Hey guys, check out my first entry for Ludum Dare. You play as a little guy who’s trying to protect his planet. Enjoy and have fun!

The link includes now a newer version of the game, but also the 72h version.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/space-raiders

Smaex

DEFEND YOUR TINY WORLD! is my game for #LD38

The astronaut wants the new planet he found so, time to protect it!

TEST IT HERE: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/defend-your-tiny-worldpreview

Check & follow my twitter @jowent for updates of this project of mine: https://twitter.com/_jowent

This is my 2nd Ludum Dare. Hope you like it :)

SUPER METROARIO

a Mashup between Metroid and Mario

ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/super-metroario

OST

ld38-super-metroario-ost-track-2

ld38-super-metroario-ost-track-4

Would love to hear some feedback on our game, "Super Natural Defense" What can we do to improve, what do we need to fix? What would you like to see in a future release?!?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/super-natural-defense

Hi everybody, I'd like to play & rate some arcade/action games

Better if its in browser ! Comment with your entry :)

ps : you know how to find our game if you want to play/rate it

I'm working on rating some games, and I bet you are too. I know everyone is doing this but I don't care, go play my game at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/step-squish

Shameless promotion!!

Play and rate Mediator here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/mediator

I always have a lot of story-driven adventure-game type ideas for every jam. Usually, I wisely choose to ignore them and try something with much less art & writing required. This time, for some reason, I was not wise... but I didn't like any of the simpler ideas I had come up with for the theme, and somehow I convinced myself that I could pull this off in a very minimal fashion quickly, and expand on it later. I was wrong, and this is the first LD I've participated in that I did not complete to my satisfaction.

Still, I am happy with certain aspects of my game, and I learned some stuff.

Art

A few weeks before the jam I came across a suggestion on how to best use colours to create paintings with a unified feel. The suggestion was basically to choose one colour to be highly saturated, and form a backdrop and context, and have every other colour be more desaturated the further it was away from that colour on the colour wheel.

I didn't quite take that suggestion because I thought it might be too overpowering in a videogame to have the backdrop be highly saturated. But I did use the suggested approach to designing the palette, with a single colour-ramp (minty green) being massively more saturated than the others. I intended to use this for characters and interactable objects. I limited myself to 7 colour-ramps overall, and I think it works well to create a separation between the action and the background.

I think this might have been my first time doing a walking animation. I felt it was passable, but a little bit stiff. I'm not really sure how to improve it at this resolution, but I will be trying.

Music

I hadn't really intended to do anything special with the sound and music, but it was probably the area where I ended up learning the most.

I wanted something gloomy and tense for the music, and a 12-bar blues in a minor key seemed to work quite nicely without having to try a bunch of different chord progressions. After a few attempts at this that were either too dark or too upbeat and intrusive I hit on the version that made it into the game. It features low & high drones throughout, and a sparse melody of some of the "pad" instruments in Bosca Ceoil.

All of the instruments are heavily filtered, similar to the sweep pad pictured above. The "atmosphere" instrument I brought down the y axis of the filter as well. I don't really know what this means, technically, but I've found that it distorts the notes and makes them unpredictable. This instrument overlays the melody bars and produces a discordant and, I hope, disquieting effect.

Finally, I underlaid the whole song with two tracks of white noise - one solid and one broken - intended to be reminiscent of radio static. I don't think it quite achieves that, but I like the effect anyway.

Unfortunately I failed to export the tune as a perfect loop, and there is a significant click when it restarts in the game. I always struggle with this a bit with Bosca Ceoil because it doesn't include the reverb from the end of the song at the start of it. I generally fix this in Audacity and I thought I had the process down, but clearly something went wrong this time.

Sound

One big change from the usual for me was that I didn't do any of the sound effects in BFXR, and instead used Bosca Ceoil for them as well as the music. I just didn't really feel that BFXR's bleeps and bloops would be right for the type of game I was making this time.

It was tough to find the instruments I needed to create the effects that I wanted, but it was just a matter of trying things out and tweaking them until they sounded right. The footsteps, for example, were done with a really low "bagpipe" and a slightly higher "glockenspiel". I think they sound convincingly enough like footsteps on a wooden floor - not quite right for a spaceship maybe! I'm sure there are other music production tools that would do a better job, but I never seem to make much headway with anything else.

Out of Time

I realised quite early on Sunday that the game I'd chosen to make was not realistic for the jam. At that point I was still working on the basics of displaying text and dialogue choices, and although I had the music done and a main character designed, there was still the entire story to write with dialogues for at least two or three significant characters, and art for maybe six locations. That wasn't going to happen, but I decided to bring the introductory scene on the ship to as high a standard as I could and throw it upon #LDJAM's mercy.

For the next Ludum Dare I am going to make sure I have a framework in place for putting story/dialogue driven adventure games together quickly. They're not the only types of ideas I have, but they are a significant portion of them, and they are some of my favourites. I feel confident that if I was able to spend the whole weekend working on the art and story for something like this, I would be able to put together a complete experience.

Bring on #LDJAM 39!

Game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/little-sprout-garden

Finally got to put up a cover picture for the game! There's a web browser version on top of windows / mac downloads. for those who don't want to download heaps of games.

And hopefully if you do read this @lutzkellen and I do intend on taking the game further! we've been listening to suggestions and comments and funnily enough they are things we were going to do but didn't have enough time~

We have different obligations at the moment like work and school but we will start on a post-jam version soon enough, right off the bat we'd like to polish what we have got and then start making more of a progression system and helping the little characters build different things, and unlock more stuff~

It may be down the line but I had started on some assets for new content in a post-jam version and will share that with yous! it will be available when we make progress with the post-jam

Have a good week, everyone.

This is the second attempt I did for this contest, the first fell through and became too complicated for the time I had. In the end, this is about 6 hours worth of work so I'm pretty happy with what I came up with in that amount of time. I'm still working on this to polish it up so expect and update in the next week or so.

View Entry

WANTED: Brave adventurer seeking fame and gold. Willing to brave cave full of spikes and lava to achieve this goal. Click link below to apply!

Play and Rate it here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/for-the-love-of-money

Many windows users have been having problems with my game,I have hopefully patched these issues. BE SURE TO USE THE 64 BIT BUILD. If it still doesn't work use compability mode for windows 7. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/ids-journey

The Aliens

I've been thinking about what to say in this post mortem for a while now, I have never done one before, but it seems appropriate

My game is called TheAliens, it was made in Java.

