We've recently updated our game with new materials, screens and everything. Fixed bugs with remapping keys and added notes to the dev scene. Here I would like to show some new features.

New graphics

We've updated the materials to be more metallic and better blend with the environment. You can also see new particles and even better - finally a beam texture.

Screens

To make some levels less confusing we've added screens with some helpfully messages. Seems cheap, but we didn't want to modify the design too much, to preserver the jam concept.

Dev map update

Since we've been showing of to some people the dev map (in console run: scene game) we've thought about adding text so that we didn't have to explain different aspects. This is why we've added notes so that you could see some design decisions we've made along the way to bring you this finished product.

Play it now

Hello guys! This is the last week of play & rate for this edition of Ludum Dare, so we made a trailer for our game "HELL deep is your love?"

If you haven't played it yet, please give it a shot. It's a hellish 2D platformer and we invite you to try it out here.

Twitter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSRUJqGTYhM

While woting (and on the homepage), I see multiple games that are updated. And that is OK - if the game has some real game-breaking bug, that makes Your game unplayable, it should be fixed.

BUT ... IMHO ....

If the game can be played by a refresh/restart, then it should be left as is. If the game has some SUPER annoying looping music (khe khem, see my game), it has some edge case that causes the game to freeze, but can be restarted with a refresh (khe khem, see my game) - it SHOULD be left in.

The first woter should experience the game as the last one.

Do You aggree?

If not, prove me wrong, by playing my game to the finish on that nice soundtrack without going crazy :)

We were finally able to spend some time on this game, to fix some bugs, polish the visuals, and most importantly add sounds and music 🎵 for more immersion !
This is something we really wanted to do add but didn't have time during the event.

Please rate the Jam version, but do not hesitate to play the updated version for a more polished and immersive experience 😊

Go HERE to play our Game !

We are so excited by all the positive feedback we have gotten on Vox Machina but we are also listening to the critical feedback as well! There is still much work to be done (stay tuned for some brand new levels) but we wanted to tackle a few quality of life improvements that will make the game a bit smoother to play.

Added Features:

Added ability to directly stun enemies with Voxcaster.
Added UI improvements to Voxcaster.
Fixed some input issues with using the Voxcaster.
Added stunned enemy animations.

If you haven't had the chance to check our game out, now is the perfect time! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/vox-machina

Wow what a fun jam! I had a great time making Deep Mine then playing everyone's games. There were a ton of great high quality submissions. After getting so much feedback, I have compiled a list of things I learned and plan to apply to the next jam:

1. Make a game that is easy to play
   • I enjoy challenging games that may take a few tries to get right when I am playing a game but I realize not everyone has these preferences and these kinds of games are very difficult to get right in a game jam. My game for this jam feels relatively easy after hours of continuous practice and despite my attempts to make it easier (no permadeath, moving all the minerals up by a few hundred blocks, increasing ore density, etc) it still ended up being hard enough that a significant percentage of people gave up before seeing all of the gameplay. I think the solution here is to just be more self aware of what gameplay mechanics I might be good at due to practice while making the game so I can adjust the difficulty accordingly.
2. Avoid unintentional or confusing cues
   • My game has a bug where mining Ice, Leaves, and a few other worthless materials causes a popup that says "+ (Name of material)". This is because I made the mistake of creating a list of materials that did not take up inventory and left a few common ones off... This minor bug led to a lot of frustration when people filled up a whole inventory full of ice just to find out it is worthless.
3. Guide the player to the optimal strategy
   • I wrongly assumed that everyone would find the best strategy of just continuing to dig straight down with occasional cave exploration to get extra resources. As much as I want to avoid having to give a block of text describing the strategy, I should have hinted that as you go deeper, the materials get exponentially more valuable. I noticed many people that played would end up grinding away at the limestone/copper layer and end up getting bored because I failed to communicate to the player that going deeper gave better minerals. If you played motherload or any similar games, it might seem obvious but after watching a significant number of people play my game, I have concluded that it is not obvious and there needs to be some hint here. This leads to my next point: A story with dialog could have helped me sneak in some hints toward better strategy.
4. Have a story if possible
   • My game did not have a story this round. Actually almost none of them do as I prefer to focus on making new and interesting mechanics and tend to neglect the equally important story telling aspect of game design. This along with programmer art is probably my biggest weakness and I think adding a very simple story in future games should help me engage the player more fully.
5. Avoid tricky mechanics
   • There is a bug that caused wood to catch fire when you drilled it. I thought this was so funny that I ran with it and made it a feature. Burning down the forest accidentally with your drill is hilarious when you have an upgraded hull and coolant to withstand the fire damage. Unfortunately I did not realize that some people would drill the trees first (classic mining game mechanic) and would almost instantly die or at least cause a pretty difficult hazard right by the shop. Another funny mechanic I added was exploding the player into lava when they died. This is fun when you know what lava is and avoid it but it isn't as much fun when you have not been introduced to lava yet and immediately die a second time exploring this new orange substance.
6. Test on multiple browsers
   • This is mostly due to how much slower Firefox is than Chrome combined with the fact that my game is a bit of a CPU hog. Delta timing makes up for this but unfortunately due to the custom implementation of the engine, I probably missed one somewhere. (I use matter.js for polygon physics but this requires a lot of integration work with the completely custom sand engine).

