space.

Add an acapella track

Ohhhh boy I was burning out, and I honestly considered not making one this time. For those unaware, my previous 3 LD games had an acapella track in them, and as much as I didn't want to break the streak, I didn't know where to put it. This game has, for the most part, taken itself very seriously as a sequel to Ribbon. As I pieced together what the bonus ribbon would be (for collecting 100% of the spools) I decided, "hey- I can make the music inside the bonus ribbon acapella. why not? I got time and energy." So I did.

I added a bunch of other fun acapella noises, like clicks and pops, but also a fun noise you can make when humming the letter 'v' in a falsetto. My roommates think the humming-the-letter-'v'-in-a-falsetto thing is super weird, but it's a fun noise to make, and I didn't add it in the previous game's boss fight music, so I had to put it in this game!

And that was the final addition to this game! Once the acapella track was in (and volume controls to only play it when inside the bonus ribbon) I was ready to build the game and submit, with about 20 minutes to spare until submission hour.

It was certainly a less ambitious acapella song than last time, but hey- I was burnt out and had less than an hour.

Smooth sailing into submission hour

If you read my postmortem for "Inbox Fool" you may recall this section was named "OH NOOO!" because, like always, I encounter some form of last-minute panic. For Inbox Fool, the shaders in the built game were breaking which required making serious changes to the camera / calculating the mouse position.

This time around, I built frequently during development. I encountered the trees being bad super early, (tried to fix it for about an hour and a half) and removed that shader.

I had about 20 minutes to spare, and I didn't know what I could do with the time, so I took some screenshots for my LD game page, and got it set up.

It was very bizarre having the game page ready at the start of submission hour instead of the last-minute-panic at the end that I usually experience, and I definitely believe it's because I built frequently during development and fixed minor things along the way instead of unknowingly letting them build up.

And with those bullet points out of the way...

Holding the wrong hands

Despite how much I tried to hold the hands of the players, there were a few comments stating that they didn't reach the end of the game for various reasons. One player forgot about the ribbon customization menu. This could've easily been fixed if I made the "you unlocked a new spool, press the Q button" text appear after unlocking the second unlockable ribbon, though I honestly assumed everyone would've played around with the customization a few times before reaching that point. Perhaps I didn't showcase the customization with as much importance as I should have. Again, notes for next time: remind players of required features if there's a gap in using them, and make sure players understand everything about them. Perhaps I need better explanations when introducing those features?

One issue that was brought up a lot was the camera. People wanted to be able to fully rotate the camera even though everything was desgined to be viewed from the front. The idea I had for camera rotating would be to simply add some curves to the ribbon and step inside, though perhaps once again my ideas are far from intuitive.

Speaking of the camera, I had an invisible wall in my game (in the form of a fence, with a realllly tall hitbox) that players were trying to get over. The entire reason it exists was to give the camera space so it didn't need to clip into a wall, but I still needed a boundary to prevent the player from going there. Anyway, yeah- people tried climbing over the fence, and even asked in their comments if they missed something that was over there. Perhaps I should just write "This fence exists to give the camera some space." on the floor next time, ha! The other invisible wall in my game had a neat effect where the floors, walls, and decorations were all greyscale beyond a certain point. Perhaps I should've re-used that as a motif instead of a fence.

Speaking of the camera... again... My code for following the player when inside the ribbon had a slight malfunction when the ribbon is at a sharp turn. A single line of code would've fixed it, but the camera would zoom real close to the ribbon, making the player impossible to see.

And I had one player who completely didn't understand the game at all. They left very little feedback, but from the sounds of it they couldn't solve the tutorial, got frustrated, and gave up. I honestly don't know what to take from that, as every other comment at least made it to the second stage. Reading that comment hurt. I'm still struggling to make my games intuitive. I don't know... I'm afraid this will lead to me over-explaining everything in the future, removing any chance of an "Ah-ha! moment" for any puzzles.

Reflection

So- now that the game is done, did I live up to the hype? Was Ribbon 2 better than the original? I'd say absolutely.

It's been 3 years since the first Ribbon game and in that time, though I may not immediately realize it, I have grown tremendously as a game developer. The problems I had to solve while developing this game seemed to be minor issues instead of taking most of the weekend. Were there issues? Well sure- I scoped insanely large as always. The camera in this game wasn't great, though that's partially just due to letting the player orient the ribbon in any way, and trying to make the camera follow the player inside it is... difficult to say the least.

Of course, it wouldn't be Ludum Dare if I didn't learn anything for next time, and one of the big takeaways from this one was a lack of Key-Rebinding. A friend of mine played the game on Twitch, and I was unaware they were left handed, which complicated playing the game. To my surprise, nobody has ever made such a comment to me. I never even considered how WASD + Spacebar was such an issue for the left-handed, and again, how has nobody informed me of this in 23 ludum dares?! Furthermore, I've come to realize QWERTY isn't the default everywhere, and WASD isn't always convenient. You live and you learn! You bet my next LD game will have button remapping.

I'm still figuring out "intuitiveness" after my 23rd Ludum Dare, and I think I need to really take the time to figure out why. And now we get to talk about the real puzzles of the game... I thought the "Very high jump" bonus spool was a clever use of the bounce ribbon, other's never figured it out. Some people found some very interesting uses for the entering/exiting ribbon mechanic with my generous "Coyote Time" as a means to collect that spool, and hey- the more solutions there are the better. That being said, I wanted there to be puzzles, I have to stop holding the player's hand at some point, but I still haven't figured out the perfect balance.

Results

11th Overall.

Moving on...

Conclusion

This game was a bit different from my previous few entries. I usually add humor all throughout my games, while Ribbon 2 only had a single joke at the very end. (I still scored 12th in humor though!) Take my previous LD game for instance, where every level had at least one bad joke in it as the villain taunts you through a TV screen. The game before that, The Bountiful, had a psychopathic crow giving you bad advice, then "Watch out" had a talking pocketwatch to make bad jokes, "Block or Bust"... well the core gameplay loop of that game is humorous.

I think I was too excited to make Ribbon 2 that I focused on the wrong things. My game has so many details that barely anyone would see, yet lacked general polish on the game's camera. I shouldn't care how smooth the camera movements are, if the camera is moving to inconvenient places! I think that's what affected my score the most.

So what's the big "Note for next time" that I'm taking from this LD? I feel like I've brought up a lot, from the lack of key rebinding, to the unintuitiveness, to the jank camera. I think the biggest note to reflect on is to figure out where to polish. This game had polish, sure, but I think it was in all the wrong places.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still very happy with the game I made. I still think it's one of, if not my best game jam game yet (despite the ratings). In my "Postmortem for 20 Ludum Dares" post, where I covered my first 20 LD games, I mentioned around LD38 through LD42 that my games were getting more ambitious, but they were poorly explained. I'm seeing the trend repeat, and I'm going to be focusing on making better introductory levels in the future.

I don't know if I'll make more sequels in future Ludum Dares, but I'm glad I got to make some of the ideas I've had for this one. That being said, I really like the dynamic I had in Inbox Fool with a foolish villain... I think I could get away with more foolish villains and not call it a sequel. We'll see.

☃

We tried our best to deliver a small game, and it seems we managed to do it. See you next time!

Thought it would be fun to highlight some of the approaches I took to create the graphics for the post-compo version of my entry, Super Drillboy!

