https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/the-blue-girl

Featuring eerie music by Brian Cavanaugh and original artwork by Dr. Chung.

It might have taken way longer than it should have, but I've finally put together the first post-jam update for my game Robogon!

This update includes: * A more polished robot editor with the ability to rotate blocks (using Q and E) * A full start menu with options * Smooth scene transitions * Some opponents to battle (!) * And more...

To get the updated version, simply go to the game page, and download the version marked "v0.2.0" (Windows only, sorry).

Thanks to everyone that took the time to play. :smiley:

I managed to play through around 70-80 of the submissions, and there were some serious contenders in the compo side. It's amazing to see what a single person can create in two days.

My favourites were / most impressive ( that still stick in my mind! ) were :

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/there-was-something-here - This one is a slow burn but worth sticking with until the end!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/unlock-everything - This was pretty huge for a Compo game, loved the music / style and the general attention to detail!

My Entry :

Play the post-dare version for fixed Mobile controls.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/forest-ninja-wizard-ghost

Here's an example of the light effect in action -

Gameplay of the Dare / Compo version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giNuK13kyEk

Still trying to figure out procedural trees without killing performance -

Also seeing if it's possible in the Unity engine -

Game Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/ignis-universia-eternal-sister-saga

Overall, I'd say Ludum Dare went quite smoothly this year. We struggled with the theme a bit in the beginning and I still feel it's a bit of an "anti-theme" as most games tend to start with the player having nothing or very little. This was also reflected in the other games I played this time, as they were generally very varied and not that thematic in the usual Ludum Dare sense.

We met on Friday night and discussed ideas for most of the themes that were on the last round, but "Start with Nothing" was one we didn't get many ideas for. As the theme was announced early enough (1 AM compared to 4 AM previously), we also tried coming up with ideas immediately after the announcement. Even though (or because?) beer was involved, we pretty much failed to come up with anything that felt inspiring enough during the night.

I guess you could say that the answer came to me in a dream as I woke up with the line "You are nothing" ringing in my head, with the rest of the intro text pretty much flowing in naturally. We discussed a few ideas on Saturday but decided to go with what we felt as our strong suit: a visual novel with some light JRPG mechanics. The idea was basically that you had to recruit the girls in the right order to beat all the enemies. We wanted the game to be completable in 10 to 15 minutes, acknowledging how hectic the Play & Rate gets.

While the game could have benefited from a round of polish to make everything fit together, the art came together very nicely. We had Tonzuko working on the art with Toge for the first time and process went smoothly overall. As usual, we left the splash for the last and had to do it in quite a hurry, but I guess that's unavoidable :) Compared to Room44 a year ago, we had time to also have multiple emotion variants for the characters which did a lot to bring them to life. As the writer, I could have also used a sad emotion, but that was ultimately a small problem in otherwise very cute characters.

The writing received a lot of praise in the comments, something I'm personally very happy about. The characters were fun to write and the stereotypes worked well in the context of a short jam game. I do wish I would have had time to write more variable dialogues when entering location with different parties and add a few more dialogue trees.

I mentioned already after the LD43, but I feel that a story category would make a lot of sense. This time we happened to have a lot of humour too, but generally, and especially after playing some very good story-driven games by others, a dedicated category would work better.

I'm not saying the code for the game is in any way good, but the dialogue system got to a pretty good shape where I could do the text, emotions and even dialogue trees quite easily (though it's probably completely unusable to anyone else). The JRPG style combat took a lot of time, mostly for the effects and flow. With the only exception of the particle effects, the game uses 100% Unity's UI, though sprites might have been a better fit for the battle.

Random Mishaps / Regrets

• One of my pet peeves is mixing sharp visuals with pixel art and had we had more time, I would have used a post-processing effect to fix that.
• Due to my sudden inability to work with TextMeshPro, I didn't originally figure out how to do outlines outside of the text, making the intro texts partially unreadable.
• Turns out the final boss was actually completable with only three characters, which was not designed. Fortunately, it didn't really break the game, even if Mordina's sudden appearance to the dialogues might have been a bit confusing.
• The game also lends itself well to all sorts of funny gifs of the characters commenting things. I didn't have time to make one for this post mortem, but let's see what happens after the results are out..

The Sequel?

Probably due to the jab at the end, we got several comments asking for a sequel. While it would certainly be cool to make a sequel for an LD game, I'm not entirely sure how or what it would be. I am playing with the idea of making a bit longer (20-30 min) version of the game which would extend the story from the current ending. It would need to make the combat mechanics a bit more involved, which needs some design effort, and some additional art. For the story, I have some ideas on how to take it further, though it would still need a lot more thought.

At the very least, I'm hoping to at least add some writing in the form of the previously mentioned variants and extended dialogue trees to the game after the rating is over. I guess the rest depends a lot on how we actually do in the ratings.

Want to up your aim game, but don’t mind no having an audio? Then I’d be happy if you gave my game a go! I do apologise about the audio, but I hope you enjoy! It’s my first ever entry to Ludum Dare so I’m pretty happy with the outcome! Colour Shot also makes for a great reaction tester for those who enjoy testing ther reaction time.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/colour-shot

The current highest score is 1105!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/forbidden-fruit

As we move into the final hours of the game jam I need a few more ratings on my game. I have an HTML5 build and windows build so if anyone has the time to try it out, it would be greatly appreciated! This was a fun jam, we didn't have time to take any music for the game but overall I'm very happy with how it came out!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/deer-game

Do you guys have any games that are still under 20 ratings? I can play and rate them, just give me a link!

Let's pump up those numbers!

This is a quick post-mortem of what went well and what didn't with ...and to Nothingness Return. I may do a more thorough post-mortem after the scores are in.

