Now that this Ludum Dare Jam's already passed, all I have to say is thank you to everyone joining in for letting your creativity and effort out for these great games! I couldn't get to playing all of the ones I've queued yet, but from what I've seen so far, the output was surprisingly amazing. I'm guessing everyone gave it their all for this one since this was a milestone worth celebrating.

As for my goals for this jam, I can proudly say that I've achieved them. The things that mattered at this point were: Releasing an entry for a Ludum Dare, especially for this one, since this was the 50th Jam, and its 20th anniversary, no less! I participated in previous Ludum Dares (LD36, LD38?, LD41, and LD43), but this was the first one where I managed to actually push a complete title in (even though it ended up being an Extra entry, because I could not figure out how to make an executable that was not reliant on the game engine's launcher, what counts was that it made it in!), and to showcase the game engine I used, which you can find here if anyone's interested.

From reading one post-mortem a while ago, I can agree with them on one thing: Creating a game within three days is not a simple feat! I spent the start of the jam, following a veteran's advice, by brainstorming, but for six hours before hitting the hay to create something the next day. The first idea I had in my head when I saw the theme brought up a similar one I had when brainstorming for Ludum Dare 43: Survival.

Though, before the theme came, I decided for this game I wanted to add crafting, or resource gathering to the mix, (hence why there's raw materials in my entry that eventually were never used) but that crafting feature got scrapped nearly immediately the moment I started building it. Other ideas I had in mind were all connected to a doomsday scenario, which felt too obvious. Another obvious choice was a runner game. I even toyed with the ideas of making a game out of prepping for a job interview, cramming for an exam, or meeting/delaying work deadlines, but I felt as if that was too true to real life when I wanted to make something a bit escapist.

What I ended up with was having a lone person trapped in a cave, or a temple, hence the literary trope of a "closed circle" came to mind, and I used that as the title for this entry. Another title I had in mind was Trapped Time, where I had a feature of having the player use a magic wand to rewind time, which I also cut. Though the trope of a "closed circle" was originally intended for mystery stories, where a group of people could not leave the place they were at until the mystery of the week was solved, I felt as if it fit the game I was working on since the player could not leave until he figured out how to get out.

I eventually ended up focusing too much time on the tileset and mapping of the dungeon, and not enough on making the gameplay playable, which is why the final result turned out the way it did. I have a feeling that I still have a lot more to learn in that department, especially on making it fun and replayable. I also want to improve and expand on this entry; it still doesn't feel complete in my eyes. By the feedback I've received for this game, my instincts were on-the-nose.

For the next jam come September, I might not participate in it, though this is subject to change depending on how things are going to go for my offline life in the upcoming months. Hopefully, there'll be better surprises and more innovative stuff in store! Again, to all who participated, thank you for the games!

To close, if anyone's interested in playing my entry, I'm leaving it for free on itch.io!

Cross-posted at my website: https://www.gbgames.com/2022/04/25/ld50-how-my-entry-disaster-city-did-ldjam-ld50/

Late last week was the end of Ludum Dare 50, culminating in Results Day.

After giving everyone a few weeks to play and rate everyone else's games, the final numbers were calculated, and the ratings announced.

Congratulations to those who ranked at the top in both the Compo and Jam categories! And congratulations to everyone who managed to finish and submit a game in a weekend!

So, how did my entry, Disaster City, do?

There were about 2,900 games entered. Of those, 1,413 were in the 72-hour Jam category, which is the one I ended up entering my game. I intended to submit it for the 48-hour Compo, but I ran out of time and needed the extra day to finish the game.

Here are my game's final stats:

• Overall: 1137th / 1413 (3.136 average from 35 ratings)
• Fun: 987th / 1413 (3.106 average from 35 ratings)
• Innovation: 783rd / 1412 (3.212 average from 35 ratings)
• Theme: 947th / 1398 (3.424 average from 35 ratings)
• Graphics: 1206th / 1279 (2.682 average from 35 ratings)
• Audio: 870th / 943 (2.734 average from 34 ratings)
• Humor: 602nd / 1147 (3.078 average from 34 ratings)
• Mood: 1068th / 1353 (3.109 average from 34 ratings)

So, Disaster City was pretty much in the bottom of the pack, with my worst scores in the Graphics and Audio categories, which...ok, fair. Jam entries are made by teams usually, and I did everything solo, and I am not an artist or great with audio. I do wonder how it would have compared to other Compo games though. My Overall, Graphics, Audio, and Mood scores were in the 1st quartile, which feels a bit disappointing.

