Hey guys, we are pretty new here and that's our first game jam.
We managed to make a game and really want to hear some feedback from the community to understand what might be done in a better way and what weak spots do we have. So please if you have some time check it out here - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/cycloop
I see that a lot of people like our game for visual. So I would like to share with LD community a small but very easy hint on how to avoid a lot of time spent on the topic.
So that is the hint:
Simple as that. Let's go with details? So how it was working in our case. At the very beginning of the first day after brainstorming about the theme I was sitting and sketching around to find out the root direction for the game style. Here is the result I got in the middle of the first day - Sketch
Looks not so impressive, but actually, it was enough to create a core mechanic and think about levels. We were doing that almost till the middle of the third day when we started to think about how to decorate them. It turns out to be not so hard to do since we have everything in prefabs (preset objects with some code attached to it). We also decided to add some wall decorations to make levels more visually interesting. So there is a level without decorations, with and with randomized decorations
I created 17 variations of the wall block (on the image it is a dark section on the wall), 9 vertical blocks, 5 small boxes, 5 big boxes, and 3 cryo-chamber types. I didn't count what time did it take, but not a lot. That's all give us a lot of visual richness effect. At the same time placing them was pretty easy and was done by my mate, since we don't need all variations to place them everywhere.
I checked a lot of games on LD47 and surprisingly spotted that people are not using this pretty simple technique to enrich their levels. So hope you like this small tip and found it useful.
You can check how it is working in our game for this LD: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/cycloop
I know that this blog stream is going very fast and a lot of people promoting their games and writing post mortems. This is awesome and it's very interesting to go through and giving a lot of ideas to myself.
However I guess a lot of people are not scrolling to the very end and might skip my post with a nice visual hint. Check it out - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/cycloop/small-hint-to-have-a-better-visual-result
If you didn't check this game Skycrawler by @oneiromancer you for sure have to!
(you are welcome to check Cycloop too!)
I'm still posting my favorites from the jam. Today is the day to save some Damsels from the Train! Check out A Damsel a Day by @alec
Hey guys, continue helping some favorite games to find audience and get reviews. Today is a 'good boy'-day. Check and review this one! It's The Leash I Can Do by @kurt-roembke, @those-30-ninjas, @mcovert and @hemlocksoames
Today I would like to share with you quite interesting visual novel Loophole Kingdom by @mateusboga
Hey guys, I know this one is not very easy to play, it's about typing. But I think we can bring some attention and support to Ronron Therapy by @lineora, @saniae, @cataries and @redunca
Do you like visual novels? There is something really touching but missed by a lot of people (only 15 reviews!). I have a feeling that there is a some problem with launch of the game, so small advice: if it's not running it doesn't mean it's not working. I'll add an additional hint here in comments to not spoil. Check it yourself - SentIO by @leorean and @simon-parzer
So we did it! It was not easy and it went absolutely not as we planned, but anyway. You can check out our game. I will go and sleep :D Will play your games tomorrow!
Hey guys, looking for more feedback for our game. Also we will check everyone's game in back, so please don't be shy and leave a comment! Thank you in advance.
Some time passed, voting ended, so it's a perfect time to reflect on the overall experience, analyze what was done right, what was done wrong, and how we can do better next time!
Overall the process for our team was not so difficult like it was the last time we participated, but we decided to find a few new team members - and got support from @sfts & @ri-ra. Sadly, but @ri-ra left before the end, but anyway I think that was the right decision to invite some additional people, it's always fun in the end.
Not a lot, compared to the problems we had during the first participation. The first thing on my list is personal. On the first day, when I was looking for a visual style of the game and was about to prepare assets to build some level I spent about 6 hrs trying to deal with quite complicated tilemap settings, which was not worth it completely. Time-wise it was the biggest fail for me, everyone who has participated in a jam knows, that time is the most important thing. And spending this amount to nothing was an absolute disaster for me personally.
