Anyone else feeling zonked after the weekend? Totally great experience and learnt a bunch, but left me feeling drained for sure. Excited to get back to playing peoples games again and seeing what everone has made.

If you still have some energy to play some more games feel free to quickly check out mine:

Link to my submission: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/into-the-deep

Don't forget to rest and recharge!

:heart:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBbnvXqYD3A

Heya folks,

Not sure if it's normal or not to share updates after the game jam but wanted to let people know the progress I've made and hopefully I'll be able to make something more inline with what I originally had in mind. The embedded HTML version of the game on my Ludum Dare profile is still the original submission, all reviews from this point on should use that version, however I'll be continuing to update the itch.io version for a little while at least.

I hope this isn't in poor taste, just wanted people to play something closer to what I originally intended. https://lordsheo.itch.io/froggy-towers

ps. it's not done yet, still plenty of bugs and features need to be ironed out.

What's Next - Change level ups, these should grant character stat increases instead of towers. - Towers can be bought at the end of a wave from the shop and placed by the player. - More juice to the animations of the critters and towers. - LOTS of balancing for towers, enemies and characters :sweat_smile:

Let me know what else you'd like to see! I don't think I'll take the game any further than just cleaning it up but like I said in the game submission it's something I've wanted to make for a long while so it will be good to at least lay it to rest.

(Play Marianas Miner!)

As happy as I am with how Marianas Miner turned out in the end, it was a pretty rough journey to get there.

Struggling with an Idea

When I was making preliminary plans before the jam started, I was looking at the themes and told my wife I hoped that "recharge" and "depths" didn't get picked. Welp. It wouldn't be Ludum Dare if we got the theme we wanted, now would it? :P

I couldn't come up with an idea all evening. I tried brainstorming with my wife and she had some concepts but I couldn't figure out how to work any of that into a game... until I gave up and took a shower. While I was in the shower, the phrase "you dug too deep" popped into my head, and suddenly all of the ideas started fitting together into a game. I visualized a cross between Pac-Man and Dig Dug where you were trying to run away from Cthulhu-like monsters but you could spear them with harpoons and dig through the terrain to get away. I visualized a submarine with a big cartoony drill on the front of it.

Trouble with the Engine

In the morning, I started making graphics. I was able to get the Cephaloid sprites to come out pretty well on my own, but I really struggled with the submarine. Fortunately, my wife is a professional illustrator (she also drew the title card above!), so she sketched out the drill sub and I was able to redraw it as a sprite.

But then when I tried to put together the animations and add some preliminary movement behaviors, I discovered that something changed out from under my game engine. I built that engine from scratch. I've put hundreds of hours into improving it and refining it over the years. I've used it successfully for six previous Ludum Dares. But even though I hadn't changed anything about it since LD44, when I tried to preview my new animations, it was flickery. I went back and tried a past game, and I was getting flicker there too. I spent a couple hours trying to fix it, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong, so I had to scrap the code I had written so far and switch to Unity.

Fortunately, things went pretty smoothly from there. I've used Unity for enough jam games in the past that I'm plenty comfortable working in it -- even if my own engine is lighter, easier (IMO) to program for, has better UI tooling, doesn't have any compile times, and has WAY better load times. (Side question: Has anyone else experienced Unity being inconsistent about noticing changes to files on disk? I had to manually tell it to refresh assets half the time...)

Aiming for Fun

I set a goal for myself to make a game that would have a better Fun score than any of my previous solo jam entries. Too many times in the past I got caught up in building mechanics and effects and neglected the actual gameplay. So from the very beginning I knew I wanted to make sure it was simple and fast-paced, to make sure it had a reasonable challenge while still being accessible.

I feel like I succeeded. I won't know until the rating period is over if I actually got a better Fun score, but this game FEELS like it's the most fun of any game I've made so far. Instead of getting lost in improving the special effects, I focused on tightening up the controls, refining the enemy behavior, tuning the world generator, and balancing the difficulty.