All of my other scores were in the 2nd quartile. My best scores came from the Innovation and Humor categories. While they were in the 2nd quartile, they were near the top of it.

I could spend a lot of time analyzing it, but Honest Dan shared a post titled "Why didn't my game rate higher?" and other similar questions which made me realize something: I've had a low-priority bucket list item to create a #1 game for Ludum Dare (despite not having participated in years), but that goal is kind of out of my hands to make happen.

My ratings/rankings don't matter?

35 people submitted ratings for my game out of thousands of players. That's not statistically significant. Out of the "winning" entries for LD50, I think I only played one of them. The others were mostly off of my radar. And I imagine it is the same for many participants.

I set a goal to review at least 40 games, as reviewing more games means the Ludum Dare algorithm will show your game to more people who are looking to review games.

One person managed to review 400 games, which is prolific! When I checked their own game, though, I saw that while they had way more than the 35 reviews I did, it was still only about 100 ratings for their game. So there is a limit to how much the algorithm helps players find your game, I suppose. Also, having 100 ratings means you can be more confident about what people generally thought of your game, but it still isn't much more statistically significant.

The winners of LD didn't have more participants rating their game than others. They had a small subset of people rate their game, and those ratings were higher than the subset that rated someone else's game.

In a way, it's hard to say how someone's game actually compared to someone else's game because there's some randomness in terms of who played which games and how they felt about them.

And as Honest Dan pointed out, you can't even really compare your previous LD results to your current results, as it isn't like you had the same 20 or so people rate your game in each. It's an apples and oranges comparison. You can't say whether you improved based on how others rated you in two different LD compos.

So despite leading with the stats up above, I'm trying not to take them terribly seriously. Maybe the general average ratings can give me a sense of what someone's gut feel for my entry was.

But what I found incredibly valuable was the comments section of my game. I think even though there was a major bug that people reported that they exploited, and even though they said the game was too easy, a lot of them also reported that they basically saw the promise of the game. They liked the turn phases, the general concept, the mechanics and dynamics. They enjoyed playing it.

Which tells me that in a weekend I was able to put together something that other people found entertaining, if flawed. And that's an accomplishment, something a low-ish rating can't take away.

Now what?

I would like to make a post-LD version of Disaster City. My task list was incomplete, so what you can play now is a subset of what I envisioned. Adding more disasters and more things for the player to do to mitigate or rebuild after them should make it more compelling. And balancing the game should help, too.

But if I do, I want it to be part of my Freshly Squeezed Entertainment line of games, and I want to be deliberate here. Rather than build onto what I did, I might start over without the time crunch of a weekend deadline.

More on those plans later.

Ludum Dare 51 is scheduled for September 30th, and I would love to participate in it. I've marked it on my calendar, and I'll need to work out logistics with my wife in terms of how to ensure I can focus on the compo that weekend. She arranged multiple outings with the kids and babysitters so I could fully participate in LD50, and I am incredibly grateful.

More immediately, this LD got me focused on putting together desktop ports of my entry so that people could more easily play them, which is something I've been meaning to work on for my existing games. So I'm going to tweak some build scripts, create some desktop ports of Toy Factory Fixer and Toytles: Leaf Raking, and then look into how easy it would be to create a web build using Emscripten.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for a great weekend and past few weeks!

any categorey

Totally a shameless plug, but we had so many nice and helpful comments on our game that we just have to continue working on it. If you'd like to see our progress, you can play it here!

https://kaircha.itch.io/rifthoppers-dev

And if you have any criticism, feedback, or suggestions, send them our way!

https://discord.gg/mYPjWeJ7Tn

(Footage from our 1st weekly update :slight_smile:)

I'm happy to release a post-jam update to my game The VortExperience. Thank you to everyone who played, rated, and gave feedback! These interactions are always a favorite part of this jam and this community for me.

Feedback

To summarize most of the feedback: the narration was entertaining, but the underlying mechanic got stale. Critique was overall very positive but also honest. You know, the "fun" aspect continues to be a tough one for me. Self-reflecting, I tend to focus on a vision of the player experience, but I also don't do a good job of baking fun into that experience. I think that "fun" sometimes starts with the mechanic, but it usually involves iteration to "follow the fun". Iteration requires time, of course, which is something that is not in abundance--especially for a solo dev.

What's new?

I had plenty of ideas of updates even before interacting with raters, but I also got good inspiration from their feedback. The first two weeks of ratings I was doing some traveling, so I really didn't start updates in earnest until the third week. The biggest update I wanted to get in was a new mechanic to make the gameplay a little more interesting--the spawner breaking! Other updates really just focused on visual polish and gameplay tweaks.

Here's a complete summary: * Scientist animations * Vortex vacuum effects * Goo spawner break mechanic * Narrator mute option * Gameplay pacing updates * Minor UI and artwork polish

So in the end, this update doesn't bolster my weakest category, but I hope it does enhance what already made it special. I have some other ideas for this title that could extend the game, but I think I'm ready to sign this one off. If you're interested, feel free to play the update here. For now, it's off to other projects! Maybe I'll focus on "fun" in the next jam :) See you then!

_ -Hawkin_

Hey everyone!

Very recently I started a new YouTube channel and my first video is about our participation in the 50th edition of LudumDare! Please check it out! :blush:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1tHoNVDBD0

Energy Tower Defence has a new update.

NEW TURRETS. I added three more turrets, Speed Turret, Tank Turret, and Bomb Turret, to help you defend better and turret range is now visible.

https://sleepy-lava.itch.io/energy-tower-defence

5 takeaways from 3 years of game jamming

Since my first ever game jam roughly 3 years ago, I’ve learned a lot. And yet, things still don’t seem to be getting much easier. Shouldn’t they be getting easier?

This post is both a retrospective for my most recent Ludum Dare I participated in, as well as some things I’ve learned over the years. Hope it’s helpful to someone out there.

1. Making something is better than making nothing

Lots of people want to be game devs without doing the work. What’s most important is that something gets made, not the actual quality of the thing being made. Whether the end result is “good” or “bad” doesn’t matter. Every game provides a learning opportunity, a piece of feedback that says you’re moving in the right or wrong direction. Quantity leads to quality over time.

While coming up with ideas for this game jam, I kept hesitating to commit to anything. I was paralyzed by the desire to come up with a remarkable idea right from the start. This was causing a huge delay and starting to stress my team members. Eventually, we decided to just get to work on a relatively simple idea. In the end, we made something and that’s all that matters.

2. Game jams never get easier

I’ve done 25 game jams in the last 3 years and it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier. It might never get easier. Every game is different. Different design problems, code structures, art styles, game loops, time constraints, team conditions, and more. There are constantly new and challenging problems that require new and challenging solutions.

One challenge while coming up with the character design in Hearts Ablaze was how to portray the player’s gun. While the player itself was a static sprite that locked to 8 directions, the gun needed to be able to point in any direction so that the player knows they can shoot freely from any angle.

To solve this, I made the gun 3d whereas the player is 2d. Initially, this made the gun feel out of place alongside the character sprite. However, I then applied an outline shader to the 3d gun to make it look more “2d”. This is just one example of the unique types of problems you constantly face while making a game.

3. The order in which you make a game (might) matter

Let me paint you a “hypothetical” picture. Your “friend” is making a game and she spends the first 50% of her time on the artwork. Then, she does the cover art, even though the game isn’t playable yet. Now, she only has 1 day left and what does she do? She redraws the character art and then spends the rest of the day on environment art. Now there’s only 3 hours left in the jam. She realizes she needs to make the game playable so she aggressively puts the game loop together and with 5 minutes left submits her game.

How is the game, you ask?

Broken. Unbalanced. Lacking content. Inaccessible.

What happened here?

There are technically no rules when it comes to making games. You can start with the art.. the story.. an IPA? You can do whatever you want. But. If you are going for a polished, balanced, gameplay-heavy experience, then you should probably get the gameplay loop working as soon as possible.

This is sadly a lesson I keep learning time and time again. Most of my jam games are not playable until the last hour. And my games usually suffer because of this. In my opinion, having a gameplay loop working early on is one of the healthiest ways to approach making games.

4. Having a team you trust is awesome

Working with a team can be an extremely rewarding experience if you find the right people. People who aren’t afraid to challenge your ideas or push you to your creative limits. When everyone trusts each other, not only is the work more efficient, but everyone has a say in the direction of the project and their opinions make the project wholly better.

Working with Mafgar, Alphons6, and Riceputtin was a blast because we all respected each others’ opinions and trusted each other to get stuff done.

It took me some time to find the true value in working with a team. I always wanted to be a solo, auteur-type individual like Toby Fox or ConcernedApe. But working with great people has shown me that they have a lot to teach me and likewise, I (hopefully) have a lot to teach them. There is mutual gain.

Furthermore, working with teams and working by yourself is not mutually exclusive. You can still work on solo projects and take the learnings from your more experienced teammates with you.

