LudumData

Ludum Dare Simulator by Marcin J

[raw]
made by Marcin J for Ludum Dare 45 (COMPO)

preview.pngFirst game I ever made to completion for my first gamejam.

It's alive! Ludum Dare Simulator

Become a budding game developer and take part in Ludum Dare jams. Improve your skills and try to do better with each competition you take part in.

It's a simple card game with a little bit of player character progression sprinkled in. * The only game mechanic you need to know, is that you have to use a release build card before the timer runs out. * The first gamejam a player takes a part in is LD45 with it's current theme, next jams have themes selected from a random list consisting of previous themes and some songs from my playlist :P

I like mentioning that it's my first game and first jam, brag if it's good and makes for an excuse if it's bad. At least it runs! I wish I hadn't ran out of time and made more cards and fleshed out player progression, but I guess that's how it goes!

TOOLS: Code: Typescript + pixi.js WebGL library written in Visual Studio Code. No game engines here. Sound: Audacity, Beepbox, BFXR Visual: paint.net, px-anima

Link to a post jam version with quality of life fix. It improves scaling to browser window. Still not ideal, but makes it playable on more resolutions. This is a github commit for it if you want to check.

Youtube https://jam-releases.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/LudumDare-45-entry.zip
Youtube https://github.com/jerzakm/LudumDare-45-entry/releases/tag/1.0
Youtube https://jerzakm.itch.io/ludum-dare-simulator
Youtube https://jam-releases.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/ld-45-postjam/index.html
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/ludum-dare-simulator

Ratings

Overall 83th 3.82⭐ 152🧑‍⚖️
Fun 92th 3.668⭐ 151🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 101th 3.738⭐ 151🧑‍⚖️
Theme 89th 3.893⭐ 151🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 126th 3.71⭐ 152🧑‍⚖️
Audio 175th 3.299⭐ 146🧑‍⚖️
Humor 23th 3.896⭐ 151🧑‍⚖️
Mood 81th 3.735⭐ 151🧑‍⚖️
Given 77🗳️ 83🗨️

Feedback

MusicBlox
06. Oct 2019 · 22:57 UTC
Well this is a fun lil card game. Feels familiar somehow... What's with the random 5th card that switches between two different cards? Its pretty fun to look at all of the cards and just randomly decide "What will make a decent looking game", but then you publish your game and its trash so you try again and eventually you get better and you make better games. Its satisfying to play. I like it.
Bry
06. Oct 2019 · 23:19 UTC
Great use of colors!
geoff.nagy
06. Oct 2019 · 23:22 UTC
This was fun and it made me laugh (in a good way)! Lots of that stuff is so true. Some of the card stats were clipped on the bottom of my screen, so I couldn't read them. Otherwise, great fun!
blobo
07. Oct 2019 · 00:31 UTC
Oh wow, i love the choice of colors! It's pretty funny how accurate this is, great work!
Chaosinism
07. Oct 2019 · 00:36 UTC
It is really an interesting topic. I did not figure out what happens to my hand after using a card. Are all of remaining cards discarded? I think it might be more strategic if some of them can be kept.
🎤 Marcin J
07. Oct 2019 · 00:45 UTC
@chaosinism yes, the cards get discarded. I spent a long time fiddling with technical things and art so that left the actual card gameplay a little lackluster. I had planned there to be a bit more resource management and other classic card game mechanics, but I figured playable & released beats better and not submitted :D
badoomtch
07. Oct 2019 · 00:55 UTC
A fun game, I like the graphics. Hit a bit too close to home in terms of accuracy. Good job!
tmullet
07. Oct 2019 · 02:00 UTC
This was great. The highlight for me was the color scheme, which i though worked really well. First game or not, this was really well done for 48 hours.
Pavel Ivanov
07. Oct 2019 · 02:16 UTC
@chaosinism This is funny because this is the idea I had originally -) I didn't exactly go that route thought, lol
TasakaSama
07. Oct 2019 · 14:09 UTC
The ambiance is great, color are beautiful. I have a little trouble with the windows scale or I do not see all the scene but it's really cool overall and it fits the theme very well
OwnGamesGamer
07. Oct 2019 · 15:04 UTC
there is a bug that can give u 2 cards on one slot but fun game
starvingindie
07. Oct 2019 · 15:25 UTC
I love how meta this game is. Also, my favorite card was the "Marie Kondo Your Code"...too real. I encountered a couple bugs. I had all of one card at one point and sometimes the card would change whenever I hovered over it. It wasn't game breaking, but thought I'd bring it up. Great job!
🎤 Marcin J
07. Oct 2019 · 15:41 UTC
Thanks for the great feedback.
I've become aware of the card swapping bug right after the release haha. SOmething else I changed caused it :D You know how it is.
What happens is that 6 instead of 5 cards are drawn, and since there is no space for them all it puts 5th and 6th card in the same slot.
Odeyalko
07. Oct 2019 · 15:47 UTC
I liked the game, not like how the development went with me.
Copper_Aardvark_Games
07. Oct 2019 · 15:48 UTC
Really fun game! I absolutely love the take on the theme and the graphic style. Nice job!
unima9000
07. Oct 2019 · 15:48 UTC
Nice game. Always apretiate these kind of mini-tycoons. Thank you for creating this.
justinooncx
07. Oct 2019 · 15:49 UTC
What a meta game this is! It was quite interesting to re-simulate what I might've gone through in Ludum Dare, and I found myself making decisions not based on what was best to win the game, but what I'd normally do. THat was pretty fun~ Also, the last card can be swapped to a different sixth card, which I assume is a bug. Hopefully you'll add more cards in the future; there's still so many facets of game jamming that haven't been touched on!

