It was sure to reach this site eventually, but boy does it make me sad. :cry:

when can we start those votes tho?

We are an experienced team and we are looking for artists to join our team for the next Ludum Dare. If you are interested in joining, please post your portfolio below!

I've been waiting for the next ludun dare for a while, I'm so excited

if you need any help with art or music id be happy to help

Hey folks!

Ludum Dare 51 is coming up in a few weeks (September 30th to October 3rd weekend), and we have some exciting new things we're about to launch. Most significantly: game uploading and embedding!

Sign-ups for Ludum Dare 51 should open by the weekend, but until then, this week we're deploying and testing out this new feature. Uploading and embedding is a big change for us, and we want to be sure it's working well in advance of the event.

With that in mind, you may see some funny stuff on the website over the next couple days. :sweat_smile: Feel free to leave a comment or send me a note if anything problematic persists.

The next few days are internal testing. We do plan to do a public stress test shortly after (either later in the week or next week). I'll share more details in follow-up posts, and on our Twitter.

https://twitter.com/ludumdare

Thank you for your patience!

Before the Ludum Dare traffic gets going too strong, I want to at least try to talk about something I've been noticing more the last few times I've participated in Ludum Dare.

Specifically: It is my opinion that the current karma system is worse for incentivizing detailed feedback than the older, only ratings count karma system.

So first, let me lay out where I'm coming from. I know there are a lot of ways to get your game played during Ludum Dare. A lot of people like submitting their games to streamers, for example. However, I really like the coolness / karma system. It makes a lot of sense to me that playing other people's games rewards you with visibility. And, I like playing other people's games. So I'm not looking for recommendations on how to get my game played here. I will manage just fine, I'm sure. I am specifically discussing: is the coolness system doing it's job correctly? Or is there something wrong?

So. Here is why I think the current system is worse at incentivizing good feedback than the old one: Leaving detailed feedback on a game is a huge time sink. I know that a lot of people don't spend that long on Ludum Dare games, but I will easily spend half on hour playing a game and then even longer writing feedback for it. I often go back and replay parts of the game, as well, if there's something I need to clarify more in the feedback I'm writing.

So, obviously, when I spend all this time working on feedback, I am hoping to at least get a little bit of credit in the karma system. But it's actually pretty random. Some newer users simply don't really know that they're supposed to put hearts on comments with helpful feedback. Or, maybe a user has already gotten 30 ratings, and stops checking the website after that. Or many other reasons.

The end result is this: I have to very carefully pick which games to rate. I never rate a game if the author isn't hearting comments. I try very hard, actually, to find games where the author seems to have hearted a comment within, say, the past few hours.

But compare this to somebody who is not leaving detailed feedback. If I were to simply post "Nice game!" or something along those lines on every game I played, well--it would be much less of a time sink. I could easily crank through lots and lots of games. And I would probably end up with more hearts! That's because people tend to either heart every comment on their game or none of them. So I would be subjected to the same random chance as the detailed reviewer, but I would be better off, simply by virtue of having left more comments that each have some chance to be hearted.

So, this analysis leaves me with the following conclusion: effort put into comments is inversely proportional to ease of obtaining karma. For example, there are lots of people who leave good feedback but spend much less time on each game than I do. But even though they have an easier time of obtaining karma than I do, they still have a harder time than those who can crank out a short and mostly uninteresting comment in a few seconds.

And of course, the purpose of the new karma system was intended to be the opposite. The point was supposed to be that detailed feedback was better for obtaining karma. But as far as I can tell, it really is not working correctly.

And this is why the old system worked better: detailed feedback wasn't punished with increased difficulty in obtaining karma / coolness. Everybody was rewarded the same, which was, in my opinion, actually better than the current system. In particular, with the old system, I could spend lots of time rating a game and I wouldn't have to be worried that it would be totally wasted--that nobody would ever put a heart on my comment.

Now maybe I shouldn't be thinking of this so transactionally. But I think it's really just a matter of pragmatism--I really do spend a long time rating games, and I would like to keep doing that. I don't want to have to put in additional work, e.g. submitting my games to streamers, just to get 20 plays. And I would like to be able to rate games by people who might be newer or who aren't checking the site daily, without having to deal with the huge opportunity cost of spending that time rating a game that would actually result in more karma.

Okay, so there you have it. That's my analysis of this system. But I would like to know if anybody has any other thoughts or different experiences. Maybe spending less time on games but still writing detailed feedback is actually a comfortable experience. I'm very interested in everybody's thoughts. :smile:

| Volume 1 |

Hello! Here, I will show off concept art, sketches, design musings, and other little bonuses from the last LudumDare. This one took way longer than anticipated!