Color Palette

I chose to use a limited color palette that was heavily inspired by the indie game Zero Ranger. The limited choice of colors made it way easier for me to create pixel art and backgrounds. Knowing what color to use was made pretty obvious and I didn't get paralyzed by having way too many colors to choose from when making the art. This also lent itself to having a very consistent and cohesive look.

Parallax Backgrounds

I spent a decent amount of time creating these infinitely scrolling background layers. Each one scrolls at a specified speed proportional to the player's vertical velocity. I think they add some real depth, motion, complexity, and life to the scenes while playing.

Decorative Objects

Decorative Objects are objects that are instantiated when the player reaches a multiple of a specified depth and scroll upwards in relation to the player's downward velocity similar to the backgrounds. They are spawned on top of the background and not actually part of the backgrounds themselves. This allowed for more randomness and variation.

Level Generation

My approach for procedurally generated content was to hand-create a bunch of mapSections of varying lengths. Each mapSection contained a certain configuration of blocks. The level generator randomly selects a piece and strings it underneath the previous one. Hitting a checkpoint triggers generation of a new section and deletion of an old one.

Blocks

In Super Drillboy, there are 4 types of blocks:

Solid: Only breakable when you have a boost.

Destructible: Breakable by drilling.

Damage: Deal damage to the player if they land on them. Breakable with a boost.

Walls: Never breakable. Dynamically generated when the map section is created. Distance between walls changes during play.

I used Unity's ScriptableObject class to create a LevelTheme for each level. The LevelTheme contains the level name, all three parallax background layers, a reference to the music, and all the sprite variants for the four block types. When a section of the map is generated, the current level's LevelTheme is applied to the blocks and backgrounds, swapping out the aesthetic.

Conclusion

I had an absolute blast working on this game and continue to develop it further. With that in mind, I would love to hear any more feedback that anyone has to offer about the game. Please give it a play if you haven't already and I'd appreciate any and all comments. Thanks for reading and playing, and see you in April for LD55!

Play Here

Please Leave Any Feedback Here

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/dont-squash-the-unicorn

7th place in innovation. It's not bad, isn't it? Because window resizing exists.

It's been a long time since I wanted to make a game relying on it. When the theme "Limited space" dropped, I had to do it. Of course, people would say it's not made for it, and at first I was afraid I couldn't do it, that refresh times would be too slow, but I think it worked out well.

At least, as well as it turned out to be. My plan for the weekend was very straightforward: do all the code Satursday, and the rest (including testing and adding cool things) Sunday. Post for Compo and profit.

Instead, I was still cramming essential sprites Monday afternoon. My workflow was terrible and my code a mess. Well, at least I submitted on time!

There is room for improvement... notably how I review other games. (I mean, Ludum Dare has this social aspect.)

By the way, I'm sorry for the long reviews I promised and didn't write (I would like to say I would do them, eventually, but I can't really promise it. I bit more than I could chew). I know how to be more efficient next time.

Oh, and I don't know if any player noticed it... but you can win this game. By killing no one (and you can lose by killing your manager during his speech). This is why I didn't think of a score system.

I already talked about my post-jam updates about the game so let's cut to me for once, I have gone into this game jam thinking I will be quite a bit on the end tail of the swarm, first ever actually finished game, in an unfamiliar engine, in 3D, which I barely used especially when your company builds on 2D games, so getting overall a 3/5 with a ton of comments saying things were good, pointing out issues and such really just made me go "hmm so that's how it works" I realized that the term: "it could've been better" just fell flat to me... like why could've been? It still can be better! so to me this jam was sort of an awakening, like when you see other motivated game devs clash ideas and share insights, you also start to feel this motivation, seeing people show up, say something, or me showing up on their game's comment section sometimes giving insight they are grateful for, I think that was the highlight... So afterall to really summarize the game jam in a few words for me...

NarrowLabs walked... so Nucleon can run...

After 9 years of Ludum Dare, this was my first game jam not done from the exact same location. In the last few months, I started college, and have moved into a dorm with all the adjustment that came with that. I like to think I adapted, but hey, a new normal I suppose. And hey, the game still got made (despite the many hurdles this post-mortem is focused on).

Brainstorming

Shrimpwrecked! is one of the most fully cohesive concepts I've ever come up with for Ludum Dare, but this came at a pretty high price. When the theme was announced, I was fully defeated. I've been doing this thing for a while now, and "Limited space" just didn't give me much to work with outside of continually linking me back to LD42's "Running out of space". I spent right around 3 hours just utterly stuck with literally no leads to go off of. I had a couple ideas, but either the scope was too big or I just knew that it wouldn't end up being fun. 3 hours might not seem terrible for some people, but it is by far the longest I've ever gone in a game jam without any semblance of direction. Right off the bat, I was already frustrated and behind, and I get the feeling that this affected my overall performance during the remainder of the weekend more than I would've like.

Productivity

I was extremely inefficient with my time during the entire course of the jam. The concept, although definitely not simple, wasn't nearly as complex as the time each element took would lead you to believe. I think this was partially a symptom of the new environment. It wasn't that I wasn't focused, but moreso that I just was not getting things done as quickly as I know I could've. It's hard to explain, but I know that I felt it in one way or another. However, this is mostly a symptom of...

Scope

I've gotten much, much better about scoping jam games as I've done more of them, but this one got away from me. If you're at all familiar with Ludum Dare 53's Stork Serenity (currently being further developed!), you'd know that that was my smallest scoped game I've ever done, and it was frankly better off for it. With the gameplay so limited, I had the time and energy to really focus on the little things and make it by far my most polished experience to date. Now contrast this with Shrimpwrecked. While it certainly isn't one of my most overscoped games (Ethereal Exchange and Planet Vesta say hi), it was just a bit more than I could handle.

As I realized once I started working on it, the minigame "levels" present in each bigger level could have basically been a full game on their own, and I had all the extra wrapper of the bigger game around it as well. The currency system, the shop, the overworld, etc, all took about as much time as I had anticipated, but the minigame system ate up basically the entirety of my Saturday. Something needed to budge, but nothing ended up doing so, and the final game felt that blow. Polish was sacrificed for a couple extra frankly half-baked systems, and doing it over again I don't think I would have made those same sacrifices.

Atmosphere

Again comparing this to Stork Serenity (which I'll do several more times), the atmosphere was something that I really wanted to nail. Stork Serenity's atmosphere was the defining element of that game, and was what took it from a simple sokoban-style puzzler to a legitimately enjoyable experience. And again, I had time to do these things because the game itself got out of the way and let me work on it. Shrimpwrecked's atmosphere was not... bad, but it definitely didn't end up being as captivating as I was hoping. Scavenging shipwrecks for treasure at the bottom of the ocean is a great pitch for a setting, but without all the elements to really tie it together it can fall short.

Overall I did actually like how the atmosphere turned out, but it still feels like it's missing that extra punch of mood that would have set it over the edge. The god rays, background, particle effects, music, all contributed to this, but it didn't necessarily feel connected to the gameplay. This seems to just be a me thing, since all of the comments seemed to universally like the aesthetics and setting I created, but it still stands out to me as a thing I can improve on. It especially hurts knowing that I did really nail it in the past, and fell short on a second attempt.

The Starting Location

This is the big one that I'm still so upset at myself for. If you've played the game, you're almost certainly aware of some of the particular quirks of the level generation. Each minigame is randomly generated, so they're different every time you play. I stand by this decision, and I'm generally happy with how it turned out, but one particular issue became basically the sole critique mentioned by almost everyone who left a comment. When starting a minigame, there's a decently high chance that there will just be an enemy spawned directly under the player, and without inhuman reaction time you will instantly die.

