Here’s a timelapse of my seventh Ludum Dare game named 3-Form.

Entry page

If embedded video doesn’t work here’s a link

Tags: compo timelapse, final timelapse, LD35, ld48, timelapse, unity

I’d like to know how to enhance the overall mood if there are any ideas

…you spend 30 minutes yelling “JUST ONE MORE VOTE!  JUST!  ONE!” at your monitor while repeatedly refreshing the main Ludum Dare page.

Getting to a measly 25 votes for Shift is becoming an obsession, even though 25 is, like, basically nothing in Ludum Dare terms.

Halp.

Hello everyone!

I finally managed to make an update for my entry, here’s list of changes:

• Applying cards now costs mana
• Added informational text to give player an idea of what’s going on
• Added one more transformation(hello, deer) and two more enemies to make the game a little bit more fun
• Added configuration file, that contains values for player, cards and enemies(now you can tweak the game yourself)

Overall I’m happy with what I managed to create during this jam, even though I(yet again) was unable to devote all of my time to the event. It was great experience and I’m looking forward to participating in the next one. I was a little bit busy lately and couldn’t vote much, but I’ll try my best to beat my previous record and rate over 210 games!

Click to play as a shapeshifting wizard

Hey guys, i’m brand new here, i’m not really a game creator but I’m a youtuber, I do lets plays of games mainly it has been pokemon since the release of pokemon super mystery dungeon, but I also do digimon, some older games for older consoles like wiz n liz, mega bomberman, i’m soon gonna do ristar and rolo to the rescue, so although I cant contribute in terms of creating games maybe I can contribute by playing them and if people want me to put it up on my youtube channel in a stream i’m more then happy too, I only have 15 subscribers unfortunately as I started in august but I have friends that i’m sure would be willing to watch a stream of someone’s creation to give feedback and such

Hi all,

I made a gameplay video of my game RobotJet for this ludum dare.

The video has different levels than the ludum dare submition and I also added two sound effects. However the game mechanic is same so if you haven’t played it yet, you can do so at http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=55647.

Also please leave a comment if you have some suggestion because I plan to finish this game and release it for iPads because recently i found out that love2d already supports iOS development.

POST MORTEM:

I think everything worked as I expected. I had this game idea for a week or so before the competition already in mind. I wanted to implement controlling player by modifying the enviroment instead of using the direct controls.

First idea was to move a ball from left to right side of the screen by creating hills and valleys using physics. I didn’t manage to draw the controls for this game on the paper so I went for a simpler solution using the grid. Somewhere in this point a simpler idea of using gravity and collecting something instead of moving from left to right emerged. This led to the robot collecting batteries with a puzzle-like levels using gravity controls and walls to navigate robot through the level. Only problem with puzzle-like game is that creating puzzles takes much time. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to prepare good set of levels but I wanted to try the idea.

Because i was not able to do actual programming until the second half of the second day of the jam due to logistics, I had a plenty of time to come up with a concrete idea and solve almost all the problems. So when I started to program I had a pretty good idea of the game mechanic and what I had to do.

Programming phase was pretty straightforward. I wanted to use Love2D because it is supereasy for prototyping even if I hadn’t much experience with it. I had some experience with lua programming from Codea app from iPad and my previous ludum dare entry. I also did a simple pong game one week before ludum dare as a training

After half day of programming I had the game ready and basic graphics in place. After few hours of sleep I had to go to work on monday and I could show my game to my coleagues(sorry boss :-)). They liked the idea but didn’t like the graphic and there were no levels. Actual player didn’t even look like a robot but more like a ghost back then

After work I rushed home to finish some graphics – draw the robot and create tutorial levels. Luckily I remembered the wonderful Tiled map editor which helped a lot with level creation and it exports directly to a Lua so I saved some time by not implementing any tools.

Anyway I knew I couldn’t make good enough levels because I was still exploring what robot can do. I spent a lot of time putting obstacles in front of the robot and watching its behavior because sometimes I was suprised what can be done using such simple game mechanic (it still surprises me because today i found a simpler solution to one of new levels presented in the gameplay video).

When the time was dangerously passing by, I finished fooling around with the robot and went back to doing actual work. I polished graphic – as I am not any sort of good painter I did my best using piskel app as pixel graphic editor for robot and tiles. Also at this point I found out that I can do a tutorial by drawing directly in the level and showing the gameplay features one by one. I don’t know if this is good or understandable, please let me know in the comments if you find tutorial good!

I showed the game to my brother and he created three of the campaign levels. I had to polish them a little bit afterwards because one of the was not passable and other were easy to get stuck. I wanted that robot won’t get stuck without the possibility to unstuck (Robot cannot react to the modifications to the field has is alread standing at – for example if in the hole where he cannot go left nor right he won’t shapeshift to go up if shapeshift controller placed over the robot).