Oh, and somehow, I got first place in Mood. Interesting. That's normally my lowest score, I think XD
![Screen.PNG](///raw/1fe/1/z/271ac.png)
MaximBegunov
07. Oct 2019 · 15:51 UTC
The cards and their descriptions made me smile a lot. Really liked their art. I guess there were no mood and humour categories because I scored #1 in both of them.
🎤 Marcin J
07. Oct 2019 · 16:01 UTC
Thanks for playing my game! The calculations for end result are a bit wonky because I didn't manage to make all the cards I wanted. The categories are there just kinda bad :D
adliberum
07. Oct 2019 · 17:31 UTC
This is really smart. Love how you've thrown in all the different cards and how each factor on the results of your game. Great work, and of course fits the theme to a tee.
jk5000
07. Oct 2019 · 17:55 UTC
A really funny game idea and pretty well made game. I love the music and the graphics is pretty interesting. Overall a cleaver and good combo game. Well done.
TJOSOFT
07. Oct 2019 · 18:20 UTC
Nice game! Really like the idea.
Los
07. Oct 2019 · 19:43 UTC
Nice idea! Love the outcome! Well done!
Joe Williamson
07. Oct 2019 · 20:01 UTC
Thanks for sharing on the stream! I got #1 in Mood yeah!
Enver Arco
07. Oct 2019 · 21:12 UTC
Nice Idea, pixel art hurts my eyes a little though
W0lfEnstein
07. Oct 2019 · 21:22 UTC
Nice arts and enjoyable experience. But it's not so easy in real life :c Great work!
NachtWitch
07. Oct 2019 · 21:56 UTC
really cool idea, but the cards are in stark contrast to the background, very complete and solid though!
Artyom Volkov
07. Oct 2019 · 23:58 UTC
You sir are genius, this game is humorous and well made!
Inventivum Games
08. Oct 2019 · 01:15 UTC
Great game, but as mentioned by some others some times the fifth card is doubled up which some times allows you to skip the night.
Kooshy
08. Oct 2019 · 03:38 UTC
I joked about something like this in our jam session when the theme was announced, but you nailed it. Starting with nothing is the very essence of Ludum Dare! It also reminded me a little of Burn Rate, which is not a bad thing.

My only note is that I had trouble reading the cards because they torn off at the bottom of the screen. I'm not sure if that's just me - in Chrome, I could barely see the text at all. In Firefox, I could see the flavor text but not the colorful text under it (except when the cards were flying to the screen.)

Def great fun!
Corrade
08. Oct 2019 · 03:41 UTC
This felt well executed and was lots of fun. The game's resolution was off for me (~1280x1024) and a lot of the meters were cut off. I also would've liked to see more info on the cards detailing the amount of player resources they consume.