There were so many solutions to this, be it better generation, altered enemy bounds, or any number of other things. However, the simplest solution would have just been to leave the starting location alone. As I was wrapping up my game and preparing to export during submission hour, I took the player character in the minigame screen, and moved it down one extra tile to start the level lower on the screen. This was an aesthetic choice, as I didn't love how it looked higher up at the start, and it especially bothered me on the tutorial screen where the player is static. However, this ended up being the biggest mistake of the entire jam. This extra tile was the entire cause of the big complaint, and I didn't think to test it because I had been playing the game the whole time with no issues. It didn't even cross my mind that I had completely designed the level generation around that position, and as such totally threw off the game balance with seemingly such a small change.

Results and Conclusion

I'm overall pretty happy with how this game turned out, despite the many many flaws I pointed out in the prior thousand words or so. Going in my goal was top 150 overall, and I achieved that. I actually added some humor in the form of the shopkeeper's dialogue lines, and placed in top 100 for that, and had by far my highest fun score ever. I struggled in innovation and theme, and had a distinct downgrade from Stork Serenity in terms of graphics, audio, and mood, but I'm aware of it and know how to fix it in the future. Honestly, this was one of the most fun jams I've ever done and I'm very excited for April. In combination, my last 2 jam entries have been by far my best set of scores, and it feels good to finally have genuine improvement happening. Hopefully I can combine the best of both games for LD54, and I'll see you all again when the time comes.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a thousand pictures, I present to you a gameplay video of my game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyeIWMfirn4

I recently released "Foxcrate" to Steam, which was an update to our LD53 entry of the same name. Since then, I've updated a few times to fix bugs and add a new playable character (Noelle), with more updates along the way. I'm still having trouble getting the game noticed, although it's up to three reviews (all of which have been positive). If you take a look and it seems interesting, please consider playing it and leaving a review to help support further updates. :)

I love ludum dare!

• This time I decided to completely ignore the theme and make a visual novel about the destruction of culture - originally meant for the Folklore theme.
• Used my prep time very well, def more important than I realized.
• Chose the very risky path of making a game with no good ending, some people were really into it, others felt confused and irritated. The diversity of responses from players made the experiment very worth it!
• Despite not having an artist this time, and fully running out of time to make anything more than scribbles, people really fell in love with the characters and the world which was a nice surprise!
• I wanna try even more risky things in future jams so watch out!! I'm coming to get you !!!!

Once again talked to so many awesome people and played great games that I'm gonna remember forever. Thank you to all who played my game, and the entire LD community for making this the wholesome place we all cherish, and also the important space for growth we need as developers and as people. If you're reading this, you're beautiful and I love you! :love_letter:

My original plan was to make a game for the Compo format. I have participated in a some game jams a few years ago and I had always used Unity. Now I have my own game engine that I use for my tech demo projects, but for this Ludum Dare I decided to go with Godot 4.

When the "Limited Space" theme was revealed at midnight I began brainstorming.

My first idea was giving the theme a philosophical twist and making something out of the Augustinian theodicy: privatio boni, "evil is the absence of good" or "evil is nothing". I was thinking about the metaphore that a hole in a sock is not some kind of evil dark lord sitting where the hole is but the absence of sock. I thought about making a game where the lack of space is imaginary and the player had to figure that out.

This first idea went nowhere quickly, so I started thinking about doing something simpler. Then I had the idea of making a firework game where the player had a payload that can fit a limited amount of timed explosives (this is the part that fits the theme) and the goal would be to reach the end of a vertical labyrinth, and there would be different types of timed explosives. I had already practiced the physics part of this idea from Ian Millington's Game Physics Engine Development: How to Build a Robust Commercial-Grade Physics Engine for your Game book, which has example implementation code and a few exercises on fireworks, and it would be even simpler in Godot, since I don't have to implement all the physics engine code, all I had to do is apply impulses to the payload's rigid body. The reason I chose to use impulses and not forces is because I believe that impulses are more stable than forces in terms of simulation in a frame-by-frame based engine like Godot. In no time I had a working implementation of the physics part.

Now it was time to design how the player would arrange the explosives.

In the end I decided to split the timed explosives into explosives and fuses. The explosives would determine the impulse of the propulsion and the fuses would determine the delay until the next explosive in the sequence is detonated. The direction of the propulsion would be determined by the exhaust pipe the explosive came from. The player would place the explosives in the exhaust pipes, set an initial ignition fuse on one of the three exhaust pipes and then wire all the explosives together in the desired order with the desired fuses, each fuse would have its own delay.

By the time I came up with the design of the core mechanic it was already near the deadline for the Compo, so I changed plans and went for the Jam. I then realized I completely underestimated the complexity of implementing the wiring UI. The deadline for the Jam was nearing and I had only implemented the placement of the explosives and of the ignition fuses, but I couldn't figure out how to implement the dragging of the fuse wires. I was thinking about giving up on the game jam, but ultimately decided to try to aim for the Extra format deadline. In the end, I would be working on the wiring UI all the way until the Extra format deadline (disclaimer: I wasn't working on the game all day every day, but only a few hours per day).

I didn't have much experience with Godot, so what I ended up doing for the wiring UI was to manually write the code that decides how the wire tiles can be combined given a path. I was also going to implement a Dijkstra algorithm manually to have the wire follow the cursor, but thankfully I found out about Godot's AStarGrid2D class, which saved a lot of work. The only issue I ran into was that since AStarGrid2D was always computing the best path, the first explosives were always connected with a wire that went around near the center of the payload, thus not leaving any space to wire the next explosives. I came up with a simple workaround to this issue by implementing anchor points that the player could set while dragging the wires, so that the wire's path would always pass through the anchor points. In terms of AStarGrid2D, this means that now instead of computing a single path from the explosive's port to the cursor it computed multiple paths: from the origin to the first anchor point, then from anchor point and so on, and finally from the last anchor point to the cursor or the target explosive's port, and in the end all those paths would be combined into a single path for the wire. With this, the game was pretty much done.

Canceled stuff

I wanted to release an Android version of this game but ran into issues with the UI scale so I decided not to release it. I also wanted to make more levels but it would take time to calibrate them, so I only ended up releasing the game with one level.

Eye and ear candy for the explosions

With a few hours to spare and not considering worth it to invest them in level design, I added a particle emitter to the payload's rigid body that would emit particle in the direction opposite of the propulsion. I also recorded myself crushing a plastic bottle with the phone's recorder app, sped it up twice and used that as a sound effect for the explosion.

Music

Earlier this year I took up learning music theory seriously and finished Michael Miller's Music Theory book. I'm surprised how much easier it has become for me to quickly write a decent sounding song after learning music theory. I managed to compose a six measure long song in about half an hour. In the game it is a short loop that repeats over and over, but I don't find it too unpleasant to listen to even if it repeats. I think that this is because the song's notes are long and spread out. After analyzing it, I can say that it features a puzzle solving/focus mood, that it's written in the D Dorian scale, has a I-IV-V-ii-V-I chord progression for harmony, and is embellished with claps for percussion. This speaks to me that writing music really is more about following the rules of music than placing random notes like I used to.