What went well:

• I think my favorite thing in the game is the fire effect, for the projectile rockets, the thruster on your rocket, and the explosions, I really enjoyed programming the fire, and effects.
• I was proud of the upgrade system, as I have never done that before. It was actually a mistake, as there was supposed to be a design and a testing phase, in the design phase you would design your ship. In the testing phase, it would be like a physics simulation, and you would see how high you could get, but I spent the whole first day making the design dialogue (I was working slowly, as I was not sure I wanted to stick with my game idea). So since I didn't really have a game, I quickly added aliens, and guns, and then made the design phase into an upgrade system :).
• I was happy with the audio and the music, since the music in that game is the first song I have ever made digitally, I thought it was acceptable.

What went badly:

• So since, as I mentioned, I was demotivated on the first day, and quickly hacked what I had into a slightly different game than I had intended, this caused a few issues:
  • The screen space is too small, this is because the game was supposed to be a physics simulation, so the size of the space ship on the screen didn't matter too much. This problem was accentuated, as when aliens come on the screen, you have very little time to react, I was a little too tight on time to make the space ship even smaller, as I was adding the aliens with only about 5 hours to go, so I didn't have much time to refine.
  • The game is too hard at the start, but quickly get's too easy. So upgrade systems are like this, which is why there are not many in the ludum dare, because at the start your ship is bad, so it's hard, at the end your ship is good, so it's easy, so it flips the difficulty curve head over heels. The obvious solution is to raise the difficulty incrementally, to contradict the upgrades, and further, to make sure it keeps getting harder for the user. However, you cannot increment the difficulty, when the user upgrades, because the user can just win on his first go, before the difficulty is incremented, because he hasn't upgraded anything. This is why I introduced the (slightly broken) level system, all it is is a number, that increments every 4000(arbitrary units), and makes the aliens slightly harder, this design structure is pretty good, and it is what I ran with, but it takes a lot of tweaking, and that is why the final game is too easy at the end, and too hard at the beginning.

Overall - I am actually pretty happy with this game. Next time I will probably do it with C++ again, since this time around, I felt like a spent the whole Ludum Dare writing getters and setters :unamused: when I do it in C++, I hope to make a 3D game, I also hope to make some sort of ~~library~~ utility to speed up the development time, so that I can make a more detailed game.

Anyway here is a screenshot (Design Phase):

Here is another screenshot (Play Phase):

Please drop a rating, and comment in on the Ludum Dare page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-aliens

Thanks for being the best community,

Ned

Use this 'thread' here to request features for A Relatively Small World.
If you haven't played it yet, click here.

Those of you with access to VR should try out Gravity Architect! Its my first LDJam entry as well as the first game made using the SculptrVR Engine!

You can try it out and vote for it here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/gravity-architect

Also check out the technical blog post about Gravity Architect's gravity computation here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/gravity-architect/the-gravity-field-computation-in-gravity-architect

I've been loving all of your games so far, and I look forward to playing as many as I can in the coming weeks. In the meantime, check out my entry, rovR! It's a casual, space-themed puzzler that I think you'll dig ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B93oM7hN7w0

If you actually stuck around and watched the trailer: kudos! Anyway, I'm going to get back to playing your wonderful creations. If you want to link me your game, please do. I'd love to play it.

Want to know how small? check Until Tomorrow to find out!

NOT A SELF-PROMOTION

I just wanted to say that this Ludum Dare was kind of weird to me. Most of these games are good, but not anything amazing. They all also seem to be more arcade-y than usual, probably because of the theme. This theme and the last theme along with a few ones farther back have just been about confining the game to a small area, and it really isn't all that great. I thought themes were there to guide you, not restrict you that much. The games should feel a bit more free, not all contained in a small world or one room. I just hope the next is something like Ludum Dare 32, which was an unconventional weapon.

Anyways, I just wanted to get that off my chest. Thanks if you actually read this.

Come to the party and vote for VIXA! If you do not pull after the first drop, I return the money ;D

Entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/vixa

Stack is a game about stealing your neighbor's furniture so you can build a tower!

Play in web browser or on Windows!

Submission link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/stack

Check out my game Pale Blue Dot and enjoy the experience!

I uploaded an updated version with a few more hours of work put into it.

Of course the old version is the one you should rate, but in case someone wants to try out a more polished version of my game feel free to do so :upside_down:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/pale-blue-dot-1

Are you looking for a relaxing, yet challenging game? Then take a wander through Small World

Getting down to business.

It was about 4 o' clock on Friday when I decided to go for it and do the Ludum Dare. The themes wouldn't be announced for a few hours. I went out and found the theme voting, after voting for my favorites, I decided to start thinking about what games I would make for each theme. I came up with a couple of ideas for each theme. They are listed here if you want to take a look. Ideas

I had some ideas and all I had to do was wait for the theme to be announced. I went out to dinner with my family. After dinner, and after getting the kids put to bed, I sat down and got down to work.

I knew I wanted to make a 3D game, so I started out with the bug idea. The idea was that you would a small bug on a dog/ or other animal and you'd be fighting other bugs. I pictured a small map with large tree like fur, and that as a bug you'd be able to jump really high. So I spent the first few hours that night headed in that direction, but things kept getting in my way. I was playing with the terrain object in Unity3d and that was giving me some trouble. Also I couldn't figure out how to get my player to launch a rigidbody object like a projectile. The projectile was a long pencil like object. I was having issues with rotation and direction and trajectory. I spent way more time on this then I should have. I went to bed after about 3 hours of work.

I tossed and turned in bed thinking about the game, and the theme, and then the snow globe idea hit me.
I'd create a small world inside a snow globe, and the snow man is the perfect protagonist in a snow globe environment. I had a fresh new idea upon awaking and was ready to take my jam in a new direction.

To be continued ..

Checkout my game My Game

Backyard Warriors

Backyard Warriors is a game about the kids fighting to take control over their neighborhood. As a player, you play as one of the children. Your mission is to defeat all the enemies.

How did we start?

Our first idea was to make a game where you play as a survivor on a round planet where you must collect some resources to create or repair your space rocket. After a while, we decided to make something else, because there were so many games with sphere planets. We figured that a small world isn't necessary about planets. It could be also an ant world, room or whatever what is small or closed area. Next, we decided to do a gladiator arena which is the small world for gladiators. I (@panmadzior), as a programmer, started working on a player controller and @moono, as a graphic designer, started prototyping some arts. Then we get the final idea - let's add young boy memories to the gladiator game concept. In our opinion, it fits the theme very well - everybody in their childhood had a unique, individual small world.