A few points that I paid particular attention to:

Progression

My original plan was to make things easier in shallow water, but have better rewards in deep water. But I realized that was terrible for progression because the objective was to escape -- so the game would start hard and get easy, and that would be awful.

I decided to keep better rewards in deep water and use an extra lives mechanic as a game balance lever. As you approach the surface, the terrain becomes more open, which makes it easier for the Cephaloids to come after you. But since the rewards are less valuable, you won't be getting as many extra lives.

Having the terrain change rock types and the background color change as you approached the surface I think was a nice touch.

Game Balance

In addition to the game balance that goes into progression, I had to think about the direct game mechanics.

I realized from the beginning that making harpoons a limited resource would encourage strategy and dexterity instead of turning it into a shmup. But I also wanted to show the player some mercy -- it's not fun to get penned in helplessly and lose all of your lives without being able to do anything about it. So when you die, the enemies all scatter and you get a new load of harpoons and a couple seconds of invulnerability.

Control Polish

I spent a long time tuning movement speed, hitboxes, harpoon behaviors, and digging. I wanted it to be fast-paced but controllable. Making sure that your movement still felt good even when being constrained to a grid so that your hitbox wouldn't catch on corners was kind of tricky -- there's still a little bit of a visual jump when you turn corners but I hope it's not too distracting.

Digging was also tricky. During development I found that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't consistently dig out a block with a Cephaloid on the other side without dying. I ended up making Cephaloids not realize the block was gone for a little bit to give you enough time to take action.

Unrealized Visions

I really wanted to add music to the game, but having lost so much time to switching engines I wasn't able to make something before the deadline.

The digging animation could have been better. Having the block explode outward with a knockback effect on Cephaloids would have been visually interesting while also addressing the mechanical problem I mentioned above.

Some additional movement tech would have been nice. Perhaps a chargeable drill rush move that would let you dash through rocks and stun Cephaloids even if you were out of harpoons would have been fun. (Or maybe not. I haven't prototyped it; maybe it wouldn't have worked after all.)

Conclusion

I think this has a chance of being one of my best jam games ever. I hope you enjoy it!

I was always planning to enter the non-competitive Extra category however our game arrived a week late this time around. Sadly it was a classic case of over-scoping that meant we had to stop short of delivering on the Monday. Then we all had other things to do so the game was paused for most of the week, until I came back the following weekend to get it shipped. Glad it's done though.

We created a gothic supernatural fishing game, set in a sinking abbey you have to use your power to fish into the world of the dead to gather clues from the strange people within so you can find a way out before the doom clock strikes midnight.

I was working with a group of friends who'd never made a game before and although my experience was meant to keep us in check to make something we can do in such a short period of time, instead we all got swept up in some cool ideas and built a much bigger game than we should have been attempting.

However the team did a fantastic job delivering a huge amount of artwork and writing that supports this strange little journey down into depths of this domed abbey.

The lesson for next time is the same as always: SMALLER SCOPE!

If you want to give it a go it's available here: Fisherman's Fiend

There's a web build and a windows download.

I have had some really positive comments on Deepline and a strong urge to take it a bit further and see what I can do with it. A few friends in the industry have given some great feedback, as well as the comments on the page and I have been thinking a lot about what I wish I had done. Here is a quick breakdown of some of that swirl :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpr2nfkjirI

As a console gamer first, I NEVER think to put escape as pause! In fact, I never add pause functionality as so much of my blueprints are hacks that a pause function often breaks the game in more ways than I can fix in 24 hours. To me, escape is "Quit prototype" and in fact, my thinking is encouraged here as when I escape in unreal .... It quits the game! One I am going to consider for the next jam. I think it is more prominent of an issue in a game like this where pausing is actually something people might want to do.

The analogue control nature of the pulse, or lack of is an area I wish I had done more in and also tied to the behaviour the drones. The Drone actually works like this - - player can move past if they are not active - drones are activated if they receive the pulse - when activated by pulse, drones will slowly move to where the source of the pulse was - allows kiting and a small amount of control over the drone. - while active, if the player gets too close, they start to hunt - if drone receives pulse when too close, it detects player and goes straight to hunt - if when hunting, player is within X distance, player is killed.