What went well

• Narrow Focus - This is the most focused LD entry I've ever made, and it shows. By limiting myself to a few simple game mechanics I was able to spend more time on level design rather than implementation. While the resulting level designs aren't necessarily spectacular, I'm pretty happy with them on the whole.
• Following Jam rules - In previous LDs, I've entered the Jam, but still mostly followed Compo rules, just using the Jam for the extra 24 hours. This time, it occurred to me that if I'm doing the Jam, I'm allowed to use e.g. CC-licensed music rather than trying to come up with something on my own. Obviously it meant I had to opt out of the relevant categories, but it improved the quality of the game overall both by including better music than I would have made myself, and by giving me more time to focus on what I can do, such as writing code and designing levels.
• Actual Playtesting - While it was only one person, I did manage to get someone else to playtest my game for me during the jam. Their feedback was invaluable in helping me order the levels more or less in order of difficulty. Judging difficulty when making a puzzle game is very hard, since as the level designer you already know the solutions, so getting playtester feedback is super valuable. Obviously more playtesters would have been even better, but the jump from 0 -> 1 makes an enormous difference.

What didn't go so well

• Bugs - Obviously bugs aren't particularly surprising in Ludum Dare, but this time there were some fairly problematic ones that prevented people from playing at all on certain Windows machines (but not all of them, for some reason). The bugs weren't that hard to fix in the end, but it took me almost a week simply because I had other stuff going on once the jam ended.
• Sound effects - The game really needed some more (and better) sound effects, as it stands there is only one, which plays on level start. And the one effect I did have generated a mixed response from players. Unfortunately, I didn't really get to SFX until the last few hours. I spent ~45 minutes searching for a publicly available effect that I liked, and then when that didn't work I spent ~45 minutes more trying to make something in BFXr. I should have settled on something way earlier and moved on to more effects, rather than spending so much time on a single one.

The Response

All in all, I've been very happy with the response my ...and to Nothingness Return has received. The people who commented seemed to genuinely like it, and a number of people stuck through it all the way to the end, including the final, very difficult level. Once judging is over (just a few hours now), I'm definitely going to dive back in and design more levels, as well as introduce some additional mechanics I didn't have time for in the Jam proper.

The original submission of my game was super buggy and barely playable. I decided to remake it. Here is a video of my playable version of the game. I am still working on it to improve it and will be adding levels, but this is what I was aiming for with my game for the jam.

https://youtu.be/pRWbdZhC9Mk

It is near the finish line but this game needs some more votes from you (still needs 8 to hit 20).

It's not my game - its from @phaix , @cybercat and @joern and its really nice.

And it would be cool if it get a score at the end.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/sushi-slasher

There's only a short time left, so don't forget to play and rate those last few games you've been meaning to get to!

cough, cough also play Frogbert

For me personally they were(in no particular order):

1)World Collector https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/world-collector

2)Oracle Pine https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/redwood-oracle-1

3)The Persistent Thief https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/the-persistent-thief

4)Dead Again https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/dead-again

5)The Carpenter https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/the-carpenter

Dont forget to leave links for each game you list

Also check out our game about an invisible ghost here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/just-a-ghost-looking-for-its-body

As the last hour of rating arrives I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who played my game! This was my first Ludum Dare ever, and I was blown away by the response I got! I did not expect to get nearly as many ratings as I did, and I was really happy to see so many comments giving praise and feedback for me to improve in the future. I really hope I'll have time to participate in the next Ludum Dare! If anyone wants to try out my game in the last few minutes of the competition here it is: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/nun-in-the-chamber. Thanks to the organizers of this event, everyone who played my game, and everyone who made a submission, this has been a blast!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/open-ocean

I just a few hours ago finally fixed all the major bugs and I think now it's actually a kinda fun mostly bug free mess.

You don't have to try to rush and rate it, just a few comments would really mean the world to me. And the badge offer in the description still stands (if they let me give badges after the rating period).

This was my first ever game jam. I can't believe it.

I'm sorry for all the people that couldn't fully enjoy my game because of bugs. I spent very much time at fixing them. However this game jam was really constructive for me (i had many many reviews, more than i thought), i learnt so much and found amazing games, with cool ideas behind and talented people! Again, thanks for all the people that found time to play my game. I did my best in making it. I truly hope that i can be in the next game jam, and find you there as well! :smile:

If you want, you can still play my game, "What the hell!"

Hey! If I go to a game, I still can give it a rating(stars). Does this affect anything? Is it a bug?

Thank you everyone for all the amazing feedback!

We are going to continue working on the game, and all of your suggestions have made our development path clear and full of exciting new content. We plan to implement and change these aspects of the game, based around all of your feedback so far:

A quicker way to select abilities, Mouse 1 will use abilities as well as the space bar, Controller support, A lighter build of the game that will run in most browsers and potentially on mobile, Configurable Graphics Settings, Survival Mode, Better difficulty balancing, Abilities are farther away and harder to acquire, Variations to the environment, Special enemies, And even a Boss Battle!

If you haven't checked out the game yet, go right ahead! It's free!

Follow our Game Jolt page if you want to stay updated! If you have any further suggestions or feedback, please leave them on this page as well: https://gamejolt.com/games/NeonVoid/443303

Despite hating the theme of this jam, I'm happy to participate in the jam, and play so many magnificent games. Thank you all and wish you luck with your ratings!

October is a really busy month for me so I didn't get to play as many games as usual, but Unlock Everything still ended up with a ton of people (180) finding it and rating it.

Huge thanks to all who played and left feedback. If you'd still like to check it out while waiting for results, feel free to do so as well.

Speaking of results...Remember, the people who are rating your game are the same people who choose the themes each year :o)

So...you might want to take your scores with a grain of salt. ;) Good luck to everybody all the same, though!