This time: Game About Trying to Gain More Time In A Time Cave! You can play it here, if you haven’t yet.

Some Words…

I think this was one of my most ambitious entries ever, and I'm pretty proud of it. I really wanted to tell a bit more of an obvious story this time around. I have a LOT of stories I want to tell, but games with those more obviously deep stories have ended up taking the most time. I'm pretty sure I came up with the idea for the story first, and the gameplay emerged mentally after thinking about it for a good while. Oh, and, for anyone who got invested in the story... I don't think this is the last of the skeletons' adventures! I think they'll probably find some way to carry the life prolonging magic of the cave with them after a few years of having to go thru the cave. Or, does that ruin the poetic ending? Haha... interesting to think about. At any rate, the world of this game pre-existed it, and more games will take eventually place on the same planet, so please stay tuned for the long-term future.

Anyway, as I developed the game I thought it would be cool to iterate on fixed jump arcs, and make that something that felt interesting and fun to use. (This isn't actually my first experiment with fixed jump arcs and that sort of thing- besides my internal experiments, check out 'FROGS...') I think the 'short' and 'long' jump concept was good, and I think I did a good job with most of the level design. The 'time gem' checkpoint concept was a little controversial, and I'm not 100% sure it's 'good game design'... but it was fun trying it, anyway! :D

Visually there was a lot more I wanted to do, especially with the general feel and tileset, and the 'cutscenes', but I did what I could with the time I had. I'm really happy with how the character's animations look though- did you notice that he has a separate set of left and right facing sprites, because of his outfit? It's true!

Lastly, really really happy with the audio! The ending theme was actually something I sung improv-style and then transcribed in LSDJ, which I think gave it a bit more of an organic feel. I also think the main cavern theme is one of my most catchy tunes yet!

Concept Art and Such

All of the below sketches were made early on during the jam.

Some of these were intended to be cutscenes before I decided to draw it all in Aseprite due to time. I tried drawing what the skeletons looked like before they were all bones. (In this particular world, living skeletons were once living humans...) I don't know if this is exactly how they look, but something like this. The 'friend' in this image is someone who helped transport the two wizards. I think she exists in the world even though you never see her in-game.

Little peek at early level design progress.

Parting Words

Not much else to say, for now at least. I'm glad I followed through on this even though it's super late... See y'all at the end of September!

Our Ludum Dare 50 game Somnipathy (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/somnipathy) is prepping for its Steam Next Fest debut! Check out our steam page

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2069260/Somnipathy/

Somnipathy is still a pixel art point and click thriller, but its focus has shifted from score attack to a proper story mode. It's been a fun 4 months of progress, with at least another 4 to go before it's done, but we're very happy with the progress, and can't wait for people to try out the demo in October!

The feedback we got during Ludum Dare was only the start, but was incredibly valuable... its not easy to get quality feedback and we were lucky enough to get it in spades. Thanks everyone who helped, and hope to see you at next fest.

It's taken me longer than some, but I finally achieved what I set out to do... And it feels great... :eyes:

(I accepted almost exactly 25% of the themes, which is wayyyyy higher than I ever expected XD)

Oof, I'm on repeat now! I've had a string of bad Ludum Dares where I haven't got anything through to submission. LD46 was the last time I finished!!! I'm hoping to change that this time around and prove to myself I can still do this!

Good luck y'all!

it's difficult to collect your thoughts together when everything in life is falling apart. but it's time to stay productive and positive about our project! here is a self-portrait of part of our team

Sometime in the far future, a now Earth-less humanity in search for a new home lands on the PULSAR planet, where the very surface emits enough energy to enable human colonization, but only just. Are you the one who can use this power wisely and make sure humanity survives and thrives in this strange new planet?

Connect energy sources to emerging colonies. Manage resources so you don't run out of building materials. And try not to lose any colonies... This might be our last hope.

How many pulses can you survive? Play our game here, rate and share you high score ⭐

(please ignore, posted by mistake and don't know how to delete)

Play Here!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/impact-effect

Play Here!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/impact-effect

Why is the feed only spam bots? Is this just me/a glitch?

A game jam is a lovely thing to start the year with and I'm feeling good about my preparations.

Engine: Still plain ol' JavaScript :P

IDE: Bit of a change in that I'll be using Visual Studio rather than Notepad++.

Art: Paint.net if I feel the need to add anything other than programmer art

Audio: Basic beeps and boops I'm afraid as I still haven't learnt enough about the Audio element...

I've setup a basic project framework of modules and all I'm waiting for now is the theme, less than 3 hours to go now :D

Good luck everyone!

So it's five and a half hours into the event and I finally fixed a nasty little bug in my game engine's physics system. I guess that's what I get for using my own engine 🤷‍♂️