Even though this wasn’t our first Ludum Dare, this one ended up being especially tough for us.

First Attempt

Most of the struggle came from our first interpretation of the theme. At first, we decided to make a game about a lighthouse keeper who had to tell false signals from real ones, in a sort of Papers, Please style. As many of you probably noticed, that kind of interpretation became surprisingly popular during this jam. At some point, it almost felt like there was a hidden sub-theme built around it.

So we spent the whole first day going in that direction. We already had a rough gameplay screen and some mechanics working. But the more we looked at it, the less we liked it. The idea itself was fine on paper, but the result felt too ordinary, and most importantly, we just didn’t want to play it ourselves.

So we made a pretty painful decision: we threw away everything we had made on day one and started over from scratch.

Second Attempt

We went back to brainstorming and tried to find a version of the theme that felt less obvious and more exciting to us. That’s how GraveBell was born — a game where the signal is the toll of ritual bells, calling the dead to rise and defend the graveyard.

In the end, we’re really happy with how this Ludum Dare turned out, and even more happy that we chose to trust that feeling and start over instead of forcing an idea we didn’t believe in.

If this sounds interesting, we would really appreciate your feedback and rating. 👉🏻 GRAVEBELL