The same kinda purple was used for the background, card backgrounds and UI background. Each element lacked distinctiveness as a result.
kyzy_4399
08. Oct 2019 · 03:53 UTC
It looks great, but I can't get it run on my Mac (html 5 version).
BrokenMirrorMedia
08. Oct 2019 · 04:59 UTC
I had some issues with some of the cards stacking or not changing between picks, but overall I really loved the idea. Card games like this are some of my favourites, and it fits the theme fantastically!
🎤 Marcin J
08. Oct 2019 · 05:02 UTC
@kyzy-4399 thanks for the input, I don't have a mac to test on but it shouldn't be OS specific as it's a purely webgl javascript game and all libraries are attached.
I will poke around the code and see if I could release a post jam fix so its playable on mac and different screen resolutions
JustusPan
08. Oct 2019 · 05:31 UTC
### After Ten Years
![ld_sim.png](///raw/a9a/12/z/28a77.png)

### Comments
This is a well polished roguelike game about game jam.
And it's true.
We spent a lot of time to finish our game, and eventually get a bad ranking result.
This game reveals the natural of game jam. Everyone come here to seeking different things. Sometime you want improve your skill and neglect the ranking, sometimes you ready to win No.1.
I got tons of fun from this game. Thanks!

### More
Bug can become a feature. Hovering from the left side to your fifth card it will become the sixth one. You got a extra option at that moment.
Jake White
08. Oct 2019 · 07:39 UTC
This is really fun, the player progression is genius too. Very replayable.
WanSou
08. Oct 2019 · 16:41 UTC
Its the most original idea i have seen on LD yet, good job, its really fun - i spend straight up hour playing this game.
Hope to see more from you!
🎤 Marcin J
08. Oct 2019 · 17:02 UTC
@justuspan way to make me feel bad about the feedback I leave behind, haha.
Thank you all so much for playing and spending so much time on this game. Card games are replayable as hell but I didnt expect anyone to commit to this once, since it really suffers from lack of content.

I think I will make quickfix so the game scales better to different sized browser windows. It was intended for 1920x1080 and should be playable in similar resolutions.
evgenimp
08. Oct 2019 · 17:43 UTC
Very nice! And the result checks out. I wish the cards would move quicker.
Freyje
08. Oct 2019 · 18:47 UTC
The design is really attractive, and we have a lot of fun, you were able to write down real facts, I rather liked the idea. I didn't really understand why my fun bar went the other way but good ^^. A little constructive criticism: I found the fx a little noisy compared to the rest.
oxrock
08. Oct 2019 · 18:53 UTC
The biggest deal is that you submitted a working game for your first game jam, so congratulations! Your first game as well is pretty impressive. It's simplistic but it's functional which is all that can be expected for a new dev in compo submission. I thought it was pretty cool overall.
superpaltus
08. Oct 2019 · 19:52 UTC
Incredible graphics and overall style. One of the best games I've seen in this jam.
Susumu Asaga
08. Oct 2019 · 23:04 UTC
I really liked this on, hit really close to home kkkk. I think the cost of each card should be visible, but it didn;t affect much of my overall enjoyment of this game.
Pedro Rosa
08. Oct 2019 · 23:10 UTC
This is an interesting game. One of the things I like more is the graphics. The pixel art and the look on the background are really cool. It is amazing the amount of work you had to create all the options do com congratz on that. The game itself is really cool to play. I like a lot the humour as well. Really good Job.
Ossi
09. Oct 2019 · 05:25 UTC
Neat game! I like the idea of balancing your health with the development of the game, this makes the experience way too real ahaha! It was a bit disorienting for me when the cards got shuffled, but I got used to that eventually. I really enjoyed the art a lot, great work!
Twelvoo
09. Oct 2019 · 05:27 UTC
#1699 haha, hope I can do better in the real world
Mykola
09. Oct 2019 · 06:25 UTC
I wish I could do that much stuff during my jam! Amazing game, very creative, a lot of fun to play!
Porocyonak
09. Oct 2019 · 07:19 UTC
clever idea, very pretty and enjoyable. i managed to get negative fun lol
iozsaygi
09. Oct 2019 · 07:46 UTC
Unique idea and art was so cool! Solid entry! 10/10
Asue
09. Oct 2019 · 18:54 UTC
The concept is great ! I can't believe this is your first game and your first game jam, everything is really very well done :o
boyTurnedRobot
09. Oct 2019 · 19:16 UTC
Cool concept! I played through a few times to see what kind of stat combinations I could get. I had a lot of fun with it. Noticed a bug though. With the card on the right, when I would roll over it, sometimes it would change card. For instance, I would get an apple, then I would roll over, then roll off and it would change to broccoli. If I kept rolling over this card it would swap back an forth between apple and broccoli. Over all, great stuff!
jusw85
09. Oct 2019 · 19:17 UTC
I got an overall of 3.7 - #1308. I loved the meta concept, it's a really neat idea! I would've liked maybe more ways to interact, currently the gameplay feels a little random.