From a code perspective, the biggest challenge was physics. @ramonvicious said that he has never worked with physics-based games before and it was risky, but we underestimated how painful it can be to simulate everything. In the end, we simplified the game's physics and this helped a lot, however, some issues persisted even in the final build.
The biggest pain game-wise from my perspective is the game rhythm and dynamic. We started to have something working from the game's cycle only at the very end of the second day and we didn't manage to polish this aspect. For sure we should make a simplistic prototype much earlier.
I'll start with the personal one, but, for me, it was quite a move. At the end of the second day, I've checked the project and it was a disaster. It was fractured like a hell and there was no glue to assemble something that we can call 'a game'.
I decided to cut out everything which we were not able to make in a reasonable time and focus only on things that lead to some sort of product. We have dropped physics, simplified controls, agreed on levels structure and content, and started to do only the things critical for the completion. It was harsh, but we managed, and I'm happy that I was brave enough to do the call.
I think we also did grow quite a lot from the previous game jam professional-wise, which helped with the number of things we were able to make.
And finally, thanks to @sfts, we were able to have a nice sound, which wrapped out the whole game in a nice polished way. In the very end, I think we did pretty well. We were able to wrap a nice game out of fractured parts and, what's important, did a few steps forward since the last jam.
You can try it now if you want, we are always open for feedback :) Thanks to everyone who organized, participated, posted entries, commented, etc. It was a nice experience and we'll be happy to participate in the next jam!
First day is over for our team. Let's check what we'll do tomorrow!
Not everything what was planned completed (not even close) and a lot of parts are still unpolished, but we've done anyway. Now - going to bed, have a nice day everyone and rate our game, we'll check yours tomorrow! Cya!
Rate && play here
Hi guys, hope everyone had some rest after the jam. We would like to give your feedback about our game & would be happy to rate your games as well! Drop links in comments below, let's have the feedback circle working!
A lot of people participated in Ludum Dare 51, many of them for the first time, some just don't have enough time to promote their entries and ask for feedback, some just not aware about the way, how usually it works.
I've played more than 70 entries already and have some to share. I won't share ones, which creators promoting them often on the front page, but would like to offer you a few entries, which are really catchy, but a very little amount of people reviewed them. Let's go!
Yes, it doesn't look very attractive, tho has it's own charm, but try it out if you are not afraid to download it. One of the best music-based entries I found on this jam and that's quite sad, that not so many people crafted something music-based for such theme. But anyway this one is definitely worth to check!
Do you have driving license? If yes - probably you know how hard to park and this game doesn't make things easier! Aside of the cool puzzle mechanic there are cute assets, nice UI and one of the non trivial gameplay for the given theme. Are you still sitting here? Go and try it now!
How often I've heard excuses like "I'm not an artist" or "I'm not a game designer". This little creation shows how little you need to actually make something first of all playable, second of all funny as hell.
I always wonder how a small team (or even one person like in this case) can create a small, but pretty compete game. This one is a good example how to keep balance between everything - gameplay, art, music and code (which is not buggy at all), give a player in-game tutorial and still match the theme!
I don't know how this one missed the hype-radar, but that's a fact it has not a lot of review. Want to udnerstand what's going on? Try to imagine a plants vs zombies, but where all flowers are actually fighting against you right after you've plant them. Imagine? Now try to survive!
But keep me posted, did you find any other good example of gems inside the piles of games people created during the jam? Is there something to share? Or maybe you created a game, but didn't have enough review? Leave a comment and we all will be able to check out and help each other!
Hi guys!
Another jam finished, some time passed and now I finally found some time to reflect my experience with LD 51 and making of NN7 Guardian game.
In our time zone the jam theme is revealed 1 am saturday. And since most of our team are boring office workers we have pretty strict sleeping schedule and we can't plan a lot for the night. But it's already a tradition to gather for one hour to discuss the theme and do a brainstorming together. I personally didn't like the theme, because it sounds to narrow for me, but we are where we are. This LD we didn't went with any fancy visualization, but we got a few ideas to play around:
After not really long night we gathered together and decided that we will go with another space game for LD. Yep, that's kinda third one in a row :blush: I probably will insist to create something different the next time!
