I'm very sad that Ludum Dare is ending. I haven't been contributing as long as some of you, and I don't know how things were pre-LD50, but I still wanted to share my opinions on what made the jam special (to me), and what a future successor could look like:

This is an excerpt from my blog post on this topic: https://sirlich.dev/blog/ludum-dare/

Lots of Feedback!

The world has enough game jams. You only need to browse the itch.io jam calendar to come to that conclusion. And that's not even counting local (or global!) in-person events.

But not all jams are created equal. Part of what made Ludum Dare so special to me, is the quantity and quality of feedback that I got on my jams. My first ever submission to Ludum Dare had just short of 30 ratings and comments. One person even updated their graphics drivers after catching Vulken errors, in order to provide their feedback. My submission to GMTK in comparison had just 3 comments.

Ludum Dare does feedabck really well. They have an algorithm which drives more traffic to your game, the more reviews and comments you leave. Of course there are always going to be a fair-share of nothing comments ("Nice game!"), but overall I feel like the quantity and quality of feedback on my Ludum Dare games has been really excellent.

I think any serious replacement for Ludum Dare would need to solve keep this feedback system, or something similar.

The Community and Independance

Ludum Dare isn't just a game-jam website. It's also a forum! And how refreshing that is. There is technically a Ludum Dare discord, and various Ludum Dare Socials, but it feels like all the real conversation is happening on-site.

People share their jam "stack". They share their thoughts on the themes. And sometimes, in the quiet moments between jams, they share updates on projects which started as Jam games, and are being finished as comercial projects.

It's nice to have a corner of the internet that exists outside of Discord/Reddit/Facebook etc. I strongly feel that the Ludum Dare community is so strong because of this distinction. I would hope that a Ludum Dare successor is able to remain similarly independent, and doesn't become just another itch.io jam.

Theme Voting

I don't neccesarily view the current implementation of theme-suggestion, theme-slaughter, and theme-voting as critical. But I think it is critical to have something community driven. Compared to other jams, Ludum Dares theme system is clearly more interesting. It drives more discussion, more hype, and indeed -more drama.

I would like to see a successor to Ludum Dare iterate on the theme voting, while keeping the core identity intact.