However.... There was a bug where the player could ping the drone when it is hunting, and if out of that mid range, it resets the drone to active. Handy for solo drones, but risky in multiple situations.

I ended up keeping it as through play testing I found it useful and a bit of unintended gameplay.

I DID actually have the pulse on a charge/release basis but there were a few issues. 1 - ranges became increasingly hard to judge and having the standard distance each time was a constant the player could measure their environment with. 2 - being able to do it quicker leads to use that made the audio repetitive and made the player feel more powerful, which ended up killing a lot of the mood. I locked the distance and recharge times as a result but honestly ran out of time to balance it. The thing I should have done was to make the travel distance of the pulse quicker.

To be clear, If I I do take this one further, I would make it more analogue, keep the recharge times slow exactly as you suggest though. In the end I went with something that does make the player feel restricted as that fir more with the theme and mood.

A system I made but didn't finish was mines/bombs/reactor sort of things that when pulsed, have a countdown and explosion to them. Through a mixture of kiting and timing, players could lure the drones to them and they would get destroyed. But alas ... Time!

Lastly, the deaths and restarts were too punishing, but in the last 30 minutes of my jam, I added a function inside the player that when they died, it just got the level name and restarted it. This was my default way of saving progress as at least players would only have to redo the same level.

I had grand ideas of manual save points that you would have to power up etc as players returned power to the facility, but again, 48 hours, scope creep and the scale of the levels for away from me! There was next to no thought about procession, pacing or layout as the spaces were constructed more from a narrative angle, and then just filled with the bits I had to make them functional. I am just glad they were functional in the end. (Also they weren't ! My initial submission has a bug meaning players could not complete it! Fixed in post within the rules though)

Audio ended up suffering on this one as the game itself came in so hot and last minute, I would do so much mor ewith mood and atmosphere and a bit more of an adaptive audio track, but at least there was SOME in the end. The door sounds went VERY wrong! :D

There are a few other ideas like timed machines and varied enemies that I am considering, but I am going to see where the game places and make a call whether to make a bigger version one day.

Thanks to everyone for rating and playing so far and if you want to check it out, head here -

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/deepline

When I saw the various theme options during the voting rounds, I was inspired to make a game about the Mariana Trench, and I was really happy when a most fitting theme was chosen. For those who don't know, the Mariana Trench contains the deepest known point in the ocean—Challenger Deep—located 11 km underwater. This point was popularized when film director James Cameron completed the first solo dive to it in the Deepsea Challenger submarine.

Many years ago, I saw a picture that visualized the trench’s depth. It was more effective back then, since computer resolutions were much lower, so it took some time to scroll down. My goal was to capture some of that feeling in the game.

I wanted the game to be somewhat realistic, so I started by determining the pixel-to-meter ratio. I used 640x360 resolution, and the Deepsea Challenger submarine is 7.3 meters long, so I chose 8 pixels per meter because I liked the resulting length of 58 pixels for the submarine. This also defined the play area, as I knew the ocean would be 11,000 * 8 pixels deep.

The speed of the submarine was derived from this scale. The Deepsea Challenger took 2 hours and 37 minutes to reach the seafloor, so I adjusted the in-game speed to make the descent take about 2 minutes and 37 seconds. Other things were also determined by this scale—like the pelagic zones (how much light penetrates at different depths) and the oceanic basin (the slope of the ocean floor).

The UI and the color of the submarine were also inspired by the Deepsea Challenger. I did choose to forgo realism for the sake of gameplay. The fauna you encounter appear at the correct depths, and the whales are to scale, but the other fish are much larger so you can actually see them.

I was blown away by the positivity here. I received a lot of feedback—both positive and constructive. I was really concerned when I saw the post about Ludum Dare possibly not happening when I first wanted to join, and I’m happy to support Mike on Patreon because this has been such a great experience for me. I hope it keeps going.

