First time doing a jam, dunno what to expect really but I'm excited, we'll see how it goes. Wishing everyone the best of luck!

I think my game is coming along fairly well. I'm not sure how the gameplay will hold up, I may have to introduce some obstacles for the player to stop them "cheating". Overall development is going smoothly. I pretty much have a working prototype now, I had a few stalls where my coding knowledge failed me but I have managed to work around them. Pretty excited, gonna keep working for a while longer to make sure everything is definitely working and then probably hit the hay and get to making it pretty tomorrow. When the theme was announced I spent a while just mapping out ideas, I'm glad I chose one of the simpler ones because it's certainly turned out to be plenty for one person to handle!

I'm wondering wherher to try for compo. I mean, I wasn't originally going to but, my game is playable. And I do qualify for entry seeing as I'm a solo developer. But it still has minimal graphics and no sound, needs more robust gameplay and playtesting...on second thought, probably better off sticking to jam rather than trying to cram it all into the next 15 hours.

Ambitious, perhaps. We'll see how it goes.

You had better be PUPARED!

(prepared)

I managed to concept, model and animate characters, implement new gameplay features, and improve the UI. Looks like tomorrow will be audio day. I'll probably keep the menu and tutorial as simple as possible, given how little time is remaining. Overall, I am pleased with how the game is turning out. Very glad I didn't try to submit in time for compo deadline, my hat is off to those who did!

Making dog noises into a microphone. Exciting stuff.

I'm just trying to make a build to check if anything's messed up. Mainly worried about the UI not scaling properly etc.

I'm so exhausted but so happy!

Please give my game a try!

https://antaresvaldemar.itch.io/keypuppers

I noticed a terrible issue with the controls. I've fixed it now and will reupload the game shortly. Glad I decided to build eary :')

Sorry about that little snag, the game is now playable again!

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVGMHO0HJ4A

Play the finished game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$15179

I shared my game KeyPuppers with my friend. He proceeded to obliterate my own high score, which was 520. As the game's creator I feel somewhat competitive about this... Try it and see if you can beat his high score. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$15179

Fixed bug - freeze power did not reset to full charge after clicking "Play Again".

Play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$15179

As soon as the theme was announced I grabbed a pen and notepad and started mapping out ideas.

I decided the keyboard world idea was the most original and also simple enough to create in the available time, so I slept on the idea and began fleshing it out the next morning.

Some mechanics evolved or were cut but the idea remained mostly intact. I decided to focus purely on programming the core mechanics to being with, so by the middle of day 2 I had a playable prototype but the characters were still grey capsules. I spent the second half of day 2 designing, modelling and animating the game's characters and objects.

I made myself a to-do list for day 3, prioritising the elements that were most lacking.

When I woke up on the morning of day 3 my game still had no sound whatsoever, so I set about creating sound effects using household objects (and recording puppy barking noises with my own voice...), once the sound effects were in place I grabbed my acoustic guitar and recorded an arrangement of the theme tune, which I had hummed into my phone the night before.

I was able to get through most of my to-do list but as the deadline was approaching I decided to abandon the ideas of difficulty settings or multiple levels, and just make sure what I had was as polished and balanced as possible.

I was anxious about not having the tutorial done so I got that made probably earlier than I should have. I found myself remaking the tutorial pages as I updated the game's mechanics and controls, which in hindsight was wasted time. Once I realised how long the tutorial was I added in the page numbers, just so a player wouldn't be put off by clicking through seemingly endless pages.

I uploaded my game a few hours before the deadline. After playtesting it in my browser I realised I'd made a huge error by choosing the Alt key as one of the controls (it kept bringing up a menu in the browser and shifting the whole game on the screen, distracting to say the least). So I hurriedly reprogrammed the controls, updated the key sprite and reuploaded.

With a couple of hours to spare I was totally burnt out but satisfied with what I had created.

I think a deciding factor in how things played out was my choice of a relatively simple idea. I think it has the potential for added features and greater variety, but I was able to execute on the core idea due to its simplicity.

A couple of things I think I could have done better:

Firstly, brushing up on my knowledge of the softwares I was using before the event started. I wasted quite a bit of time looking up how to do things that I knew before but had simply forgotten. I should have anticipated what type of methods I was going to use and practiced ahead of time.

Secondly, I started with great planning and work rate but as the event progressed my focus started to drift. There were times when I sat there spacing out, weighing up in my head what to do next and wasting valuable time. Burnout was partly to blame for sure, but I could have done a better job of small-scale time management.

Overall, it was a great experience. Honestly I never would have thought it possible to create something like this on my own in such a short time frame.

So thanks Ludum Dare for the inspiration to push myself to the limits and find out what I was capable of!

Here is a full timelapse of my LD38:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVGMHO0HJ4A

Play the final product here!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$15179

View post on imgur.com

This is my entry to LDJam 38! Your keyboard is a small world, and these small but energetic puppers love it! Can you keep up with them?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$15179

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

If you haven't tried my game KeyPuppers yet please give it a go and rate it! If you already tried it, please rate it anyway :)

Had a blast last time, which was my first ever game jam. Looking forward to getting stuck in this time around too!

I had a pretty productive day! Woke up, checked the theme, mapped out some ideas and settled on one pretty quickly. I programmed all the basic gameplay in the morning, and then spend the afternoon doing very rough photobashed concept designs for the environments. Then in the evening I blocked out a rough version of the environment in 3D, and made sure the player was interacting with it properly.

Tomorrow my aim will be to plan out the sequence of events in the game, add NPCs and dialogue, and then if I have time polish up the environments and make the character models.

If I can get all that done tomorrow I think I'll be in pretty good shape.

I don't have a name for my game yet but I'm excited about it :)

I have a playable game, albeit shorter than I had originally intended. The story is going to be a bit of an unintentional cliffhanger because I can't afford to spend any more time on it. Everything is still cubes and capsules. Tomorrow is modelling day. I have to design and model the characters, and then remodel the environments, and assuming I get that done, I have sound and music to create. ...and then I have to test play the game and solve the inevitable bugs. So yeah, tomorrow is gonna be a busy day. I'll do my best. Hope everyone's projects are coming along well!