I'll try to improve on these for next time! As for the current game, I am stuck between continuing/finishing it in its current form and just giving it a bit of polish then making a completely new terraria-like game which many of you suggested and I agree would seem like a much better use of this engine.

Here is a quick gif demonstrating the tree mining (not a good idea):

Feel free to give it a play! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/deep-mine-1

I really enjoyed your game and paid tribute in voxel.https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/hell-deep-is-your-love https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/panemuan

I just looked at the Ludum Dare 48 Statistics to see how much the Jam and the Compo have each gained popularity since last LD (each category has 300+ more entries than last time, by the way, and Compo submissions went from about 25% to about 30%), and not even 60% of games have hit 20 ratings, and we're down to less than a week and a half. There are even 64 entries that don't have a single rating. Come on everyone, let's journey to the Danger section! There are some pretty darn good games in there, let's help as many developers as we can hit 20. Don't forget to check out the Zero Section too, if we can get 20 developers giving ratings in every category we can get even the most unrated games to 20.

To ensure that more games make it to 20, I will not be publishing my recommendations post of games that have already hit 20 until many more entries have hit 20.

Great job to everyone that's been rating plenty of games! I've seen developers who have managed to rate 100 to 200 games, fantastic work everyone!

If your game does not yet have 20 ratings, comment down below and I will play it!

I've been trying to get the highest possible score in my jam game Fall Miner. I can't beat 157238.

Can anyone else beat this? I'm curious

Play Fall Miner here

Heya! ^-^ I've uploaded all the art assets used in Now You See Me and made them avaliable for public use =D Enjoy!

Free art assets

download here: https://haiyoooo.itch.io/art-assets-now-you-see-me

Play Game

Be warned, it's challenging ;D https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/now-you-see-me

Yes, they are plenty fall entries, all of them awesome, but would you make space for one more?

What about a play and rate of: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/the-final-frontier

Looking forward to play your games, feel free to add them as comment.

Hey!

I created my game using Java.

So I want try other games also made with Java.

Just comment this post with link to your java game, and I will play it and give you my feedback and rate.

(also I will play other games, not only java, if you interested in rates and feedback)

:)

Here’s part 3 of my series of blog posts explaining some of the audio systems I designed for our game Dieper and Deaper (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/dieper-deaper). This time, I’m discussing the musical footstep sounds that trigger if the player picks up the Cactus costume to sneak around. The game is developed in Unity, with FMOD for all the audio.

Yes, You can be a sneaky Cactus in this game!

My favourite mechanic in Dieper & Deaper is the Cactus costume. The game is about stealth/infiltration, and we already knew that disguises would be a key mechanic. @Saskle (our wonderful artist) started making props for the environment, and one of the earliest decorative elements was a potted cactus. It wasn't long before a throw away joke evolved into a central mechanic: what if you could dress up like a cactus, and become undetectable when you stand still?