You're welcome to try The Trench

Finding sperm whales (one of the deepest diving mammals) in the midnight zone

В общем, привет всем!

Я с удивлением обнаружил довольно много игр от наших ребят. Думаю, не будет преувеличением сказать, что я нашёл около 50 игр от вас и поиграл в них. Конечно, игр наверняка больше, но даже 50 - это весьма внушительно.

Я рад, что столько русских разработчиков принимают участие в LD. Это очень здорово!

Короче, так держать! В LD, действительно, главное не победа, а участие.

Поэтому поздравляю всех наших ^_^

Hello! It's been a while since I've done one of these. My game Dwarvenshaft recently passed 20 ratings, and has already gotten quite a lot of engagement, so than you so much! So I decided to write a post-mortem for the project, and some thoughts about it going forward. Here you go:

Post Mortem

Part 1: Basic Idea

So, unlike previous jams in the past, I no longer begin brainstorming before the theme is announced. This allows me to save mental power for the theme itself only, and I no longer get frustrated that my favorite theme wasn't picked, and so far this strategy has worked well for me.

Why dwarves?

Good question! I figured a lot of people would make underwater games, and like usual I tried to find other ways of implementing the theme. There were some options, the depths of your mind, the depths of a forest, but ultimately I settled for "the depths of the earth" since I wanted to make a game with a nice and easy progression. Games like Terraria, Minecraft, Deep Rock Galactic and the like came to my mind, and since I was already at the time listening to a band called Wind Rose, I decided: you know what? Let's make a lemmings game but with dwarves!

Part 2: Coding the game

I was already pretty tired when I started the jam, so I didn't push myself too hard. I started by doing a grid system, and by programming the basic interactions with the dwarves. The dwarves themselves were the hardest part to make, since I wanted to make them with pathfinding. I struggled to figure out how to do it, since the algorythm I grabbed wasn't suited for what I wanted, which was for them to move next to a block and then mine it. Instead what I had to do was split the algorythm into two parts: the first one is a regular A* (A Star) algorythm, which looks for the closest unimpeded path between to points, and this one is active when the destination is an empty block. The second is not an algorythm at all, it simply draws an L shape between the start and destination points, which happens when the destination is not empty, and the dwarf mines all blocks in his path to get to the destination.

After playtesting the game for a while I realized it was too tiresome if I had to manually order every dwarf individually to mine every block, so that's when I decided to create the automation algorythm, which just looks for the nearest block to mine in a certain radius randomly and then pathfinds to there. This has issues, of course, because if there are no blocks within that radius the dwarf just stands there. Regardless, I was very happy with the results of this, and with it the game was about half-way done.

Next was the drill, which ended up breaking the game. The drill breaks every block in only a single hit, but doesn't drop as much material per block. This can very quickly deplete the resources of a level and hurt the gameplay, but I didn't have time to fix it. You use the drill to mine to the next level, but this destroys the drill. This is because I wanted each level to feel like a new challenge, otherwise you could just keep going down indefinitely. I also made it so that blocks are harder to mine the farther down you go. Then we get to the messed up part:

The Soft-Lock

Yea, there's a pretty big flaw in my game design that went overlooked until it was too late. It goes like this: In each level there is a random but similar ammount of Iron Ore. In order to progress to the next level, you need to craft a drill using Iron, then waste that drill. However, the iron required for each new drill rises exponentially, so you need more and more iron each time, but the iron that is available in each level doesn't increase, so inevitably there reaches a point where the ammount of iron required to progress is greater than all the iron that you have access to, and you get stuck. Upgrading the dwarves helps to get more Iron per Iron Ore, but this only delays the problem since the upgrades are linear and not exponential like the cost of a Drill. This is a big problem that I was unable to solve before the jam was over. I intend to fix this in the post-jam version.

Part 3: The Art

It was time to fill the game with a bunch of sprites and animations. This part was tiresome but I powered through it, since there were a LOT of sprites, two for each resource, and then at the last minute I decided to make variations of the dwarves, which meant having to draw 36 sprites for them. Luckily, Aseprite helped me to complete this task much more easily. I ended up using the Rosy 42 color palette for this, which I was a bit skeptical about in the beginning but committed to it and I think it looks good.

