So Ive been busy with school and other stuff, and I kinda rushed this product out. Its a web browser game, but I decided it`s going to be an Android/ iPhone App.
Link to Game: http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/fallen-angel/41263/
Tags: #LudumDare31, ld31, ldjam
Well, as much as this post sucks to make, I won’t be able to submit my entry for this LD.
The main lesson I’ve learnt is: book time off work in advance and manage time effectively! I left too much to do on the last day. I felt like every feature I wanted to implement wouldn’t complete the package unless a lot of other stuff was done first. As this was officially my first LD, I didn’t want to release anything that didn’t represent the quality I would be proud of.
Nevertheless, like my other comrades (looking @ the URL (compo/2014/12/08/oh-dear-8/) have 7 other people used the same title today??) whom have failed to submit in time, I have not suddenly lost all work I put in; I still have ‘half’ a thing made! So this jam was beneficial in motivating me to try new ideas and I’ll continue to finish this game as I’ve enjoyed working on it so much.
Looking forward to playing all your games tomorrow!
I am incapable of making my itch.io game appear properly in an iframe.
right now in the edit submission form I’ve just linked to jrap.itch.io/contact-cowboy which is clearly not what I’m supposed to do but it works for now. (but it looks like this)
Who can help a guy out? What does the right url look like and how do i obtain it?
I’ve been doing a totally crap job of posting about the process of our jam, but Richard, Jason and I have been participating in the most excellent jam, here at Free Lives HQ in sunny Cape Town, South Africa. We’re planning to do some after-the-fact posts on the jam itself, but we’ve basically been very hard at work on a cyberpunk customer service game!
We’re tearing through these last moments getting “Bionic Bliss” as excellent as we can before the deadline. So looking forward to sharing this bizarre creation with the rest of the world!
Tags: MGSA, South Africa
Originally from Imgur: http://imgur.com/gallery/wGYR1
Game page: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=18514
I spent around a total of 8 hours on this game. I was wanting to develop but at the same time, I had work. On the last day, I decided to go full steam ahead.
The concept of the game actually have nothing to do with DickButt. I vowed to put DickButt in my next LudumDare game so here we are. A game featuring DickButt. Game: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=18514 Gameplay isn’t the greatest in the world though. but here’s a better game I made which is frustratingly fun! http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=18514. My concept is that an asset in the game isn’t part of the game until it’s on the screen (window of the game).
Animation is a bit crude but I was on a deadline that was going to be reached in 12 hours. I did all my artwork last and my sound event laster.
Here’s the animation from the game. I also separated them so anyone else can use these <3 These dickbutts are dickbuttless because the you have to go get the dick in the game.
Strut dat ass.
What chu looking at?
Not really jumping is he?
He ded Jim
If the playable version with core idea rules can be considered a succesful ld /it’s my first time here/ then I guess… um.. it’s finished? yay?
The idea was to create a game in which you assume the role of a Muse, guiding a starving painter through a week, in which he has to finish a commissioned painting.
Written in Lazarus /not by me/
Art made in Photoshop, music in Ignite /by me!/
the idea was of course, much broader, but the dreaded real life reared its ugly head /was rearing? I mean the whole weekend it just kept bobbing like a neurotic seal/. There were random events planned, deaths by various means, animation etc. Eh, c’est la vie.
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=21781
You can play my first Jam game here. “Zombies Vs Army” (what a simple name!)
Need some heavy long sleep :). Can’t wait to play all games from community.
Planning to write a post about my development tools, assets and strategy. Interested? Like it
Tags: strategy, tower defense, zombies vs army
Hey everybody,
I made a post-mortem of my first Ludum Dare entry!
http://www.reddit.com/r/ludumdare/comments/2op7bw/postmortem_ld31_compo_teeny_tiny_little_ball/
Submitted the archive on the last minutes. Spent so many time for setting true initial state of the game (I changed it for testing to don’t walk from the beginning).
So, there is a small Zelda clone. Unfortunately it’s not finished, but playable enough. A cool dialogue-quest system is implemented and 2 temples of 3 are finished (you know – dungeons, keys, doors, switches, etc…). The 3rd temple is designed but I had no time to implement one interesting game mechanics and quest-chain to reach this temple. Maybe I’ll finish all that I planned as post compo version.
A few big gifs (click to see in full size):
Play and rate it here!
Small hint: if the game window is too small for your display or you cannot force your eyes to see small details – use Q to scale “gameplay” window.
