Invitation code: sixtober

🕹️🦄💖

Hi all! Do you have thoughts on whether AI coding tools like Claude should be allowed for Ludum Dare? Then fill out the

Unoffical AI coding rules poll

This is an unofficial poll I put together to hear what the community things the rules should be for AI coding. It's not binding, but having more data will be useful for making a decision. So please share your thoughts! Your answers are anonymous.

Happy to see LD site is back. I checked it in the last days ofen and was happy as i thought that most of it was online today :smile_cat: So looking forward to see you all in the JAM!

It's been a loooong time, but I am releasing my Ludum Dare 52 game, Vegetableau, on Steam later this year. There is a demo out already which is pretty much just a polished version of the LD entry, but there will be some extra features in the full release.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4535610/Vegetableau/

I never bothered to upload my games on itch, all the time I used my ld page to introduce myself to new fellow game devs, my data harddive dead too so the last couple of months been such a nightmare: Meet new people, they wanna play my games, open ldjam and it's dead, I told them to wait, people frustrated say if you don't have a game just say you don't, open godot and reread my shithole projects then build the games and sent to them... Thank god( I mean thank Mike) ld is not dead I was so scared😭

Well... I am going to dive into this Jam despite my doubts. Dear Mike, please do something about your communication, I planned the time rather full because of the lack thereof 😅. Just a simple message 'working on it', 'technical issues' or 'will be back'.

Anyhow! Themes... Curious to what ideas everyone gets when seeing the themes.

It works! Thank you Mike ++

Welp. Got to make the best of these. This will be my 37th ludumdare in a row. xD i started at LD24, hi. 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

Glad to see this here. I'm just hoping for some smooth creative development so there will be something to remember. ludumdarians. :D

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∣∣ | ∣∣∣ ∣| ∣|∣∣ ∣∣ ∣∣∣|
∣∣|∣ ∣∣ |∣ ∣| ∣|∣∣ ∣|∣∣ |∣||

…I'm in!

Even if my suggestions still aren't very original:

💡 Countermeasure
💡 Fair use

Maybe some of you remember Burn With Me, a LD 55 game we made. Well, my team and me has been working on a full version, and we've almost released it!

Reworked look, 7 times as many cards, a lot of new mechanics and twists... oh, and the game is a narrative deckbuilder now.

Steam page in case you're interested!

:shrug: Everything's Uncertain Now

I am in, but after taking part in every Ludum Dare since LD36 onward, it is now no longer a guarantee that I will have a game at the end of it.

Ludum Dare 59 was the first time I failed to complete an entry, and that while I had a very clear picture of what I wanted the game to be. But I tackled some things in the wrong order, and by the time I figured out the error of my ways I had lost steam to the point where I just bailed on my attempt, resulting in me breaking my streak after 23 consecutive completed jams.

The thing I paved the road to hell with is that I will simply continue jamming as I have done before, and hopefully I didn't break the seal of forfeiture for jams to come.

:tools: Tools

• :notepad_spiral: Twine (Harlowe + HTML/CSS)
• :paintbrush: Photoshop CS6
• :musical_note: FL Studio 20

:racehorse: Back on the Horse

So chin up, fix my posture, and let's see how well I can recover from previous failures!

It's actually happening!!

I have only done 2 jams before (LD 56, my game was "a little HUGE Adventure", and LD 58, my game was "Collectants"), and i'm not sure if i'll have free time by October 16, but i might as well try to participate. I've definitely gotten better at making games, but time always makes it hard to do the best game you can make. Anyways this are my suggestions, hope you like them.

My picks are:

• Autobattle
• Rules change

Been checking the website about once a month. Couldn't believe what I saw today. Ludum Dare is back. It's peak.

Btw, my theme ideas were Deeper and Cycle.

I'm In.

Probably will use C vulkan engine thing I made this year, uses Box3D so maybe can have some nice physics.

Still aiming for top 100...

Back for a 7th time, let's see how we go!

My friend is going to participate in Ludum Dare for the first time and got stuck on the invite code part. The code for LD59 seems to be outdated. Is there any info about a new one?