Early player controller

For the character, I decided to make a 2D sprite facing the camera. For movement, we chose a classic WSAD steering with mouse aiming. With some camera adjustments, it felt quite nice.

Next, I started working on some simple AI system. It was my first time with that kind of bots. Below you can see some dumb NPCs following each other. It was a good start point.

Animations

After core controller modules and first arts were done I started developing some animations. The game is made using Unity, so for 2D animations, I chose Anima2D asset. I've never used it before, but - whatever - I gave it a try. It was easy to start with. I learned to use basic modules quickly and I made a simple character skeleton.

I made two death, three attack, running and idle animations. I was quite happy with them.

With help of the Unity Animator component, I managed to do a running animation.

Unfortunately, Anima2D animations don't really work in 3D space. After rotating character to face the camera animations were not working. A x-rotation needs to be exactly 0f. After a while, I found an idea to solve this problem. Do we really need to rotate the characters? Why don't we rotate the whole world! Yeah... Now, inside the Unity editor, it looks like this. Anyway, it works!

Weapons and attacking

We wanted to do three weapons - sword, pick and slingshot. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to do the last one. Melee weapons basically work the same way. When the player or a bot start attack action, an animation starts and after some time system checks collision - if weapon collider hit some target it gets damage. Because there is more than one weapon, I decided to do a system for dropping and pick-upping them.

AI improvements and first gameplay

For AI, I made some mind map first. The main goal was to make any kind of playable enemies. I ended up doing this:

I added some more small mechanics like dodging incoming attacks. For this, I made some simple statistics: care, greed, fury and skill. Those stats are randomly generated at the start of the battle. And they work! You can see that some NPCs get points in every round and some not.

Also, I added simple spawning system to test out my creation. Here is how it looked:

Result

At the end of the third day, I finished all systems. For comparison, how it looks now:

Summary

If you want to play our game you can do it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/backyard-warriors

We'll appreciate any feedback, so leave comment how do you like our creation :)

If you are interested in Backyard Warriors even more, you can follow me https://twitter.com/panmadzior. Maybe in the future, we will start developing a full game out of this prototype, so you'll get informed about this!

Hibernaculum

Play here

Hibernaculum is a puzzle game me and @redpanda made, in which you collect all 3 puzzle pieces in each level and solve a riddle, the player can move only left or right and is stuck inside a snow globe BUT you can also control the rotation of the globe itself.

What did i do?

• All the art using Blender 2.78c
• All the music using FL Studio 12
• The second level
• A bit of the programming(Basically just the inventory system and pause menu) everything else was programmed by my good friend @redpanda)

What went wrong:

• I'm not really experienced with animations, so when i tried to make the skipping animation for the girl i had a hard time and ended up just making a normal running animation.
• I made too many assets, and we ended up not using a lot of them, i should have spent that time making levels.
• I forgot to check the "Loop" option on the audio sources :sweat: .
• We had a lot of issues with GIT trying to merge .meta files. and missing textures. We'll use a different version control software next time.

What went right:

• We did a pretty intensive brainstorming session, so we were really happy with the idea we came up.
• It was the first time i worked in a team, so i was able to focus on the art and music side while he made all the programming. We also had pretty good communication and working with another person made the jam ten times more fun.
• Apart from some character controller issues we didn't have any major problems during development, everything went smooth.

I loved it, and i hope to make some more levels, polish the game and release a full version!

To look at more art and stuff made by me, check my Twitter

A group of 4 indie developers in Orange County, CA got together to build "MicroCHIP," a game where you control CHIP, an advanced antivirus from the future!

We are considering putting together a post-jam release with better controls, effects, more levels and other improvements as well.

Please try it out and let us know what you think. I just started playing and rating, so I'll check yours out too!

Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/rashlander

RASHLANDER sort of spewed out of me LD weekend. It is a Downwell Mario Galaxy Lunar Lander hybrid that was made with Arcade First principles, which means that it must work in an arcade cabinet. These limits fueled the creative process, making decisions easy in a way that isn't typical for me.

The result is a really outrageously hard lander that is fresh and compelling. It's almost a joke how hard this thing is--but the design point is still made, I think. I'd like to talk about some things that went right, as well as some things that did not.

The Good.

-The visuals came together fast. I embraced a 320x240 resolution, which sounds horrible at first but goes all the way around problems pixelated games usually run into post 2000 ("fake" looking, pixels not lining up, varying pixel sizes, etc.) Sticking to rigid resolution requirements made pixel art a product of math, not hours of poking with a pencil tool. It's 2017 so I can play with shaders that juice up the pixel art, but at 320x240 they still agree with the overall look. I am extra happy with the HSL effect as screenshake rather than an actual shake.

-The movement is the most compelling part about this game. This means that I can have a simple game (get to the goal) which is still a challenge for players. Game Jam time requirements are a monster without a dead simple mechanic, so this was a real life saver for me. After post competition work it became clear that the perceived difficulty goes WAY down when I properly introduce players to the mechanics.

-I love space. SPACE

The Less Good.

-Holy Space Rocks is this game hard. After the LD dust settled I tried to beat it, and found I was unable to. On the one hand I am going for Downwell/Spelunky level difficulty here. So in that way it's not a flaw. However, Downwell and Spelunky have SO MANY reasons for the player to stick around (upgrades, tunnel digger, earned extras, etc.) and this little game jam baby just doesn't have that going for it. Again, post competition I am discovering the perceived difficulty goes down when you have something to work toward.

-Proc Gen is mean sometimes. This version is full of moments where you start a level and die immediately. I'm working on it.

-Not enough space. :(

TLDR

This was an amazing weekend and I made a cool thing that people seem to like. I learned about new ways to limit myself and how it puts genuine rocket fuel in the development process. I learned about new ways to juice up a game when I don't have HD pixels to do all the heavy lifting. I also learned that people are generous and up for a challenge when you state up front "THIS GAME IS HARD."

What a good time. Good luck and happy landing,

Ryan Davis https://twitter.com/ryguygames

If you're interested, play my game here (it's not the same art style).

Heya! Read up on some of the tricks I used to create Techium Eclipse, also don't forget to vote!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/techium-eclipse

Blog post; http://kenney.nl/blog/making-of-techium-eclipse

Hey games seem to be sorted! Does anyone know how one gets 'coolness' points??! Just reviewing? Or is there more to it than that?

