Hey guys! We make a rhythm game with shooter mechanic.
We would like to receive feedback and criticism about the resulting game. There are plans to bring the project to the final version.
Link - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/dance-of-bullets
There are a HTML5 version and .exe
Can you defeat the evil succubus and bring the guy back?
I was looking for something cool to show about the development of the game but this is the only step-by-step we have... The first playable prototype VS The final game !
You can download it or play it directly in your browser ! Your feedbacks are always welcome !
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/sblaaf
Game I had the pleasure of working on a soundtrack during #ludumdare48 Play and tell me what you think of the game and the music !! hahaahhaha
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/how-deep-is-your-love
I'm now live on Twitch for the next few hours to play your Ludum Dare games! I'm happy to give constructive feedback or just have fun with it. I’ll also be rating every game I play (but not while I'm live). If you want me to play your game, type !submit url/of/your/game in the Twitch chat.
If you miss today's stream, I'll be doing more streams throughout the rating period- see the About section on my Twitch page for the next date and time. I hope to see you there!
Hey boys and girls! Finally through a lot of sweat and tears I finally ported our game to html5. You can play it on Newgrounds or itch.io. I highly recommend Newgrounds since I added achievements that are kinda fun to get.
Here's the link to the Ludum Dare page and if you wish to rate us that would be fantastic!
It has become a habit for us to join Ludum Dare in the past few years, whenever we have the availability to do so. For the programmer and the artist, it is our fourth game together. Out of all our Ludum Dare entries so far, we have even finished and published a previous entry on Steam, which we are very proud of. This time, we wanted to add someone to our team with writing chops and develop a narrative game, which has always been our weakness. We got lucky with the theme “Deeper and Deeper”, as it’s the kind of theme that lends itself to the sort of game mechanics we wanted to explore.
We are here to talk a bit about the challenges we’ve faced and also invite you to try our game: The Plot Chickens
For some reason, whenever there's a Ludum Dare, we have a "bad" habit of doing things in a way that we haven't tried before. In the end, it pushes us to figure out how to use the new things.
There were a bunch of firsts for all of us in the team.
Writer: The first Ludum Dare. Artist: The first time creating voxel/3D art in the context of game development. Programmer: The first time using Unity's Visual Scripting and making a dialog tree system.
All of these had a bit of challenge which we'll talk in more detail below.
Having never worked on a dialog system like this, this presented as a new challenge. Recently having heard of Unity Visual Scripting it seemed to make sense to use this to build dialog trees in a simple and visual way.
Although the tool served the purpose, the execution wasn't as smooth as we'd like. We found it to be a bit rough and hard to work with. Well, it works quite nicely if you intend to do everything in your game using only visual scripting however for our case we intended to only use it to script the interactions with NPCs and entities. Interaction between this system and C# wasn't as easy as expected and it also made the Unity editor quite a lot slower when developing.
Almost a whole day was spent trying to get this system to work. In the end the result is acceptable.
Dialog tree for Gertrude
All of us work full-time jobs, and in previous jams we always aim to have the game almost done by the end of Sunday and then Monday evening after work we do some finishing touches.
This time it was a bit different in which we did not have to work Monday and this ended up being quite needed. In the programming side, the struggle with Unity Visual Scripting system delayed the gameplay implementation by a lot. And on the art side, getting used to do voxels also delayed the whole process. However all of us were working up until late on Monday.
We don’t necessarily keep a time table of all things but this is roughly how it went:
In our team we have a lack of music / sound artists so this is something that we always have issue with in previous games. We decided to spend some time trying to find some music and sounds that we could use to make it more lively, and of course we opted out of the audio rating.
The only sound in the game that we made ourselves was the talking sound. Our programmer made some weird noise and then playing with some random pitch while talking made it pretty nice.
Finally we'd like to share some screenshots of early in development.
