So I somehow managed to make a game about pushing boxes that got 29th in Innovation and 5th in Theme...

The main thing I wanted to do was a game where you "run out of space", and not "run out of time"... I also wanted to make the player feel they were running out of space because of what they'd done instead of because the game forces so.

The core idea is "join 3 blocks of the same color to reduce them, and gain more space", but "if you just join 2, they get locked, which might lock you into a smaller space".

During development, I had my sister play-test it, and she said it was overwhelming. This gave me the idea to split the game into an "arcade" and a "puzzle" mode; their difference in code is a simple conditional, but in gameplay; one is a frenetic challenge to keep up with, the other is a zen puzzle that eventually traps you.

Theme: 5th (4.484 - 33 ratings) Innovation: 29th (4.081 - 33 ratings) Overall: 33rd (4.032 - 33 ratings) Audio: 56th (3.726 - 33 ratings) Mood: 58th (3.714 - 30 ratings) Fun: 112th (3.726 - 33 ratings) Graphics: 264th (3.468 - 33 ratings) Humor: 295th (2.542 - 26 ratings)

Thanks to everyone who played and congrats everyone who made a game!

For this cool score!

this is last art for my game as i think. if you want more check my: https://twitter.com/s21_man

Thanks to everyone who played and rated Screen Space Defender! I had a blast playing your games!

Ratings Breakdown

Postmortem

The theme of this jam was "Running out of space". Participants were given 72 hours to create a game from scratch that incorporated this theme. The concepts and mechanics I came up with were:

• An Arcade game where the player types incoming filenames to prevent them from being downloaded and having their hard drive run out of space
• An Action game where the player must eliminate enemies in a specified order to make the approaching spiked walls recede
• An Action game where colored boxes fall from the sky and must be destroyed by the player by matching their fist color to the box before being crushed
• A Puzzle game where the player must unscramble images and close panes to prevent their desktop from running out of space

I went with my fourth idea as I felt it was the most unique. I also thought it would be fun to create the simulated operating system in the game.

What Went Right

• The game was completed and submitted on time
• The presentation was polished and visually appealing
• The mechanics worked well and the audio selection complimented the gameplay nicely

What Went Wrong

• The difficulty scaling mechanic of having multiple versions of each puzzle with an increasing number of pieces made the game too hard and was removed
• The delay added between selecting the second puzzle piece and the swap occurring was too long and not well received
• Limited testing time resulted in some bugs making it into the release (patched post-release)

Conclusion

Another Ludum Dare in the books! This was my second game jam, and while it didn't go quite as smoothly as I had planned, it was a great learning experience that resulted in another playable title.

Time is always an issue. The 72 hour window is tight and really forces you to refine your scope. I had planned to add an online leaderboard, as well as additional animation, OS interaction, and puzzles, which didn't make the cut. This is something I hope to improve on in the next jam.

I'm happy to have made progress in the graphics department. As a programmer, art is not one of my stronger skills, although it is something I have been working on. Screen Space Defender rated higher than Deck of the Dead in Graphics and Mood so I consider that a win in itself.

I'd like to thank everyone for playing and rating Screen Space Defender. The feedback is greatly appreciated. I had a blast creating, playing, and rating games during this jam and I can't wait to do it all again for Ludum Dare 43 in November!

Play Screen Space Defender

Dave Brake Creations

We want to say thank you to everyone who played, rated and left a comment on our game, A Tale of Fish.
This is the final result:

Considering that it was essentially a last minute project and our very first entry to Ludum Dare, we're extremely happy with that result and even somewhat surprised. We've always personally believed that even a simple and straightforward idea - the game is, after all, essentially just one long fetch quest - can be elevated through a bit of polishing, and this seems to prove it.

If you haven't played the game yet, you can do so here: https://dalton5000.itch.io/a-tale-of-fish

So, what's coming next?
First up, we don't really intend to continue working on a A Tale of Fish. It's a nice one-shot, but we have neither desire to expand on it mechanically nor narratively.

If you do want to know what we're up to, I recommend following my partner on Twitter and itch.io, where you can also find his previous game, On Blazing Rails to Kansas City, which won third place during the Godot Community Game Jam earlier this year:

https://dalton5000.itch.io/
https://twitter.com/dalton8000

I myself don't have Twitter at the moment, but if I ever get it you'll probably hear it on his feed.
We're looking forward to participating in future game jams. In fact, Dalton is already planning to participate in another German-speaking Game Jam this weekend.

I can also tell you that we do intend to reveal a big project in the near future on which we have already started working together well before Ludum Dare.
It is going to be an adventure game - on a much more stable basis than A Tale of Fish though, I promise! - and coming along nicely at the moment, so if you're interested in that, definitely follow us on Twitter and stay tuned for the great announcement!

Thank you all for your feedback! I took all of it into account while working on an improved version and I hope you guys want to try it again to see if it is any better! @langotriel approached me and helped to add sound, which makes the game a lot more playable.

The following features were added for the full version: - Added way more sound - Ability to skip waiting on timer - Modified Solar panels to be more useful - Made GUI more clear - Fixed minor bugs

This might not be the last version and I will look into expending this into a full game later, but for now I wanted to provide an improved version of this jam game. Hope you enjoy playing it as much as I did making it!

Try here: Full version

If anyone notices anything that doesn't look right, feel free to contact me!

GG everybody! I hope you all had a great Ludum Dare 42! I personally loved this experience and will definitely​ try a Ludum Dare 43!

Thank you everyone who played and rated my entry, I Saw Him Today, and gave it 12th in Mood for Compo! It really means a lot to me and I'm glad so many others were impacted by the game. If you haven't already checked it out, it's a 10 minute visual novel about dealing with the after effects of suicide.

Itch.io Page ♦ Game Jolt Page

This is what happened.

Over the course of four New Zealand days, I worked on my entry and finished the features and the three levels I wanted, and then found bugs and kept breaking things over and over, determined and adamant that I fix every game-breaking bug. Bunny Horrors is a Chip's Challenge clone that I decided to use to get my first game over and done with, once and for all. I was using LOVE, so there was very little guidance for me as far as sorting out functions calling once after being triggered by a detection in the update step. Now, it's definitely worth stating that I got this under control eventually, because it isn't literally the "worst idea" and can be solved, but for the entirety of the LD41 challenge, I did not figure out how to solve it. It was a really, really dumb fix, which I figured out pretty much immediately once I started work on the next game.

By Day 2, I'd already seen my fair share of unholy bugs in the game I'd made, and Tiled broke the first level map somehow, leading me to have to redesign Level 1 (which I think sucks, because I'm pretty sure the original version was way cooler and more interestingly balanced).

On Day 3, and the early morning of Day 4, things got really stressful. We'd already all seen the game in my household, we knew its merits, the weird April-based Christmas my family came up with was already done, but there was seemingly no stopping of the issues I was having.

The biggest one, and this makes me quite mad: gold was duplicating. Sometimes gold would double every time you died. And that was a huge problem because the amount of gold you collected was a core mechanic, and that growth in gold value was accumulative. You can't get the right ending if you get so much gold from walking into a single tile that it triggers the inaccessible joke ending that's supposed to be mathematically impossible.

After the Ludum Dare, after finishing another two games, more recently, I discovered the cause of the issue. And it was really, really dumb. Some things were triggering more than once because I didn't do the if prak == "prok" then prak = "done" thing properly. The way the control loops work, that expression cancelling whatever is inside the if statement has to come FIRST, not last.

But that was after a matter of weeks. Back in the morning of the day I had to submit the game, nothing was working properly, and I was helpless to do something about it. I decided to submit an unfinished copy of Bunny Horrors and clearly label it that way. Then, shock horror, the website slowed to a crawl at the last possible minute. Now, I know now that I probably could have just asked for a bit of leeway on submitting it slightly after the submission deadline, but I was out of my mind with tiredness and rage and decided against it. In the same state of mind, I decided to make Bunny Horrors an unperson to LDjam, disappearing silently and working on BH or something else later.