Some people are asking if / what is procedurally generated : Mostly everything ;)

The 2d planets are procedurally generated, it use about 100+ different planet textures, all monochrome, then use a material to add color. The minerals are also selected randomly and the particles systems are blinking with the corresponding mineral color (iron = red, gold = yellow, …)

Just to give an idea of some of the attributes of a planet : ``` new PlanetObject(planetName, pos2d, pos3d,width, height,mass,

planetTypeEnum,auraTransparency,planetColor,spriteIndex,timeRT,

mineralA,mineralB,oddsPlanetObject, playerStartingPosition,

playerShipStartingPosition,gravityFPS,sunSize); ```

Then I use the 2d features of a planet to generate the 3d world

Play it and vote right here :

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-small-world-in-a-big-universe

Hey - doing some judging on LD 38 games. If you interested in a review drop me a line!

Where?

https://www.twitch.tv/morbidcamel101

Games Reviewed So Far

https://www.tribalmind.co/Journey/ludum-dare-38-judging/5253

I'd love to share some techniques, tips, and tricks I used to make Fast & Faeries (general techniques and plenty of Unity-specific items), a furious and frantic racing game between miniature forest faeries.

Play now if you have not seen it yet: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-fast-and-the-faeries

How it's made (Unity):

Proc-Gen Ground: The ground is procedurally generated in 100x100 unit meshes using Perlin noise to shift each vertex randomly but consistently so that other proc gen ground meshes can line up with it. Several levels of Perlin noise of different frequency are added together to create larger features (smooth hills) and smaller features (bumps). In Unity, use the Mathf.PerlinNoise function to generate Perlin noise. This ground mesh is also used in a mesh collider. The ground is generated on the fly, up to 300 units further ahead than the leading player and up to 200 units to the side of each player, and is recycled 300 units after the last player. Dandelions and trees are then randomly placed onto each ground mesh.

What a naked ground tile looks like in the editor in game after some proc gen, looking only at the ground layer:

Race Trail: The yellow center trail is generated on top of the ground by using raycasting to see the height of the stones. The trail uses a few sine/cosine waves as well as some Perlin noise to see what bends there should be. Trail boundary mushrooms are added to the left and right sides of the trail the same way. These markers are pooled to that they get reused. The side markers actually contain box colliders that reach towards the previous marker so that the players cannot go past them. When the center markers are generated, they check around themselves for trees, and push away any trees in their radius so that the center trail is somewhat clear. (physics layers and Physics.CheckSphere() in Unity)

*Curly Vines/Trees: * There is only one model for the trees/vines, but it looks different depending on how you rotate and scale them. Spiral/vine-link shapes blend together to look quite organic. A pool of trees/vines is generated. Then the trees are populated along the sides of the trail as a hedge wall using that pool. Using a Unity 5.6 instanced shader greatly speeds the performance of these trees, drastically reducing the draw calls.

Particle Trees: At the start and end of the race are thick areas of trees/vines - these are generated using a particle system which simply displays meshes rather than billboards, with varying scale and 3D rotation.

Dandelions: I experimented with a few ways of making the dandelions, but ended up making each dandelion a particle system of dandelion seeds that rests on a dandelion stem mesh. I had to custom position the dandelion seed particles using the Fibonacci Sphere layout to make them evenly distributed. Adding a trigger collider to the head of the dandelion puff allows a script to give the particles a velocity when hit, and gives them each a random color.

Fog: Linear Fog at a far range of 300 units greatly helps hide the fact that the camera can only see 300 units ahead, and helps to blend the far trees into the background.

Far blurred foliage: There is a particle system of glow particles that follows the position of the camera. The particle system emits these blurred colored glow particles on the shell of a sphere right before the 300 distance of the camera. This gives the effect of out-of-focus foliage that is moving around.

(ran out of space, post is continued in comments)

i hope everyone like my game... it was a ride in my first ludum dare https://itch.io/embed-upload/454718?color=333333

Just putting my game out there again. Enjoy the game, it was designed on Windows, yet it should still work on Mac and Linux. I apologise that it is a download game, yet i hope all whom play the game enjoy it and if you want too please add a rating.

• **https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/just-another-pocket-universe

It seems that WebGL games are the way to go this year. I find they get more interaction are are easier to interact with.

Here's my first Ludum Dare entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/polyville

So, after cleaning up all the scattered bits of LD games from all over my hard drive tonight, I figured I should probably see if I can get a browser-based version of my own game working. Since it only took a couple tweaks and seems to work okay with Chrome and Firefox, I got it posted and am happy to share it with everyone. I've added the link to my LD game page at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/antagonistic-hamburger-hill

Just a simple question, I get told a lot that my games need music. Do you fellow peeps have any recommendations for software that I can make music with in a short time suitable for Ludum Dare? Just wondering. Bloo blah blah blee

Hey guys, Matt here. I've put together a full playthrough of Blocknauts from start to finish. Also check out the brand-spanking new end game cinematic at 13:25!

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

If it looks fun, consider giving it a whirl, I'd love to hear your feedback! I'm working on an AfterLD version of the game (for fun, not for judging) that offers improved controls, the ending cinematic, and more, all based on what I've heard so far.

Just wanted to make a quick plug for our team's game: Higher Ground

It's a turn-based lite strategy game where you help a group of people progress up to the snowy high ground of a small island by gathering resources and building things before the island floods. Hope you enjoy it!

In our game "The Epic of Gilbert", we attempted to convey existential dread in the most fun and lighthearted way possible with only 3 days to do it. You play as Gilbert, a recently captured fish who dreams of nothing more than to see the open ocean once more. If you are interested in playing the game, it is (of course!) very short and will hopefully leave you with a smile on your face.

Play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-epic-of-gilbert-1

Thanks for reading!

First time I've given someone a 5 for humor. I haven't even started the game yet, I'm just cracking up at the opening cutscene.

"Antimus? More like Can't-imus!"

Life of an Ant

I put together a web build as I was getting a lot of people asking for one, and they seem to be very popular in general this year. So it's up! Actually kind of surprised the terrain generation is using a low-enough amount of ram to make it feasible. If you run into any problems with the web build please let me know!

Play it here!

Rate it here!

-Sam

There's a mystery in Horizon City... Milly Pfeiffer is dead :(!