“A game so unfinished that even calling it a game is bold.”, an Anonymous Source
“I had incredible time playing! Other games of course.”, another Anonymous Source
“What the hell is a spaghetti monster?”, a Friend
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=43892
The game may look unfinished but if you like the concept, feel free to use the engine and create your own game. Don’t forget to send a link to us 😉
http://hasan.birler.co/Blog/kingdom-simulator-engine
We are a just couple of friends that tried to (unsuccessfully) create a game in a weekend, hope you enjoy!
Finished my fisrt Ludum Dare participation! I’m exhausted but happy, enjoyed it a lot!
The game is about a cat who jumped onto a soccer field and have to avoid all the people who try to catch it:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=40073
Now going to sleep. Can’t wait to play your games people!
Hi everyone 
I made a small game for the Ludum Dare compo check it out and rate it here!
Also, check out my postmortem here!
A comments and ratings mean so much regardless if they are good or bad I’d love to know what went right and what went wrong so please leave your experiences with the game in the comments.
You can also follow me on twitter if you’d like @OfficialDingbat
Thanks for reading
Intersection
My first entries doing programming I’m super proud of this game. It is a lot of fun with four players. Crack open some beers, grab some friends, and some controllers.
Jet packs, ricochet shots, and goat screams
Play it
Three days and many laughs later, “Blue Screen of Love” is finally complete. For myself and my team it was our first Ludum Dare, and despite a curveball with the theme we charged head-first into a ridiculous yet heartfelt dating sim between a person and their computer.
We used twine to create the story and HTML/CSS to make the interface.
Tags: AI, dating sim, DOS
My second Ludum Dare entry. It’s not how I imagined it at the start (and the fact that I prepared for 3D Didn’t help :[)
But here it is: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=35062
My first ever tile based game!
Hello!!!
Taha here, happy to announce that, yes, after silencing, my beautiful creation is complete! I would implore you, kind sir, to please play it and tell me how bad it is! How ugly it is! And how I wasted all my time!
But seriously, I’d seriously appreciate it, and I look forward to getting home from college tomorrow and playing other’s games! My God this LD was fun, as fun as my first (I’m still counting this as my second, 28 didn’t exist )
You can try out Like A Boss, the game about defeating a Boss who tries to defeat you by manipulating your environment, here!
For somebody who posesses the drawing capabilities of a blind scotch egg, I really like my antagonist, the Heathen Wizard!
Many many thanks,
Taha
See you in the Post Mortem!
Finished with only a little time to spare. Good luck to everyone else!
Well, it is done, as much as it is going to be. Please try and rate, and feel free to post any comments and feedback. I’m a grown man and I can take it.
The submission post is here at this link.
Thanks in advance.
After spending an entire day debugging and optimizing some code to draw a circle, I’m finally done with my entry! Defend your program data and code from incoming missiles in $2000-$3fff!
Heck yeah, we’ve managed to finish our little platformer, REPROPULSOR. It’s way shorter than it was supposed to be. Like almost every of our LD games.
Go and check it out right here!
Tags: blackcode, repropulsor
Here is the second theme for our game, because snowman have feelings too 
:
And btw the main theme :
Hope u’ll enjoy !
Yay! Finished my game for Ludum Dare. Couldn’t make it to the compo, so here’s my jam entry. Good luck to people who are still jamming, you can do it!
Let Tiny Bear’s adventure begin, where this jam ends…
Phew, managed to get it in a decent state to upload in time! Time for some sleep now I think.
Hello!
We are London Central Secondary School’s programming club. We’re about to submit our first Ludum Dare Jam game. It’s been a great experience for everyone who participated. Although none of us had any experience with Ludum Dare, we managed to create something we’re all proud of. Hope you will all like it.
Mandatory self-promotion post and off to sleep for a couple of hours. Please play our game, it’s cute and has owls.
It lives! I may not have slept this night, but sleep is overrated anyway. I’m rather pleased with how the game turned out. I spent today polishing the game, solving bugs and actually balancing the units. The only big part that I wanted to finish but couldn’t was the AI, but in retrospect that was a monstrous task anyway. Good thing I had a backup plan. I introduce you to the hotseat mode:
So taking turns is my idea of letting you play on your computer with a friend, alone, or on a small device, if you don’t happen to have an Android tablet and a friend that likes strategy games lying around. The AI I would have done in a jam would have been rudimentary anyway, so maybe giving you a chance to play against yourself taking ‘turns’ was a better idea anyway.
So, apart from a few bugs that I didn’t quite manage to squish (nothing game breaking hopefully) the game works quite nicely, and I actually had fun testing it this morning with a friend.
If this looks even remotely interesting to you, please give it a try on my entry page. I will be continuing this game in the future so any feedback you can give is more than welcome!