You will love one, hate the other :laughing:

pick a genre, mechanic... and invert it somehow

• Roguelite -> Rogueplenty
• Metroidvania -> Castleoid
• Art game -> Fart game
• Monster-taming -> Monster-rewilding
• First-person shooter -> Last-person shooter
• Soulslike -> Fleshlike
• Walking Simulator -> Standing Still Simulator
• Visual Novel -> Visual Nonfiction
• Capture the flag -> Return the flag
• Permadeath -> Permalife
• Hitbox -> Hugbox

if they sound kind of nonsensical we're in business

As always I'm so in! Hella stoked to see the page back up. Let's all suggest some amazing themes guys. This is one of the last five Ludum Dares remaining. Let's all have a great jam. We'll miss her when she's gone. I know I will.

This time, I feel less motivated than other LD installments. It really depends on my ability to dream-up a game I would like to make within a few hours. My girlfriend, Lizz, will join too. Depending on that I will do one of these things:

• Let Lizz be the captain and help with her game idea
• I'll be the captain and Lizz will help with my game
• We both create a separate game (maybe with some overlapping idea's, like last year)

====

Tools most likely used: - Notepad++ (or Linux equivalent), Paint.NET, Firefox, Audacity, Bfxr

====

Themes suggested: - Communicate and Serialize

I worked on MUMMY MOMMY during the last 2 years and it's finally time to lanches the kickstarter :)

the Kickstarter

Demo

Trailer ans gameplay:

https://youtu.be/VYVPF4l3FMg

After just 20 compos, Mike announced the LD countdown :( We have to make the most of it. Now every remaining LD is a must!

This time, I’m bringing my daughter along. She’ll be joining the Jam with her friends. So LD is officially a multigenerational event!

Be glad you’re part of this legendary game jam, and most importantly, have fun!

Oh and I also made a little screenshot for you. Inspired by Michel Ocelot movies I've been lucky to see this summer. I love his artstyle, it's so close to what I would like to achieve some time...

first time I've submitted theme suggestions! So excited, I've learned so much from making and playing games in these events, of course I'm in for the 60th! As always I'll be using my homebrew C++/Vulkan/KataScript engine!

completely forgot about Ludum Dare schedule, but I got a lot of free time, so consider me in

Last LD's compo winner was generated by claude. Might as well post a steam page link to Elden Ring for my compo entry and call it a day. Same shit, different name.

Even after pushing out "Lonely Crossway" in about 12 hours last time...

...I will gladly come back for more! :)

In the case this site goes down again, there's Ludum Dare community Discord where we discuss LD future after LD64 etc. https://discord.gg/F3JCXMKAR

It's been a long time since I participated in Ludum Dare. I started in 2017: LD 40 gave me the taste of what game development is like and I loved it so much! I never skipped an LD up until 2024. Then, something changed in my head and I lost interest in 72 hour game jams (or maybe in Ludum Dare specifically, I don't know).

But since this is one of the last LDs on this site, the end of an era in some sense, I'll try to make something this time. Gonna try not to stress out about it. As always, with my wife, using Godot, Neovim, Aseprite and a good old notepad for notes. :) And no genAI in our game, that's for sure.

Have fun and let's make some games!

And I keep insisting on Amalgam.

I thought the jam was starting today, but it’s literally just the theme selection round 💀

My theme suggestions are Deep Water, and Opposites

I have submitted my two suggestions, and I am so looking forward to sifting through the entire wheel of suggestions to vote out every single one word suggestion.

Our team is in, though logistics will be harder this time due to real life.

Our stack, as usual: Aseprite, GIMP, C++, Raylib, eecs, edat, Audacity, Bitwig or Dirtywave M8. Codebase will be based on the skeleton of our LD59 submission.

I might have a couple of days to try to sketch an UI system, so we'll not be doing all the styling and layouting by hand, like in the olden days, but chances are not high...

Anyway, we're here to learn, have fun and to make something interesting, so naturally I'm going to say "no thanks" to AI, so we can produce a hand-crafted game.

Ambiguous enough, as they should be.

~~Hi people, This year I want to try creating a team with only people who aren’t cisgender. I myself am agender and can create music (https://soundcloud.com/technicality-creations ) and do programming. DM me on the discord (I’m TechnicalityCreations there) if you’re up for it. ~~

I'm in! 11 days left.

