Ludum Dare 50 is kind-of a big deal. It's been 20 years since we started, and no joke, our anniversary event begins on Friday April 1st. What a curious date? :wink:

We're still getting setup here, but in the mean time feel free to go make some Theme Suggestions. For this event the Theme Selection will be the same as usual: make suggestions, slaughter, 3 rounds of theme voting plus a final round.

We are making some changes though.

New Decade, New Rules, New Event Format

Behind the scenes I've been making some of the biggest changes. Everything is still open source, but for clarity I've spun-off the code that runs this--the event website--into its own project. In time the project will become less "Ludum Dare" specific, but one step at a time.

Next, the rules are being moved. They're not live yet, but the new rules will soon be available on ludumdare.com/rules. The move will make it easier for anyone to contribute fixes, changes, and translations via the ludumdare.com project on GitHub.

Finally the rules are being heavily reworked, for the first time in nearly 5 years. The core will still be the same--hopefully easier to understand--but we had to make room for the new event format: Ludum Dare Extra.

Ludum Dare Extra

Like the "Compo" and "Jam" formats before it, games can now be submitted in the "Extra" format. Ludum Dare Extra games are like Ludum Dare Jam games, but you have nearly 3 weeks to submit them, until we stop collecting feedback and ratings for the event. There are no final scores given in the Extra format, and thus no winners. What Extra does have is feedback. When you submit a game in the Extra format, you still get to take part in the feedback and rating process. You are encouraged (incentivized) to submit as early as possible, to give ratings and feedback, so you get feedback on your game.

The goal of Ludum Dare Extra is to make taking part in Ludum Dare more flexible. Time is not always on our side, and to have to wait 6 whole months between events because it landed on a bad weekend is extremely unfortunate. The new Extra format effectively gives you 2 more weekends to make a game and still be a part of Ludum Dare 50: April 9th weekend and April 16th weekend, but you are also free to choose your own schedule. We like weekends, but you do you.

Ludum Dare Extra submissions will be open from Friday April 1st to Thursday April 21st.

Results for the Jam and Compo events will go live later in the day on April 21st.

Wrap-up

That's it from me for now. Feel free to tweet at me or e-mail me if something breaks.