1fc204ec6148ad23f0612f7a7b2bd2f3.jpg

Solve the mystery and rate my game ;)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-couple-of-questions-volume-ii-small-business-small-world

After that shameless promoting, I think that you will have fun trying my first compo :) Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/carefulzilla

My game is a little flaky when it comes to windows support. It will run on some machines but not others. Windows 10 is one of the few configurations which supports my game. Be sure to download the 32 bit version and run it in compatibility mode set to windows 7. Linux support is flawless. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/ids-journey

We've have almost 300 views for our game, uP-8: Microprocessor! Available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and on the Web.

I'll play all games posted in the comments that run on linux and require no mouse control (since I'm on a laptop)! Thanks!

I'd like to take a moment to critique the critiques.

I think we all love to see new comments appear on our game pages and see what others thought of our game. We see the difficulty they had, the excitement or joy, and also what they think could of gone better.

There are thousands of games to play, but rushing through your comment for the sake of playing the numbers game is just rude. I see some comments that offer very simple critique and then rush off to the next to give almost copy and paste replies. I've seen some that try to use that space to advertise their own game as well.

Let's be polite to our fellow participants. Don't shill your game on their page. Don't rush from game to game without really experiencing the creation they made. We are all developers, think how you feel when you see someone do that.

You can now rate games on the ldjam.com page! Check out my 11th LD: Asymmetry! If you’re into hardcore shooters then this is for you! c:

Check out my 11th LD: Asymmetry! If you're into hardcore shooters, this is for you! c:

Say something

3RD ROUND

As long as it is on web or windows under 100 mb

Check out my game also:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/statera

We recently finished the WebGL version of the game and we'd love it for people to check it out and leave some feedback!

• WebGL: https://hyperfocusgames.itch.io/rogue

We are really proud to have our game reviewed by Calum Fraser, at Alpha Beta Gamer, and want to share their site here!

Alpha Beta Gamer Review!

"Miniverse impresses with its lighthearted and addictive blend of space exploration, crafting, junk collecting and strategic turn based combat. An odd, but very enjoyable bit of mini-planetary warfare."

Thanks!

Also, if you haven't. Rate and check out our game!

You know you want to play this game!

https://giphy.com/gifs/ldjam-ludumdare-ludumdare38-xUPGcD4AaVPFYuHjc4

So, in my game, you play as a social shut-in, who is trying to keep theirself alive in their "small world". You are allowed to do things people would do at their home, watching movies online, eating, sleeping, etc.

It's pretty foolish of me to try to make a simulation game, because obviously there's not enough time to add enough content to the game to make it feel remotely realistic.

For example, I wasn't able to simulate small creatures, so over time the room can be filled with bugs (as they would in real life). So to compensate, I filled the game with bugs instead.

It's over 9000!

When I was coding this game, I was thinking made I can make it survival-ish. So I made it pretty easy to die in this game (which is also true in real life, btw).

For example, if you are hungry, your health would drop. And you won't be able to go to sleep (because hungry keeps you awake, not because this is a corner case I'm too lazy to code for), which makes your health drop double fast. If you don't have food right at your hand, you would die pretty quickly.

Basically, you health bar should normally look like this:

....not like this:

...Are you sure that you are even human?

Just that 0.000008 dollar I needed

Floating point numbers are great, there're a lot of uses for them.

For example, in this game, the salary you earn after completing work is calculated using a complex formula. And if you are not careful with floating numbers, you ended up with something like this:

...gotta show off those math skills I learned from that frog.

Why work when you can...

Same as the health, I tried to make earning money difficult in this game as well. You would typically spend ~$30 on food everyday. But after you complete a 3-day long job, you would usually get $40~$50. So there's never enough money.

( Unbalanced you say? Welcome to real life :') )

This worked as intended, for a while. Then someone did this:

Why even work, when you can have a small loan, without interests, forever?

I wish I can do this in real life.....

Conclusion

So what should I do when my game sucks?

Why, make more games, of course.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/world-simulator

Encircle is my second Ludum Dare game and even if it doesn't have as much content as I might have liked, for someone who is pretty bad at art I am realy happy with how the visuals turned out! Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E0OkJNriE9c

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/encircle

Hi, please link me your game so I can play it and review it!

Web or Linux only please! Small Windows games might be ok (under 10MB), I'll try run it under wine.

If you like, try my game too! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/smalltrek (it's a small star trek themed puzzle game)

Hey! Check out this timelapse of my LD game, Bunosphere!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3__I0JtYPvQ

And the final product:

:rabbit: Play it here! :rabbit:

Thanks everyone :grin:

So we ended up making an online multiplayer game for LD38! You win by knocking the enemy team out of the arena, come try it out! :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/tiny-battle-world

Hiya! This is my third Ludum Dare.

Let me tell you about my video game:

You are Solomin, the sole living survivor of an ancient canine race. Armed with your trusty「many bombs」, it's up to you to defeat the alien menace. Buckle up and get ready to blast your way through several or a few exciting levels in this single player action video game!

I can't wait, I must play this video game on my PC* computer right away!

*Note: Available on Windows, macOS, and Linux

My sincere apologies for the delay, but Judging is now Live!

What is new?

To get score at the end, you need ratings! As we've done for many years, the best way to get ratings is to score coolness points, as that prioritizes you when browsing games.

The coolness score is now a combination of ratings you and your team leave on other games, but new it's also affected by the :heart:'s your feedback receives. So leaving good feedback will score you coolness points.

Please give :heart:'s to any quality feedback you see others leaving

For how effective ratings are vs feedback, you want both. Past a certain point there are diminishing returns for each, so to maximize your coolness score, do both. Exactly how much effect they have is to be determined. I'll be playing with the numbers over the coming days as I get more data to work with.

Also due to the added complexity of the coolness calculation, you wont see its effect immediately when browsing. It can take upwards of 30 minutes before your efforts take effect.

What you should do?

• Visit your Game page (click My Game up top)
  • If necessary, opt-out of any categories your game shouldn't be eligible for (if you made original graphics and audio, you're fine)
  • Set your cover art.
• Start Playing and Rating games. The game views are currently sorted by coolness score.
• Check out the Dare To Play thread for YouTubers and Streamers looking for games to play
• Check out these neat community-built tools for judging (let me know if I miss any)
  • Feedback Friends: An alternative way to browse - http://feedback.ld.intricati.com
  • Randomizer: Get a random LD38 game - https://sse-search.ovh/randomLD38game
  • LDNotify: Get notifications on new comments - http://ldnotify.timtips.com

When does this end?