This is a screenshot from Day 2, but the game is finished now. I spent a few days over the first few weeks of May trying to fix Bunny Horrors, to no avail, then gave up for the meantime and started working on something else. Once that and one other, smaller game were done, I got stuck into Bunny Horrors and fixed the update bug just as I once predicted. It is quite unfortunate that Bunny Horrors didn't make it to LD41, but things could have been much, much worse. And I will be making something better next time a Ludum Dare comes around, purely solo. It helps to have friends like I do.

Not too shabby! Many thanks to you all!

Play Forkin' It Up!

"This is freakin' fun man!" -Pilorekt (Twitch) https://www.twitch.tv/pilorekt/video/298303231 1:50:00

"This is like a really fun, snappy little game." -Tiger_J (Twitch) https://www.twitch.tv/tiger_j/video/298618145 1:55:15

I m pretty satisfied with my 11th in mood in the Compo, especilly since i m a big beginner (but learning fast). But i lost sooo much time on Paint to draw ugly sprites..

I either need practice or a team. If you are in the same case, maybe we can consider working together for a future game jam ^^ feel free to ask

(btw i m not fluent in english obviously, sorry)

Super happy to end up in top 25 overall for my first LD! However, most of those individual category scores could probably use some work.

In particular, I know my graphics could be improved -- they're kind of basic. Maybe I'll try using more than two colors per tile next time. :stuckouttongue:

Additionally, while my initial idea was inspired by the theme, the game kind of diverged in implementation, and the theme didn't really shine through as I'd hoped it would.

Lastly, it's not super innovative -- while I'm proud of most of my puzzle designs, and I think the specific concept of the game is something that hasn't been explored before, the general "block-pushing puzzle" category is probably pretty saturated at this point, hah.

Overall though these are really good results -- better than I was expecting! So I'm pretty proud of myself but I'm also glad to have some clear room for improvement.

Hope to see you all next time!

So, something kept filling up my disk space. I finally decided to run drive usage analytics to find a output_log.txt file sized at whopping 21gb. It apparently was produced by Unity. I don't really know Unity, so I don't know how to find the source game. The path is AppData\LocalLow\DefaultCompany\Game Jam SEP-01-2018\output_log.txt. Is there a way to find which game to blame?

Also, a reminder that this can happen. Be careful.

First of all, I'm happy we could finish the game and make something decent on our second entry :) Thank you all guys voting for the game and commenting.

Our first entry was for LD40 and we were working mostly on a gameplay and balance for all the stuff there (it was about managing passengers on a space ship, while they are getting stressed out and killing each other :D). But it was really hard and we couldn't pull it off in the end. We finished the game, but it was really raw and the gameplay wasn't quite what we were intended it to be.

So this time we were trying to make something more simple, and it seems, the game came out too simple :) I knew it has problems with the gameplay, but I didn't think it would turned out THAT bad :D We'll really try to improve it.

But as an artist I am extremely happy with the graphics score! :) My goal was to make something good in these short terms and I think I did my best here and I'm glad you liked it :)

So I think next time we need to find balance and aim for something simple enough to finish it in three days but enertaining enough to not fail the Fun score :)

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

Results

We are very happy with our results, thank you so much for voting and playing our entry. We got a lot of valuable feedback and have created a Post Jam version that contains both content, bug fixes and balance changes. If you like RTS games, give it a try :smiley:

Patch notes

• General

  • Added Health bars to buildings.
  • Improved minimap: Has more information, can be clicked to move camera there.
  • Added difficulty levels. Standard, significantly easier than the previous difficulty of the game as well as Hard and Insane that will really put your skills to the test.
  • Upgrades to units and buildings apply to already existing ones.

• Added controls

  • Holding shift allows you to add more units to your current action-group.
  • Pressing CTRL + 1-9 adds the currenct action-group to a control group.
  • Pressing 1-9 will select all units in the corresponding control group.
  • Double tapping on 1-9 will center the camera on the units of the corresponding control group.
  • Pressing Space will center the camera on the units of the current action-group.

• Balance changes

  • Enemy turrets now has the ability to move (slowly)
  • Hover-tank
  • Deals more damage
  • Maximum targets set to 3
  • Has more 50% more health
  • Mine-layers
  • Now places mines spread around itself.
  • Mines now have a duration (30 seconds)
  • Heavy infantry
  • Increased damage by 30%
  • Increased health by 50%
  • Light infantry
  • Increased damage by 20%
  • Upgrades
  • Each level now costs 100 Crystals more than the previous one

• Bug fixes

  • Fixed build button bug (Player would place a building when pressing the build if a building was selected)
  • Fixed a rare bug that would cause units to visually remain after dying.
  • Fixed a bug causing some text going outside of the dialog box.
  • Purple Goo will no longer spread outside the map.

So far the best I've done in any LD. Perhaps I should take the game and run with it.

Another Ludum Dare done, another dollar! Except, no dollar I suppose. But lots of fulfillment and fun! I very much enjoyed playing everyone's games this jam, and I'm pretty satisfied with how my entry turned out as well. A great jam overall!

I made a post-mortem for my last solo project and it was received pretty well, so I've decided to do it again. I found it to be pretty cathardic for me as well. I thought about doing one before the end of the jam, and that may have been smart to get a little bit more exposure for my entry, but I really liked having the results to show in my last post-mortem so I ended up waiting. Also, laziness happened. So here we are!

Brainstorming

I'll be honest, I wasn't too thrilled about the theme. Ironically it felt claustrophobic-- I didn't have any ideas off the top of my head, and I was worried about being able to come up with a unique take. But in a way it was a good thing, as it really got me pumped for the challenge and got me brainstorming hard.

I usually bounce ideas off my wife at dinner Friday night for Ludum Dare, and this was no exception. We ended up coming up with a handful of decent ideas, and in the end I was deliberating between three candidates. I had my IDE open and was ready to get started on a puzzle game about cramming material into your brain the night before a test when I realized I had never made a puzzle game before... so I chickened out and went with something a bit more familiar, a half-baked idea for a quirky action-strategy-whatever that became High Castle.

Some players very quickly made the connection to the arcade and SNES game Rampart. I loved Rampart as a kid, and I distinctly remember the frustration of not being able to fit your wall pieces together late into a battle because of all the junk and mangled walls laying around taking up space. High Castle was directly inspired by that memory of having nowhere to fit your walls. I decided to add in the crumbling island in an attempt to increase the "running out of space" theme strength, which obviously was going to be due to the fact that the island was flying, right? A fantasy setting it is then!

Not Math Again

Like a good LD jammer, I only had a loose idea of what I wanted to do when I started. I knew it was going to be an island floating in space (or somewhere dark and sparkly), and I knew it would involve defending a keep by placing walls. The first thing I worked on was the code behind wall placement. I quickly realized that getting arbitrary shapes that could be rotated to be placed on a grid and set corresponding grid cell properties would not be a trivial task. And so my first panic began.

Each shape contained its own mini-grid, and depending on its rotation that smaller grid had to be mapped to the larger grid and set cell properties accordingly. Coordinate transformations? That sounded like some linear algebra crap, and it had been a long time since I had taken linear algebra (not to mention how I barely passed... the second time).

But it's amazing how something that was so difficult to wrap my head around in a school setting could be so thoroughly and completely dominated in the course of a few hours when there's a fire lit under my butt, and a passion for the application of the concept. After a few scribbles, google searches, and intense braining, I got the math down and the code working beautifully.

Making It Up As You Go

As stated earlier, I only had a rough concept to start with. As I built the game and test played it, I came up with new mechanics or changes that I thought would be fun to try. This is a risky sort of thing to do, but I think that it is also a very game-jammy thing to do when you've got a very short period of time to work on things. You're driving on a bridge while construction is happening just a few feet ahead, barely keeping up. Hey! That's not a bad idea for a game...

