I participate in the LD for some time, and while I'm not exactly a master of promotion, I've seen some people commit basic mistakes that can be avoided without much effort.

Presenting posts

• Link to your game! I've seen posts asking for ratings, but without any links to the game. If you don't, readers will have to go to your profile, then the game list, then click on your game to reach it. If you provide a link, people are more likely to go and at least visit your game page.
• Make sure there are images. Even if your game is text-based or otherwise visually barren (I'm a programmer so most of my LD entries are pretty bland too), try to find an interesting situation in your game that can be shown, and upload that with your post!

• Images as links. It gets a little hairy on the markup, but some people instinctively click on images, so add a link around that screenshot to your game's page! [![alt text](https://example.com/image.png)](https://ldjam.com/your-game-link)

• Be concise. While lots of details are great for technical posts and that kind of post is very important (even for your personal development, as it allows you to actually reason about the challenges you faced), simpler posts can be made short, or at least use appropriate formatting so people can glean the important information.

• Pitch your game! Find a single sentence or two that can describe your game, and even if you have more content in the post, make sure that you actually explain what the basic of the game is! Take advantage of the fact that LD readers are either gamedevs or very interested players, and use some jargon to shorten, it is fine!

Your game page

• Have at least one image atop your page. The LD game previews are very tiny, use the full width space for presenting your game! Do not mix big pictures and text though, as LD's formatting makes it hard to find the next lines. You can resize images to a smaller size if you're writing a tutorial or whatnot in your game page.
• A cover image is required. If you have a nice game logo, putting it there might be a good idea (with the background being your actual game, ideally), or at least have a nice screenshot, cropping out any useless UI elements.
• Have a Web version, even if it is a little crummy. I feel kind of bad saying this, as many great entries are desktop-only, but at this point it's basically true, a lot of people second-guess before downloading games, even if subconsciously, and that means less people rating your game. Having a Web build ensures that those people are less discouraged. If you use one of the big engines, it's often just a matter of changing the target platform and rebuilding!

And most importantly!!!

It should be obvious, but LD doesn't make it very clear. Besides the obvious fact that you should be playing other people's games because of the spirit of a game jam, rating people's games increases your "Smart Balance", which rates you first in the first weeks of the rating period's game listings.

Leave constructive feedback. Don't you love when people find bugs in your game and report them politely? Or enjoy the game, demonstrating that they actually cared to play it? Well, surprise, everyone else likes that too! So make sure your feedback is more than "nice game, like the X". More "review-y" feedbacks cause those people to be inclined to see what you made, and rate you back! Do not beg for ratings on comments, though, that is just petty.

I didn't know if I was going to participate, as I joined with 11 hours to go on the Compo clock.

But I wouldn't miss the legendary LD48 48!

So I made this game as quickly as I could, all in a single HTML file. Behold Pipes All the Way Down! Turns out I finished it with about 2 hours left on the clock.

Should run on toasters, as long as they have an up-to-date browser!

I couldn't bear to miss the legendary 48th LD48, so even with just 10 hours left in the compo, I made this!.

Chilling and rating some games over on Twitch.

You can submit your game to be played, but you gotta be there or I will give preference to the people who are!

Now I just need to add the other bajillion elements.

I meant to target the Compo, but this is my first jam in Bevy so I overscoped a bit by accident.

If you never played the original, do try it out! It's a fascinating literal sandbox.

Technically still 3h to go today but I need a break.

Draw demonic sigils and keep the other demon lords in check!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HZS_uHc3qw

Made in Bevy, play it here!

Bevy + Krita + LDTK

First time using LDTK and rusty on Bevy (no pun intended), so probably will end up with a very simple game.

Struggled a lot with collisions and animations, tomorrow I'll get the digging mechanic in.

Unlikely I'll get a complete game loop.

Had to murder the GIF quality to fit LD, but it's a very simple scene/assets. Meet Jeremias "Jammy" Bolt!

Struggled with getting the web build to work fine. Turns out the beautiful particles I spend the last couple hours making don't work in WebGL (long story), so I had to cut them out. :pensive: But I got it published just in the last 5 minutes of submission hour!

In any case, it was super fun to make! It's cool to see the tooling around Bevy evolve, it really has come a long way, and is already very enjoyable to use, even though I'm most certainly using the engine wrong (hey, it's jam code...)