When does the theme voting start? I thought it was supposed to be starting 2 weeks before the event.

This is the first time our team is participating in Ludum Dare.

I'm interested in hearing how do you prepare for the jam? Do you for example create some boilerplate code to save time during the jam? Do you practice?

I usually prepare for the jam by opening Unity and doing some initial testing few weeks before the jam. For example now I am very interested in doing some hex-based strategy game, so I have been doing some initial testing how the unity tile-maps work etc. I have never used the Unity tilemaps before and I dont want to spend the whole jam learning it. I have also already implemented some basic path finding algorithm that I plan to use during the jam, as the rules allow to use ANY previously done code.

What about you guys? How do you prepare? And do you think it is ok to start coding before the jam has started?

When does the them voting start? It is only 6 days to jam and at least in the previous jams there has been 4(?) voting rounds.

I feel like Ludum Dare would benefit from a clear timetable for the different stages of the event and then automated process to handle it. The automation might however be rather tricky because of the manual work in combining the different themes.

Is this normal? I have always left unchecked the box "receive notifications", but still, I get the notifications. It is rather annoying to have notification from every comment from every game that I have ever reviewed.

Hello everybody, I just wanted to share and document evolution of our game Treasure Tactics. In the 3 previous jams we have had clear idea from the beginning and the have stuck with that idea. But this time we needed to re-do many things. Luckily we had some screenshots from different stages of our game to see the evolution from start to finish. :)

After 1 hour: we had an idea - Turn Based Strategy with 10 second asynchronous turns, where projectiles fly in real time.

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After 10 hours: Hex based city of Kouvola (Finland). The game is not fun and looks depressing! Panic!

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After 20 hours: Bye bye Kouvola, welcome Caribbean sea and pirates. But the game looks weird and cheap. :(

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After 40 hours: Random generated map and the visuals are starting to shape up. But the game is still very buggy, there is only one (1) enemy on the whole map and the gameplay is terrible.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-rXaIs9yq8 After 72 hours: Finished product. It looks and plays nice, overall we were really happy with the final game. :) Shoutout to https://www.twitch.tv/matchamaze for playing our game. <3

I have several years of experience on Unity. I have released 6 games made with Unity. However, this time, our team participating with Godot. We have no experience(or very little experience), but Godot seems cool. Are we idiots? Is Godot over hyped over Unity? All opinions welcome. :-)

Am I the only one, who feels like, that three Ludum Dares per year is just too much? I would prefer only 2 x Ludum Dares / year. Of course I could simply just not participate to all three, but then my streak would break. :D

I am eager to start planning and preparing for the next jam, only couple of weeks!

Slaughtering is the most time intensive process of the voting, and there are still 4 voting stages left, with 9 days until the jam soooo....

... is very tricky to come up with any ideas I would be happy with! Panic!

I am unable to see the count down timer on mobile browser. Requesting desktop version does not help. Any workarounds? I am eager for the results and I check the timer regurarly. XD

My game received 5 reviews without any comments while our team had reviewed 0 games. To me it sounds like some teams are just blindly giving random reviews in large numbers. There might even be bots included.

What do you think? And is there anything that the community could do to mitigate review spamming?

Our game is gettings more reviews than downloads (stats available on itch) and most of the comments dont make much sense. I get that people dont want to download a game with unusual installation process, but leaving a review without actually playing it just makes me angry...

Meaningful and costructive feedback would be highly appreciated!

One of my earliest Game Jam games was Medic Mayhem. I have been wanting to make a sequel for it a long time and now that the theme suits it little bit, it feels like perfect opportunity. However using a "ready" game as a starting point this feels like little bit of cheating. That is why I am thinking about the Extra format.

What do you guys think?

Had only couple of hours so far to do this, but I am pleased with the progress. Quite tricky to take care of 2 year old child and participate in Ludum Dare, but so far so good. 💪

While reviewing games is fun, it also takes time, glad that the chore is soon done. :v:

If you are looking for short games to review, here is < 1 min experience: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/photo-pro-papparazzi