Pretty much everything was new for me, even though I did take part in a couple jams with a team before. I got a bit lost when doing the physics, so they are mmm, a bit weird sometimes, but the game mostly works as I imagined it. It's a platformer, where you also play Tetris to build yourself a path. I'm glad I * finished * it on time xD I would appreciate feedback on the idea itself most, because I know everything else needs improvement.

Check it out at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/tetformer

After some trouble getting the connection to our remote programmer working, we all took a break to make pizza. Project wise we are slowly getting somewhere, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

So before we actually have something in-game worth showing, here's a picture of our pizza

P.S. The VehicleBody3d in Godot 4 beta seems to have some bugs atm, so we will need to make something from scratch :(

We did it! We finished it. And we are pretty sure it works. This was my first time designing a puzzle game, so feedback will be much appreciated. I made quite a couple levels, and with the help of the team they work and look pretty nice. Let me know if you managed to collect all the golden stamps. I hope I found the optimal solutions for all the levels haha.

Check out the game at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/rawnhill-post :heart:

Game jams are fun, but they sure are exhausting as well, so I'm glad the main grind is now in the past :)

Any other teams who have a mostly dedicated game designer? I'd love some tips about what I'm supposed to be doing in the middle of the jam. I have a lot of work at the start and towards the end, but in the middle I still fall back to being a programmer. This time around, after we did some brainstorming and decided on an idea, I spent quite a bit of time writing things down and defining them in a bit more detail. After half a day I felt like most things were defined well enough that everyone else could work on the implementation. I had to add and change a couple things, help around a bit, but honestly the design doc didn't change much. After that I felt like I couldn't really do much until the game was kind of playable so I could playtest to see what works ok and what doesn't. So I started programming and helping the others out.

So, fellow game designers, what do you do in the middle of a game jam? Do you all have secondary roles?

I'd love to hear what you guys do, but I'd also love it if you check out our game :P

Check out Packed Ride at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/packed-ride

Another jam, another game. We are feeling pretty good about the end result, but we would love to get some feedback from you guys, so go and write something in the comment section!

Check out the game at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/riches-from-below

Thanks to everyone who has given our game a try, we've reached 20+ ratings! And even more importantly, we've gotten some great feedback in the comments. We love that - we love it more than the overly positive comments people make. So if you haven't yet, go give Riches from below a try and let us know what you love and what you'd improve. The divers are waiting for you!

Our world generation now (mostly) works. We are simulating a simple economy, where the steps go something like this: - we pass new tax policies, - villagers make money, - we collect the taxes, - villagers can't afford food, - villagers die, - ??? - profit.

On a more serious note, balancing this economy will be a big pain in the ass. So many numbers, so many AnimationCurves, so many unforeseen consequences. Also, so much UI. And no one on the team likes making UI.

But progress is looking good so far. Pretty much all the base systems are set up, and (if we ignore the self destructing economy) things work as intended. Best of luck to everyone!

Paying taxes sucks. Filling in forms, submitting papers, guessing if you filled out the right ones. But you know, taxes aren't all bad, they can actually be pretty fun, IF you're the one collecting them hehe.

Come, develop your regions, build cities and collect the maximum taxes possible in Taxcellent!

As the rating period is coming to an end, we decided to release another small update. We already have enough ratings, but we felt that the game needed a few fixes and small improvements. The main thing we fixed is

No more memory leaks!

Some friendly advice; don't lerp the color of Unity's TextMeshPro... It seems like it rebuilds the mesh every frame because the color is passed as a vertex color, causing very big memory leaks that never seem to get cleaned up. It caused some crashes, especially when people tried playing multiple rounds without closing the game.

How we fixed it.

We were changing the alpha of the TMP object to fade out the floating numbers when playing the turn animation. We added a canvas and changed the Component from TextMeshPro to TextMeshProUGUI. Then we added a Canvas Group component, which allows you to control the alpha (transparency) of all it's children nodes. The effect is the same, but memory isn't leaking. Hurray!

Region developments and upgrades used to be "applied" during the turn calculation phase, after some other things were already calculated. This caused a bit of confusion, as the order of events wasn't properly explained, and there were quite a lot of things going on between turns.

We don't really need more ratings (and rating the updated version goes against the game jam spirit), but we would love to get some more feedback now that the game doesn't randomly crash anymore. Find Taxcellent at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/taxcellent