My original (very loose) plans were to mimic Rampart more closely and have "rounds" where you'd fire your weapons and then rebuild in relative peace, then rinse and repeat. Your wizard would conjure random wall shapes during the build period that you'd have to rotate and place.

Then as I was going to sleep Friday night I thought about how cool it would be if debris was floating around in space and you had to grab it and slam it down onto the island. You'd still be handed random pieces, but I felt it would feel a lot more interactive. After prototyping and testing that concept, I thought, hey, wouldn't it be simpler and more hectic if everything was just happening at once? Yes, old me, yes it would be.

It felt haphazard and dangerous, but for a 48-hour code jam the quick [build > idea > prototype > integration] cycle seemed to work very well.

Pesky Theme

Although I took steps to align High Castle more with the theme as development went on, I got some comments about how, while fulfilled, the theme wasn't as center-stage as it should have been. I have to agree with these comments, even though the game focuses on winning 'space' and losing it due to breaches or the island falling apart, it felt more like background noise. I blame the 'making it up as you go along' strategy for this.

If I could go back and try to fix this, I might make the island fall apart more methodically, perhaps in sections rather than lots of small pieces at a time. I'd also try to add 'land debris' pieces that you could pick up and slap on to the edge of your island to build it back up. These changes might help make the theme more central to the gameplay. But that's just a theory.

Difficulty Is Difficult

In my last solo project, I got a lot of comments that the game was too easy. I also got a few that the game was too hard. I even got a lot saying that the game was right where it should be. One of the issues with that project was that most everything was procedurally generated, including aspects of the game that directly affected difficulty. This time I decided to maintain more control and manually build the map and difficulty arc.

While the results were much more consistent and objectively better than my last project, I still don't think I was able to nail down the difficulty curve. For me this is one beast that I just can't seem to slay. There isn't a lot of time during a code jam to manually test your game, and you don't have access to a lot of play-testers (is it even kosher for a compo game to get play-tested by anyone but the creator?), so I understand why it's hard. Maybe next time I should try to be more mathematical about it or something.

In the post-jam edition of High Castle I implemented difficulty modes to try to accomodate more types of players. I thought about doing this for the official entry, but I didn't think there was enough time left to implement it.

Complexity Kills

As I was wrapping the game up, I realized I had no tutorial. As I was thinking about how to throw together a quick tutorial or controls screen, I began to realize I had slightly drifted into "too complex" territory. Shoot enemies with mouse click from your tower? Cool. Grab floating debris and build walls? Alright. Gain power and capture structures by building full enclosures? Ok, getting weird but not too bad to follow. Sometimes your tower and other buildings produce other towers that you can place by right clicking on them then left clicking to place? I think that's where it crossed the line. All the other mechanics were more or less part of a larger system, but the turret building system was just weird and out-of-place, a relic from the game's conception as inspiration from Rampart that didn't belong anymore.

And of course this made it hard to build a controls screen or a tutorial in a short amount of time. And so I was highly unsatisfied with the player's educational experience of the game mechanics ended up. 48 hours isn't enough time to cram in mechanics that need extra explanation, it's best that the mechanics remain simple and tightly cohesive to be as intuitive as possible. A lame attempt was made to shoehorn a sort of tutorial in-game through pop-up messages that would try to give quick and dirty explanations, but it became painfully apparent that people very quickly stopped paying attention to those while playing.

In the post-jam edition of High Castle I remedied that with a sleek visual in-game tutorial system and by removing the turret building system altogether, instead scattering unpowered turrets around the island that you are free to capture. I feel that it jives with the other mechanics a whole lot better, and just makes more sense to a new player.

Story Time

In my last solo entry, I threw together a simple last-minute story line before I finalized the game. The story actually turned out mildly compelling, but didn't really deliver at the end and was honestly just filler for presentation. Players care about gameplay above all, and could care less about the story after all. Right?

Wrong. I got several complaints that the story seemed to be building towards something and then delivered a wholly unsatisfying conclusion. I learned something important from that project: players like stories. So, for this project, I tried to put in a bit more effort with the story. It was an incredibly stupid story, I won't lie about that, but I tried to present it more dynamically with small cinematics and funny quips. I think it paid off, people seemed to enjoy it. It was fun to do as well, so I'm looking forward to continuing to improve my story telling methods in the future.

Bit Tones And Bit Tunes

Making the audio is strangely always a stressful task for me, not because it's that difficult but because I feel like it will take a lot more time than it actually ends up taking. As I'm building music I feel that hours are passing by but it's only been minutes. In contrast, when I'm coding I feel like minutes have passed by when it's been hours.

The sound effects so far have been very rudimentary using BFXR, which produces very 8-bit sounds. They go well with my rudimentary graphics style which is about the best I can do on the art front. I try to make the sounds as painless as possible (it's easy to make VERY annoying sounds with BFXR) but I still got some small complaints, especially from players who got swarmed by enemy infantry throwing hundreds of spears that all made an annoying 'tch' sound when they hit something.

I haven't been making game music very long (only since I've been doing compos) and I finally began to notice a "style" emerge. If you listen to the menu music for my last solo entry Sanguinite and then listen to the menu music for High Castle back-to-back, it's painfully obvious. I'll have to try to mix it up more next time.

Results

With the difficulty issues, the overly-complex mechanics, lack of a decent tutorial, and apparently annoying sounds, I was content with my entry but not expecting a whole lot from the results. While I was very satisfied with the level of polish I was able to achieve and how the idea panned out in general, the game was highly flawed even for a game jam entry.

And so the results have completely blown me away. Unexpectedly almost every category was a personal best. I managed to land in the top 50 in four categories, notably beat my previous placements in 'Overall' and 'Fun', and even land a top 10 spot in audio. Audio? That one was a real surprise; while I didn't think my audio was bad, I didn't think it was excellent, especially with the few complaints I got about annoying noises. Who cares, I'll take it! Suffice to say High Castle did a lot better than I expected it to.

Conclusion

Well, this turned out to be somewhat of a novel, but that's alright. The Ludum Dare experience is intense and there's always a lot to say about it. It was a bit of a wild ride and I re-learned a bunch of scary math, I made a lot of good snap-decisions and a lot of neglectful snap-decisions, and I ended up with a game that I'm very content with. I was also floored by the unexpected results, and that was a really nice treat. Thanks to everyone who voted!

Here's the game page if you haven't played High Castle yet!

Here's the post-jam edition if you want to try it out!

I played a ton of awesome entries too! Playing new games for a few weeks after the jam is over is always so cathartic to me and is the real reward for participating in Ludum Dare. I wasn't able to play as many games as I would have liked, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some that I really liked, but here's a list of some of my favorites!

• Greenie Goes Right
• Champion Chowdown
• Clippy's Awakening
• L - An Interactive Mystery
• Runnink Out Of Space
• Evercloud

First of all, WOW. What a trip! The whole weekend of this dare was just a whirlwind of possibility, and we came out in a great place for what we went up against. Without further ado:

• Overall: 317th (3.65 average from 52 ratings)
• Fun: 564th (3.265 average from 51 ratings)
• Innovation: 402nd (3.367 average from 51 ratings)
• Theme: 641st (3.439 average from 51 ratings)
• Graphics: 437th (3.66 average from 52 ratings)
• Humor: 600th (2.585 average from 49 ratings)
• Mood: 483rd (3.24 average from 50 ratings)

We didn't quite place in the top 10%, but that's still fantastic, and we got some great feedback. Personally I'm impressed our game was coherent and playable at all, since this was our very first time targeting a real Gameboy (with z80 machine code), but we pulled it together and made things happen. We got some pretty excellent feedback from the community too, notably:

• Sound and Audio would have helped a ton. (We just didn't have time, assembly code is a huge time sink.)
• Wrenches weren't obvious enough, and players had a hard time understanding that they were a primary objective (without them you run out of level and die)
• The game's difficulty was a bit awkward:
• Wall slamming was unforgiving; players expected to be able to try to recover, and not insta-die. This wasn't helped by the short camera distance, a platform limitation
• The explosion's speed needed fine tuning, as skilled players could outrun it and then it simply wasn't a threat
• While crates were an intended obstacle + speed management mechanic, they weren't punishing enough due to the explosion speed, so there was no incentive to avoid them. We wanted a balance of good + bad, but clearly missed the mark.