Wednesday May 17th. I was going to push it back to the Friday of that week, but now that I've checked, it looks like I have some travel coming up that weekend. Just to be safe I want to be sure we end before that.

That's in for me. Go vote!

PS: Please keep the debate about how I'm ruining Ludum Dare over here. I would like to use this thread to answer questions about judging and help people. Thanks!

Drone AI has now been optimized as we originally intended We can't make an FPS without including an extreme mode. Only question is will Captain Destructo die today?

DOWNLOAD HERE https://github.com/JohanOtto/Destructo/releases/tag/V1.2

* JAM ENTRY HERE * https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/destructo-island

Check out In Good Hands: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/in-good-hands

Web Browser, Windows, Mac, and Linux support!

Leave a link to your game in the comments of this post and I will play it and rate it! Have fun!

Not Enough Room is the 2nd game I made. It was made within 12 hours because I missed most of the jam due to RL stuff.

Try it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/not-enough-room

Post your game below and I try it out~ ;)

Here is a gif of the gameplay :)

If you like games-as-art, you owe it to yourself to try Phaeton. I just did and I loved it.

Wow, already over 150 plays on Marbleverse, didn't think I would get that many! But also don't mind it, please keep playing :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/marbleverse

It is not finished but I really want to hear your opinions because it is first time for me. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/hassans-ants

My name is Nathan Hicks (Programmer) with Apostate Games - Jason Varnell (Artist)and I did the game Plutus as our #ldjam38 submission. Please check out the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/plutus Since we wanted to focus on getting the game done in time with all planned features we stayed away from doing a devlog throughout the weekend so over the next few days we will be posting day by day recaps from start to finish of all the progress, decisions made, and even problems we ran into or things we had to cut from the final entry. If you have any questions please post them in the comments! :smile:

Day 1: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/plutus/plutus-dev-blog-ldjam-recap-day-1

Day 2: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/plutus/plutus-dev-blog-ldjam-recap-day-2

Day 3: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/plutus/plutus-dev-blog-ldjam-recap-day-3

Day 4 - Monday - FINAL DAY

With no sleep I was able to hammer out ALL of the bugs that popped up and began realizing we wouldn't be able to do any of the extra stuff we wanted to. I quickly found some public domain Music and SFX from the Sonnis packs. We decided on a excerpt from a PD classical composition by Dvorak - A New World since the idea fits the theme and at the same time is a spoof of star wars. So quickly got the text to scroll similar to star wars. THEN another bug - we didn't realize the engine would not include the installation of our custom PD font we picked out for some of the pop ups. Luckily we had gone ahead and made all the buttons image files instead of text but began tweaking some of the text files to be images after that. Some of the text will still return to a default font on most computers, not the intended font unless you have it installed (its called "PC Senior" if you want to download it). But then also typed up a quick outro text for the success event of destroying ALL planets).

With most everything working well (as far as we knew at the time) I began implementing the rest of the graphics Jason had made for the planets. All of which were done JUST in time to allow us some building and testing. Towards a few hours to the deadline we were coming up on the home stretch and got EVERYTHING in we had wanted minus the extra stuff if we had time. However, some last minute decisions were made to make the world feel more populated and of course we later found this to be an issue and broke a few things after we entered our submission (amidst the site being up and down)...and unfortunately some of those bugs were GAME BREAKING.

I continued on into about midnight to 2am after the submission deadline to fix and remove some of these last minute implementations that made it game breaking. Basically what happened was the number of objects allowed in the world was TOO high and we added TOO many objects causing the game to slow down to non-playability as more things spawned. So this was immediately fixed. With fixing that it also broke the scaling down limitations to where objects would stop shrinking to a certain size and they would keep going to become not visible which also broke the game. With all that fixed we had reached our completed state by around 1 or 2 am Tuesday.

We did still end up with a few glitches we are aware of but since they weren't game breaking or affected gameplay much if at all we decided to leave them be out of fairness but will go back and fix them when voting is over. The few remaining bugs to our knowledge are: Thruster and shield graphics (when active) get knocked out of alignment when hitting large things or wrapping around the play area. The indicator arrow that is supposed to point you to the next planet you are able to destroy but does not always point to one you can destroy even sometimes. The sun collision box stays the same as it shrinks but entering to far into its glow can kill you so avoid the glow once you see it. Some planets hit boxes get wonky from time to time too and sometimes the power-ups become a one time use per playthrough. And the biggest thing we will be changing later will be the scaling and consumption values - some small objects when starting LOOK like you can consume them but you can't until you grow just a bit more and of course the biggest complaint and feedback we've gotten is the controls need some tweaking as well and we will definitely revisit that. Will definitely also be returning to Katamari for research lol.

So...what did we learn from this gamejam?

• Get plenty of Sleep
• Don't plan on adding little "extras" - start small and then if there's time come up with more stuff
• Allow ample time for testing before submitting - ESPECIALLY if there are any last minute additions
• Getting a music and sfx team member is a good idea
• A fully functional website would also help LOL jk :stuckouttonguewinkingeye: we do really look forward to all the exciting new features and interfaces that will be added...love seeing this jam grow every year!

We will be doing a full postmortem sometime this week on "Plutus" - especially once we get feedback from some of the judging and comments. Again if you would like to go check it out and please vote that would be greatly appreciated:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/plutus

And feel free to comment a link to your game submission and we will go rate and comment with some feedback on yours as well! :smile:

Hoped this helped any other jammers looking for other peoples approaches and day by day recaps. There is much we would like to fix, build on and add to make it a final product so if you have any suggestions please leave them below! :smile: Also if you get some free time and want to take a break from playing and voting on the 3000 games please check out our other game we currently have on steam greenlight and tell us what you think!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=872678368

Also follow us on social media and our website for future games and updates:

• http://www.apostategames.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/apostategames/
• https://twitter.com/apostate_games

If you think you have what it takes to be a rough and tough detective from the 40s who is also an ant, then check out Ant Detective!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/ant-detective

Rate my game, and leave comment bellow this new I will rate your game :)

PLAY-HERE

I will play yours game after few hours. When I ends in work today :)

You are welcome to play and rate my game Potions recipes

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/potions-recipes

I have uploaded timelapse videos.

What's cool about timelapse videos you can make retrospective analysis.

For example I spend 3 hours on game resize. That is not very important for such a small game.

Also I was doing a lot of music writing instead of core game play.