Results

I submitted my entry very late and didn't have the time to rate and give feedback to many games, so I didn't get a score but I got some feedback. Thanks again to those who played my game and gave feedback. On a side note, I also want to thank my roommate, who was the first to play the game, for completely breaking the game and discovering mechanics I don't remember implementing. :laughing:

Usability issues

• Players having trouble figuring out how to lay fuse wires
• Players having trouble selecting the explosive port to start dragging a wire
• Players not knowing that each explosive only accepts one input and one output
• The editing interface is conterintuitive and setting the editing mode right requires too many clicks (can't edit fuses or wires without having selected a fuse or a wire in the palette even if pencil or eraser are selected, especially if the eraser is selected it shouldn't matter)

Technical issues

• Wire laying can bug out and crash the game
• The physics simulation is inconsistent, the same payload arrangement can result in different movements of the payload
• It seems that Godot doesn't have continuous collision detection, so it is possible for the payload to go through walls using the most powerful explosive and complete the level that way

Time spent

I kept track of how many hours I spent on making the game, but not too much in detail, especially during the implementation of the wire dragging UI. In total, I spent around 60 hours on making this game, most of it implementing the wire dragging UI. I spent 01:40 brainstorming and 02:25 implementing the physics part. I think I only spent about an hour on the music and sound effects. The tiles of the tileset for the game were made as I needed to implement their specific part in the game.

LDJam 54 was exhaustive. I slept little, neglected my wife and dog and my stress levels were elevated for 3 whole days. Other than that it went great. I recorded a video with some tips to set me up for success next time around. I would love to hear your opinion about these points and hopefully get some feedback on how to fit the game jam into rest of life.

YT video - How to have a successful Game Jam

My Entry into Ludum Dare 51, Impact-Effect, did very well, and I am working to create a fully realized version of the game on Steam!

Check out the trailer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGdrV1jRQS0

If you like what you see, any support would be amazing!!!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2611750/Cosmic_Cursor/

Hello all,

First of all, the whole team behind ColorSpace would like to thank you all for your constructive feedback and kind words!

We spent a lot of efforts and time on this game, and reading your comments was really rewarding. Even more rewarding was the final result. We managed to land an outstanding 81st place overall, and 46th place for graphics ! We did not think this possible, and I personally was jumping around for a solid 10mins ! We already knew that we were going to keep working on the game, because we really liked the Game Design we came up with (and being currently unemployed, we had time to spare)... But these results, they gave us the moral boost to keep aiming for higher ! So thank you all again !

We are currently in the process of creating our own GameStudios, of which ColorSpace might just be the first game we will attempt to fully release sometime in the near future (baby steps). We will also streamline our team processes, and show some love to older games that also had some improvements potential.

In the meantime, we published ColorSpace under our new studio name, on itch.io. Feel free to go try the post Jam version there! We will be constantly updating the game until we feel ready for a full release... On Steam maybe ? Who knows where the path will lead us !

Thank you for playing and rating another silly game about cats

I'm very pleased with these results and couldn't have asked for more. There were so many amazing games this round and I'm grateful I could play many of them. Even though this round had fewer participants than normal, the quality of the games and the closeness of the community always makes my heart swell. Until next time <3

I will be streaming for the next couple of hours on https://www.twitch.tv/vorceshard. Comment in the chat or here if you want me to play your game jam entry and give live feedback!

So I apparently got into the Top 100 with Laser Grid? I just discovered it today, as I was honestly pretty checked out for this jam. So perhaps you can imagine my surprise when I discovered this.

The context

Laser Grid is probably the game I poured the least effort in, mostly due to my increasingly chaotic schedule this month. My uni semester was starting, I had two different events to plan out, and overall, I was just stressed. My internet even went out mid-jam, to complicate things further.

At first, during the planning phase, I considered making a concept-heavy, emotionally-driven game. Even though my friends also wanted to participate, this time I wanted to go alone. The stress was taking a toll... so what better to do than to transform my suffering into art?

Slowly though, I realized that my best shot at this was trying out something simple. I had this image on my head of a fast-paced puzzle game, something that I could chew on to distract me from my problems. With a cyber-pixel theme, I could work on both the art and the music myself, as well. Everything aligned itself for me to eventually decide to go for Compo.

The process

The game was finished in less than a day. I iterated on the design a bit, but didn't deviate much from the original premise. Surprised with the lack of fucked up bugs, I was then able to focus on polishing everything up, extracting the juice out of every cranny I could.

With programming, at least for me, it's not the implementation that's hard - it's the bugs that come after. Finding them, fixing them, ughh! Due to this game's simplicity, though, there weren't many holes for which these nasty little critters could claim a home. When you reduce your scope, everything becomes simpler.

So okay. The only thing left to do was the music. I use an online tool, Jummbox, that's somewhat easier to work with, at least for a composition noob like myself. But then, my ISP decided to just give up on me - so I had to focus on something else. With this 'extra time', I went down the priority list and settled on making an intro sequence.

Nice. I watched some old DVDs with my sister, then went to bed.

The next day, the last day, I focused solely on audio - music and sound effects. That night of rest was critical for my creative juices to get a kick - had I tried on the previous day, I would've probably kept banging my head on the wall to get it right, wasting precious, precious time.

This was the result: https://tinyurl.com/ymndtx9r

With the extra time, I dedicated myself to developing a simple dynamic track system to advance the song at key times when the player reached certain waves. With this, the project was over. For the first time, I didn't even have to rely on last-minute patches or stuff to get everything running properly.

The next day, I wasn't even thinking of Ludum Dare anymore - I was too busy stressing over asking my boyfriend if he wanted to go official. A story that's perhaps a bit too personal for this site, haha.

So what did I learn?

My word of advice, honestly? Keep it simple, and keep it short. Don't think of this as making a normal game, but instead as a jam game. Introduce your concept in a concise manner, polish it up, and make it unique. Personally, when I'm going through the entries, I'm looking for that 'Oh, neat!' feeling of being surprised and impressed at the same time.

Another thing is to be wary of making it too difficult... people unfortunately don't have as much patience, there are other games to play! My idea for Laser Grid, from the outset, was for it to be action-focused - though that created difficulty problems that were tricky to solve. When in doubt, err on the side of 'too easy', at least for jam games.

Three years ago i created a list of tools and resources for game developers! I think it is a fantastic way to find new tools that you may need to make your games better :grin:

Feel free to add your favourite tools to the list by commenting or by creating a pull request!

https://wujood.github.io/awesome-gamejam/

After much positive feedback and good initial results, we've decided to develop a full version of Dwarf Looter! The full Steam version will be more polished and extensive, while retaining the game's core strengths!

You can already wishlist the game HERE

Of course, while waiting you can still play the Jam version: https://matthieu-riboulot.itch.io/dwarf-looter

Less Space results

Considering the short time I had to work on this game, I'm pretty happy with these results. It's not my best score but it's still above the average of my previous entries.

I played a lot of very good games during this Ludum Dare :smile: Congratulation to all participants!

Post-jam update

I made a post-jam version with rebalanced difficulty and some small additions. Thanks to all those who played and commented, your feedback helped me a lot!

You can play here: https://vyndilis.itch.io/less-space

Less Space - Ludum Dare Page

This was so much fun! Getting a very quick :bulb: moment for the theme helped me get going. I came up with Space LTD, a generic space services company simulator, which is the theme reversed sort of. Here's the timelapse, with lots of notes below: https://youtu.be/Sky141NOvDk

On the lapse, you'll notice sometimes the left screen goes black. This is when I have that monitor switched over to the xbox. You'll also notice alot of flashbangs from old visual studio. This was kind of unavoidable as I had to use a windows xp virtual machine to code for the original xbox.