I’ll be publishing a Post Mortem these days with a few things I’ve learned from this jam, but now is the time for REST! Happy submission everyone!
DIDN’T MAKE COMPO – > ENTER JAM. FINALLY DONE! EXPECT A GREAT MULTIPLAYER GAME IN THE FUTURE.
I’m a top-tier time waster and won’t be able to finish this before the time-limit.
However, I will try to finish this game in the near future.
Until then, have this screenshot
Fear and loathing in Unity
Left it to the dying moments but we manged to squeeze out a game! Luckily didn’t have to wrestle any big bugs or other problems, so we got some extra bits of polish done. It’s still quite rough with the transitions and everything but for a jam game it looks pretty good. More in depth analysis after a couple hours of sleep.
Play it HERE
Wow, found two gameplay videos of my game. It feel so good to see people laughing with it 😀
Checkout the videos here and here.
Also, go and check my game by yourself!
Wow, I’ve been playing some awesome games today! How do you guys manage to get so much done in such a short time? Super creative everyone! Thanks for the fun!
Original idea was to have 16384 screens in one screen.
Try it out right here: mircea.23c.se/ld31.html
After fixing a few last minute bugs I submitted my game meaning I have successfully finished my first LD! Although I have learned many valuable lessons during the LD I think the most valuable lesson is to always check your spelling before uploading your game. Needless to say, I plan on updating my game after school tomorrow I fix my careless mistakes. In the mean time you can take a look at my game here.
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=43881
We’re finally done, and our game, “Icy the No-Man’s Trivial Travails” is up for judgement. It is a trivia board game starring Icy the No-Man, where you parade around the board to collect colored answer points to unlock the various colored gates guarding the roads to victory. After a number of turns, if you haven’t won yet, we have included some incentive in the form of a hungry Yeti.
You can play and rate it here.
The trivia is accurate to the best of our knowledge (and research), so we’re fairly confident in the answers.
Trivial Travails was made with Stencyl by my friend and I with various voice overs done by me.
Tags: game, ld31, screenshot, stencyl
My Ludum Dare game, “Perfect Squad” is now up. I really wanted to do an FPS so I came up with the idea that you’d control each squad mate individually and then the game replays all the recorded actions of all 4 squad mates simultaneously. You can redo each of your squad mates actions individually till it’s perfect. The overview screen (entire game on this screen) shows a replay of all 4 members of your squad. Sort of a turn-based FPS.
You control all 4 squad mates
Due to time constraints, I wasn’t able to complete everything I wanted to do but the recording and playback of each squad members actions is there. Check it out!
Tags: 3D, FPS, redo, replay, rewind, shooter, squad, turn-based, unity, unity3d
Well, as fast as a Slowpoke, but can’t deny the hype and fun i had. ROFL.
My Java applet is not working… I will post the html code incase my error is easy to figure out
<html><body>
<Title>Retro Mashup</Title>
<embed id=”RetroMashup” type=”application/x-java-applet;version=1.7″ code=”ajay.ld31.main.Main.class”
archive=”https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9zrxe9EFlBMckxIUkdEMDVaWlE/view?usp=sharing” width=”640″
height=”480″></embed>
</body></html>
It’s great to have finished our second LD Jam game… download it here.
Mac OS X only version at this time. Hope I can get a Windows port fast
Hey everyone! How’s your jam coming along?
Well I’m happy to announce that I’ve completed mine! I know, I know: there’s still 1.5h left to the jam, but honestly… what feature can you add in that time? 😛 Might as well play everyone else’s game instead: much more fun!
Should you feel like saving the Earth, feel free to check out my classic arcade-like Space Guardian: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=40143
I don’t know about you, but finishing this jam is quite an accomplishment for me! I’m having a drink to celebrate, and here’s a CHEERS to all of you who are celebrating this personal victory along with me!
Play more games!
Jonathan
Waiting for the post-mortem of Wreck a Goblin, just look at its time-laps video.
21 hours of work, summarizee in 2 minutes. Depressing, isn’t it ? But strangely nice to watch.
The video : http://youtu.be/IGrEQhNABZY
The game is available there : http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=40976
Please rate, comment, give feeback, scream, send money, do something…
See you…
After a final night of performance tweaks and gameplay tweaks we’re live!
Play it here.
Question is: can you make it to the end?
We’ve finished our first Ludum Dare Jam game!
Grandpa’s Grid tells the story of two sisters forced to spend the weekend at their grandfather’s house. Unfortunately it’s a rainy day, so they can’t play outside. They scrounge around for anything in the house to keep themselves occupied, but all they find is a piece of grid paper and some writing utensils. They begin to play Tic Tac Toe, but of course that only lasts 5 stalemates before they start adding rules to make the game more interesting. The resulting game was unrecognizable from Tic Tac Toe.
