(TL;DR We've couldn't participate on the jam because we were busy announcing the Steam page for our Global Game Jam project!)

*Hey everyone! 👋 *The first day of this weekend’s Ludum Dare has come to a close, and I hope you’re all having a fantastic time working on your respective projects!

The theme sounds really challenging this time around, but quickly scrolling through the feed, there seem to be some fantastic game ideas coming together! Really looking forward to seeing what some of the regular folks (ahem @coleslaughter @mateusboga @peace-of-cake-games) are working on! 👀

Unfortunately, our team isn’t participating this time around. We were really looking forward to participating, but we had to focus on a major announcement for our team and studio instead. My colleague @moski did post a few tips yesterday for newcomers though, and I definitely recommend giving them a read!

*Remember that there’s no right or wrong way to participate, and if you feel like you need to drop off due to being stuck, mental health, or personal errands, it’s fine to do so! *Whenever you’re ready, there’s always next time to pick up and try again! At the end of the day, we’re making games. If we’re not having fun while making something that’s meant to be fun, what’s the point? 🙌

While we’re not participating, I do want to take the opportunity to talk a bit about that major announcement I mentioned earlier! I feel free to use this moment you’re taking to read this post as a little break or procrastination from your work if you want. 😜

Up until now, our team at Whales And Games has mostly been around because of our work across several game jam projects. *We have participated in _8 Ludum Dare’s_ up until now, and earlier this year we also participated for the first time in _Global Game Jam_ and _GMTK Game Jam_ together. During _Global Game Jam_, feeling some hangover from not being able to travel during the pandemic, we created an exploration-trading game called *Townseek, where you travel a map discovering landmarks and trading with towns.

After the game jam was done, we started working on a post-jam version of the game, and were expecting a mostly quiet release to follow as is common with most our jam entries. The reception blew our expectations, and Townseek became our third most played game in the time-frame of a month! We received many comments with praise for the game, suggestions for more features and towns and even got featured on itch!

This week, we released The Star-Seeker Update as the final update to the jam version of the game. *Today, we’ve announced that we’re working on a full-release version of the game for _Steam_ and beyond! *It marks a huge step and a new voyage for our studio and team! While we were working on a bigger project with Bunny Splash Casino (and continue to do so on the background), following on Townseek and doing a full release just made the most sense to us. It allows us to get more familiar with the Steam release workflow, better setup at marketing, and other important things on the grand-scheme of setting up a studio!

If you have the time, we definitely would appreciate it our Steam page a look! If you like what you see, we’d even appreciate a wishlist (and a retweet too)! 🐳

While not every game jam needs to be a full-release or needs to have a life cycle after you’re done with the jam, if you do happen to come across a project with good reception and that you enjoy working on, it might be interesting to keep working on it! And if it doesn’t work out, it simply wasn’t meant to be.* I personally like to believe that there’s no such thing as lost life opportunities. Even if you miss an opportunity now, another one will show up later! *Indie development tends to be so demanding and crunch-based at times, that it’s good to remember to stay positive every now and then!

While we had to sacrifice joining in this time to focus on making the Steam announcement across our social media,* we’re definitely going to be around _Ludum Dare 50_! That’s a promise! We would want to lose on such a milestone edition for sure! 🙌*

For those of you who are participating this weekend, I wish you the best of luck, work and fun! *I’ll be on the lookout for your games! *Cheers! 🐳