I did have some issues with aliasing and scaling on the fonts, not sure if it's just me, I did try both the post jam and original versions.

![Screenshot from 2019-10-10 03-13-50.png](///raw/814/2/z/2933f.png)
🎤 Marcin J
09. Oct 2019 · 20:26 UTC
@jusw85 Thanks for playing and feedback. Cards are just sprites so the text is not written in code and scaled. I had some issues scaling text with pixi.js. I figured wasting an hour or two to find a solution wasn't the best idea so I decided to just go for playable and slightly bad :)

![card_happyTrees.png](///raw/620/72/z/29375.png)
Autumn Schutt
09. Oct 2019 · 20:57 UTC
The graphics are really nice and the game was really fun! Definitely a good representation of participating in Ludum Dare! I loved it!
coffeedrinkers
09. Oct 2019 · 22:36 UTC
Great idea and execution! A lof of smiles from the card descriptions... this game must be played before every LD, so you can plan correctly your time. :D Dunno, if it's a bug, but the cards moved really slow. :(
🎤 Marcin J
10. Oct 2019 · 00:19 UTC
Card movement is fps based, I didn't add delta. Oops. So for me at 75 to 140 fps in testing it was okay. If I do any work on it afterwards there will definitely be fast or instant card movement setting
LanaLux
10. Oct 2019 · 05:02 UTC
YES. Now I can relive Ludum Dare in a fraction of the time. ;)
Tori
10. Oct 2019 · 08:44 UTC
Nice game, i like how you included important aspect like sleep and not forgeting to eat, i think overall it work very well, i wish i could have done as good for my first LD than i did in this simulator héhé

great job !
Human Writes Code
10. Oct 2019 · 11:45 UTC
Four hours left in the jam and I'm looking to shoehorn in some innovation by building a procedural generation system? It's like this game knows me on some metaphysical level. Great work!
HumphreysMedia
10. Oct 2019 · 13:42 UTC
Before playing it put a smile on my face, art and audio are super lovely. If only making a game was this easy, sure did give me a chuckle! Found a bug with the far right card where it would switch between two cards when doing a mouse over, but other than that, great game! I made it out with a healthy mind!

![Screenshot (150).png](///raw/420/72/z/294c7.png)
T-Bo
10. Oct 2019 · 14:57 UTC
This is a "Ludum Dare into the Ludum Dare" ! Such a great idea ! The cards mechanics are really cool ! And there is a nice work on graphics ! Amazing ! :clap:
Lars-Erik
10. Oct 2019 · 22:54 UTC
Overall 5/5! And then what @humphreysmedia said. 🤣

![Merknad 2019-10-11 005307.png](///raw/a20/b1/z/295a6.png)
Compasslg
11. Oct 2019 · 04:30 UTC
I tried to do exactly what I did in the jam... turns out I need more sleep, or I have a really high health pool in real life

Really fun game, good job!!!
Hajden
11. Oct 2019 · 12:10 UTC
Very fun and very true to how participating in LD is :)

some issues: 5th card switches (randomly?), and the UI goes off screen when I go for another run, but I did play the unfixed version
Danilo Freire
12. Oct 2019 · 20:58 UTC
Sometimes only sleeping cards would appear in my hand! In the real life I am not a sleeper during a gamejam! hahahah. Congrats for that one, love the LD tribute, is the most important jam for me! <3
frenchie
12. Oct 2019 · 23:06 UTC
Perfect - next time I don't even need to do LD; I'll just play this game instead! I tried a few years and my top score was #45 Overall. :fist:
uchiro
13. Oct 2019 · 08:22 UTC
There were very few cards about sound. Very realistic game.
n3bul0sa
13. Oct 2019 · 16:12 UTC
LOL really funny. I had an issue (?) too with the last card on the right that seems to randomly change. Really great idea, congrats!
HumphreysMedia
13. Oct 2019 · 16:30 UTC
Hey, just to let you know I’ve been making Ludum Dare 45 gameplay videos and I’ve put your game in my video! You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kqLrk46ODA
Yaen
13. Oct 2019 · 19:12 UTC
Haha wow I ended up spending quite a bit of time on this one! It's actually quite fun and somewhat relatable. Watching those bars grow was engaging! Some balancing issues I had were that innovation was really hard to maximize or get a good ranking for, even after many rounds and adding lots of proc gen.
🎤 Marcin J
13. Oct 2019 · 19:22 UTC
@yaen Thanks for spendings time on my game! Jam results and ratings were done last minute and aren't great. Like really, really not great. I will be writing a postmortem soon and it'll be one of the points of what went wrong :) Btw. Innovation result is influenced by coding and development skills.