How the town started
Early movement testing
Dialog testing with UI before art pass
* What are some of your favourites you have played this jam so far? Share them in the comments. Preferably games with not too many/not enough votes. Only games you didn't work on. *
In no particular order:
This game has the most expressive animations I've seen this jam. I love them!
I love the pixelart in this one, it is just so clean, and the eels are super scary!
If you are a sucker for TDs like me, you should play Scython! Nothing more needs to be said.
Can you beat my highscore on the leaderboard? Nobody has managed so far - give it a try:
Hey there ! Just to say that the crew behind Falling Dwarf is working on a Post-Jam version ! :tada:
What to expect ? New levels, new rooms, boss, fixing and tuning stuffs for even more "It feels good to fall deeper !" 's juice ! These are the stuff that we wanted to do but didn't have time to be done during the jam :smile:
So stay tuned and feel free to play the current version of our lovely Falling Dwarf ! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/falling-dwarf
Prepare your pickaxe, it's time to fall deeper ! :pick:
Here is a screenshot of the post-jam version :
Welcome to part 2 of the series, this time about the environments!
If you're curious about the character art, you can check the previous post here -> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/bonbon-and-the-deep-below/the-art-of-bonbon-and-the-deep-below
If you want to try out the game, go check it out right over here -> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/bonbon-and-the-deep-below
Now to some art.
SAFE AREAS
Initially we had pitched a small story as to why Bonbon had to escape deeper underground. You’d came across these rest areas in which there would be some animal friends with who you'd be able to exchange a few words with and together make way for the final exit. I still think it would be a nice idea to explore and to add some character (pun intended?) to the gameplay.
With the deadline encroaching on us, I quickly made some assets to make the safe zones feel cozy. @pronomicalartist 's amazing music helped me get in the mood and inspire my decision to go with steam room and onsen inspired props, dipping into the coziness and warmth I’ve experienced in the past while visiting these spaces.
TILEMAPS AND BACKGROUNDS
The one thing that blew my mind was learning about tilemaps. In hindsight, for future jams and games, I'd design the different parts of the world such as this all at once, to keep consistency. Not having enough knowledge in what would've been useful for me to spend the time and energy in was a clear hurdle I ran into.
That's all for now, thanks for reading this far! Make sure to check out the game if you haven't yet :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/bonbon-and-the-deep-below
For our game, I can say it is 1,8 ))
It was 3 of us (but only one skilled person). So, me, my boyfriend and our friend work on idea and concent. My boyfriend made all art & programming, me did texts & audio support, and our friend test&balance game (to be truth, all of us test, but he was responsible)
So we made a simple arcade with rich story and atmosphere (as art and humor was our strengths, and programming weak haha)))))
You can play, rate and tell what you think https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/last-penny
And tell me about your team?
Hello people!
First of all, the reception of the game has been wonderful and unexpected. We knew we had something good cooking, but this is our second Ludum Dare entry ever and we are overwhelmed with the positivity. In the name of the whole team, thank you so much guys!
We heared your feedback, and here we are with a patch for OVERDRILLED! Let's dig in: - Adjusted the difficulty of the game so it can be completed. - End game screen now shows the reason of your defeat. - UI bars have been changed to improve readability. - Various SFX, VFX and animation adjustments.
If you played it before, please consider playing it again, and if you haven't played it yet, what are you waiting for?
Haven't even had the time to play a lot of all of your games yet and still thanks to you people I have reached 20 votes to be able to receive a score. Thank you for trying out my game and I hope you all liked it. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/deeper-into-enemy-lines
Hey, going live in a bit, you can submit your games in the chat and we can talk about it while I try it: https://www.twitch.tv/paulloz
It's 10:00 AM (08:00 UTC), we connect on our Discord server (a :coffee: mug in hand) and discover the theme. The theme has been released 8 hours before and the ludum dare feed is full of game messages showing up prototypes.