But anyway, it's good that I have these videos.

Day 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeYai_KrLv0&feature=youtu.be

Day 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBd8sO07vCY&feature=youtu.be

Want to break out of prison as a badass cyberpunk robot? Well you can in our new Ludum Dare entry, Chroma.

In Chroma you play as a cyberpunk who has been captured and locked in prison due to him being against the actions of the people that live on the surrounding moons. The armies on these moons plan on completely destroying the home planet of Oarus, and your goal is to stop them. Break out of prison, and escape to the moon of Juovis to defeat The Guardian - the commander of the armies. Defeat him, and bring back the freedom that is yours!

DOWNLOAD

• https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/chroma

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/slovenly-shopper

Weird puzzle mechanics with cute critters ＼(￣▽￣)／

Check it out!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/nomnom

This was the first jam I've done on my own, so I was pretty worried whether I'd be able to finish.

As is becoming tradition, I came up with a concept that I knew I could implement within the deadline, but didn't allot nearly enough time for design and polish. So the game either ends up too easy, or too difficult, depending on your play style.

Art I was a bit nervous doing all the animations on my own in After Effects (I've never had to generate my own sprite sheets), but thanks to the plugin Sheetah, it was pretty much a one-click operation to turn them into sprite sheets... highly recommended. I had quite a bit of fun doing them, even if they were mostly simple morphs and rotations on primitive shapes. My real strength is digital painting, and I was hoping to come up with some really psychadelic environments, but that just didn't happen. Maybe next time.

Sound I did all the sounds with Bfxr, but the music I pulled from a site offering public domain, royalty free clips. Even though I altered the track and added a bit to it, I had a feeling that I'd mostly be judged on the atmospheric sound, and didn't feel comfortable taking credit for it. So I opted out of that category.

Code Nesting worlds inside worlds isn't really too difficult. I'd had the idea for a long time, so I knew how to hit the ground running. What I didn't account for was how garbage collection would clean up my data references upon game object instances being destroyed to make way for new map generation. I did finally figure out a decent way to hold onto the references, though, though liberal serialization. What really ended up being a pain was trying to position things based on two different coordinate systems. Making it so the player could scale up and down also ended up a bit more difficult than I'd intended (I originally would scale down each nested world... but there was a limit to how small colliders could get before no longer being functional. So I dropped that bit). At some point, being able to escape "rooms" while still inhabiting enemies got borked. Not sure when that happened, but perhaps I'll fix it in a future iteration.

Design ... what design? I ran out of time, so balancing came down to just tweaking a few numbers. At least this time, there was actually an end condition, that could actually be met. Telegraphing this appropriately to the player, though... heck, communication in general, beyond those simple tips, is pretty much absent. One of these days, I'll do a better job of scoping. Ah, well.

Overall I think I'm actually pretty happy with how much I did manage to get done solo. It's certainly not the most fun thing I've done, but the process was pretty enjoyable. Would jam again. After a few more solo jams, maybe I'll actually attempt a compo. Maaaaybe. We'll see.

Check at the game at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/primordial-ooze Leave feedback, and I'll be sure to check out your entry as well! Best of luck to all the other jammers!

It's time to "The NedLudd Club". Leave comments and I will leave a comment on your game! :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-nedludd-club

Arindama is the game I made for the compo. It is a Minecraft-esque game, focused on crafting the different blocks of the small world you live in, to create new objects. Pickup objects and craft them to create new ones, and complete the quests, or simply make something you like, it’s up to you.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/arindama

I'm looking for feedback right now, and ratings. The game can be played on the browser. :eyes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsfBCYP2qZM

Go catch some flying space cow!

And don't forget to leave a feedback!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/cowmets

Or are they? Play Until Tomorrow to find out!

My first ludum dare, my first shot at unity and my first time publishing a game. Followed compo rules but most of the time was spent learning Glad I (almost) finished it in time :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-dogs-small-world

This is what the menu looks like.

Still seeing quite a few entries with the default grey bars - draw people in with your snazzy programmer art and more people will click through, play and leave feedback!

Hi LD friends! How is judging going? Have you already tried Llama's World? This is our 4th LD and we are so proud of it!

We promise to try all the games of the user that leave us a comment! ;)

If you don't know us jet, find below our games for the past LD!! - LD32: SleepOver - LD34: Garbage Run - LD37 (TOP 100): Booking Mama

Hey!

our game is available for rating! if you have any feedback on it, we are very interested in them :) this is my first LD with a team and i'm really happy with what we came up. We should have spend more time to focus on the theme and after our initial idea we drift ( pun intended if you play our game :p ) a bit from the small world theme. I think that the game is still interesting and we'll give you some fun for 5 or 10min!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/comme-le-monde-est-petit-smalltalk-supermarket

We will do our best to test as much game as we can with a priority on the people giving us feedback of course.

Enjoy !

So far we are seeing a lot of awesome games! Everyone really did their best this time around. :)

Our game is available at this page.

Life is hard when global warming melts your glorious castle, and thus the invasion of the seal peasants. There is only one thing that you can do...

SLAP THOSE PEASANTS AWAY

Hey everyone, check out this short, and "seally" game we made for this Ludum Dare 38. Promise, you won't regret playing it!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/king-of-the-seals

Hey! My game "Leucos" is ready for voting and feedback! I'm looking forward to see what you all think about it :D

You can try it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/leucos

Our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/interstellar-botanist

Hello! Come and try our game in which you will be taunted by a crazy AI while trying to grow and mutate alien plants. The challenge comes through balancing water, light, fertilizer plus keeping the plants healthy. Plants also have special mutations that you can check with your scanner. Mutating plants will give them up to 3 mutations. Some are positive, others even dangerous. Then sell plants and buy new equipment and seeds. And don't let the oxygen run out!

Hope you're having fun! Cheers!

Check out and vote to our first LD game! :)

You can try it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/galactic-fighters

This is our litle game to the Ludum Dare, we would like to recieve some feedback, also we will rate every one that give us some comment.

Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/tadeo-escapes-the-dinosaur

Play mine below and leave a link to yours for me to play. Thanks to all who have played and sent their games to me. Can't wait to keep testing games. Been through a ton of them already!

My Game:

YOUTUBE link: https://youtu.be/lUqoQTs4RFE

Google Drive Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B13g3FsdXQ4MUGp5anQzb20zams?usp=sharing

Be sure to use this map to find planets:

Taimlapse with 3rd day is ready!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWiCRVmqlek&t=3s

Don't forget to play and rate us =) Play here

Hi developers, how was your day, I'm inviting you to play and review my game

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/little-wild-invasion

Thank you! Good Jam!