Help Tiffany get to the end of Jessica’s maze, but be careful because the further you get into the maze, the harder Jessica will make it! We hope you like it!
Download the game here
Well, it’s submitted, http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=28080. Please and Thank You. I fixed what could easily be fixed, and tore my hair out trying to fix what couldn’t easily be fixed. It’s not as pretty as I liked, and I wasn’t able to pull off the theme as well as I would have liked but it’s playable and that’s gonna have to do for now. (PS, the “one screen” is supposed to be a television tuned into an Intergalactic television network.) Try as I might, I couldn’t get shaders to work for that CRT 80s television aesthetic, but whatever. I had fun, but need to work on my time management skills for sure.
Anyways, can’t wait to start checking out everyone else’s totes awesome games! Thanks!
Here’s a video of the gameplay from my compo entry Cubelicious:
After the long amount of hours and the long amount of I don’t know how to code this moments I got a game.
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=18322
Our game is done now and you can rate it here
Robots Must Die is a FPS made with Unreal Engine 4 for the Ludum Dare 31 in less than 72 hours.
The goal of the game is to get the better time that you can. All contents are made by the team
DEMAY Guillaume : http:/www.guillaumedemay.com (Programmer & Designer )
CORDEROCH Briac : http://bcorderoch.wix.com/portfolio#!cv/c24vq (Artiste 3D)
CODEROCH Alice : Music
We finished Insecticide! It’s been a rough 3 days but we’re actually happy that the game turned out fun and strategic. If you like tactic/strategy/chess games (and have 2 players) give our game a try!
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=18369
Oh yeah, releasing stuff. This feels good.
You can now play my game, an exploration game with the map the size of a screen! See what weird stuff you can find out.
It’s 2 am and we finally did it !
We enjoyed our first Ludum Dare, for our game and other’s but mostly for the great community (and PoV).
Go there to play our game, we’ll hope you like it.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get my game up to a quality I want to release. I’ve spent most of my time over the weekend and today fiddling and fighting with game maker rather than designing a game. It’s unfinished and lacks polish. I realise that with just under an hour left, I could remove incomplete features and release something that is complete, but that game would be terrible. Instead I’m going to carry on with the project at least until the stage I would’ve released it at. I’ll upload it as I was going to and maybe even continue with it. But for tonight, I’m done.
On the plus side, despite not finishing my game by getting bogged down in things which I should’ve practised before implementing, I still had a great time. I’ve learnt a great deal from this experience and look forward to the next competition. Next time, I’ll be much stricter with myself. I’ll brain storm for at least an hour and devise all the mechanics and the UI etc. I’ll then implement said mechanics, in turn, not moving on from one to another until it is implemented fully. Then I’ll work on graphics and sound. And only once these are acceptable will I start to balance the game and add extra variety.
Our main hero Blipt wish to find the exit !
HELP HIM!
Platformer : you can move right left up down but also through the front and the back of the screen!
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=39859
We finish our second Jam and we can’t wait for a third!
Stop judging me D:
High school really does never end! D:
Perhaps changing it to something like “Your game is being judged” or “Your entry” or “Your submission” would be preferrable. 😀
(Writing this post just because I found the wording funny)
Poo Dee Pie is complete! #LDJAM #LD31
I set out to build a twin-stick shooter that was playable with just a keyboard. And a snowman.
Check it out here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=5229
Made in 10 hours-ish, this is a “game” where you are in control of two ladies trying to sell… something, but you have no clue about what you’re supposed to sell! Like you would do in real life, search for things in your enviroment by clicking on things to get ideas as you ramble your way through success.
You can zoom-in using the keyboard numbers and advance through the text with the spacebar, pretty simple stuff.
We had a lot of fun with this one… I just wish we started on Friday instead of Monday ^^; – there might be spelling errors because we had no time to proofread.
Play here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=35049
Made with Game Maker Studio.
Programming/Writing: @ironiclark
Graphics/Design: @kiririn51
well I think I did it. I loved working on the idea, but I’m not really proud of my execution. On the plus side, I got two friends involved with the game dev(hopefully). So shout out to them: if you’re reading this, I hope you’ve learned something and I REALLY hope you start making games!
The Game
It’s basically a police chase. No you’re not the runner. Nope, not the chasing cop. Instead, you’re the roadblock!
You have to set up an efficient roadblock in as little as 15 seconds. Give it a try!
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=21290
I finally finished Hazard Hills! You can play/rate it here!
Things I’ve discovered from working on it: Work on the annoying stuff early, don’t put it off. Otherwise it’s likely never going to get finished.