In our side, we're not really inspired by the theme. Before the start of the jam, we wanted to build a game about cooking with cauldron on a fire pit. But we've not found a idea that fit with theme and cooking idea, so we continue to brainstorming, we're looking for inspiration in our shared file full of pitch. And after few minutes of messy talks, I don't know how exactly, we start talking about a game with cats :cat: . The first idea it's "a grandma" who have to care of "meowing cats". We have already made 2 games about animals (fish and cows), why not a third one?! We dig deeper on this idea and finally we imagine a game about feeding cats (and also smashing :smilingimp: :screamcat:).
And voilà! Our game design paper!
For the artistic direction, the main idea it's to reproduce old cartoon style (like "looney tunes", "Cuphead"), and use theme color of "Kill bill" movie.
Ok, we have the idea so... it's time to rush! First we work on our tools (Blender & Unity) to build quickly a rough prototype of our game in order to approve the concept. You know, just check if the game is fun... or not :worried: And at the same time, we model a beautiful 3D cat that can be animated (with bones, blend shapes and all cool stuff).
After few hours of coding and modeling, we have a ~~nice~~ rough prototype of game 🤮 ... and a cute cat.
The core game loop seems to be fun, but the timing and score system are not perfect yet, so we decided to code a "game manager" to easily tweak the main values and improve the game. Actually, it's a good way to try something else changing the player experience quickly and so, check the limits of your design.
Ok, it's Sunday morning and the main interactions are approved. Now we have to implement animations, Vfx, sounds... Maybe you know that: when you just finished the core game loop, you got the feeling that you've done 90% of the game, but in reality, you've done maybe 30% at most. We want to make a great game, with many features but we also realized there are only few hours left. We have to make a decision. And now. So, we talk a lot about our features and the reasons why this one should be done first and not this one. It's really hard to do it but it's necessary. This situation probably sounds really familiar for people who love gamedev.
We should add a splash effect when cat is smashed on the bowl!
Yes, but this sound effect is more important!
Oh no, we've an issue with the camera!
We're getting tired, but we can't give up, because, you know, we want to make this game! :muscle:
Monday morning, we almost finished the game, but we don't have time to publish it. Damn! It's Monday, we're back to our office, we can't work on our game and it's quite hard to hide to our boss that we're really exhausted :tired_face:
We were secretly going to hide in toilet to cry or sleep:
I'm soooo tired! I want to work on my jam game... I need to sleep!
Just kidding. We did it outside alone, not in toilet :laughing:
After few hours of suffering, we're finally back to our personals screens to fix the last few bugs, add the last animations, polish the game, create the itch and ludum pages, and... :windblowingface: Oh my god IT'S DONE, the game is released. Now we should test some games but... meh. You know, it's time to sleep sooooo... We'll test games tomorrow!
:sleeping:
Game is playable here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/what-do-cats-dream-of
Thanks for reading this and thanks to all people that support us and our game :smile:
Written with love and flowers by Duck Reaction
A heads up: No remixes of How deep is your love were included (yet). It was a missed opportunity, I know. :laughing:
That said, it was an amazing experience. Since the beginning of the pandemics, my music production has been on standby and it felt GREAT to be back at it, especially in the context of a game jam where time is not our ally and we're forced to come up with creative solutions. When we were solidifying our base concept for HELL deep is your love, I started to think about references for the music and I drew inspiration from very different sources. From Donkey Kong Country to MM Power Rangers to Super SWIV to The Messenger, it is noticeable that the sounds (mostly made with 3xOsc in FL Studio 12), rhythms and melodies were heavily influenced by retro videogames. I'm pretty satisfied with how everything came out and I hope you enjoy it as well. Thanks for playing and see ya!
Listen to HELL deep is your love's Soundtrack!
* Hey folks, didn't hesitate to come and test our our latest creation! *
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/rip-deeper
One of the biggest challenges of making a retro game is to limit yourself when creating the sprites, using only 4 color channels and limiting yourself in quadrants of 8x8 pixels to create the whole scenario. However, the result is gratifying!
Check The Deepest Dungeon and give our feedback <3
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/the-deepest-dungeon
