I've been doing LD for quite a few years now, but one game per jam was always more than enough. This time though, I really wanted to push myself. The last couple of LDs have been quite relaxed and laid back, so I decided to jam to the max this time around. I jammed at the Kokolores Collective in Ludwigsburg, Germany, together with my friends Kathrin and Kasi, and it was beyond amazing to work with you two! (I live in Berlin, but they had their housewarming party the Thursday before LD and so I went there for the whole week)

We first brainstormed around an hour on the theme and came up with a few interpretations we liked. We chose a mechanics-driven approach for our team game and worked from there (the story is thus a little abstract), but in the back of my mind I always had this narrative idea about cows and meat that I wanted to pursue. If there's time, I said to myself, not really believing it could be possible. So, most of Saturday, we worked together on our game, I did some code and story writing, as well as music and testing on Sunday, and we progressed quite well.

After having watched High School Musical (which was way more entertaining than I had expected ^^) to end this intense day, the other two left, we had a game that was pretty playable already and I started working on my own little entry. It was a very pleasant way of working, since due to the very little time I had for this game, everything was "good enough" pretty fast, so I made some decent progress that night.

After 5 hours of sleep. I spent Sunday working almost exclusively on that little game, which wasn't really planned, but came very naturally, since our team game seemed to also be progressing well without me (like mentioned above, I only did the music and some testing that day). We managed to finish the team game in the evening and it was in more than good enough shape, the other two left and I continued working. Three hours before the deadline (midnight in this part of the world) I was almost finished and doing some polish on the game, but that polish came in a very sad fashion (recording panicked cow sounds, doing sad music, reading facts about animal slaughter) and it really, really got to me. I was so sad that night and almost started crying, being all alone in a big, dimly lit office, deprived of sleep and feeling the weight of so many animals dying everyday to feed humanity. I couldn't go on anymore, but it was okay. I uploaded the final builds and went to sleep. The next morning I woke up, replenished, not terribly sad anymore, more melancholic, but above all proud and satisfied. It was a great weekend.

So, these are our games:
First up, limbostore.heaven, our team effort, that is quite polished, also has a bit of playtime, and that I am super proud of. We are still missing a few ratings to get to the magical 20 on this one, so I'd be forever grateful if you left us some feedback:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/limbostore-heaven

And secondly, my own little compo entry, My precious life, that is very short and not very interactive, but has grown close to my heart:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/my-precious-life

Making two games in 48 hours was intense and exhausting, but totally worth it. We had a lot of fun, learned a few new things and I'm very proud of what we created. Thanks for reading, cheers!
~ Erkberg ~