So going into this I knew there would be a few timing challenges so I opted for the 3 week mode. There was the overwatch league grand finals, motoGP and an emulated everquest server I had been looking forward to for a long time launched the same weekend.

Stuff I didn't anticipate was a big family gathering 300 miles away, and a death in the family + funeral and such. Then the weather had a bit of a cold snap and I had to abandon my office (and my xbox) for a few days. If you've played Rimworld you know what I mean :)

Codewise I started mostly with nothing, but referred back to my github stuff in both C and C# format. I have some basic collada tools, bsp map compile stuff, a shader library and such. None of which were compiled for xbox. So I spent quite a lot of time just getting text drawing on the screen.

Some of the code challenges I ran into were my usual yaw/pitch/roll camera not working at all in space. Fixing that was just changing any pitch/yaw/roll change to be relative to current orientation. There is no "up" or "forward" just where-am-I-now? Quaternions are great for this, but the old xbox math libs were missing alot of quaternion stuff so I had to go hunting for a few functions to steal.

Physics were the next big one. I was going to just fake some simple velocity and thrust and such but the numbers would quickly go haywire and it was hard to show onscreen data like G forces. I ended up porting over an implementation I had done in C# of Gaffer on games's great physics articles: https://gafferongames.com/post/integration_basics/

That got me thinking (and googling) about power requirements and heat and fuel and so on. We are a long way off from decent space travel, and it mostly comes down to getting rid of heat. I had to assume superconductors had been invented to even get close at decent amounts of thrust.

Then there was the extreme scales of space. A shuttle being a few dozen meters and gas giants being 50 thousand kilometers across. I ended up going with "sectors" that were 64 thousand floating point units across + and -, and then INT_MAX of those, so around 2000 astronomical units of space for a star system. Not enough for the furthest out bits of the Oort cloud but plenty for a game.

I ended up using a megameter scale for huge stuff like planets and major asteroids like ceres. These draw first as I couldn't image anything big enough to draw "behind" them. Then I change projection matrix, clear the depth buffer, and draw the close stuff. This worked pretty well.

I did one realtime journey, but I cheated and gave myself an enormously powerful engine that would accelerate at 30 thousand G. Even with that it took a few hours to do a 7 AU journey. Space is big!

Here's the Git: https://github.com/Kharzette/GrogTestXBOX

There's not much art assets really. Just a font and a couple dozen AI generated gas giant cubemaps. Oh and a terrible shuttle I made in blender in 5 minutes.

Remember DETOUR, my puzzle game from previous Ludum Dare, about robot on a wire?

Well, I've been cooking a full game out of it the last several months.

10+ "worlds" with different mechanics, 100+ levels to wrap your head and wire around (haha, get it?), and my infinite love towards good puzzle mechanics and levels.

See you all in a month or two for a demo, and in half a year for the full release!

Wishlist the game on Steam!

And look at this gorgeous poster:

Much love <3

Nozomu

I finally uploaded the music I made for "Claustrorush", our LD54 entry with @marcoleric !

You may find it here : https://youtu.be/qR7jx4uw4cI

PLAY THE GAME : https://teampebble.itch.io/claustrorush LDJAM ENTRY : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/5...

Thank you so much for all the positive feedback!

Cavescape ranked 259th and that was the best ranking my team has ever achieved!

This time the team was great in -both- size and skill and there were loads of assets and plans that were left unused as our time ran out... So we decided to make a DLC-edition where we added all the missing content. So don't mull over what could have been, download the DLC and try for yourself!

Download Cavescape DLC

https://youtu.be/tSt2gJLZH7Y

Featuring: - Speedrun Scoreboards - Controller selection - Enemies - Destructible obstacles - BOSS FIGHT - Loads of bugfixes - Quality of life tweaks and balancing according to your comments!

Hello everyone. I hope that all is fine for you. One month ago we finished the latest LudumDare session and I played many amazing games. Congratulations! Mine has received many good ratings and its final score was good enough giving me the fire needed to improve it. Finally I made a post-jam version of my project StarDust (Mood #4 and Graphics #6). I changed the player controller which was bad and I added many other features in order to increase the gameplay. At this stage, it's more a visual experience than a full game. You can find it clicking the link below. I wish you the best. Thank you for your creativity and your kind words. See you later here. Bye ++

https://geckoo1337.itch.io/stardust

Good morning everyone, just congratulating everyone who participated in the jam, I saw a lot of potential out there. I wanted to thank the people who played our game, we didn't expect so many people to play and like it, we intend to make it a complete game, I already have most of the story things in my head and I started making new songs.

you can play the game here: https://shiivers.itch.io/snow-rose

The process:

My friend had invited me to participate in this jam, I had never participated before, so I thought ''why not?'' a week before the jam started, I had already made a song for the game, it didn't take long for me to think about what the game would cover and the first thing that came to mind was a robot that disassembled. The first day that started, I was kind of bad and tired from having to work on other things, but I still persisted in starting to make new songs on the first day. I have to say it was a crazy thing to do one song after another, but it was worth it. If you want to stay tuned (as there is no specific place about it yet), you can add me on discord, yellowrain.

thank you all

When grades come out I try to convert my ranks into percentiles. (It's hard to say what 335th means until you know 335th of how many.) In the past I've divided my rank by the number of games in the event, because that number is easy to get, but what with different numbers of games competing in each category I've never quite trusted my back of the envelope math. There was only one thing to do: write a script to pull down all the grades for the entire event from the API and run the calculations properly.

If anyone else wants to use it: https://jacobwinters.com/ld-percentile-calculator/

Thanks to everyone who played and rated Six Seats Left during Ludum Dare 54! It ended up being comfortably my highest-rated entry since LD44, and my highest-rated Newgrounds submission in over a decade!

As a way of saying thank you, Six Seats Left has been updated to V1.1, addressing some of the feedback I got from the jam and adding a few things I didn't get to include initially. There's little in the way of new content, but I hope you'll all enjoy the changes that have been made.

V1.1 Update Notes

Additions

• Dialogue can be fast-forwarded by pressing Z

Changes

• Alice and Caitlyn’s dialogue noises are now much quieter
• The intro now fades in
• Added clouds in the sky during the intro
• Added a pathway leading into/out of the game area (what happens if you try to leave?)
• The target arrow is now animated
• Minor code tidy-up

Bug Fixes

• Fixed candidates facing the player when boarding or leaving, instead of looking where they’re going
• Fixed candidates clipping through the fencing and/or the side of the boarding ramp while boarding
• Fixed candidates clipping through the fencing when leaving

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chStBidRi7w

Join the Beta Now until November 15th! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2611750/Cosmic_Cursor/

Based on Impact-Effect from LD51, Cosmic Cursor is an arcade roguelike that combines kinetic melee-based combat with a dynamic bullet hell. Use the cursor to control a vast array of ships and survive increasingly complex enemy swarms as you battle through the cosmos.

This time around was a great experience, and I made a devlog about the game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoJwodlwo3M

Thanks to everyone who played it, and hopefully keep getting the time to continue participating!

For my first game jam, this has been a lot of fun and a great learning experience! Seeing all the incredible games people made in such a short time has been amazing, and has given me so much inspiration for some other ideas of mine. I've made a second devlog on my game, going over how well I did in the jam, as well as some updates and lessons for next time! A big thanks to everyone who played the game, voted, and left some awesome feedback - you're all amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VjFvP-Gp7s

Gacha Fever Steam Page is now live

We continue to work on our game that we made on the Ludum Dare 54.

Add a new vampire survivor like the most Kawaii to your wishlist !

We are so happy, we are so excited ! Thank you so much ! 🔥🥰

Steam page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/2673310/Gacha_Fever/

I planned to publish this right after the jam ends, but the verification by Google took so long and I got busy in real life so i kinda forgot about it. Oh well, better late than never right?

On this new version, I added character skins and themes, tho I don't think i did a good job designing the new themes. So if you buy the theme support and have a suggestion about the themes, feel free to contact me.

Download Boxed In for Android here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.raassh.boxedin

The second major update to Postcards is now live on itch.io: https://otergen.itch.io/postcards

Postcards was my LD54 compo entry that did way better than I could have hoped and got a lot of good and helpful feedback besides. Because of that, I was originally inspired to continue developing the game, so almost a month after the first update (which was a lot of post jam polish), the second update is now ready.

Postcards is a text-based interactive fiction game in which you backpack across Europe, sending postcards to your pen pal Paul along the way. In this update, I've expanded the final city, Venice, considerably - the game's overall content has more than doubled. Venice used to be a very brief place to see either of the two endings to the game. Now those two endings are entire versions of Venice, each with a lot of different options to explore. And there is a third, somewhat hidden ending I added too :)

To help balance the fact that the game starts pretty linear and then becomes much more branched, I also added the ability to replay from any of the major cities when you reach the end of the game.

1. Making a branched game was much harder than expected. I'll spare you my groaning and skip to something I'm currently wondering about though: I did my best to allow players to make choices that feel right to them and true to the narrative. But doing so also makes it harder for a player to see everything in the game, requiring multiple full playthroughs to see all possible choices and outcomes. Having just realized this at the end of update 2, I'm starting to wonder what an optimal middle path might look like: how to provide choices that matter (to both the player and the direction of the story) without making it a chore to see 100% of the game.

If you've worked on a branched narrative game in the past, I'd love to hear your thoughts while I continue to mull it over.

2. The game lacked (lacks?) art direction. I've had to go back and try to provide some love to the graphics, but only because I didn't properly consider the art direction (and my level of skill) ahead of time. But, in struggling with the art, I stumbled upon something I'm rather fond of: creating line art in Blender. As someone with better 3D skills than 2D, I ended up reproducing a bad 2D drawing of mine in 3D (with the help of Google Earth and reference photos), then having Blender trace over the line art for me. With some more polish in Krita and Inkscape, it turned out much better looking:

(and if you're wondering, I was so excited to figure out this process and see it work well that I forgot to add the train to the reproduction!)

It's been a lot of work, but in all this continued development has been a great learning experience and has kept me excited about making games and writing stories. Thanks to everyone for such a great jam - even while I've continued work I've been looking forward to the next LD many months away. Big thanks to Mike for doing so much for the community, it's really great.

Decided to add some polish to my Ludum Dare 54 entry, "Limited Ssssspace", and release it for free on itch.io as Viper Survivors - a game that combines the bullet-hell frenzy of Vampire Survivors with the arcade classic Snake.

Features: - 10 Minute Session - Ability Upgrades - Crazy Tense Gameplay - Global Leaderboard

Web Link: https://quoclon.itch.io/viper-survivors

I'm making progress very fast and the game is really coming along.

I'm unable to upload a video, so here's some gameplay:

https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/17xoh6h/nowthecleanupbeginslovinggodot4s_tilemap/

If you're interested in following along, I've also created a website and started a newsletter!

🗞️ https://smitner.studio/ 🗞️

This NES/Famicom game is a sequel / spin-off to my LD54 entry, MIROH, made for the NESdev Compo 2023.

|Rainbow Retreat|Starlit Stable| |-|-| |||

|Fairy Forest|Glittery Grotto| |-|-| |||

Four unicorn princesses must deal with oncoming blocks of marshmallow being launched from Marshmallow Mountain by Miroh Jr., while navigating mazes and eating some healthy snacks for energy.

New features compared to the LD entry:

• two control schemes: single player and two-player co-op (even on single player a second player can join mid-session)
• three game modes: story mode, endless, and time trial
• four stages, each with it's own kind of maze (a fifth one, Marshmallow Mountain itself, is planned for a post-compo release)
• new "roll" move; with enough energy the unicorn princess can roll towards a marshmallow block, either to push it or to break it
• art and story by M-Tee
• music and sound by Raftronaut

Update for Plump on the Stump is completed and it's ready to be played by everyone. Get Plump on the Stump here: https://darkbloodbane.itch.io/stump

Here are some shots from the update:

I just released a new version of Textris with 2 new game modes!

• The arcade mode shown in the video is similiar to Tetris but with some twists including flying over things and switching the letter at any time
• The Arcade-Puzzle mode combines elements of both including giving you all the time in the world to plan things out
• New glitch letters can take up any shape. The music you hear in the video is also new.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GKERjcZwOA

I also fixed some issues but I balanced that out by adding the glitch letters.

The game is here https://tocogames.itch.io/textris

Hey all! A bunch of you have played my game in the most recent jam and have shared some valuable insights with me, and positive feedback. It encouraged me to continue with my idea, so I'm here to let you know I'm committing to making this game into a real one!

It's going to be a Roguelike game, with multiple types of worlds, environmental hazards, cool things to find, items/tech to unlock, and more!

(It's a little close to its inspiration currently, I plan on making all original visuals & mechanics)

If you fondly remember Motherload and are wondering what a modern take might look like, perhaps you'd like to lend your ideas and opinions, check out my Youtube devlogs here: https://www.youtube.com/@PoshDanGames

There's also a Discord server to get some discussions going and this is where I'll drop some early details, too :) https://discord.gg/TmvDwxQwAY

Today's the last day for getting Foxcrate 50% off on Steam's Autumn Sale! For those that don't know, this game was based on our LD53 entry of the same name.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2598050/Foxcrate/

It only has 4 reviews so far; I want to try and hit that magic number of 10 so that it can get an overall rating.

Made a 3D version of the visual story https://egggrass.itch.io/the-death-wrapped-by-feathers2

Hi everyone!

Hexle was my entry for Ludum Dare #54 compo. It's a number-guessing game based on Sudoku but with more numbers and a set of original rules. The compo version was a little rough around the edges and was missing music but it still got the 27th place overall which I was really happy with!

As you can guess I've kept working on the game, adding so many little things you just don't have time for in a jam, revamping the tutorial entirely, and working up the puzzle generation to a state were it can actually pose fun challenges. The game even got some awesome dynamic music and fancy new sfx by Pentadrangle!

The ludum dare version of the game is still available on the game's Itch.io page but I also made a new free demo with all the nice little additions and the reworked tutorial of the new version!

The game is available on both Itch.io and Steam if you're interested! Thanks for your support! :sparkling_heart:

Have a wonderful week!

-Rémy🍬

If you are interested in the process of releasing the game on Steam I did a small write up here

And here's the store page :) The Spellswapper on Steam

Hey all! My game, Less is Moore came in 2nd in the LD54 Compo! I've made a little video about my experience. I'm a really small creator so I'd love it if you took a look! Hope you enjoy :3 :sparkles: :sparkling_heart:

Video

Hey!

Almost year ago we participated in Ludum Dare and made Junkship. If you are interested how it went I even wrote post about it.

But today I am here to tell that this game is evolved a lot. It now has much fancier visuals, it became co-op game and... you can wishlist it on Steam

No release date, yes. But hopefully this year! See you, space cowboys!

The Steam version of our LD53 entry, "Foxcrate", is for sale on the Steam Winter Sale! Since release, a bunch of additions have been made, including 3 additional main characters!

We're finding it very difficult to hit that 10 review mark, so if you do play it, please leave a review; it will be very much appreciated!

Hello everyone. I hope that all is fine for you and your family. Just a few words to thank you for your participation during the latest LudumDare events. We were here as usual, sharing good projects and some really relevant games. 2023 year is ending and the next seems a little bit too complicated because of wars and different problems on earth. I would like to see mankind reflecting more or less what I know about our community - sharing passion and respect. Thank you for your help and kind words. Without you, life would not have the same taste... If something can be changed, it will be by the music (said Bob Marley). I guess that games and creativity can do the same. Don't give up. I wish you the best. God bless you. See you later, my dear friends ++

Привет вам. Я надеюсь, что у вас и вашей семьи всё в порядке. Несколько слов, чтобы поблагодарить вас за участие в последних мероприятиях LudumDare. Как обычно, мы были вместе, чтобы делиться хорошими проектами и интересными играми. 2023 год заканчивается, и следующий кажется уже страшным из-за войн и разных проблем на Земле. Мне бы хотелось, чтобы человечество (более или менее) отражало то, что я знаю о нашем сообществе, делилось страстью и уважением. Спасибо вам за поддержку. Без вас жизнь не имела бы того вкуса... Если что-то можно изменить, то это будет музыкой (сказал Боб Марли). Думаю, что игры и творчество/искусство могут сделать то же самое. Не сдавайтесь. Желаю вам всего наилучшего. Пусть Бог вас благословит. Увидимся в недалеком будущем - мои дорогие друзья ++

Salut à tous. J'espère que tout va bien pour vous et vos proches. Juste quelques mots pour remercier chacun pour son implication durant les derniers LudumDare. Comme d'habitude, nous étions là, partageant de bons projets et des jeux parfois incroyables. L'année 2023 se termine et la suivante ne prend pas une orientation idéale du fait des guerres et des différents problèmes sur Terre. J'apprécierais de voir l'humanité refléter ce que je sais de notre communauté, laquelle brille de partage et de respect. Merci pour votre soutien. Sans vous, la vie n'aurait pas la même saveur... Si quelque chose peut être changé, ce sera par la musique (dixit Bob Marley). Je suppose que les jeux, les arts et la créativité peuvent faire de même. Ne renoncez pas. Je vous souhaite le meilleur. Que Dieu vous bénisse. On se voit bientôt, mes très chers amis ++

You witness the epic battle between the fearless heroes and relentless fiends in this game about greed. Except that you are no hero, but a rogue who loots the dungeon during the battle.

You can carry only 5 items. Oh, and don’t die, because a rogue lives only once!

Buy upgrades for your health and luck. Luck upgrade increases the chance of finding valuable loots.

Game truly ends when you retire. Hi-score is saved only when you retire.

https://aslangames.itch.io/greedy-rogue (WebGL)

Development story

Greedy Rogue was my idea for Ludum Dare 54 I came up for the "Limited Space" theme. It was supposed to be the game I'll be learning Godot while making it, because I wanted to give up Unity. I failed to complete the game in 72 days even though I was using pre-made assets, my time was spent mostly struggling with learning this new game engine. But it was an idea I was so fond of.

Then I joined Secret Santa Jam 2023, a jam where each participants make a game for a random participant. My giftee said they like bullet hells, roguelites, D&D. This Greedy Rogue idea would be a perfect gift here.

Art

I didn't want to draw the art for this game, but neither wanted to work with someone else. So I used free and paid pixel art assets. A pack of in-game sprites and a pack of icons were combined for this project. The challenge here was the inconsistent color palettes of each packs. So https://github.com/Gord10/PaletteConverterCSharp that changes the colors of images according to a pre-set palette obtained from a reference image.

I can't compose, but also wanted to work alone. So yes, pre-made music used here.

Unity?

I feel guilty for turning back to Unity after all the fuss. A "sell-out", maybe? But to be honest, I don't feel relieved while struggling with basic parts like restarting the level, while I make jam games for that relief.

Reception

Mostly positive. Its Reddit thread has some great advices for its game design. I might get back to this game for simple improvements like assigning a different key for the exit.

I finally released the post jam version of the game I was creating for the last ldjam.

In this game you are a crane operator in the harbor and you need to place containers on the ship to load it fully. Players are choosing themselves what kind of rules they want to apply. If you like puzzles I would love love to see you try to load the ship in 100% as only few of the players achieved that.

Gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1avCOCcj8c

You can play it in your browser here: https://wdebowicz.itch.io/harbor-tetris

99 days before the next LD. I start again the same stupid game :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc5iTNVEOAg

Just a few words to explain to everyone how it works - the only rule. Each day who wants to do that can post a song with a few words just to say something about himself or the song - or something else. If someone has posted for the day a song, wait the next day to share your clip. Don't flood the thread - and think about others. One day - one song. The main goal is to keep the torch burning until the next LudumDare event. That's all friends ++

What we started a few months ago :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/all-odium-needs-is-love/time-wrong

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2753900/TheKingisWatching/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2753900/TheKingisWatching/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2753900/TheKingis_Watching/

I'm still working on updating my last jam entry, and in the process I decided to design some new characters, as well as slightly updating the design of the main one.

Meet the roster, Guaxinim, Raposo and Polar:

I'm planning on finishing the update and wrapping things up before the next LD

Hello my friends. A few words to say that I continue my PostJam entry for the latest LudumDare. I don't know exactly where I should go, but I made a technical demo with many features. This is not the final gameplay. Instead it's a solid VFX implementation in order to play with colors to get some depth into an invisible environment. I fixed some problems according to the reviews which I received during the 54th LD session. Take a look at my work. If you like it, give a thumbs up and/or leave a comment. Thank you for your support. I wish you the best ++

https://geckoo1337.itch.io/stardust

Hi there! After the many positive reviews and 31st place in the mood category I have been hard working on a stable Demo release for my point-and-click horror game One Socket! You can play it HERE

Give it a try! It should take about 15 minutes to complete, I would love to hear your thoughts!

https://youtu.be/EXS-gt1YMW0

For the last 7-8 months, my team and I were working on a full release of our game DETOUR from LD53. And today we released first public demo on Steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2666840/Robot_Detour/

The game is now much nicer in all aspects, has more mechanics, and even more to come!

It looks like this:

And like this:

Would be happy if you gave it a try and wishlisted :)

Steam link

I have been doing research on this editor and it is amazing. They have taken the Unreal Engine Editor and applied it to the FortNite Platform. There are assets, a scripting language called Verse and an incredible World Editor. Virtually any kind of game can be made from this current platform.

Is this something that can be used to build a game for in the next Jam?

