First LD. Since it's the 48th I think it's really time to do it and stop saying "one day I'll do it". Know LD since years, never did it, it's time.

Going to use Game Maker. Really hope the theme will be inspiring. Might sleep some one hour and half before it...

Work 3h on movement to have something similar to old Pokémon games. Needed the help of a friend because I made an overcomplicated system. Went to sleep after 3h30 hours of harsh programming at 6h30 (France), woke up at 9h, spoke a bit with friends that were at my place that night, shower, breakfeast, and I can resume. Now I gotta deal with collisions and then with a simple camera... Hope it'll be done for noon. I suck at programming, even on GMS 2.

It has been hard but I finally have most of my tools. It'll be 24h soon. The game will be about going deeper inside of the character's emotions. It's not really a breakthrought in terms of programming, but I'm glad I can give this atmosphere with this little game... well, if I manage to make it.

Hello ! Since these are the last hours to rate games, I'd like to show some games I enjoyed. I'm not necessarily showing games lacking rating, just some I really liked in the jam.

(Note to the pinged creators : if you want me to remove or edit your game presentation from this post, feel free to ask ; I just wanted to promote a bit your games because I particularly enjoyed these.)

Unto the eight by @threeli : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/unto-the-eight

A beautiful looking game set in a bizarre world, cold but far from being lifeless ! Deterministic in its design, the game is enjoyable for many aspect, being some sort of puzzle-exploration game. Might be my favorite entry.

Jawbreaker by @arya-s : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/jawbreaker

A story driven game in a delicious mafia-movie atmosphere. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men... and jawbreakers candies.

Downward Frog by @goggleskitty : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/downward_frog

A very cute game, with beautifully animated pixel art. Somewhat demanding skill, but yet relaxing.

Gulp! by @goodgamesjames : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/gulp

Weird atmosphere but grossly funny ! This one is very original in its settings.

Memories.io : a living painting by @namidasai : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/memories-io-a-living-painting

Might be one of my favorite concept from this jam. I think there is something to dig. Also a good "thinking-fuel", as it can be a bit introspective. This one really gave me unique feelings !

Try again by @cryoxe : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/try-again

I liked this one because its creator and I had a similar idea. I believe this game works well better than mine and that you should give it a try, the retro atmosphere, the music and general feelingss are very good !

And here it should be enough. I really loved these games, alongside many others. I hope most of these will get a sequel / buffed-up-post-jam version, because I liked a lot their concepts. Thanks to the creators of these games for making these !

I'll be in this year. Did LD 48 last year, and was waiting for this one. Unfortunately I'm not on holidays this time, and while I'm not working on the week end, I'll still need to sleep to be fresh by monday, plus I have to go to a concert tomorrow night (a friend's premiere !). But hey, it's just a bit of a bonus challenge to have less time, just gotta try.

So I'm going to sleep now and wake up in 4h to see what will be the next 48h flavor. I hope it won't be Mutation because I already did an other jam with friends with this theme, tho it could be fun to try a jam with other ideas.

I'll use Godot this year, along with Aseprite, and probably SFXR. And, of course, a pen and a notebook !

Can't wait to play the games submited !

Alright, so being French LD started in the night for me, I've woke up at 3 am to see the theme, took a notebook and write ideas in my bed for an hour.

I have an idea since sometimes ago that I want to prototype, and that seems fitting for this theme, I'll detail it when I'll have screenshots to save a bit of time.

Until 12:15 (it's now 9:45 AM) I'll do the core mechanic. Hope I won't have too much problem before lunch.

Here are the notes :

EDIT : made the pictures smaller.

Kind of a rough start this time. After waking up in the night to check the theme, I got a bit embarrassed ; I had no idea what to do with this one, I don't really like the theme. But hey, it's part of the challenge. I wanted "You're not the main character", because I immediately had an idea.

The rest of the night was a bit hard for sleep, and dreams didn't really helped me get an idea.