Personally we felt that the game's camera could have been improved with some dynamic scrolling, and this would have helped with difficulty. We drew inspiration from several other endless runners (especially Canabalt) but the hardware limitations made the more traditional "zoom the camera out based on speed" approach impossible. We also had some more interesting mechanics planned (including a wrench + bolt mechanic) but those got scrapped at the last minute.

There was also a deployment lesson to be learned. There are actually some HTML5 Gameboy emulators out there, but we didn't think to search for one before the contest started. It would have been nice to launch with a "web page" version, which I think would have made the game a bit easier to rate. Y'all stepped up to the plate though, and mad props to those of you who got the game ROM running on your real gameboys; those were so awesome to see!

For challenging ourselves with a tough platform, I'm extremely happy that we ended up with a solid proof of concept, and I would like to keep improving it some more. I think my gameboy itch is scratched though; next Ludum Dare I want to target a platform that's got a bit more breathing room in the VRAM department. :)

How I spent my time

The first 2 hours were spent coming up with an idea. I had a few different ideas, including a tetris game where bricks expand after every turn (leaving you out of space), and an inventory management game where you need to fit items in a limited inventory. I thought all of these ideas are super original, but of course I later saw similar things implemented again and again in different LD games :) (to be honest, many of these implementations were much more original than what I would come up with).

Eventually, I brainstormed with my wife and came to the idea of going up the pyramid, trying to avoid creatures running around. Here’s the original design drawing:

I then started with drawing the main character. I’m not an artist, so this took me a long time, and the results weren’t very good. Here is my original pencil drawing:

I “scanned” the drawing (by taking a picture with my cell phone), then colored over it with gimp:

And then animated the character using aseprite:

Obviously it’s very amateurish (and the hands move all wrong!), but I think given what a noob I am at this kind of thing, in my opinion it came out rather nice.

However, this took a very long time. 6 hours after the start, I basically had the player and snake characters animated, and had them walking around in unity:

The next 4 hours, I coded the simple AI for the snake, and started playing around with trying to avoid the snakes:

Eventually, I spent most of Saturday trying to polish the AI to make the snakes fun to avoid in different room sizes. This was eventually what probably took most time in developing my game. I wrote an entire post about this process so I’ll keep it short here. I’ll just say that one thing I learned - while it seemed very tedious while I was doing it, this was eventually the most rewarding work. It was amazing watching people have fun playing my game after spending so much time making sure it’s actually fun.

Sunday was spent mostly on polishing, adding things that are not essential to gameplay, such as adding all the hieroglyphics and wall painting, the Horus character and the dialog at the start of the game, the end game, and a few of the animations.

Sunday night was then spent on making easy mode, which was surprisingly simple to do (since it didn’t contain any new elements, except for different snake AIs which was just a bunch of tweaks of already exposed variables in the AI script).

Monday morning was spent on drawing and programming the hawk character and making / balancing hard mode.

Results

If I understand correctly there were about 1300 games, so that puts me in the top 35% which I’m pretty happy about for my first attempt at Ludum Dare! Also, I’ve had a game breaking bug (that made the game unplayably slow for around a fourth of the players) which I discovered and fixed only around 40 hours after my submission, so I imagine it also affected my score.

One thing that surprised me is the relatively high “mood” rating. I’m not sure what mood actually means - I thought only sad or scary games get a good mood score. I guess what happens is that the sad/scary games get the top results and the others just get assigned to a random score and I got lucky :)

Alternatively, maybe people scored it high because of the “ancient egyptian drawings” theme I’ve made for my game.

My conclusions

• I need to work on my method for creating art assets for the game. This took very long for me and ended up eating a very large portion of my time. I think I could get at least twice as fast, allowing me to create many more animations and characters for my game.
• Gameplay programming is really fun, probably the most rewarding of all the work I’ve done in the jam! It’s awesome watching people playing my game and commenting about all the design decisions I’ve made.
• Watching streamers play the game was one of the most insightful things for me this jam. Next time I’m going to take at least one more day off from work to be able to watch and interacts with a few streams.

That's it. Had a lot of fun participating in Ludum Dare! Can't wait for the next one. Thank you to everyone who played my game! I'm still happy for more feedback so if you're feeling bored and have a spare 5 minutes, please play my game and let me know what you think.

We're releasing Terror for Two October 10th, which means that we've got a trailer for you! Check it out, save the date, and keep an eye on our Itch.io and Game Jolt game pages! https://youtu.be/37plZ50zfiA

Cheers! - The Koala Squad

Well, the results for LD42 are in, and this time, I am extremely surprised and pleased...

• I placed in the top 100 in 7 out of 8 categories!

• I placed in the top 10 in 2 categories!

I felt Johnny's Flipbook Space Adventure was good, but I had no idea how it would rate.  Many thanks to those that played and rated.

As I mentioned in a previous Post-Mortem blog and video, this was a LD I almost sat out, but decided to jump in about 12 hours late. I am glad I did!

Looking at the graph, I normally rate somewhere in the middle of the pack, so the LD42 results really stand out. Some things that I find interesting, looking at the scores:

• All audio was done by speaking into a microphone, and changing the pitch to make it sound more like a child. No computerized bleeps, bloops or tools to create sound effects. The results were obviously favorable.

• Top 5 in Humor! I did try sprinkling in some funny things, so I am glad that it was noticed and appreciated.

• Mood.  I always score very low here, and I guess it was because I am not sure what this is exactly... until now. Did the player feel like they were playing a flipbook game? Answer is "Yes"!   

Continue Development?

After every LD, I feel that I should continue development on my game, but I never do for various reasons. With this game, I am still undecided. The high score is motivating me to continue development, and I feel that this may be a good Nintendo Switch game. I do have some enhancement ideas, like adding additional enemy types, but I also have an idea to add this style to the game I am currently developing, SMS: The Next Mission as a bonus level for early adopters. I would be interested in any comments around future plans.

In Conclusion

For a game that was almost never written, it scored beyond any expectations I had, and I am seriously considering continuing development as a stand-alone game as well as a mode in the game I am currently developing.

I also hope to keep the momentum going for LD43!

So, it was fun! I think the theme was great (certainly better than I originally thought, haha)

Here are my results:

Some of the things I learned from making my game and playing other games: - The final game may be very different than original idea - Minimalistic art is better than bad art - When I design levels, they seem much easier to me than to other people - The game should be as easy to follow at the beginning as possible, initial confusion is important

It was a great experience, se y'all in the Ludum Dare 43! :)

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

Results

We are very happy with our results, thank you so much for voting and playing our entry. We got a lot of valuable feedback and have created a Post Jam version that contains both content, bug fixes and balance changes. If you like RTS games, give it a try :smiley:

Patch notes

• General

  • Added Health bars to buildings.
  • Improved minimap: Has more information, can be clicked to move camera there.
  • Added difficulty levels. Standard, significantly easier than the previous difficulty of the game as well as Hard and Insane that will really put your skills to the test.
  • Upgrades to units and buildings apply to already existing ones.

• Added controls

  • Holding shift allows you to add more units to your current action-group.
  • Pressing CTRL + 1-9 adds the currenct action-group to a control group.
  • Pressing 1-9 will select all units in the corresponding control group.
  • Double tapping on 1-9 will center the camera on the units of the corresponding control group.
  • Pressing Space will center the camera on the units of the current action-group.