Upload the sourcecode EARLY. The source folder was around 250 megs, which is a real pain to upload on my internet.
Ambient sounds really help make the game nicer.
Don’t set your aim TOO high.
You can watch my preview video here:
Simulacra in Space is finished!
Whew, that was good! Got a lot done and I’m happy with the result.
Things I like about it: Audio, some of the writing,the fact that opening the computer obscures your needs, the clay figure of the monster,
Truly, a thing of beauty.
Things I would’ve liked to work on: Surprisingly little of what is in there I want to fix, but I would’ve added more things in if I had more time. But all in all, Pretty good!
There seems like a lot of other good games out there, can’t wait to start working through a few. Good job everyone for participating!
Take A friend and play!!!
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=47252
Hi! I’m Tobi Hahn, representing Paisley Games in our first Ludum Dare. We just finished our game and we would be thrilled if you played it!
Fixed some small bugs with the numbers going negative when reaching a certain value. I changed the number type to double so a 16 digit amount of cubes is possible now.
Tags: cube clicker, polyganz
Finally, we’re done. Lost & Found is “finished” and ready to be played right here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=31047
Comments and criticism welcome, as always 😀
My project is coming along very nicely!
…But it’s still not going to be a game yet in fifteen minutes. 
Oh well. No jam for me.
I’m still planning to finish this game soon, so stay tuned if you like old-school dungeon crawling.
It’s not all done. And submission hour is soon. Time to rush.
I can’t believe I finished it! I didn’t think I would come through with a game this Ludum Dare, but I did. After two false starts, I managed to pour a little under 48 hours into Stack Hacker.
Play as a hollywood style hacker, crashing firewalls by causing memory exceptions in this little minigame.
You can view the submission here.
Not much to say. It’s 3 AM, I’m super tired. Play it!
I’m glad I went trough with this, it’s been as fun as it was exhausting. Can’t wait to do it again!
My game is about the soul of an adventurer escaping a cursed tower, while having minimal visibility and shifting walls.
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=46895
Finally completed my first Ludum Dare! And I’m happy with the game, too. I guess it’s a cliche, but it really was quite the experience. Postmortem coming when it’s not 3 AM.
Check out Usher here.
I finished up my compo entry last night. Since this is my first Ludum Dare, I overestimated how much I could get done. I didn’t get everything done that I had wanted to, but I’m surprised at how much I did finish.
Tags: compo, ld #31, snake rider
Here is a screen cap of the win screen
Finally DONE!
Special thanks to red bull for your constant help and support 😉
Well sort of =\… It is such a complicated game to make in 72 hours. I think I pulled it off (I was solo) but I was unable to make (and play-test) the levels.
Good news though! Sol Defender has a “Custom Level” choice where you can create your own levels using the in-game editor ;)… So thats fun 😀
Screen-woots!
Now lets go vote friends!
With love… Jake 😀
Tags: 2D, defense, reveriejake, tower, towerdefense, unity, Unity 2D, unity3d
ATech Island – Sorry I did not quite make it in time!
Will fiddle about with this game any way as I am curious to see how it plays…
Good luck every one.
There are plenty more things that I would like to do to this game but it is playable. Not my best LD. Good experience though. Play it here.
My new game for the jam “Flailing-Arm-Ninja” has been uploaded! It’s my first complete game ever and I’m pretty proud! Check it out:
Well, what are you waiting for? You’ve already read up until here so you’re clearly okay with wasting your precious, irreplaceable time which you are currently wasting right now by reading this so you might as well waste it on something better like playing and rating my game! http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=43866
Here’s my Ludum Dare game, I realised at the last minute I hadn’t actually named it, so I’ve just called it ‘Nebula’ for now.
http://urbanlogicgames.itch.io/nebula
The game places you in command of a lone starship hiding in a nebula with 5 enemy ships. You have to find them using probes, which can scan over a short range. If the probe picks up emissions from an enemy ship it will mark the direction the emissions came from (it should only take 3-4 of these to triangulate the ship’s position). If an enemy ship falls within the probes inner-radius it’s exact position will be marked on the grid. Once you think you know where a ship is lurking you can destroy it with torpedoes.
I didn’t get as far as I’d like with it. Enemy ships don’t have AI and are essentially sitting ducks. The scanner is probably a little too precise, I think some sort of analogue waveform readout with more ambiguity would work better, just didn’t get a chance to try it. Torpedoes can be customised by allocating power between speed and yield, though admittedly this doesn’t affect the game as much as I’d planned.