So two hours ago in the morning I started pondering. what if I adapted my idea for not the main character to this theme ? It could actually work. But it loses a bit the spirit too. And an idea working for two themes seems a bit less compelling, all of a sudden.

So I kept thinking while taking my breakfast. And I decided, after four ideas, to go with a game where you are a witch trying to stop an evil force, in a horizontal shmup gameplay. The twist : you summon not only your bullets, but also thunder and crows to help you, and even health refills and power up ! Want to activate a bullet time mode ? Summon seconds to Time itself ! But everything has a cost : summoning something asks for salt. And salt is not naturally found airborne. Solution ? Avoid the ennemies bullet with timed dodge to absorb their own, and extract the salt in their summoning by catching them in your summoning circle. Nothing too hard for a witch really.

Absolutely no idea if I'll be able to pull this off because it's a bit ambitious, and I actually can't commit full week end to the LD. But I'll try to do a Proof of Concept at least.

Here are the first drafts :

Slowly advancing on that witch invoking things with salt game.

Since it's my first time with shmups and one of the rare time I'm doing something in real-time in general, I had to figure out some things along the way, but Godot's tutorial are helping. So for now the bullets can hit both the player and the enemies, and the player can absorb the bullets with the light behind its character. Absorbing gives back some salt, necessary for summoning bullets and other spells (that are yet to be programed and implanted). The player can charge its shot to fire five salt balls in a row.

I feel like the game won't go further than a proof of concept, because I took much more time than I expected on simple features like proper shooting and particles.

The graphics will be handdrawn, like the salt shaker in the upper part ; this is to test a workflow I want to try later.

It's still too much of a prototype for my taste, at this point in the compo. Knowing I'll absolutely need to submit tomorrow at around the same time, I feel like it wont be very good. But hey, participating is already better than doing nothing !

Gonna try something with music and sounds before taking a real break.

Very rough start for me. I woke up in the night to see the theme (LD starts at 3 am for me) and felt uninspired. Went back to sleep, but no idea came to me in a dream. This is the third jam I do that has a "deepth" theme, after LD48 and a smaller jam from a discord I hang in. It's getting hard to be original at this point, especially when you want to avoid the Downwell likes and other common tropes.

In the morning, it took me several hours to find an idea, largely based on one I had for the Plant the seed theme. Basically a flower that would grow over time, even when the user don't use the game, and that you have to take care of. The depths twist would be that you'd also see the roots and have to take care of it, as "depth" of gameplay. Yeah, not very in theme, I know.

So I tried to make something of it ; but it felt like it was too far of the theme, and I struggled to much to animate a 2D skeleton to make flowers moving naturally. I quickly felt like I shouldn't go with it. While going to eat with family, I had a minesweeper idea. Basically a 3D one taking account not of 2, but 3 axis, to make minesweepers go in depths. "Meh, definitely going to be something you'll see a lot this LD..." I told to myself. "...but it's not like I got many other ideas". I also realised I'd have to learn quite a few things to do it, which is the reason I do this jam in the first place ; to learn something from it.

So I might go on with this. I've never done a minesweeper and from what I understand, it's actually a bit harder to do than it seems ; hope It'll go alright. The challenges for me will be : - To make a 3D simple game ; - To make a minesweeper ; - To make a good scoring system with it.

Let's hope I finish this one !

5th LD I participate in ! Being sick since the begining of the week, I only hope I'll be able to produce at least at fraction of my idea.

So I'm kind of lucky ; Collector was one of the themes I had an idea for, actually pretty much the same as the Modular theme : a prototype for a card game where all cards are generated procedurally. It'll definitely be a proof-of-concept at best because I lack some knowledge to achieve my idea and I don't have the energy to fully commit to a LD while sick, but I want to give this a try.

It's noon where I live and I just finished writing down the ideas I had in the night (I checked the theme quickly when waking up during my sleep), and combined them with ones I had before.

Yeah, I've been replaying Magic The Gathering recently, and it shows.

EDIT : took out two pictures because it taking too much space, I don't want to take the whole front page.