Hi, this is part I of the post-mortem of my game for the compo: Terrartisan. This first part includes the development log over the weekend, with WIP screenshots of the whole process.

I hope you like the read, and if you could rate the game and provide feedback, I'd highly appreciate it!

• Link to the game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/terrartisan

Saturday

I woke up early (around 7 AM) to see the theme: "A small world". I went outside for a walk and also to have breakfast in a café –since I was going to spend most of the weekend indoors.

I like to do mind maps for brainstorming. Here's a section of it while I has having a delicious sandwich:

In these mind maps I usually note down concepts, as long as movies, other games, genres, etc. related to the theme. I decided to go for a terraforming game, in which you will control a planet and let biomes evolve. I envisioned this as a tiny, cute world inside a glass ball.

Right before lunch I started to make some placeholder art in Pyxel Edit –my go-to software in pixel art.

After lunch, coding started. I made a list of features I needed to implement, separated in "core" and "nice to have". My initial core features were:

• Place terrain blocks in the world
• Terrain palette UI
• Constraints to place blocks in the world (i.e. no flying water blocks)
• Evolving blocks depending on their surroundings
• In-game tutorial

The first thing I made was placing terrain blocks in the world. Afterwards, I implemented the basics for biome evolution: water would turn desert blocks into fertile soil.

The UI felt weird without some kind of feedback, so I generated sound sound effects quickly with bfxr.

Once I had that in place, I deployed the game online and posted the URL on Twitter for people to play, which was fantastic because I could start to see the worlds they were making! For instance:

I continued to add and tweak biome evolution rules, as well as lot of bug fixing –people in Twitter were kind enough to point out odd behaviors and bugs.

Once thing I noticed is that absolutely no one asked me how to play with the game in its current state (no indications from me, no instructions on screen… nothing), so I began to think of maybe dropping the in-game tutorial since it was time to go to bed already and I was way behind schedule.

Sunday

I managed to get around 7 hours of sleep and did the same as the first day of the jam: go outside for a walk and breakfast. This Sunday was a special day –and not only because Barcelona was playing against Real Madrid that evening!– because April 23 it's Sant Jordi (St. George) day, which is celebrated in Catalonia by gifting books and roses to your friends and loved ones.

My original plan was to take advantage of the cafeteria to do some level design with pen and paper, but decided to drop it and walk through my neighborhood instead: there were multiple people outside, and the streets were full of books and roses stands.

This meant I got home late in the morning and no level design or whatsoever, and still lots of coding left to do.

I continued by adding global stats to the world (so, for instance, humid worlds could hold more plant forms). I also created a new biome –forests!- and tweaked the UI a bit. Here you can see how I dropped the whole right area and made the canvas a square:

In the meantime, people kept sending me their creations over Twitter:

At that point I had a toy, not a game: something people could play with and have fun, but there was no goal in place. I decided to create some simple goal system for levels: player would need to get at least a certain amount of some blocks in order to complete that level. I also created two modal dialogs: one for displaying a "you won" message, and another one to show which were the goals for the level:

It was 17 PM already and I still had no proper art and no music. People were finding the game cute already, even though the terrain blocks were looking very rough and the whole background was empty… But the game was playable indeed, so I didn't worry much about it: I could always leave in place that placeholder art! (which I ended up doing).

I had one level in place, but I wanted to preserve the "free-form build" mode that people loved. I made a title screen in which players would be able to choose between those two game modes:

Afterwards, I realised that for some levels that I had in mind it would be convenient if players had a way to remove a terrain block. So I added a "remove" button to the UI. To make levels challenging, I put a cap into how many blocks of a particular type the player would be able to use in a particular level. The new UI looked like this:

9 PM and… yes, still no decent art and still no background music. It was a terrible time to do music because the game (Barcelona vs R. Madrid) was about to start and I couldn't listen to the radio and make music simultaneously. But waiting for the game to end was out of the question.

And then a small chain of bad things happened. I wanted to try a new set up for music in game jams: Pocket Operators with an audio interface. I had already tested it with one pocket operator, but not with two of then chained… and I couldn't make it work.

After almost half an hour I gave up and decided to switch to a more familiar environment for audio: Audiotool, an online DAW. And again, after half an hour with it, their servers went down and I couldn't keep on working. I lost a full hour with this! I settled to make music with Garage Band instead. It took me around another hour (I actually finished it when my whole neighborhood was choiring Leo Messi's name). I was not very happy with the song, but it was better to use that track as background music that not playing anything at all:

Listen at SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ladybenko/terrartisan-bgm

I was tempted to leave the game at that state and submit, but I went for a bit of polishing: I implemented a reset level button (with a flashing warning that would appear after the player has run out of terrain blocks) and added some more levels –making a total of five of them.

One cool thing about the levels is that they serve as a tutorial, since you have a limited palette of blocks to use and you are asked different types of blocks on each one, which makes the player to learn one rule for biome evolution at a time!

It was midnight, and I decided that I would add some passing clouds, as in my previous games. I thought it would provide a bit of eye candy and much-needed movement, since this game had no animations.

After that, time to upload the game to itch.io and make the submission at the Ludum Dare's website. 1:30 AM, mission completed!

If you are in a team and not the team leader make sure you add a link to your game in your profile. I can't return the favour of reviewing your game if I can't find your game. :)

EDIT: Never mind, I'm an idiot. Didn't see the "Games" button. Sigh.

EDIT 2: I'm not an idiot, the "Games" button is only visible on the leader's profile so yeah, put your game link on your profile!

Since this site lacks a search button, I guess I'll make a post! Post your games here, I want to try them!

Hi all. I'm having a hour of free time on my workplace so I thought about playing some LD games. But I have one big problem - my internet traffic is heavy limited here. So if your game have a small distributive size(5-10 Mb per game max), please post it and I'll be happy to play it and leave feedback.

Sorry for this little discrimination, I'll make sure to play all other big beautifull games when I get home. Too bad I can't physically play all of the LD games :(

ED: I want to clarify, that by limited traffic I MEAN limited traffic, and not slow internet. My internet here is ultra fast, I just have a quota of 100Mb of it per day.

Check out how we created our game "A World in A Jar": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUZRh51-sB0&feature=youtu.be