I learned from my mistake last time. And didn’t take an idea that was too big, the theme really helped me with that. And I actually finished the idea. I didn’t actually polish the game as much as I wish I had but work got in the way. Reguardless, this is the result of the work I managed to put in. A small, somewhat confusing game with “three” endings called “The Room”.
We just submitted our first game!
Just follow the steps in the manuscript and try, you can play it just with your mouse
Hope you enjoy playing it, and please give us some feedback.
Thanks!!!
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=14947
Well it’s up. I need to polish it a bit and it’s broken I should be able to fix the collision bug in the next hour so at least you can redraw the bats and keep the game going. I wont add any features til post jam.
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=12354
What you can do.
1. Draw player bat 1
2. Draw player bat 2
3. Draw the score 1
4. Draw the score 2.
5. Ball will bounce – just finding that bug now.
TODO (post jam)
5. Detect edge of screen and update scores – so tell player to redraw scores.
6. End game when a screen player reaches 10
7. End game when (you) the actual player stuffs up too many times and annoys the other players.
Thanks to our programmer who worked relentlessly, we finished in time. We are happy and proud to present you our first ludum dare entry, Sea King Hunter.
A big thanks to the Ludum Dare Organizers and participants. We love you.
Defend your base from asteroids
Play my Game:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uspty1vmi8orort/Satellite%20Defender.rar?dl=0
Like yesterday, a little too tired to write a “real” post, but we’re done with our entry !
So it’s called Goblin Crown Fever and it’s about goblins, ghosts, greed and time.
Check out my timelapse!
On Friday evening I started brainstorming for the possible themes, paying some special attention to the now forgotten ☃. I wasn’t particularly keen on it, but judging from people’s reactions on the internet there was a high probability of it being selected. It also felt particularly appropriate, as by the time I was scribbling possible game concepts I was freezing in the cold waiting for a gig.
I regret nothing!
That hour and a half yielded red fingers and around 3 notebook pages of quick and more or less bizarre thoughts, references and ideas. “Entire game…”, as you can see, didn’t get too much love back then (In case you’re curious, I’d just written something like “taking advantage of the UI elements as parts of the gameplay”).
Flash forward to Saturday morning. At that point I learn about the chosen theme, curse for around 30s and put my mind to work. While it wasn’t among my favourites by a league, I generally don’t make a big drama about the theme as I can’t fully understand it (the drama) either. I’ve read many complaints about it not being a real theme but a technical constraint, too restrictive, too generic, etc, etc. Even though some of these can be valid points, to me they don’t carry enough weight as to get angry over it. In fact, I feel that restrictions more often than not enhance creativity rather than hinder it, as they force you to get out of your comfort zone, think in a different way and try out unknown routes that can end up in interesting, original takes (as a proof, I’ve already played several today. I’m amazed at what people can accomplish). In this specific case I thought that the theme might work in several ways: as a technical restriction (no scrolling, no separate levels,…) or as…well, a theme (surveillance,…). Waves of stuff coming at you (a reverse beat ‘em up, for instance), monitoring some action through a display, shooting ranges, fighting, multiple levels crammed into a single view, puzzle games or single-screen arcade games, etc, etc… All of them seemed like some viable approaches. At some point I seriously even considered to make a TV broadcast programming simulator, but luckily discarded it when I realised that it would probably go way out of scope. In the end I decided to follow the arcade approach and started looking for references.
A couple of screenshots of good old Arabian, some helpful advice and references from Zener pointing me in the right direction, and thus the main concept for Dungeon of Jest was born: A single-screen platformer with a single level where sections of it change as you progress around the game, giving the impression that the dungeon is trolling our hero, giving her a more difficult time.
Arabian and King’s Valley 2
I came out pretty happy with the game this time, even though there are lots of room for improvement. To everything that I’ve already mentioned there are lots of things that could make DoJ more interesting (or bloat it :D). For example, just to name a few:
I don’t know if I’ll make a post-compo version with some of these changes (I always say that I will and then don’t do anything, so I’m not going to fool myself this time), but for the next time I definitely hope to at least come better prepared in terms of code (have the language choice clear from the start, ffs!), and become faster (and better!) at asset creation. Well, and probably synthesize a bit more on the postmortem. If you’ve managed to read all the way until here, thank you!
Tags: haXe, HaXeFlixel, postmortem
JUST IN THE DEADLINE!
After an intense weekend of work, our game, DisChord, is now live. You can play it here. Hope you guys enjoy it as much as we enjoyed doing it!
Now GET HYPED!!