• Balance changes

  • Enemy turrets now has the ability to move (slowly)
  • Hover-tank
  • Deals more damage
  • Maximum targets set to 3
  • Has more 50% more health
  • Mine-layers
  • Now places mines spread around itself.
  • Mines now have a duration (30 seconds)
  • Heavy infantry
  • Increased damage by 30%
  • Increased health by 50%
  • Light infantry
  • Increased damage by 20%
  • Upgrades
  • Each level now costs 100 Crystals more than the previous one

• Bug fixes

  • Fixed build button bug (Player would place a building when pressing the build if a building was selected)
  • Fixed a rare bug that would cause units to visually remain after dying.
  • Fixed a bug causing some text going outside of the dialog box.
  • Purple Goo will no longer spread outside the map.

Thanks to all of you that reviewed my game, I feel like I've grown as a dev' love ya ! see you in 83 days ;P

Results Final results Overall: 450th (3.232 average from 30 ratings) Fun: 381st (3.204 average from 29 ratings) Innovation: 241st (3.411 average from 30 ratings) Theme: 368th (3.556 average from 29 ratings) Graphics: 557th (2.778 average from 29 ratings) Audio: 379th (2.833 average from 29 ratings) Humor: 282nd (2.591 average from 24 ratings) Mood: 334th (2.978 average from 25 ratings)

The best i got so far :smile:

My placements are okay considering that I feel like putting much effort into this LD because I absolutely hated the theme.

When effort is accounted for, there's still an upward trend in my gamejam scores. (The AKJ is another game jam I enter with the same rules.)

My goal this year was to work on my audio, which is clearly going well. In the charts, this LD looks like a failure when you look at the averages, but the scores pulling everything down are my theme and humor scores, which say almost nothing about the quality of the game itself.

Hopefully the next theme won't be terrible (almost never happens, but this is my least favorite theme out of every LD I've entered). I really liked the last LD's theme, but I underscoped the game which resulted in a weak entry. I haven't gone "all out" on an LD since LD 40 (my second least favorite LD theme). If I think I can do it with the theme, next time I'll put way more effort into my next entry. My pixel art skills also improved almost immediately after the game jam, which is a bit frustrating, but it's better than not improving at all. xD

I mostly improved in the areas of trees and terrain.

Here's some of my work from after the improvement:

Here's a pic from my LD entry (before the improvement):

@drums @axoona @coomzy @mykola @dancan @oberon @johnyf @timbals @paulo-augusto @rahim-pxr @brandon-napky @fakefirefly @oneiros @erikiene @antti-haavikko @pepelumen @punisherXA @cristihkj @himadri-sekhar-mahanta @unknownevil @ghastlymicrowave @dom-harris @watdowtal @keebleryestime

Check out our shiny new Twitter page! We'll make sure that the page receives the latest development news, so if you're interested in the Koala Squad's projects, drop a follow and stay tuned!

https://twitter.com/squad_koala

At the risk of sounding like I am complaining. I am seeing a pattern with a number of games where they had a very low number of ratings (under 30), yet they scored in the top 20% for many of their categories, and thus ended up with a higher overall score. It seems like some of us who have more people play (over 60) had a lower mean score, and thus were rated lower.

Again, not trying to complain but it seem like there is a penalty for advertising and getting more people to rate your game.

Maybe I am missing something in how it is scored? Is there a post that explains it?

Thanks all.

Wow, I got like 400th place, which is pretty awesome considering there were around 3000 submissions

I know it's already been a couple of days but I've been way to busy lately with summer vacation going on, part time job and the likes so I was only able to check results now.

Overall I've mixed feelings. I couldn't play many games so I didn't receive much ratings, that's okay though, as I said, almost 0 time lately, but overall I was happy with some of the stuff I did and a bit disappointed with some other.

This one time I decided to do some humanoid models on Blender 3D all by myself and that took quite a bit of time since I'm everything but an expert with it. Also animating took some time as implementing the animations and rotating the characters properly while pointing became a huge pain in the ass. Now that I've sorted that out it shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Aesthetics were also much simpler this time around, lots of plain colors because of the time, and some really simple stuff made it look too "paint-like" so I can get while it didn't gather much attention because of that. In this aspect, my entry for LD41 seemed much more clean and "beautiful" and as such was often told about it. Nonetheless I was able to pretty much fixed my biggest flaw from LD41, controls. This one time I went with something that seemed quite simple, even after all the animation trouble it gave me, yet it seems the Blood Bros gameplay is not really popular nowadays xD

Overall, programming-wise I'm pretty satisfied while aesthetics wise was a disappointment when compared to LD41's entry. I know I've learned lots from the experience and I expect to be able to get the best of both things for my next LD entry.

See ya all in LD43!

Best Ludum Dare so far! I was incredibly lucky to score 1st place in a Fun category, and pretty good scores in all the other categories as well. Had a great time making the game and watching others play it. Here are the final results:

Past results

This was my 4th Ludum Dare. And here is how my past results compare to the current ones.

LD39 - Westwood Hills Hospital

First Ludum Dare was also the first time I made a 3d game. I went for a creepy/horrorish game since the theme was "Running out of power" and I got an idea that the player is at an abandoned hospital and his mobile phone is running out of battery life. Nothing innovative, I know. And the scores reflected that. But! I scored 4th in the Mood category, so I was happy that I succeeded at creating a good atmosphere.

It seemed like people enjoyed playing it, so I tried developing it post-jam. I never got to the final version... Maybe some day!

LD40 - Imbalanced

I didn't like that my first Ludum Dare results were so scattered between the categories. While Mood rating was pretty good, the game wasn't as fun and Overall rating was pretty low. So I decided not to leave any categories behind and do a little bit of work for the each one.

The theme was "The more you have, the worse it is". The result was a species simulation game, where you have to control population of plants, rabbits and wolves so as all species would stay alive for as long as possible. As you can see from the score graph above, I succeeded at not letting any category fall behind (almost all of them were rated similarly) and the highest rated one one being Innovation at 112th place. However, the ratings overall were pretty low and I didn't do any post-jam development.

LD41 - RPG Shop

Try harding to get good scores in all categories didn't paid off the last LD, so I this time I had to do something differently. I made a shop keeping simulator with bad physics (in a funny way) crossed with a story based adventure and called it "RPG Shop". I decided to go with the gut feeling and throughout the development didn't think about how to get better scores in what categories. I just tried to make a funny little game with many fun characters one change at a time. And I think it worked! I got pretty good scores: overall 16th, humor 20th, mood 14th.

I was happy with the way people accepted the game and so I decided to work on this post-jam. This was the first Ludum Dare game that I worked until full version and released it on itch.io. Check it out if it sounds like something you would enjoy playing.

LD42 - SWORD1

And here we are now. For Ludum Dare 42 I made a 2d aim and click fighting game. This time I just wanted to have fun while making a game and decided to put most of my effort into polishing the "game feel" and balancing the difficulty and level progression. The game in its core is pretty simple: it's just hitting things with your sword until they die or fall off the platform. I had the core mechanics in first 6 hours (it looked like a gif below).

And I spent the rest 42 hours playing these levels over and over again and eliminating every little thing that I found not fun until the experience was smooth enough. I'm very happy that players noticed that and that scores reflected the same. Here are some gifs of the final game.

If you haven't played it yet, you can try it here: https://lawrence-laz.itch.io/sword1

Let me know what you think. :slight_smile: I still haven't decided on whether to continue development of this game post-jam.

If you read all of my ramblings then kudos to you for the patience and hope to see you in the Ludum Dare #43!

Alakajam! is a sister community to Ludum Dare, founded by moderators of the old website. On top of regular week-end jams, we are hosting more unusual things, like the current AKJ Tournament :smiley:

How it works

For two weeks, everyone gets to play on a selection of 6 games (mostly from the 3rd Alakajam) on which we'll try to make the highest scores/best times as possible. Using screenshots as proof, players will battle to enter (and remain in) the leaderboards.

Leaderboards points are awarded to all players that enter the top 10 of a game. At the end of the event, on September 23rd, the player with the most points wins the tournament! Check the 1st tournament winners to see the current title holders :)

Of course, there's no prizes to be won other than bragging rights. We're just here to have fun!