Probably gonna go with Pixi.js. Or Phaser, or maybe even Defold, dunno. I'll just let the idea decide 🤷

Some tools I'm eyeing: LabChirp (sfx), 1BITDRAGON (music). bfxr.net has also just received a major update.

What do you think? I need to fly in a few places on the plane in jam's time, and I'll have only air m1 for it. Has anyone participated in a hardmode like this? 🥲 (I'll plan Compo with Web build)

This time, there's an 80% chance I'll go Solo for the JAM. I wanna to belive what i'll listen to myself. Hit me up if you want to join my team and dont listen to me, just say!

https://discord.com/channels/218883154155536384/1556371223275901008

I am happy to say that I AM IN!!! It's the first in a while for me. Ok, so the first as the new me.

I started socially transitioning summer 2025, and I had a lot going on last October and didn't complete the jam. April 2026 put a business trip right on the same weekend as LD, so I had no choice but to skip. I've done a lot of healing since a year ago, and I'm in the right headspace to make it through the jam. This time, I will only have 2 small distractions on Saturday, so this will be my first completion as Stephanie!!!

If I remember right this might be the last LD so I should probably take part

Edit: no wait 64 was said to be last

Having participated for the last time in 2023, I'm back for this event, this time solo!

Gonna not use Godot for this one, and work with my own custom engine I've been building on top of Ebiten. Also looking forward to using some new tools I've been trying lately, like TidalCycles and BitFX Forge and SLK Image to Pixel, among others.

Hopefully gonna make either a text adventure, a shoot 'em up, or an horror game maybe (haven't ever experimented with any of those genres before, should be fun).

Leaving you with a photo of a crab I took at Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan three years ago, through img2pixel with the Chaos Mountain 59 palette.

Been dabbling around a bit with Godot and followed through this Brackey's great tutorial which I can warmly recommend to anyone contemplating trying the said engine.

I'll probably release the creation later after I've made my own tile-set and music plus perhaps some expanded mechanics.

I've also further developed the sandboxy game I made for LD58.

This might be the first time I've put this much postjam-work to a creation than ever before!

My plan is to combine previously established mechanics from my earlier entries to make some kind of bigger amalgamation.

I'm in the process of moving house quite soon so still not entirely sure if I can participate to LD...

Probably doing something very minuscule would suffice this time.

Might still stick to Clickteam Fusion which I'm more comfortable with although trying my hand at Godot would provide a more rewarding challenge.

We shall see!

Ending the post with a horroresque GIF I made a year ago that I found in my image-archive.

It was edited using a photo of one of these nightmarish beasts.

The slaughter gonna be wild with so less time to check… :rolling_eyes:

Soon as I saw it up, I locked in haha!

Hi, everyone. This is my first time participating in a game jam. I hope I'll be able to make something.

Slaughtered all themes and posting because on bsky they said to make a post to prove the humanity of a new account (me)

I finished this years slaughter!

An impressively high amount of themes has survived my wrath.

There're a lot of nice themes out there, but I feel like only leaving the ones you can think of as "I can think of at least of dozen interesting interpretations of this theme" is more justified.

This is going to be ☃'s year for sure!

I'm feeling very hopeful about that the theme will make me upset, distraught, and frustrated as usual. :laughing:

As is tradition this is my I'm in post. I also did the slaughter. I only Yes'd the joke themes this time. :8ball:

I did write down a few favourites tho. Like 3 or 7, also 10 is a good one. Personally really enjoy Elephant in the Room, as well as Calzone and Rodent OF Unusual Size (that presumably makes all the rules). Good stuff all around, can't wait to see Soup win

last jam I messed up my back crazy bad and had to dip. it WAS gonna be my first compo BUT I'M BACK AND READY TO SOLO THIS THANG.

Kept around 7% of themes.

This is my first time taking part in a Ludum competition! My English isn’t very good, so it was really hard for me to successfully find an invite code! But I can take part in the theme voting!!

Im nobody and I wanted to try making a small game with a good game feel for this jam

It is with a mix of apprehension and excitement that I share to you my KICKSTARTER for the game I’ve been working on for two years now.

Trailer and gameplay:

https://youtu.be/KZnupt7SeHE

I've been fiddling around with Trilotracker which is a "modern" piece of software for the old MSX-computers.

I consider myself more of a live-player / instrumentalist type of a musician, but I've always been fascinated by the oldschool demo- and tracker-scene.

Although I find it a bit tedious, I have a feeling that practicing and experimenting with this style of making music will benefit me in many ways.

I'm running the software with OpenMSX-emulator, but you can actually try it on browser too.

Here's some documentation of the controls if you're daring enough to try.

I've never handled a real MSX-device in my life and don't personally know anyone who would've owned these since it's relatively unknown hardware in my country.

The C64-scene is much more lively around here since that family of computers was really popular and widespread here back in the day. My folks actually had two of them a reeeaaaallly long time ago!

Later I became familiar and quite fond with some of the soundtracks of Konami's old games so I'm trying to see if I could incorporate some of the elements to my own sound and/or workflow.

:keyboard: :musicalkeyboard: :musicalscore: :musical_note:

For anyone interested in indulging here's a very in-depth resource about the subject.

Exactly one year after LD 58, Enchanted Blackjack has released on Steam! I've been making games for game jams for many years, but this is the first idea I've liked so much I kept working on it afterwards, and it's now turned into my first commercial release! Check out how much it's changed since the original version, and check out the full version on Steam today!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4859440/Enchanted_Blackjack/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT47nJXneOA

Well, I went almost literally five months without being able to access the Ludum Dare site. And when I finally return, Ludum Dare 60 is about to start. So, I guess I have no choice but to participate in this edition.

After all this time, I’m determined to see this thing through to completion.

Been a while since I've managed to actually make a game for LD, but I'd like to try!

Play for free on itch.io

Dead or Beautiful, Darling...
...every day is the same...
It’s 1:11 a.m. You’re gonna do it again...
Warning! Play the downloadable version for better experience!
A surreal and interactive experience of self-harm and the deeply buried emotions of the person experiencing it

I have slaughtered most themes, let’s see how they'd go.

Speaking of Ludum Dare, I’ve just released post jam version of Ruvoroid, a jam submission to Indie Game Clinic Gamejam 2026. The world of Ruvoroid is the same as Sigul Signal’s, therefore a land filled with siguls can be accessed in Ruvoroid. More than land, the signal mechanic is also available in the post jam version.

For those interested, here's the link to get Ruvoroid.

Slaughtered Themes : 888 :-)

It's a while since I participated in a game jam. Pretty excited for another Ludum Dare! I also have a few specific things I want to try out this time:

• 2D in 3D environment
• 2D sprite bones and rigged animation, instead of frame by frame

Every year I do this post, just to remind you that your health is important. Consider it one of those quirky little traditions lots of us do in the week(s) before the event starts.

Welcome and have lots of fun! Here are some tips :-)

• You are the most important this weekend, so take care of yourself (drink/eat enough, sleep enough, use a good chair, take a shower before the event, etc)
• Be aware of 'feature creep', a good way to do that is to plan something that should take half of the weekend to create. Be sure to playtest it and if there is more time, THEN implement some of your scrapped features. Always aim for a "least viable product" in the first day of the LD weekend.
• Make sure the game is easy for you to play: you know the mechanics very well as you are the designer. For other players it should be harder to play, as they did not spend an entire weekend to design it :-)
• Take time comming up with a solid, fun and doable idea, it will save time later as you can ground your development in this first concept.
• Controversial one here! Don't be afraid to use new techniques and tools. It will take up time ofcourse, but it is a great way to force yourself to grow as a gamedeveloper. Keep time in mind though.

If you leave a comment, then I will put your name on my 'to play list'. I'm curious what you all end up creating :-)

P.s. Some fellow LDers gave the following advise last year, do you have any more?

• If you can figure out a way to get the theme into your game archtype that reduces the scope you might be thanking yourself in 47 hours time - liam
• Most important is to have fun , make a game and having others play your game. Its so rewarding - magus77
• “take time to enjoy the jam” and “perfect is the enemy of good” - digital bacon

Hey everyone! I'm going to take a stab at Ludum Dare once again. This time I really want to try and use Godot and see what I can make. Regardless of what gets finished, I hope to have a good time and I hope everyone else does too!

I was sure it would switch to the finalists voting while I was slaughtering lol.

I think having lacked motivation for game development over the past two months, I think this should be fun. Glad to be joining for my 2nd LD and my third jam in total. Let's hope my college doesn't get in the way :D Good luck everyone!

Just thought I'd mention that my submissions were, in case either of these make it into the final 3 rounds: Feast Famine

I'm [in]famous for my LD 44 theme suggestion winning: "Your life is currency" (which was basically a synonym of 43's "Sacrifices must be made") and people were understandably upset since it was basically a retread of the year before; no less... In my defense I did try to tweet at Mike and get him to change it (which would've been the first time Ludum Dare changed a theme, I was going for that LD Achievement) Anyway, sorry for the ramble- still tryin to live that down (almost 10 years, whoa!) Regardless GOOD LUCK all u Ludum Darers!

Hi all! I've been running an unofficial poll on the Ludum Dare rules. (If you haven't filled it out, the poll is still open here). Here's an update on the responses so far:

The main part: Run-off voting

I set up the poll using what Wikipedia calls Instant Run-off Voting, because it allows us to pick between these four options more fairly compared to other ways of voting.

The way it works is that everyone orders the choices from their first choice to last choice. We start with counting the votes based on everyone's first choice. If your first choice is not popular, instead of your vote ending there, you get to vote for your second preference as a fallback. The process repeats until one option has more than half the votes.

Here's the simulation of how the votes were divided up, with votes colored based on the first preference:

After handling second & third preferences, the most popular choice is ❌❌ No AI coding allowed for Jam or Compo. Though it's pretty split, and there's still a significant group that would prefer it be available in some form.

Also interesting that people are so split when you only consider the first preference.

What option might stop people from being involved?

One argument in favor or against a choice is that it might turn away people. So I asked two questions on that:

If all AI coding tools were explicitly allowed, would you continue to participate in Ludum Dare?

• 1 = I would stop participating completely
• 3 = Neutral, I would participate at the same amount that I currently do
• 5 = I would be more likely to participate

If all AI coding tools were explicitly banned, would you continue to participate in Ludum Dare?

• 1 = I would stop participating completely
• 3 = Neutral, I would participate at the same amount that I currently do
• 5 = I would be more likely to participate

Allowing AI has the biggest impact here with 46% of people saying they'd be less likely to do Ludum Dare. That's a lot! Disallowing AI would discourage a smaller group, 15%. I'd personally like to not exclude that 15%, but if it's a strict trade-off between these two extremes, banning AI seems the better choice based on this data.

Where people seem to agree:

Most people seemed to agree on these questions:

Should you have to disclose AI tools?

This seems to be basically unanimous to me.

Should AI autocomplete be allowed?

This surprised me actually given the way the other questions went, but many people are ok with AI autocomplete.

Free form responses

There's a range of responses in the free-form section. Honestly there's a lot of meaningful stuff there and I don't think I can really do justice in summarizing it but here's some that give the range of responses:

• AI, to me, is against the spirit of a game jam [...]
• Don't overthink, allow AI, slop games will get bad ratings [...]
• I dont care if its made with AI [...] for me the end product is important.
• I deal with this shit enough day to day, I finally want to feel like I am doing something for fun.

Poll weaknesses

Because the site has been down I've only been able to share it with people that are more involved with Ludum Dare in general, e.g. people that hang around on Discord or people that were on the site months before the event. So it's going to be a biased sampling in that regard.

Raw Data

The current data is available as a spreadsheet if you want to dig into things and analyse things more. (Unfortunately Google forms doesn't let me share the summary, as far as I can tell).

What to do with this?

Well... right now with Mike in charge of Ludum Dare, the best we can do is advocate that some type of rule change seems to be strongly needed for the sake of Ludum Dare. At a bare minimum, disclosing AI usage seems like a good rule to add, and I feel like disallowing AI for compo seems like a pretty uncontroversial choice (even though that's not the most popular option, seems like a reasonable start).

If we ever switch to a truly community run Ludum Dare, then this data might be a good starting point for a rules change, although it would be nice to get everyone to vote somehow if we are going to use this in a binding way.

Perfectionism is hard. I abandoned my last two compos mid-way because I wasn't satisfied with the results. This time I'll submit whatever I have at the end of the Compo, even if it's literally unplayable