@humphreysmedia Awesome! Thanks so much for playing my game. The scaling issues you experienced were probably fixed in the post-jam release. I've tested the game on a few displays and it should be possible to play it on most, but it might require some tweaking of browser window and zoom. It's definitely one of the things I need to get right in the future.
Yaen
13. Oct 2019 · 19:26 UTC
@marcin-j Oh, that's fascinating since that part FELT quite sophisticated, actually! From a player perspective I didn't even feel like that part was shoddy or rushed
I guess that the root of my problems was that my coding skills were going up really slowly compared to the other skillsets and that this in turn gave me a lower innovation outcome.
Hcursino
14. Oct 2019 · 06:19 UTC
I don't remember taking that much time to sleep nor walk in the park hahaha Fun game, good job!
🎤 Marcin J
14. Oct 2019 · 09:27 UTC
@hcursino thanks. There is a lot of walking in the park, that's for sure lol. The game was originally going to be a deck builder so you'd have like one or two of these but I quickly realized i can't pull it off in time.
mharring
15. Oct 2019 · 01:53 UTC
Neat, relatable take on the theme! Nicely done!
Franciszek Pyrć
15. Oct 2019 · 05:39 UTC
Amazing. Keep it up!
Tygrak
15. Oct 2019 · 17:14 UTC
Fun game! I love how the player improves between the game jams. Maybe I should take more walks in parks next LD :). The music was pleasant, and the gameplay definitely isn't as simple as you say :). Great job overall, especially considering it's your first LD game. Also because you didn't use any game engine, I know how hard it is to start with nothing (haha).
CaptAndrey
15. Oct 2019 · 21:23 UTC
fun local theme)
GigaHood
17. Oct 2019 · 12:59 UTC
its really good and really relatable, take naps kids and eat healthy. also you forgot to add a feature that gives you more ratings if you rate other peoples games... oh wait you can just do that in real life, remember to rate others yall ^-^. jokes aside it's really polished and really well done (and super meta, why, why do yall do this to me it's too relatable), there is a weird bug that hides one card under another and i think a good fix for that is just to add one less card to the players hand but other than that it's perfect. music is great, graphics are awesome, mechanics are solid and it's playable in browser.

final rating #relatable/10
RealityCheck
18. Oct 2019 · 22:20 UTC
Very nice card game to represent the stress and joy of participating in a game jam. Had lots of fun playing this one. Graphics were really nice - great color scheme.

There does seem to be a bug with the Mood rating - seems you always get #1 for that? Maybe there was just not enough time to implement that properly.

Either way - had a wonderful time reliving the LD weekend... in a more relaxing way.
tinykidtoo
21. Oct 2019 · 02:34 UTC
MY GOD, I think I know why so many of my games keep being unfinished messes. I need to Marie Condo my code. Actually its probably the lack of sleep. This Jam I only got 7 hours for the entire thing so.....

I really like this, as someone who has done many ludum dare games. Well, it scares me how many of these cards represent my actually Jam process. It surely is a game trade offs.
ToxicComputer
22. Oct 2019 · 23:03 UTC
Great job.
Game-mon
23. Oct 2019 · 17:51 UTC
Nice game! Well I think a lot of us thought about doing this, since we were all starting with nothing when the theme was revealed :) The idea is well executed, with nice graphics and audio. Good job! :D
hwaet
25. Oct 2019 · 01:46 UTC
I love how meta this is, and on a tricky theme too. It's a fun simulator! I ran into some troubles on a 4:3 monitor, but that aside it was a real treat.
Virimine
26. Oct 2019 · 14:11 UTC
Fun game! Interesting take on the idea and very relatable! :') The background art is beautiful and what got me here! Only thing, regarding the graphics is that the cards' pictures are not very consistent with the environmental art. I also loved the final results screen! Great job!! Keep it up!! :D
Elemental Zeal Game Studios
27. Oct 2019 · 01:55 UTC
Really enjoyed this take on the theme. A pretty funny entry too. Great first entry. :)
Anion_Z
28. Oct 2019 · 08:23 UTC
Haha, such a true game
sikosis
28. Oct 2019 · 09:46 UTC
too cool ... and so meta.
elysiagriffin
30. Oct 2019 · 00:45 UTC
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!

If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/494940957?t=7h41m55s

Hope you got some valuable feedback on your game and looking forward to seeing you next LD jam if I dont catch you before then! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady

https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin