I've updated my "Dare" album on Bandcamp with the music from our LD44 entry, Cat Outta Hell. The album contains music I've written for each of the Ludum Dare Compos and Jams I've participated in over the years, and I update it regularly with new tracks.

https://parsecproductions.bandcamp.com/album/dare

• Musician (Wouldn't necessarily have to have good music in it, but just be about a musician or the music business for instance.)
• Deception (Trying to find new ways to deceive the player in some fashion could get interesting results.)
• Leave out one element of game design (Can you design a game without graphics, sound, story, or some other element? Especially if the lack of the element adds some unique gameplay challenge. The missing element should probably feel important to the game, such as leaving out music in a rhythm game, or leaving out story in an RPG.)

My entry, "Ex Nihilo", is complete! I managed to finish it within 24 hours (which is good, because I won't have anymore time to work on it!)

P.S. It's not broken; it does do something. Also, I'll put the source code up later.

My entry, "Ex Nihilo", made in 24 hours. Only takes a couple of minutes to play; just chill and enjoy some procedural music.

We're within the last 24 hours to give "Ex Nihilo" a try (I could use at least one more rating in Graphics to bring it to 20). Thanks!

Here are my results for "Ex Nihilo". I finally got in the top 3 for Audio!

Successes

• The procedural music!
• Completed it within 24 hours. It's better when I actually have the time to work on it some more, but if I'm going to have that restriction I might as well embrace it.
• I'm getting better with particle effects, and in particular I came up with a particle-based thing for the planets to give them a random "texture" when they are generated (actually a paused particle system).

Opportunities

• Despite some successes in the graphics, it's still one of my worst categories. Not THE worst (this time), but it could have definitely used some extra flourishes or interesting visual effects to go with everything else.
• I realize that I didn't communicate the beginning very well. I really, REALLY wanted above all else to literally start the game from nothing on a blank screen. The problem is that you have to hold down the right mouse button to create the first planet, and it's very difficult to do that by experimentation (nobody ever HOLDS a button when they're testing controls; they just click). This clearly caused some confusion, and I'm sure my Fun category suffered a bit from it (it was my worst category).
• I really wanted to have more things to click on and do, and more music (maybe just a little more would have even pushed it to 1st place in Audio). I'm happy with what I made in 24 hours, but there's a LOT of room for improvement.
• I didn't quite learn my lesson from my LD 38 entry, "Nucleu" (actually a very similar entry to this in a way, even down to completing it within 24 hours). The problem with both games was that I had very specific goals in order to progress, which of course were not communicated to the player per se, and so it was possible to miss them and get stuck or just take longer to progress than expected. I should have had things advance automatically at some points, especially once the comets started to appear (you have to click on them 4 times in order to progress, but I should have just made it also progress after a certain number of them pass by, like 8). The Fun rating clearly suffered due to this.

All in all, not terrible. I'm still pleased with how it came out. Thanks for everyone who played it!

I've got plenty of experience with both! Please check out my previous LD entries, as well as this sample of the music I've written for LD and other projects:

I've finished my Ludum Dare 46 entry, "Life of the Party"! Trying to hold conversations in order to keep interest alive at a party can be difficult for the socially awkward. Be sure to post your best times!

I still need more votes to get a rating for "Life of the Party". Please help! Thank you.

Started on the theme slaughter. I'm only 200 in, and I've already encountered 4 variations on "Remove something from a genre". So they couldn't have all come from one person...

I just completed my Compo entry, "Periphery". Please check it out!

I got over the 20 votes I need for my entry, "Periphery". Now seems like a good time to talk about what worked and what needs improvement

What Worked

• Music, as always -- I Love to try to use the theme in multiple ways, so in this instance there are loops that the Light Orb is stuck to, but changing loops will also change the drum loop playing on the music.
• Visualizer -- I tried making a visualizer for the first time, which at its base seemed to be simple enough since Unity already has a built-in function to get the spectrum data from an AudioListener. Wrapping the visualizer around a circle proved to be harder though, and I ended up doing it with vectors instead of trying to figure out the underlying math. Either way, it worked!
• Speedrun mode -- Replayability is always important to consider, and when you have a set number of levels, replayability is usually pretty low. So I decided to implement a speedrun mode that unlocks once you complete all the levels. It's also the first time I tried using Unity objects that don't destroy on load, in order to keep the timer consistent while each level loads. (I also did this with the cymbal sound to make the music seem to flow more smoothly from one level to the next.)
• Graphics -- While usually my weakest element, I feel like what I came up with did the job here. I don't really know of many improvements I would make, aside from maybe a visual link between the mouse pointer and a loop that you're currently moving.
• Mobile-friendly -- The only control in the game is clicking and dragging, which means that this game suits itself easily for mobile platforms should I ever decide to make a full post-compo version of the game.

What Needs Improvement

• More levels -- While I think the 12 levels are enough for the speedrun mode without making it too long, I do feel like I could have come up with more levels if I had the time. I originally intended to do 15, but shortened it to 12 as the deadline drew near. Truth be told though, I could probably make PLENTY more levels, since I have several ideas for more game mechanics to implement alongside them. Maybe something for me to pursue post-compo.
• More music variety -- I'm happy with the music, but it could always be better. Right now there are 8 drum loops to switch between, and 3 base tracks that it randomly enables and disables every few bars. Those numbers can be easily increased. Originally I wanted to cycle through different base track combinations for each level, but I barely had time to finish the game as it was. Definitely will be improving this if I make a post-compo version.
• Ending -- The game needs an ending, as right now it just dumps you back to the main screen.
• Obstacle graphics -- One piece of feedback I've been getting is that the graphics on the red obstacles is a little intense and hard on the eyes, especially if there are a lot of them on the screen at once. Toning it down is also on the post-compo list.

Any more feedback is appreciated (and of course your votes 😉)!

There's still time to play my entry, "Periphery". If you like puzzles with skillful movement and timing, along with dynamic music, I hope you'll give it a try!

• Musicians
• Improper Mood
• Deception

I replaced “Musicians” with “No In-Game Text Allowed”. I figured this would be challenging, trying to get gameplay elements, story, and other information across only through images or symbols.

I have completed my Compo entry, "The Discloser". Investigate a conspiracy to try and find and expose the true master.

This was a lot of fun to make. I put a lot of work into the random narrative bits as well; hopefully it was worth the effort!

Time to go over a few things about my compo entry, "The Discloser"!

The Good

• Dialogue -- While there's room for improvement (they are rather generic), I am relieved that I managed to type up as many dialogue variations as I did before time ran out. I feel like this added a lot to make the "world" feel more alive, since I couldn't convey much through the graphics alone.
• The conspiracy board -- Although simple, I'm quite pleased with how the whole note and string system worked out, and I'm glad I got it to work so smoothly. Allowing players to move notes around to arrange the conspiracy tree however they feel was an ultimately unnecessary touch, but one that makes the players feel more involved in the game's decisions.
• Music -- Though there was probably room for one or two more instrument layers, I was still pleased with the end result. Dynamic music always helps the mood!
• Randomized conspiracy tree -- I was proud of the fact that the tree randomizes each time. Ultimately it has no real impact on gameplay, but it FEELS like it does. Maybe later on if I expand the game and give groups unique traits, that could change...

The Bad

• No save -- The game really should have had a save system so that you could quit and come back to the investigation later, especially given how long it can take to play a game.
• Dead ends -- I should really have made it easier for dead ends to be thrown out, as they really begin to clutter up the board, especially in the late stages where very few of the newly-uncovered groups are actually involved.
• Readability -- The icons are not always helpful at first for a new player to know what's going on. For example, I really should have used a separate icon for each time of day, instead of the confusing-at-first letters. Also, putting the data count in a document page instead of a hex would have made it a lot clearer to know what the number even represented.
• Tree direction -- Speaking of readability, the group links really needed some kind of indicator showing which way is deeper on the tree (i.e., which group is the master and which is the puppet). I think a simple arrow attached to the string probably would have sufficed, and I even thought of that during development, but I forgot about it in the midst of everything else that needed to get done.
• Difficulty -- The game gets crazy difficult, especially near the end, mostly due to the low success rate when investigating groups deep in the tree. While I made all failures increase the odds of later success, it sometimes felt like it wasn't enough. I've seen people so close to winning, but just couldn't prove the last link because of research taking so long and leading to a failure, and having to start again.
• Repetition -- Although there's a fair amount of dialogue variation, eventually it gets old, and it's common to just click through it. It could have used a lot more variation, but I just didn't have the time.
• Awareness -- A big feature I had cut out of the game early during development was a group becoming increasingly aware of your investigation activities, and eventually at some point it starts manifesting as a failure chance on your activities. This was going to encourage you to investigate other groups more and let their awareness die out. But I couldn't think of a good way to communicate it to the player, and I had bigger fish to fry, so I cut it out. Still would have liked it though.

Ideas For Improvement

• Awareness -- Per the above. I'd still like to put it into a full version of the game, especially if there were group-specific consequences to awareness getting too high (such as the Police Department attempting to arrest you, or the Hackers deleting undeciphered data you've acquired).
• Group-specific dialogue -- If I had a lot more time, I'd have happily added dialogue variations that were specific to each group, in order to keep the player reading. Maybe generic ones would still play from time to time, but if each group had unique dialogue and interactions, players would definitely want to stop and read it more.
• Ally groups -- I had the idea that if a group is proven not to be linked to the conspiracy, you might be able to ally with it, which would confer special bonuses onto you. For example, the Police Department may provide data obtained from criminal groups, or the Hackers may allow you to decipher data faster, etc.
• Enemy groups -- Similarly, a master may confer traits to their puppet, and vice versa. For example, gangs may make nighttime investigation harder, or the Sanitation Department might decrease the amount of data you find during an investigation, or the Hackers reduce the chance of data being useful. Proving the link between the groups would also sever this passing of their traits.
• Different types of data -- Originally I had thought that data could take many forms: simple documents, encoded documents, encrypted documents, etc. Each would have their own method of deciphering, ranging from finding a codebreaker, to hacking the encryption, to just spending extra time sifting through a mountain of documents. Each may have some way to get it done faster.
• Player backstory -- The game should choose one out of some random backstory options for the player to show how they became aware of the conspiracy and why they want to disclose it to the public, probably tying into whatever the conspiracy's plan is (i.e., the plan should not be just a vague threat like in the compo entry).
• Multiplayer? -- The idea of multiple people investigating together has an interesting ring to it. Players would each select which activity they're doing, and after everyone has selected it, they are all performed simultaneously, with the results being delivered at the end. Multiple people could also collaborate on an action in order to improve the odds of success. The difficulty of the game would have to be increased to compensate obviously.
• Much larger additions -- If I had a team and/or a budget behind it, I would gladly make the game far more complex with more actions to do. This would include things like being able to purchase items to make investigations easier, actual dialogue options with contacts, some kind of stealth minigame for investigation, failure consequences, etc.

There's still time to play my compo entry, "The Discloser", before ratings close in about 5 days! Try to uncover the conspiracy before time runs out!

I've updated my album, "Dare", with 4 new tracks for Ludum Dare 45 through 48. This brings the total count of tracks up to 23. As usual, anyone who already has the album can freely download the new tracks as well. Thanks for your support!

• Remake your first game
• Deception
• No Text