I though that player should not die/stuck during the game to not feel bad about his skill and won’t get frustrated from starting over so every situation must be resolvable.

Afterwards the time was almost up so I packaged the game and submitted.

Next day I fixed some bug that prevent last level from being finished – spawn point. This was clearly caused because I haven’t had enough time to replay every level after every change.

For the future I plan to create a proper set of levels to illustrate all things that can be done programming the robot using just gravity and walls. All levels I am creating now are resolvable by putting the controls in place before the level starts so instead of rushing during level player can solve the puzzle by thinking before the level starts and preparing the setup for the robot beforehand.

This ludum was enjoyable as always but after this one I feel a little bit special because I really like the resulting game (even bad graphics and no sound and almost no levels 😀 ) mainly because of possibilities it presents.

Regards everybody and see you in the next ludum dare,

Jan

Tags: 2D, 35, gameplay, LD35, love2d, lua, Ludumdare, puzzle, robotjet, video

Well I’ve officially given 3 times as many ratings as I’ve received, and I’m exhausted now after playing 30-40 today alone. Someone go play my game and make the ratio a little better! Also check out this post for more information about the game! Thanks everyone!

A bit late, but finally writing my post-mortem! If you want to check it out, here’s the link!

It’s kinda bad to suck in your own game

The Beginning

So, this is my 4th Ludum Dare, so it’s been a year since I started taking the challenge! Actually it was also when I started to really game development! Time sure flies, and so much improvement! I’m really happy about how far I’ve come, but also excited about how much more there is to learn!

Anyway, since it was like 1 year anniversary I wanted to do something special, but work and life has been really crazy, I can barely work on my side project, so I wasn’t able to prepare anything really, except that I tried out Inkscape a bit. Also I had a really busy weekend coming, so I knew I wouldn’t have much time to dedicate to LD either. That was a bit sad, but whatever, I was still going to do it!

The Concept

So when the theme was announced I kinda panicked. I had no idea what to do, and I was worried about the time it would take to make all assets (my slowest skill). So I just figured that I would have to make something really simple so that assets wouldn’t take much time, and so (as most people) I decided to use just geometric shapes. And so my first reference was Geometry Wars (it’s even my recommended BGM). In the end it was mostly the aesthetics.

And then I thought about doing a stealth game, in which the main mechanics would be if you were the same shape of an enemy, it would ignore you. But then I thought it would be too difficult, but I would keep the main mechanic. And so it was time to work! (Actually 20 hours after the start)

The Good

– Graphics

So graphics were a big deal, I wanted to keep it simple so I wouldn’t waste too much time on it, but I really wanted the neon style and that the animation was smooth, since the theme was shapeshifting. And alas, my newly acquired Inkscape skills came to be handy! First it was to make geometric shapes in a fast way, then the neon I would apply a filter. I was only worried about the animation, but then it came to me the interpolation function!

Shapeshifting frames. Inkscape did most of the job for me!

And so I did the best square, triangle, star and circle I could make (so hard!) tweaked the filters a bit, and BAM! Interpolation made all the frames for me! It came out really nice, I think! Now the rest  I could do programmatically, like rotation and light tricks (every shape has its own point light that moves according to its velocity)

– Mechanic

So one of my events was a birthday party, and there I was able to talk a bit about my idea for the game, and it helped me a lot! So I came up with the idea of having to reach a goal by collecting keys and avoiding other shapes that were different from you. The ones same as you would be repelled, and so I used a basic electrical force formula to apply force in all shapes in the arena, and there you go, simple as that! And it turned out quite fun! It was really simple, but there were a lot of possibilities to how go through the level, even without spawning the shapes randomly!

Mechanic test. Actually a quite hard scenario.

The Bad

– BGM

So I put a lot of effort to make the assets, but I couldn’t just get the right tune for the BGM. Like Geometry wars, I wanted to have a electronic feel to it, but I don’t actually listen to electronic music, and I’m not really a composer, so after some hours trying to make the music I just gave up (and it was the right decision, I submitted the game like 1 minute before the deadline). Guess I have to practice more my composition skills!

– Rush

Oh the lack of time! All LD have this pressure feeling, but this time it was a big thing. I couldn’t stop coding, even if it was to just rethink a better way to do something. All my assets and code organization is really nasty xp If anyone is interested in having a look at my source code I apologize in advance ^^; Management stuff like Trello and Toggl were left out too, which is kinda sad, I couldn’t keep track of my performance… But oh well, it was for the greater good.

