I ran pretty late today really hoping to at least get 2 of 3 puzzles finished today. Sadly there's still a few more hours to go on Puzzle 2 but I'm out of steam at this point.

Here's half way implemented version of puzzle room 2:

I'm going to see how long it takes me tomorrow morning to finish room 2 before I decided if I'm going to cut room 3 or not. I really don't want to make that cut but I really want to get this project finished by the end of the Jam at the latest.

So higher pressure day tomorrow. We'll see how I get on. Hope the rest of you have had a good day of game dev!

I made this Pico-8 game about a possum avoiding cars in about 5 hours. I had fun making and playing it, and doing something simple is a lot more enjoyable. Development and time lapse videos coming soon.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/possum-blitz

I finally get to give my insanely simple behavior tree code a test run. At 88 lines it sure gives me some amazing options. Now to work on the enemy behavior tree.

Find the code behavior.lua

First day is complete. I'm working together with JamesOliverMusic again, which is a lot of fun. We used to jam together a lot but life happened and we haven't in a couple of years, so we decided to dust off an old game of ours we made for GameOff 2019. The game is Ninja Training Simulator and you can play the original here if you so choose: https://minibobbo.itch.io/ninja-training-simulator

This game will be a spiritual successor called "My Revenge Is Inevitable". You will play as an undead ninja who has returned from the grave to kill the shogun who destroyed your village (and killed you. What a jerk). I wanted to play with the theme a little and make you as the player the thing that was inevitable. You die and you just keep coming back until you win.

I've changed my methods and tools a lot since 2019, so I'm recoding the game from scratch with new graphics, mechanics and James is writing some new music. I doubt we will have as much content as the other jam since I had a month to code everything and Ludum Dare is obviously shorter, but I'm hoping for a polished experience that is fun to play.

Here's the progress on the first day. The MVP is complete with a single level, an ugly main menu and some placeholder graphics. I spent most of the day fighting with my tools (I haven't jammed in awhile and I've had to look up and relearn a bunch of stuff) but I got a ninja jumping around and I have the mouse lock working correctly, so the most annoying problem of the previous game is fixed. Yay!

On the art side of things there's still plenty of polishing to be done, but we've got idle animations running smoothly! Here's our cast of NPCs! Who's your favourite? :eyes:

I love adding cool stuff to my games... I adding some foliage and stuff to make things feel more 'real.' :)

For my submission I'm making a game that is a reverse boss battle

You're playing as the big guy with the sword, and you mission is to defeat the "player" as many times as possible before they inevidently defeat you (which they will, eventually)

Every time you kill the player they return levelled up and also learn new things like dodging and jumping, and your movements are relatively slow and easy to predict, and your moves become more powerful when your health decreases

I think I'm going to work on things like a boss intro cutscene and music next, the main gameplay is pretty much finished at this point

I'm calling it a bit earlier tonight, so here's my nightly update! It's... not great. I really struggled today, and I'm not nearly as far as I wanted to be. I've been having a tough time motivating myself to work hard since I'm not passionate about my concept this time, and the implementation has also been slow going.

Most of today was spent trying to get Sisyphus working. My original concept was that he would push the boulder up, then you'd click and drag him back down to stop him from reaching the top. I was able to get him moving on the path pretty easily, but dragging backwards wasn't going nearly as well. I specifically wanted clicking and dragging, but just holding it down made it move and I couldn't figure out how to check for mouse movement in the correct direction. I tried using a LineRenderer, a Slider, linear algebra, Vector3.Project - nothing was actually working, even after many many hours.

Originally, I was planning on using the drag mechanic multiple times, but after spending so long without success, I reevaluated. The other minigames using a slow drag weren't particularly hard to come up with a separate idea, so I just replaced Sisyphus with clicking to slide him back down a bit. It was... extremely easy to implement. I really should've done it sooner! After that, it was trivial to add Tantalus with a vanilla slider, since that was always supposed to be a quick drag.

So here I am, getting ready for bed with 2/8 minigames done and placeholder graphics. Not where I wanted to be, but I think the rest of it should go a lot more smoothly. Knock on wood, but I think the other minigames should be a lot easier? Here's hoping!

We've been working all day on Waking Gerald. One more day to go! It's about time to go to sleep, but we'll be back at again in the morning.

"Do you have game jellies too?"

I had to restart due to imcompatance, but this is what I have got done on the new project. I have all the mechanics done, now just need to add a scoring system, a timer, and a win state/lose state. If I have any extra time I will try to work on the art some more (the dude can use a lot of work)

Looks like those interruptions came in early and I lost this morning to distractions before I knew it. This means I'm about 6 hours behind schedule, so we'll have to see what I can cut.

Apart from that, things are moving forward about like I thought they might (with more bugs than I expected - as normal).

Here's a progress screenshot where my AI decided it needed to spam bullets:

Wow it always takes more time to do simple things than you expect.

I think I may be obssesed.Done by @lishiana

The point of the game is to make your own runner. There will be obstacles on the way, as well as on tracks. Is failure and rage quitting inevitable? Only one way to find out.

As Yet Unnamed Autobattler

I just checked back, my last LD entry was in 2016! Time flies. I haven't designed anything major in that whole time, so there's been quite a bit of relearning. I'm pretty happy with what I've been able to figure out, though! I picked an idea I didn't know how to make work, and made it work!

I've still got a lot to go. My as-yet-unnamed one-sided autobattler has you pick a team of evil minions to defend your castle against a way-too-strong knight who will inevitably save the day. I had some grand ideas for unit merging mechanics and evolutions, etc, but I'm probably going to have to be satisfied with something that just "works" for now. Still, I'll be happy to just get something to the finish line!

Placeholder graphics. Need to figure out if I'm making this 2D or 3D for final, but 2D right now! Jumping works!