My responsibility in the team is mainly look & feel, however I also coordinating the process, helping with code to @ramonvicious, making UI, binding sound and balancing the game. However the most important part is how our games look. I started straight away with mothership model and texture to fix the art style and make for us some anchor to build everything around (on the picture below all models, except utility ones from the finished game)
While I was making this model Roman already completed some basic mechanic with gathering resources, state machine and make it everything more or less moving together, but I hope he will write his Post-Mortem later.
By end of the first day we had a draft prototype of the game and most part of assets to play around, but I really wanted to figure out how to make a portal between levels in a way that player won't spot the change of decorations. After playing with camera and effects I got a result, which was fitting my wishes pretty well and was almost identical to what you can find in the final game.
In my mind a space game is always first of all a space around the ship, not a ship itself. It was clear that we won't be able to make a whole universe around the ship, so I decided to try simplify and randomize everything I can simplify and randomize. I'm quite a big fan of randomized assets, since they are working usually quite well and making game very visually reach, even if you have quite limited amount of efforts put into assets. If you are interested there is a separate article about our LD 47 entry regarding my approach.
Actually that fact that I decided to make 3D game helped a lot with making picture adorable and cool to look at. Behind the scene the space is actually quite small, but what's important is that there are a few tricks:
Other part of the day was consumed by small assets we need - small ships, trail effects and asteroids. The second day was also a day when we've finished the gaming cycle, added asteroids and enemies, binded most of sound and finalized the code to some playable state. However there were plenty of work to handle during the next and final day.
The third day is always really mentally challenging for me. Same as with LD 49 we didn't have anything even close to the product after two days. I was even barely playing in what we have. And even tho it was looking good we had to make a few important adjustments to make it really be a game. I hope Roman @ramonvicious will share more about development & game related stuff, but even from look and feel there were a lot of small issues to fix.
I won't mention everything, but a few were pretty challenging for me. The first one was game victory and game over. If the first one is pretty easy to show the second one is for sure more challenging. For small ships we came with just removing a model at all with small amount of particles, since it won't be really visible anyway. For the mothership it was clear that it should be more visible.
On the picture above you can see two things. First of all damage indicators (grey spheres, which are actually bunch of emitters in the game), which are making damage to mothership more visually clear for player. Second thing to notice a slightly changed model (actually just cut in half) with additional parts to make it more like a wreck. Actually it was already done in hurry and I didn't have a chance to make it properly. However it worked pretty well in the game with animations and effects.
The last but not least part was UI. Yes, we didn't have a lot of it, but anyway we had to construct it. I have a UI designer background, so it wasn't really complicated for me to come with something meaningful in a limited amount of time. And thanks for event-based design in code we usually making it was quite easy to bind everything together.
The publishing and panic in the very end is not really something I'm proud of. I was able to slow down and play finally a game a few hours maybe before the deadline and it was surprisingly working pretty well. We did a few adjustments in our spawn balance but in the end it wasn't anything critical.
Fun fact - we literally came out with the game name at the last 10 minutes before pushing the final build.
LD is always a challenge. It's never simple to make a cool game in a limited amount of time no matter how many people are working together. I am actually pretty proud of what we ended up with, even tho in the process I felt like everything is just falling out of hands. I will definitely participate in the future and hope we will reach even better result in gamecraft.
Sorry for taking a lot of your time for reading this post. I hope you have enjoyed the event as we did and I wish everyone the best score and new achievements in the future!
Hi guys,
Is I'm the only one who concerned that there is no activity at all and no notes from organizers about what happens?
Hi guys, it was quite rough, but we managed it. Already got some sleep and ready to play & rate. Link in comments if you want to get some feedback from us.