Mickey Mousing

To underline the comedic effect, I decided to design a "cartoon sneaking footsteps" sound to go with the costume. The common technique of syncing the accompanying music with the actions on screen is called "Mickey Mousing" (going back to Disney's 1928's "Steamboat Willie"). Typically for a sneaking cartoon character, the sound of a xylophone, pizzicato strings, or even a bassoon in an ascending or descending scale tends to be used for footsteps.

So I made several sounds, finally settling on high pitched pizzicato strings combined with xylophone (lower strings melded too much into the background music). For pitches, I simply took the minor scale(in the key of my background music, to avoid clashing), spanning 3 octaves, for a total of 21 pitches.

A 240 step sequence up and down three octaves

I organised my footsteps into an FMOD multi-instrument, set to trigger them in sequence from lowest to highest pitch, and back down again, but I found this became repetitive and irritating too quickly. Instead I settled on a longer sequence that still maintains the "up and down" feel: Always ascending through the scale, but dropping back down an octave every 8 notes. When I reach the highest note, I descend back down the scale in a similar mirrored fashion. This means the sequence only truly repeats after 240 footsteps, but keeps its cartoony "going up and down a scale" feeling. The system is built in such a way that if the player stops for a while, then starts walking again, the sequence does not restart, it instead continues wherever it left off.

Conclusion

All in all, it's a minor audio detail, that some players might not even notice, but I think it really adds to the comedy of the Cactus Costume, and personality of the game by emphasizing the old time-y cartoon vibe.

Thanks for reading!

I hope this is of interest to some. If anybody has any questions or remarks regarding FMOD or the system, please let me know in the comments! And of course, go check out our game "Dieper and Deaper" to hear the system in action!

You can also find Part one of this blog series discussing the adaptive music system here: (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/dieper-deaper/dynamic-audio-systems-in-dieper-deaper-01-adaptive-music)

And Part two on the Animal Crossing style gibberish voice system here: (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/dieper-deaper/dynamic-audio-systems-in-dieper-deaper-02-animal-crossing-style-gibberish)

I'd love some more feedback, and if you give me a link to your game I will play it (Only Mac and Web though) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/tower-of-darkness

With only 8 days left, we're getting pretty close to 100 ratings. Can you help us get there? Our game runs in the browser and average game time is about 2-3 minutes. If you happen to have a friend with you, the local multiplayer battle mode is all kinds of fun! Check it out...

Check out our single or multiplayer endless faller-brawler, Vertigo!

A frantic action arcade game with some lovely 16-bit era style pixel art... why not give it a go?
Plays in browser. Gamepad supported. Avg game time 3 minutes.

I recently played a few Ludum Dare games on stream. A bit late, but here is the first part of the most interesting moments. I will try to post the second part soon. The video is mostly in Russian, but there are English subtitles. I hope you will enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXa1tb-HJWU

Games: - How to swim: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/how-to-swim - Depth of Death: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/depth-of-death - Blackout: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/blackout

Oh, and if anyone is interested, here's our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/fall-1

POV: You are Hitler's psychologist in 1924. Try to find the source of his complexes to avoid the war.

Play here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/heal-hitler!

Streamers have to play so many requested games, it's only fair for everyone if we do a SPEEDRUN! I'll f*in' whoop your ass in these games, just request them in the stream on https://www.twitch.tv/adamphoebe

Come on for "Vô dos Games" (grandpa of games) and submit your game to our Fun.

https://www.twitch.tv/vodosgames

I just wanted to say that I will probably keep working on Sprookies and see what I can make with this game. Here's some footage from the original compo version

https://youtu.be/0XoIx2H9jlo

I would really love to have everyone try it out and leave some feedback. I will make sure to get back to you and play your game too.

I already posted an updated version with better controls. It didn't really came to my mind that I could have taken a way easier and better approach for turning around the world without actually doing that :)

I will also try to wrap-up a post-mortem in the following days.

Here's the link to the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/sprookies