The Future

And thus, it has ended! Or has it? I think this game, although very simple and made in a rush, had the best feedback of all my entries! It’s a shame that I couldn’t work out a post-compo version, I’ve been busy with work and playing all the games (100% coolness!). But still I want to make it! Maybe I can get it before the judging ends? Or maybe I will continue it’s development even after? I’m thinking about changing some things too, even tweak the mechanics, who knows what will happen in the future?

Anyways, thank you for reading this far! I really had fun this LD and I hope you had too! If you are interested in the game you can play it here (again)! I also have a twitter and an itch.io account! There isn’t much yet, but I’ll tidy up things pretty soon! Any news about the game I shall post about it too! I hope to see you around 😉

She is funny to watch as she energetically describes everything as she experiences them.  It is kind of gold for game developers.

One of my favorites of hers:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq7gAVMGGJQ

oh, and here’s my game:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qghFHbf88KI

If you haven’t yet, please check out my game, Swine Fortress: Bacons On Strike!

Here are some of my favorite entries for this compo. I think they embody what Ludum Dare is all about, and I tip my hat to these fine folk!

Sluggy’s Tiny Adventure

A Slimy Fellow

Rectangle run

Helium-4

Stellar Pendulum

Elixir

One Letter Werewolf

Doppleganger

Tags: favorites, having a good time

Here!

Have you already done the great leap ?
If yes, Congratulations!
For the others, try to reach hell in order to become a daemon. Otherwise, you will decay in the bowels of Cerberus!
The evil won’t help you with anything like checkpoints! Only your patience and will can make you succeed.

TheGreatLeap

Hey devs!

Today is my birthday!!

What better gift than play and rate my game??!

Maybe a comment with ur feedback too?

Thanks!!

-> PLAY IT HERE <-

So LD is coming to a close rather soon, so I figured a post was ado. I’d like to thank everyone who has checked out my game, and I’d also like to urge anyone who feels like it and hasn’t done so yet, to give it a play and perhaps drop me a vote. Regardless, I also wanna rate some more entries as well, before the certain closes, so if you have a cool entry (yours or someone else’s) that you’d want me to take a look at, please drop it in the comments! I will try to give them all ratings and write you some words of feedback as well~

>PLAY/RATE MINE HERE<

Hey,

Suggest your game in a chat. And I’ll do my best at playing and rating your game!

Here is a link

If you are me, you have noticed that some games for this competition have something in common: they use the rock-paper-scissors device as a central element. If you think you have played all the rock-paper-scissors games there are, know this: you are wrong. You have yet to play MORTAL RO SHAM BO. It is different because instead of being those other games, it is a game where you fight Mortal Kombat style to determine who gets pizza. If you want to play a game that is that thing I just said, then you want to play MORTAL RO SHAM BO, a game that promises to curdle your cheese or your money back.

Play it here!

So I thought I would share my top picks for the categories this LD.

Not putting fun on this list because all of them deserve the award.

Humor – Vogue Ninja

Humor was a hard choice but I am giving it to Vogue Ninja for its flailing character animations and how well the overall aesthetic works to get you to laugh. I also want to give a shout out to Vote For Duck, it was a short but funny game.

Audio – Nyamo’s Adventure

Nyamo’s Adventure from the first frame had me with its very well done soundtrack and great visuals you can download the soundtrack from the LD entry page as well.

Graphics – Devil’s Hand

Devil’s Hand was a game I played early on this LD and was one of the first that blew me away, with very nice graphics and fluid animations and gameplay this Doom inspired game has earned its place on this list.

Theme – Operation R.E.P.T.I.L.E.

Operation Reptile is a fun game with two parts to it, in the first part of the game you are trying to find small differences or glitches in the disguises of the lizard people. If you fail in your mission you must kill the lizards before they kill all of the civilians. Great ideas in this one but I also want to shout out The Night Shift for putting a clever spin on the theme.

Innovation – Windowframe

Windowframe is a puzzle platformer that has clever mechanics and a large number of puzzles Windowframe is a great experience and I would love to see this expanded into a full game. Also just for making the spore creature creator in 72 hours Biota gets a great recommendation.

Overall – Party At the Knightclub

Party at the Knightclub is a funny puzzle game that was too short but well done all the way though I enjoyed every moment of this game and want to play a full version soon!

My Game – Slime Quest

Slime Quest is my game. Please play.

Thank you all for your comments and feedback.

I will continue the game after the ” Ludum Dare ”

   Link Itch.io                                                              Play / vote

Credits:

-Eduardo Garcia / Design and Developer.

-Pablo Erices / Art.

-Paulo Gallegos / Music.

Hey! We’ve made a post jam version of our game. We improved controls and fixed some issues thanks to your comments. Do not hesitate to have a look at it here !

Have fun!