I’ve been following along with the handmade hero stream and learning a lot. It’s been 2 or 3 weeks since the start though and we’ve covered a lot of new stuff for me, so I wanted to go back and do a kind of accelerated review.[1] Ludum dare just sort of happened to coincide, so I used it as a kind of excuse to spend the weekend programming (although I’d been eyeing LD31 in particular since doing 7dfps last month).
[1] And since recall is so much better for solidifying memory than reminders, trying to do everything from scratch was important (using the api docs though, of course — I’m only mortal ^-^). Plus I really wanted to get that old-school feel of just pushing bits to the screen and directly manipulating pixels.
So with this sort of challenge to myself I just kind of dove in without much research or forethought. Then sometime around sunday morning I realized I was basically following all the rules for the compo (“huh? there’s rules? what do you mean jam vs compo?”) and things were going pretty well so I decided to try and get something all tied together by the deadline. It was tough to quit though, I kept on finding myself adding features, right up to the deadline (leaving the actual balancing of the game pretty much undone). Game prototyping is always this balance between fixing things and adding things.
In terms of the initial goal, though, the whole weekend was a big success. I’m really starting to feel more comfortable with the windows api, so much that I’m starting to see all these potential things to make: neat tools and things to make life easier and just generally be more awesome. It’s sort of like I’m starting to see this other level of potential. Sort of a level above power-user.. like.. superpower-user. The OS has always been like the reality on which we build our little worlds. But I’ve always been afraid of getting close to it, thinking it too complicated and dangerous. But it’s all kind of easier than I imagined, and when you do get down and talk to it directly, you find everything you had taken for granted about the way things are, and the rules that govern the fabric of this reality: it’s all more malleable than you thought. Like, you actually have power over this world if you want it.
But I’m starting to digress, weren’t I going to talk about the game? Ok…
What I like about how the game turned out…
It works? It’s sort of a whole game?
It’s not too hideous? (Although people claim [I won’t confirm] I’m a little colorblind so picking subtle shades of white was kind of a challenge.. err, I mean, it would be a challenge in that hypothetical world… But, in my case, never fear, it was just the normal kind of challenge: that usual one of overcoming your own ineptitude).
I like the feel of knocking the blocks out of the snowmen, and that little head with a hat moving around is strangely satisfying to me. I like how using non-targeted attacks can get you nowhere, and even undo damage you’ve done. (The collision detection still feels a bit wonky, though.)
What I don’t like about it…
The difficulty ramp is kind of a mess, I tried to clean it up a bit at the end but didn’t really give it the time it needs.
It’s not actually all that interesting of a game. (I could go on about this one but I’ll leave it for now, maybe pick up the thread in a proper post-mortem at some point. [Oh wait, that’s sort of what this turned into.. well I’ll leave it for later, all the same.])
I don’t like how the snowmen all bunch up. I tried to mitigate this a little by making each snowman not target the player exactly but a random point near the player instead. This helped, but they still group up too much. (This had the unexpected added benefit of being slightly harder to hit than if they just came straight at you). I should look into some kind of basic flocking behavior.
Not in love with how the collision detection works on the snowballs/snowmen. I tried a basic bounding box collision, but it would always hit whatever part of the snowman was closer to you (hard to target one area). I tried using just the center of the snowball, but they would fly right over the snowmen’s hats. I ended up with something in the middle, though it still doesn’t feel perfect. (Basically what I think needs to happen is give each snowball instructions like this: “if you just nick the corner of something, see if there is a better target beyond what you hit.. if there is, brush off the corner and hit the better target. if not, register a hit on the corner.”)
I really wanted to animate things (the player throwing and the snowmen jumping) but it sort of turned ok without it. If I kept working on things, I’d probably add this, though.
What went well.
Using C (well, I guess technically C++) went well, I really enjoyed using it. Still do not get how strings are supposed to work, though.
Like mentioned earlier, the windows platforms stuff went well, mostly from having it all sort of so fresh in my mind from handmade hero.
It wasn’t really necessary for a jam game (I feel like good coding practices rarely survive the weekend, if they aren’t the first thing to go), but keeping a clear separation between platform and game code went well for me here. Things started to get a little messy by the end and the whole thing needs that traumatic post-ludum-dare cleanup and restructure, but overall the foundation didn’t crack too much.
Just drawing basic flat squares didn’t look so bad as I imagined, maybe as a kind of accidental byproduct of flat design being sort of in vogue (or is it so 2012?).[2] Also having more colors and pixels to work with gives us an edge over drawing squares in the days of yore. Also, a consequence of having basically just one way to draw something (“DrawASquareHurrHurr()”) and no actual, like, art or sprite images, means you get a sort of internally consistent aesthetic for free.
[2] (Or soo mid twentieth century?).
What could go better.