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/free-download/uefn-unreal-editor-for-fortnite?utmsource=BingSearch&utmmedium=Performance&utmcampaign=554380763&utmid=1297424827062610&utmterm=unreal%20editor&utmcontent=

Hello everyone. I would like to expose to you my problem with which I am struggling - and I need some advice. I can say that I am an Indie Dev without any pretension. I made some solid projects in the past, trying to do my best, sharing my passion with others. I created a game which is available on itch.io and Steam for a single buck - Theorem, a little puzzle game. The ratings are positive, but I got only 28 reviews on Steam. The game is good, but I have no community. My latest project for the 54th LudumDare received many good ratings as a Jam entry (mood #4 and graphics #6). Now I would like to reach another level, creating a little studio to become Pro. I am not trying to get rich 'cause I don't need money - instead I want to share art and dreams. However I have no community around my work - and I would like to gather one. I guess that it is necessary if I want some visibility among other projects. So I am aware that I have no understanding about the process needed to do that. I noticed something really interesting a few weeks ago about sharing free keys of my game Theorem - I can generate a lot of traffic during a few days (more or less 4000 visits and 400/500 downloaded games). LudumDare is a big community, but outside of the event there is nothing... Finally this is my question : how to gather a community around a project? Which social media does the work? Should I pay someone to do the work (I can)? Thank you for your help. And as usual I wish you the best ++

https://geckoo1337.itch.io/theorem

https://store.steampowered.com/app/838490/Theorem

https://geckoo1337.itch.io/stardust

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/stardust

I wrote a long rant on Unreal but erased it because I didn't want to bore you. Briefly, the editor crashes like there's no tomorrow, the documentation is universally acknowledged to be bad, and the code style and script to BP/editor workflow it requires of you is a hassle and not to my taste. And having many built-in presets means that they should also provide efficient ways to do anything out of the box with that preset. I don't believe they have.

Trust me, I wanted to give it a try especially after all that Unity fiasco. Don't get me wrong, I've spent enough time with it. And it really doesn't hurt to have more expertise (without spreading myself too thin) so I'm going to continue learning it. I didn't "want" to hate it, in fact I wanted to like the engine. I wanted to like it so I can stick to it and be done with it never look back. But I couldn't. That's why I'm not just angry, I'm depressed.

I'm really tired of this engine hunt. I just want to make a game. I don't even know why I chose to leave Unity except that I was turning towards 3D, always did want to give Unreal a chance, and what Unity did recently sort of propelled my decision.

What is your thought on this? I wanted Unity to remove its splash screen thing just because of the stigma they have (which has only increased because of you know who and what), and in an ironic turn of events they have. Should I just go back? I think I've learned enough of the Unreal engine workflow that I could just come back to it later if fate really requires me to. But I think I miss Unity.

I mean it's not like Unreal is the prime example of a clean company either. It has its own shady history, so I feel weird that I should leave Unity for what it's done only to go to another company with its own problems. Why are all big game engine companies, that has an active community and useful modules, like this? Not that that was my prime reason to move, but it did hurt.

So this time I want to make a 3D game. Recently I've determined the art style and narrative (environment) I'm aiming for my "dream game" and I want to focus on that direction. That means I'm going to have to forgo 2D entirely. I've also been learning 3d art more in depth for this purpose, although I probably won't have time to make "beautiful art."

Also, I knew from the end of my last LD that I wanted to make a puzzle game. It's about time I did. I've relearned what makes a puzzle interesting but I've barely put it into practice. Actually make that never. So the next 53 days I'm going to spend my spare time designing and studying puzzle frameworks. It also coincidentally seems to be the one of the most optimal genre for game jams.

I suppose I'd be using Unity. My last post concerns it so if you're interested check it out.

Because of the nature of what I'm doing, I'm considering the possibility of going for Jam from the get-go. I've always aimed for Compo then relented to Jam (except once or twice) but this time I'm trying a completely different format, so maybe I'll aim directly for Jam instead. It means I'll be able use premade assets too.

None of this is confirmed, my plans are flexible but I think this is the general direction.

We just finished our refined version of our Luddum Dare 54 game!

It originally got a score of 74th Overall and 58th For Fun.

Delve into procedural underground, wielding quirky weapons and bizarre hats. Conquer rats, goblins, and demon lords, all while amassing treasures - but your limited inventory space WILL leads to tough choices. Beware your growing greed in this humor-infused fantasy roguelike challenge!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2660760/Dwarf_Looter/

Old Jam version

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/dwarf-looter

Hello Everyone! We're counting down to the next LD. While doing that, we post our favorite songs and tell a little story about why we shared that one. Come and join our countdown at the post linked below :smile:

Please follow the instructions before posting :-) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/stardust/one-day-one-song

Worked on my game super cube now a phone friedly version on apple and android Free and no ads.

https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/super-hitbox/id6475626920

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.resurrectedstudio.superhitbox&pcampaignid=web_share

We have been working hard for a couple of months to bring Prickle, our (top 50!) LD54 game, to Steam!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bth8jbelufo

Prickle is a grid-based, Sokoban-style puzzle game with a laid-back, wholesome vibe. The full version features more levels, new mechanics, enhanced art, and controller support!

Visit our Steam Page and don't forget to ✨Wishlist✨!

For the last few months, I've been working on expanding Compress(space). I now have a ~1hr demo with 62 levels on itch! Vertical folding was a common request in the jam page and it's here: Folding is also freeform and you can fold as many times as you want.

There are a lot of new mechanics. My favorite is this switch that can be activated by the ceiling:

Compress(space) was 10th(innovation) and 71st overall in LD54. I was floored by the reception here. Your feedback was really helpful last time and I'd really appreciate your thoughts on the expanded version.

You can play the demo here

Foxcrate's steam release is being received positively, but is lagging a bit in reviews; it only has 8 so far, (just two off from that magic number that gives you an overall rating, if I understand it correctly). If you have tried it out, please consider leaving a review. Thanks!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2598050/Foxcrate/

Today is Pi day ~ 3.14159. I have no clue about what it could be, but I wish you a happy Pi day. Below are some ideas in order to celebrate Pi day. This irrational number is magic. It is infinite, unpredictable and transcendental. It appears everywhere around us. Mathematicians say that Pi is as close to religion as you can get in math. Pi is a perplexing, elegant representation of something more vast and profound. The symbol π was first used by William Jones in 1706 as an abbreviation for the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of any circle, but there is something really spiritual behind this symbol - and I love that. Pi is fun ++

https://www.piday.org/ways-to-celebrate-pi-day

My game Alien Up has a demo on Steam. This game was inspired by a couple of LD entries I was a part of. Tanya Titor and the Time Twister, and Alien Medical Technician. LD games that were made years ago. The game is also up on Indiegogo! Play the demo and check out the campaign.

:star: Awesome Game Jam Tools and Resources :star:

Four years ago while taking part in the ldjam i created a list of tools and resources for game developers! I think it is a fantastic way to find new tools that you may need to make your games better :grin:

Feel free to add your favourite tools to the list by commenting or by directly creating a pull request!

https://github.com/wujood/awesome-gamejam

There's not a lot of time left until LD55. Usually by now we would be in the phase of theme suggestions or even theme slaughter. Does anyone have any information about this? Will the event be happening normally?

Hello. This is just a test to see if I am able to make a post.

Vr Tower Defense where you manage a dungeon that you can upgrade to take over the world

We pushed an update to our game to address feedback we received from from the jam. Checkout the video below for the details!

https://youtu.be/JRBbt4oON9E

Keep sending feedback our way! And let us know if you want to see more Mine Goblin!