Current leaderboard

We're only 2 days in, but the competition is already strong! Come by and see if you can make yourself a good spot in the rankings :wink:

https://youtu.be/sWrxt9zkFRk

We have a ranking

Thank you for your feedback !

Hey everyone.

As a big time Ludum Dare fan I'm always looking forward to the next one and I don't want to wait 3 months. Are there any other game jams that have a similar 2 day all online format. The only other one I know of that I think is worth doing is Alakajam.

I'm really thrilled to announce that I've remade the game that I made for the LD42 compo. It took about 4 weeks of "spare time" to make this new version that you can download and install from Google Play. It's currently an open beta that you can test and this is the first game I'm releasing on mobile so I am treating the publishing process as a learning journey.

You can download the open beta here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Imphenzia.ParkingSpaces

Screenshot from the new Android version:

FINALLY RELEASED!!! My game "UNISAVIOUR" has been released.It is a 3d shooting game about aliens attacking earth and the universe and you have to save them.it has 15 levels+3 bonus levels+5 guns.IT IS REMAKE OF MY LDJAM ENTRY.It supports gamejolt score boards and trophies.so you can share your highscore and achieve trophies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OryHNHbm3Bo

available on: with scoreboard : https://gamejolt.com/games/unisaviour/366828 without scoreboard : http://prajwalatyoyogames.itch.io/unisaviour

LD42 was the second time i entered the jam. This time i got help from my brother for the sound and music. I wrote down a few words in this blogpost: https://supernapie.com/blog/ludum-dare-42-post-mortem

I'm sorry you guys, but we could not finish the videos with the other games we rated. We did rate them, but it is already long past the end of the jam rating, and we still have a lot of work to do. If you asked us to rate your game on YouTube and you still want it rated, we can post the unfinished and highly unpolished videos, but we don't plan on posting those videos or working on them more. Don't worry, we still gave all the games a rating in the jam, but this simply would take way too much time, and it is already very late.

I'm extremely humbled and pleased to see that Closing In: Barney's Daring Escape managed to place 42nd overall in this past Ludum Dare. (Top 5% of compo entries!)

I have had my doubts that an old console could get this much love, so this is really exciting to see. I was also really happy to see some other retro entries, including Running out of RAM for the Commodore 64, and Rad Rhino for the Genesis/Mega Drive. For bonus points, there's also a game that runs entirely in the browser's address bar!

This gives me a lot of motivation to keep going with these quirky games; it seems like people really enjoy them. Plus, as a first real test of nes-starter-kit I see this as an overwhelming success.

Thanks to everyone who played or made games; this was a great Ludum Dare!

PLAY HERE (Sorry for quality. I wish I could upload a crisp 400kb WEBM instead of a shitty GIF)

I added more stuff to Asteroidvania: Two optional powerups, a map layout that makes a bit more sense, and bigger caves to explore. Right now it's a bit empty, but the next update will have more environmental hazards, power-ups to deal wit them, and new, more varied environment art.

play it here and tell me what you think or comment on the LD submission page

I thought that I didn't understand all the hate for the theme every time. I thought that it never bothered me. The data says otherwise... :smile:

A bit of blogspam, but I wrote an article about coherency in games and other media, and it refers back to my LD blog!

One of the most challenging things in games and in any creative work is in figuring out what direction to go in.

The basic strategy most folks will use when they don’t have other process ideas is “copy-paste-modify” or “remix”: Take something that looks appealing and try to make your own spin on it, maybe add in a few other ideas. The majority of creative techniques are an enumeration of remix methods...

Hi everyone! So Ludum Dare #42 was my first game jam ever, and I decided to write up a detailed postmortem dev blog post about how it went! Topics include such things as:

• How I decided to participate (despite thinking it was impossible due to lack of time)
• The development process (including progress screenshots from Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3)
• Analysis of feedback received, and a look at the final scores
• What went really well, what went sort of okay, and what could've gone better
• What I'm planning to make next!

Overall though, I had a blast participating and can't wait to join the next one. Congrats to everyone else who finished and submitted a game as well!

hello! after about a month I'm back with another terrible game! this time on itch.io! https://naggames.itch.io/hyper-shot it's a simplistic shooter game!no music.again.but im happy with it! it's an early access.just to let you know what are the main mechanics and who game runs and stuff if you are a fan of 2D shooter game you should check it out! all the details in the itch.io site! Good Luck :fourleafclover:

Hi everyone, I'm one of the makers of Pianobots!

A couple of weeks ago, some people asked about the puzzle design in Pianobots, so...sorry for taking so long, finally I have some time now to do some sharing!

First of all, thank you all who played our game and made Pianobots the 3rd 🥉 in INNOVATION of LD42 JAM! It really made our day :D

There's two of us, @fonserbc dealing with the programming and visuals, and me in charge of the level design and sound effects.

Before the jam, we knew we wanted to make a music-related game. After brainstorming we came up with the concept of limited space you have in a piano keyboard, where you can't have unlimited hands trying to play the piano at the same time, because you would eventually clash with each other. Maybe we could make a game out of trying to fit hands and music lines into a limited size keyboard!

Refining the concept

Once we had the idea, we first thought of the easiest way to present and develop this idea within three days. We first decided to go with one-finger robots instead of multi-fingered hands for simplification, each robot could only be playing a single note at a time, creating their own melody. The second decision was to give up on time differences between robots: let me explain. When playing on the keyboard, there are 2 different dimensions where the robots could be moving their melodies: - Space/Pitch: robots can move up and down on the keyboard, shifting their melody in pitch. - Time: robots could delay or get ahead when playing their melodies, changing the rhythm and the synchrony with the other robots.

We decided to not allow time shifting for the melodies, and try to make puzzles playing only with the pitch. Looking back this was a good idea, but we still had many questions we had to answer:

How many robots on a keyboard? How many octaves should the keyboard have? How long is a loop or song? What's the smallest unit of musical time?

There are way too many directions and potential to make the puzzles more and more difficult to make and play. In the end, we decided to go with these rules: - Robots can only play a note at a time - Robots are always in rhythmic sync - All pieces happen in a one octave keyboard - 2-3 robots playing at a time at most - 8 or 16 time units in one loop/piece

The reason for only a one octave is straight-forward: to shrink down the possible combinations of robots. However, to compose a loop within one octave played by 3 robots is quite difficult.

Composing the levels

At first I tried to come up with a three-voice line, and then just cross the notes. By that I mean that the three voices shouldn't always be parallel to each other, otherwise it'd be either too difficult to find the right intervals between them because there is too much space between them, or too easy because they would either clash totally or not at all.

After crossing them though, the voices didn't sound so musical, so I realized that all lines needed to be a mixture of notes that are 1 and 2 time-units long. Musically speaking, I went from a three-voice harmony to a counterpoint approach.

After some struggles, @fonserbc made a tool for me in Unity that, after inputing all the voices (robots) of a piece, it showed me how many possible positions are there for each of the robots, and how many non-clash combinations are there of all the robots (and how many of them are repeating).

Let me explain: A combination of robot positions represents a possible solution to the piece/level. If it is a not clashing one then that means it is a possible solution, but there might be more than one combination with the same sound output, meaning that all the robots are shifted up or down, on a different key, but they all are the same answer.

In conclusion, here are some guidelines I came up for myself for puzzle making on Pianobots: 1. There should be less than 15 non-clashing possibilities. 2. Among all the non-clashing possibilities, there should be ONLY 1 that sounds right. (Not counting the repeating ones) 3. Voices shouldn't be parallel with each other all the time. Otherwise it become either too easy (never clash) or too difficult (too many possibilities). 4. Each line should be rhythmically different, to make it as musical as it can be.
5. To make it easier, try to make one of the robots limited with only 1-2 positions. E.g. in level 2 Etude in C, the first robot has only one position possible because it plays across the whole octave. That's why it's actually easier than level 4 Sonata in C even though that one has only 2 robots.
6. Try to make one of the robots a well-known melody line, so players have something to lean on. (Even though most of them turned out to be very hidden ..oops)

That's more or less it!

Comments, questions and advice welcomed. If you haven't played the game please try it out!

Hi, finally I decided to launch a kickstarter campaign to finance some servers for a multiplayer version of my ludum dare 41 game "Soccer Battle Royale"!

And now visit Kickstarter!

Hello I just modified the game that I created for LD42 previous one was extremely hard :( and also I added cool features like grenade here is the WEB link

https://ardagk.itch.io/space-survivor

A trend for many of my LD games is that I use lowpoly art and I guess the obvious benefit is that it's fast to make so I suppose the bonus is that it's fun to make and also that it is a bit of a style on its own.

I have now created 24 cars and 4 levels for my LD42 remake of "Parking Spaces". Here's a fresh level with a tram that makes it a bit harder to plan your parking =)

I am now on my 5th week making the new version of the game and the beta is available on Google Play. I think I should have about 8 levels before I do the public release and I also need to make a tutorial and some more options. For example, you need to be able to mute unlockable cars because when I unlock the ice cream truck and family van it's driving me crazy :)

This idea came up during LD but it didn't really fit into the jam and it is also a bigger project. So I wrote it down for later use.

And here is the result: The first showcase/devblog about "Siege Game" (Yeah, that's a WIP Title :laughing:)

Feedback is appreciated. :smile:

(Btw, shooting arrows is nearly implemented)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8f9L827pAk

Super Potato Bruh is a platformer combined with some bullet hell elements!

I've been working on it since the day LD42 ended and I just released it yesterday. It had an amazing launch, so I'll release it on Steam after the paperwork goes through. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UnvMe1Neok

Get Super Potato Bruh here!

Hey peeps!

It only feels like yesterday that we were all mashing our keyboards for LD42... how time flies! Anyway I'm posting to show off a video I just released: A Postmortem (of sorts) of my entry, Ludum Dare Simulator 2019! It's my first time doing a video in this style and there's definitely room for improvement, but I think it's come out well enough. Check it out below if you're interested :slight_smile:

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

Congrats to everyone who participated in the jam and thanks again for being such a wonderful community! :heart:

Hi guys, I'd like to post something a little bit different, not related to the LD at all, but is related to game development.

Well, I'd like to share with you my most important project: My wedding proposal to my girlfriend.

As an indie game developer I used all my skills to accomplish this important mission.

The achievement is unlocked, now I'm going ahead for new challenges.

Hope you like! :heart:

Enable captions for english subtitles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY-8exHlE7M

Hi everyone! My LD40 Game has now turned into a real game, for Android!

Download it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.LittleBellGames.AmongTheTrees

As a Mother Bird, you fly in an endless forest full of danger.

Avoid trees while searching for the precious eggs and guide the newborn birdies all day long toward the Great Tree, a safe place appearing at night only.

• Race at full speed in an endless forest

• Collect birds to increase your score

• Survive as long as you can, and try to rest a little at nightfall

Download it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.LittleBellGames.AmongTheTrees

We put our game on Kongregate with integration to their high scores, so you can see who's the best speed runner :P

Check it out!

https://www.kongregate.com/games/dietzribi/super-responsible-parent

Hey LD friends!

It's been quite a while, but I'm proud to announce version 1.12 of Samurai Shaver, our 1st place entry from Ludum Dare 40.

The main change in this update is the addition of an all-new audio latency calibration screen!

In addition to automatic calibration (by tapping to the beat), there's also a testing screen where you can manually adjust calibration to your liking. This is a huge boon for any Android users especially as the Android platform is notorious for having sub-par audio response times.

I've also turned on "predictive audio" by default, which is really just a fancy way of saying that the sword slash sounds will be perfectly in sync with the music, rather than reacting dynamically to player input. Reacting to player input was a good idea in concept, but ultimately the audio latency ended up subtly throwing many players off (myself included).

If you haven't yet tried Samurai Shaver, you can view its Ludum Dare page here. It's available on both WebGL as well as iOS and Android!

In less than 3 hours theme suggestions open for the 4th Alakajam!

Alakajam is a weekend-long jam very similar to LD, and the 4th one is happening in two weeks, starting on Friday 12th October and ending Sunday 14th (jam) or Monday 15th (unranked) - and theme suggestion opens tonight!

We run three Alakajams per year, and we also run month-long jams called Kajams, game tournaments where we play user-suggested/created games, and feedback sessions for gamedevs.

Check out the full rules and details of the Alakajam and the detailed schedule!

We hope to see many new jammers join the 4th Alakajam! :smile:

Hi Ludum Dare folks. Today I uploaded a new version of my chess-go-hybrid game "The King‘s Board". The game has many more features and improvements compared to the original version: - AI opponent! (You can control both players in a separate mode called Hot Seat) - Music and more sound effects - Main Menu - Additional unit: Ranger - Towers can now be conquered by most units, except artillery unit - Improved UI and graphics

So as you can see, I put a lot of effort over the past month to bring the game in this state. You can play the new version in the browser on itch.io (https://martin-senges.itch.io/the-kings-board). If you like the game please leave a comment on the game‘s itch-page.

If you want to see how I developed the new version, watch the playlist on Youtube

That‘s it for now, see ya.

Took part in JimJam #2 this weekend, ended up with something I'm really pleased with :grin: Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!

https://thechief-665869.itch.io/death-arena-sigma

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

Hey guys! I made this game recently. Need feedback for improvements

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindstormstudios.dancingcircles

I decided that my Ludum Dare 42 entry, Johnny's Flipbook Space Adventure, deserves an official release, so I have been working on a rewrite which will be released on PC, Mac, and hopefully consoles. There are two reasons I decided to continue development.

First, the game was very well received by the Ludum Dare community. After every Ludum Dare, I think about continuing development, but since this game scored so well, I think that this one should be improved so it can be released. I plan to add and tweak a few things to make game play better.

My second reason is that I think the game I was working on, Space Mission Survival: The Next Mission, would make a great add-on. You can read about my on-again, off-again development of SMS:TNM but to summarize: I love that game, I've made a lot of progress, but I get waves of doubt and discouragement in developing it since I am unsure of it's success for various reasons (I still have plans to release that game, but a flip book version fits in well here).

So, Johnny's Flipbook Space Adventure will have two chapters: an enhanced version of my Ludum Dare entry, and the classic Space Mission Survival game released to mobile years ago, but with the new flip book style. I think this will be a great game, and I am excited about its development. I hope to get a game play video out soon, and I am hopeful that a playable beta can also be released.

Coming Soon: Spooky Slime Slasher Ultra. A spooky Halloween themed timed event for Super Slime Slasher Ultra!

Hear more about it from Ambyst who's all dressed up for the occasion.

I finally made a new version of my game entry for Ludum Dare 42, "Full of Thoughts"! I've maded now a version for Android devices! It needs Android 4.4 to play it.

Link to download: https://pedro-m-m.itch.io/full-of-thoughts

Game page on LD site: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/full-of-thoughts

Our first full game, Terror for Two, is coming October 10th to Steam! We've been working on this for close to a year now, and it's finally getting released! Check out the Steam page for more details, and wishlist it to get it on release day! https://store.steampowered.com/app/945910/TerrorforTwo/

The Mansion is a platformer we made for the 42nd ludum dare game jam. We've spent the last few weeks improving it for you guys !

You have to collect the key in each room in order to move forward. But platforms disappear right after leaving them, there are also mobs and other special platforms .

I personally recommend playing with a controller, but you can do just fine with a keyboard too.

Any feedback is more than welcome, of course, and is of much help to us.

Enjoy your game!

link here : https://evengames.itch.io/the-mansion

I thought I should make a quick video between my LD41 and LD4 post mortems, maybe some of you will find it useful :smile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBuvFBcA6cI

(Sorry for advertising :\ )

How many people here are using LWJGL 2/3?. Just a question. I use to use Unity but found out I prefer making Game Engines and games from my own engine.

So I started a Devblog recently, for a game that I am working on. If your want to be one of the first ones to se it, then please visit my website!

https://www.hugimugi.com

Anyways, have a great Day! :smile_cat:

My fourth project (whatever happened to the third?) as an independent interactive-digital-media developer has been released. A few weeks ago in fact, been busy.

It is an interactive simulation about creative creatures.

WebGL demo here

Try it out, if you have the time.

Cheers!

PS.
Already working on the last project of the year.

Just in time for some spooky scares this Halloween, we've released our first game: Terror for Two! It's a cross between an old-school text adventure and a first person horror game.

The Steam page (Yes, we got on Steam with this one!): https://store.steampowered.com/app/945910/TerrorforTwo/

Spooky Slime Slasher Ultra is available from now until the end of October!

Download it here!

This Friday, at 7pm UTC we will start the 4th Alakajam!, a competitive game jam set in-between LDs, more intimate (50ish entries and a lovely little community) and is adjusted to EU timezones. It takes place over 48 hours (even for teams) and we're now in the final steps before the launch!

:bulb: Theme shortlist

For one week the community has submitted themes and voted on them, and now only the top 10 remain. You can still rank them by order of preference here!

:checkered_flag: Jam launch - on stream!

About 30mn before the jam starts, DanaePlays and AurelDev will host a livestream on Twitch to hype up the final countdown. Just join the website at that time or directly watch the stream on her Twitch account.

Expect some polls, possibly givaways (hint below) and a live elimination of themes... until just the winner remains! Then the jam starts and we can start wrecking our keyboards for 48 hours :heart:

My workflow got a bit slower, but here it is. Surprisingly it's getting better each day.

You know you achieved something, when you realize that you've been playing with your game with your friends for 10 minutes and they aren't crying about how bad it is :smile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjeNQKwf6Ek

Feedback is appricated!

(NOTHING ELSE)

It remains a couple of weeks of work https://store.steampowered.com/app/966010

Hi all :) Just wanted to let folks know that I ended up expanding my Ludum Dare 42 submission, Hiding Spot, into a full game and it's available now for PC & Mac!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8Lmmdye-AY

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/950140/Hiding_Spot/

Itch: https://toboggan.itch.io/hiding-spot

If you enjoyed the jam version, I think you'll have a nice time with it. It's a pretty small game but dirt cheap and even cheaper if you own Pipe Push Paradise.

Ok that's all, hope you like it!

I finally finished the post-mortem for my Ludum Dare 42 game, You Are God. You can read it here. I hope you enjoy!

Two years ago we joined Ludum Dare 36 and created our very first game “The Wheel”. Even though LD36 had no ratings we thought people liked the game so we decided to make a mobile version of it.

We were able to improve the game so far with the feedback we got from LD36 but now the game needs some more feedback! So if you have an android device please come and try it out! With your opinion we can make it the greatest 2D endless runner for this awesome community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI13Ty8IB-8

• Store Page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=thewheel.io.bitbucket.theewheelteam

• LD 36 Link http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview&uid=110286

• More updates to the game will be coming soon!!!

Hi guys, I want to share my last littel game "Bounce, the line", is now in a early state of development, so I will apriciate your feedback, will thank you if you could suport me by rating my game. https://www.kongregate.com/games/javi10jedf/bounce-the-line?referrer=javi10jedf

I am happy to announce that I released Parking Spaces for Android on Google Play today!

Parking Spaces is a remake of my Ludum Dare 42 game and it's actually my very first release on Google Play. The LD42 version of the game scored quite well in the competition and it received some very positive feedback which fueled me to remake and polish the game for a public release on mobile. I see it as a great opportunity to get experience in actually publishing a game so I can practice the necessary skill for a larger game release.

I hope you enjoy playing Parking Spaces =)

Check out the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLJK3E94rYI

I'm currently polishing the iOS version so it will be released shortly in the App Store too.

Finally, I'll also publish a post mortem of my journey, both making the original LD42 entry and remaking it into this game.

Hi everyone! I cannot believe the progress the game has made from the original LD entry to the current state which is the basis for the Steam Store Page!

Thanks again for all your valuable feedback and time! I have managed to get a good workflow for level creation going and I plan to make around 12 levels for the release. Today I finished making a level in just under 4 hours :)

Here is the store page where you can wishlist the game :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/961710/PuzzleOutVR/

I have a Patreon now, right now I'm serving rewards for Goo Building updates. I made Goo Building for Ludum Dare 42, but me and my friends liked the game so much we've decided to update it

Link: https://www.patreon.com/Lilkkgoog/overview

I just launched Lamplight on the Google Play store, based on my entry for Ludum Dare 39 over a year ago.

I listed it for $1, but for this week it's on sale 100% off. Feel free to pick it up, any and all feedback is appreciated!

It was a challenge for me to stay focused on one project for so long and make it to completion, and I truly have Ludum Dare to thank for that. Being forced to complete projects in 72 or 48 hours has taught me so much about scoping and planning, and I've acquired a lot of skills making games for LD. Thank you!

Specifically, I'd like to thank @togis and @aevek for featuring my project on their streams way back in LD39 (although it would be impressive if they remembered), and everyone else who played and rated my entry!

Check out the trailer on YouTube

Strengthen your biggest fans without losing the random feeling

I like randomness as much as the next person Binding of Isaac, Spelunky and lots of games here on Ludum Dare uses it in really cool ways to spice up their games.

But what if we made the seed of the randomness player-decided?

My suggestion is letting the random system be determined by factors within the players control.

For your next Ludum Dare try using a factor the player has control over as a seed for your random number. For example: - amount of jumps - amount of clicks - seconds since start of level - half-seconds since start of level

Note that this does NOT mean, the player walked 205 steps so we spawn 205 things.

The result could be 1 or 1000 or 5, the important thing is that each time the random event triggers from seed 205 it spits out the same number.

So if Random(103) = 67 the first playthrough then Random(103) = 67 in the next playthrough

For most players this will work identically to normal randomness but people who want to speed-run and optimize strategies now have complete information which is awesome.

It changes nothing for casual players but strengthens your biggest fans.

This random system could of course be a "secret to everyone" or tucked away in a mysterious book the player can find. (Or maybe the secret is tucked away in a nes-style game-manual).

I hope people use player-influences semi-randomness in their next games

The following is a clip of people speedrunning Super mario for NES and using semi-randomness to influence game-events it inspired me so I hope it inspires you.

In Mario this is unintended and many parts of Mario is out of the players control.

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

I know, I know.
"There's still *THIRTY days!"* you say.
But, I'm still getting hyped! Ludum Dare is my favorite thing ever! It's like Christmas to me! Of course, it will only be coming twice a year now, but you can't blame poor Mike, I'm guessing running this game jam is a massive undertaking for him. Anyway, have a happy and safe Halloween everyone! See you all in thirty days!

P.S. Mike, if your reading this, is there anything we can do to help out with the jam other than donating?

Hoping for a good theme this time around. Asked off work for the entire weekend :D:D:D

So this past Ludum dare I produced probably my favourite game yet. I received fairly good comments from friends, family, and reviewers and I am really happy with the outcome! Lately, I have been thinking of expanding it, turning it from a 72-hour project into a much longer-term project. I don't know where to start, so asking people who have continued their own games in the past - what would be a better course of action? Do I restart from scratch, maybe borrowing some art assets and glancing at the code, or do I continue with what I have got? The way I left it I didn't think I would be coming back to it so it's VERY messy and most of the code I would have to change anyway, but if I start from scratch it adds a, probably large, chunk of time into the development.

If you are interested, you can get the game here: https://micdoes.itch.io/dwn

Hi, finally got my game released on steam. The game was the result of ludum dare 41 and is called “Soccer Battle Royale”!

Lemon is finally out on Kickstarter! Thank you all for your tremendous support! Come check it out if you would like to join in on this project https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1843122730/lemon-1?ref=creatornav