48 hour jams are not really the place not great for trying to learn completely new things. (They are great for trying new things, though.) Two-day jams (and less) seem to work best when you’re comfortable with your tools and workflow. I was reminded of this when trying to add an icon to my exe, which I had no idea how to do. I spent maybe 2 or 3 hours on this which, of the total time spent on the game, is easily over 10% of the weekend. A big chunk of time for having nothing to show for it! 😉 There will always be unexpected time-sinks and dead-ends, but some of these you can avoid if you’re careful (sometimes it doesn’t really matter, I mean: it’s just a weekend, what have you lost if it all crashes and burns?). Summary: experimentation and LD go well together, research and LD less so.
The game balancing / design / play experience itself needs some love. It’s easy to say ‘oh if only I wasn’t so focused on learning these new programming things, I could focus more on the game’ (and I think that’s true to some extent, I mean you only have so much time), but it’s also basically an excuse. I don’t think focusing on code and design are mutually exclusive, at least I want to believe they aren’t at this point in my life.
Since Unity is my usual weapon of choice, some quick comparison:
Unity vs C from scratch
The biggest difference that jumps out at me is actually the deployment. Unity just deploys so many places, it’s very nice for jam games. The web especially is nice, it makes it very easy to play your game.
In terms of actually making the game, though. I didn’t feel like I really missed having a full engine. (3D would be a different story, I’m sure.) Yes, I had to keep things simple so I could program everything, but I also wasn’t looking up random library functions all the time.
Overall, jury is still out. I’m basically still a dilettante at both.
Just made this wallpaper from my game engine !
Enjoy
You play as a wizard who has taken it upon himself to defeat a bunch of people wearing black hats whilst being shot at. You have many spells at your disposal, unlocked from kind-of-rare enemy drops. But your bread and butter will be the Fireball Spell:
But you also have the Black Hole spell, the Freezing Spell, the Clockblocker and six more. Simply murder the people/snowmen in black hats until you are defeated. Use the final spell to get a sense of victory.
Well, Voxey is not a game itself, it’s rather an “engine” for games based in cubes.
The idea is that the environment changes constantly, creating and destroying cubes while you play.
So you can explore a changing world that fits in one screen.
Explore my little voxey world here!
So, our first Ludum Dare is a wrap! And what fun it was. We did manage to produce a very rough prototype of our game called Glitch. It’s a game about a pixel that has become sentient after a tv short circuits.
see it here
Sadly, our team had very limited time this weekend. In total I think we only managed to put 12 hours of work into it. A lot of things feel unpolished and the game misses that sense of directive. But hey, for something none of us ever tried before, I think we did a reasonable job.
On the bright side: we are very excited about the premise of the game and game design in general. In the next couple of weeks, the game will be revamped into something enjoyable and thrilling. Moreover, this little speed game creation session has taught us so many things, from process management to art direction, that it was definitely worth our time and efforts.
We will be joining Ludem Dare next time and make sure no interruptions befall us!
Tags: compo, final, fun, game, glitch, great experience, jam, screenshot, unity, update
I just wanted to say I had fun these past 72 hours and I definitely want to give the jam another go next year.
Don’t think I’m going to submit my entry, though. Kinda made the mistake of starting with too big an idea for my first jam; I meant to start with a one-screen RTS that got downgraded into a one-screen mini-DotA thing where you had to cross from one side of the screen to the other with your caravan while capturing forts and outrunning A SNOWSTORM chasing after you from the side you started on. It sounds confusing now but that’s what happens when you have a lot of features you want to add but need to cut most of them down for sake of time. And the result looks playable (it has sounds and menu screen) but it doesn’t feel very fun at all.
Live and learn, I guess! I’ll make sure to keep my goals reasonable for the next jam. In the meantime, I think I’m going to use the stuff I learned and apply to the other projects I have. Also play some cool LD games. Congrats to everyone who submitted!
Snowman’s Revenge is finally finished! Throw snowballs to make vengeful snowmen explode. Page is up here.
I’m surprised we got as much in as we did. If we could do it over again, we’d probably get a basic version of the gameplay done first, as we really did spend too much time on the art, etc. It came out alright, though. Maybe it’s a bit hard, but what’s wrong with that? Anyway, feedback is totally welcome, we’d love to hear what people think.
WE FINISHED! Well, sort of. Missing a few sounds and such, but the game is basically ready to be played.
PARTICLES!
After long 72 hours of hard work, we’ve finally completed our LD31 project! You can check it out at the following link: BounceEmUp
Please play, rate & comment!
We’re looking forward to the next LD , hope you guys enjoyed it as much as we did.
Cheers!
P.S. Mike, please fix the website.