5. Game jams are a means to an end, not an end themselves

Game jams are awesome. They provide a structured way to improve in game development, to find a community of like-minded people, and to put a piece of yourself out into the world that others can find joy in.

But whenever I finish a game jam, the same nagging question pops into my head: When am I going to finally work on a bigger project?

As much as I love game jams, I can’t pay for groceries with them.

This is my dilemma. Game jams are a means to something greater and eventually, that greater needs to take precedence.

Jon <3

(This is a repost from my personal blog.)

Strawpoll Here!

This was my first game jam where I took it kind of easy, didn't really get started until the 2nd day, and let myself get a full night's sleep to finish things up on the 3rd day.

Got me thinking how long folks tend to spend on their games.

Here's the poll: https://forms.gle/VX6hQwdveBt7zqUo8

Do folks find that spending more time yields better results? For those who have done many jams, does it seem like your results change depending on how much time you put in? How about getting more or less sleep?

My team and I are working on the inevitable post-jam update of our game The Assessment, which is a WarioWare-type game with microgames.

We did around 10 games, but we had so many others planned that never came to fruition because of, well, time. Here's a sneak peak of one of those games, it's called "Share The Wifi" and basically you're the host of the party and your guests are eagerly awaiting the Wifi password. A true classic.

So I did this music track for the microgame, please enjoy! And stay fresh!

https://youtu.be/xwAMkCNq2PQ

At my request @lesinvisible was kind enough to write a detailed postmortem for his game Crows:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/crows

I fear not many folks will see it, so I am posting a link here. It makes for very interesting reading, for those of you who want to know more about the processes of creative thinking and game design.

                                                                                        Screen shot from Crows

i will host a game jam for 3 days and the theme will be life is money . reply back if youre interested and you can do you 3days at any time but reply with video footage of of all 3 days. good luck

Hey everyone! How's it going? Have you recovered from the game jam yet?

Just wanted to announce that we have released the 4th patch for Fire Escape, which fixed some of our severest issues.

Since we submitted the game to the competition these changed have been made and issues have fixed:

Issues: - The HUUUGE performance drop that occurred from the 8th day and thereafter has been fixed - The game no longed freezes whilst a day is being initiated - LootLocker API calls have been optimized so that they don't yell at us any more :(

Changes: - The scoring system has seen a lot of love and adjustment so there's even multiple scoreboards now for different versions of the game - The scoring UI has been changed to more clearly indicate how well you are performing - An arrow pointing towards Mr. Boss Man has been added

If you have the time and you're in the mood for some casual fast paced gaming with an online leaderboard head on over to Itch.io and give our game a go ;)

If you want to get updates on things our team makes and progress on the game make sure to follow us on twitter ;)

I couldn't believe my eyes today, when i was peacefully browsing the Edge magazine on the toilet, as i usually do. Suddenly i saw something that seemed familiar before realizing what it was: our Ludum Dare 49 entry Karawan! I burst out laughing, in amazement and surprise. I didn't think this possible, and it was lovely discovering it by accident.

If you've seen previous versions of the game, you'd notice that it's changed quite a lot! Evolving from a purely jump game to a something more 3D!

I should've gotten this out a lot sooner, oh well

I was super surprised to see that my game got 7TH OVERALL! (well, 7th jam game overall) I told myself that I was gonna make a full version of this game if it did well... so I'm making a full version

BTW, I'm not super fond of the name "delayed trickshot", so if anyone has any better ideas for a name for the full version, let me know!

Hi, developers use the Dart language to create an application in Flutter. Dart is an object-oriented programming language created by Google, Dart has its own package manager, several compilers and transpilers, and a parser, to learn more iOS app development services , you just go to the article and read everything yourself

Hi all and thank you for everyone who played and rated our game, Kiwis Can't Fly. We ended up placing 1st in audio, 2nd in mood, and 8th overall!

I'm happy to announce that the mobile port of Kiwis Can't Fly is now available! This game works especially well on mobile due to the drag controls, and looks great on a tablet such as an iPad.

We've also added some small tweaks and an additional animation for the meowmies in the game, as well as an extra end screen that encourages players to contribute toward efforts to protect the life of the kiwi bird species.

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kiwis-cant-fly/id1617884722

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cocoamoss.kiwiscantfly

You can of course also play the web version in your browser as well.

Post-Jam version (v1.03): https://cocoamoss.com/kiwis-cant-fly/kiwis-cant-fly.html

i want to make a top down platformer about food and would love some ideas. comment any ideas below:)