Part 4: The Audio

This part was surprising. I knew I wanted the extra day to polish everything better before submitting, so no way I was going to go Compo, but this also meant I didn't need to make the music. I practically never make my own music for my games, the only time I had done it was in the previous LD which was my first time participating in Compo. However, since I had such a specific vibe I wanted the music to have (a Dwarven chant but somewhat epic, inspired by Wind Rose), and I was unable to find a fitting music on my usual resource websites like Pixabay, I decided: You know what? Fine! I'll make my own music! So I opened up BandLab, and after a couple of failed attempts, I came up with the official OST for Dwarvenshaft: Dwarvensong. I admit this was the most fun part of the project for me, and I was struggling to not laugh while recording it. You can listen to it on my Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1416498

Conclusion

This was one of the most interesting Ludum Dare entries I made in my opinion, we'll see if it holds up after the jam. I definitely want to keep working on this, solve the current problems it has, and flesh it out into an actualy idle and incrementation game. I have some ideas for new features to implement to make it more interesting and engaging, but we'll see how that goes. For now, thank you so much for reading, and I'll see you next time! Take care.

Play and Rate Dwarvenshaft: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/dwarvenshaft

We'll be releasing an update to this game after the jam period, but try it out now and let us know what you think!

Hey heeey everyone! Tonight we're planning to play, rate, and give feedback on some games. Feel free to drop yours — we’d love to check them out!

Also, absolutely no pressure, but it’d be awesome if you gave our game a try too.

Thank you so much! 💜

It's me once again. I finally had time to get the Shleep OST up on YouTube, with some gameplay to go along with it.

https://youtu.be/--guEO8QRNM

This is the last time I'll pester you about it, I promise! It's a fun game though, if I do say so m'self.

Well, here it is... You can't escape it... You can't stop THE FALL! The world around you has tilted, now the world flashs by, the wind whistling in your ears. Where will you end? You don't know. How long will you fall? Only in time will you find out... but will you survive it?

Try THE FALL now !

Developed in 72 hours, the Fall is an arcade fast-paced game where you must avoid obstacles to reach the earth’s core! As you drop down, the whole world becomes a blur, your reflexes start being put to the test.

If you have 5 minutes to kill, time to take out the drill !

You can try and review our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/dig-digger :smile:

A short atmospheric exploration game set in an abandoned space station.

Play & Rate: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/the-signal

https://caffeinetrip.itch.io/echo-of-fallens

Working on Service Pack 1 update

I've released a post-jam version of my submission, Drilly's Journey. The new version is available via the itch.io link at the top of the game description.

Changes Include: - Music! - Smoother movement - More consistent drilling (no randomly drilling into corners/walls) - Visual fixes - Checkpoints don't reset when touching previous checkpoints

.

Dig deep, collect resources and drill your way to the lowest depth!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/dig-and-delve

Hi all again! Thanks for watching the first video and... I make another video where I play 25 more random games for time saving. Enjoy watching.

🎥 Video: https://youtu.be/MSBoG8iLYH0

P.S. If you like any game and wanna try them yourself, I have add links all of them in the video description.

Play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/stickys-aquarium

Another Jam Done

I'm happy to have finished something, anything, that's as complex and well put together as this project here. I have a few game jams under my belt now and I have learned the same lesson over and over again. Simplify. I have a bad habit of over scoping and releasing a super unfinished project, but not this time. I came into this jam with a goal. One mechanic that feels really satisfying to play with and then everything else can just be filler content.

I decided on a super replayable minigame that I used to play a lot on the phone "Pop the Lock." It was a really simple and fun game that had its own challenges and difficulties that I wanted to bring into a cozier game about fishing.

Why The Art Style?

As I get more and more confident with my artistic talents I find myself drawn to the old styles of the game boy advanced or even Paper Mario on the N64. I am in love with the round thick sticker like pixel style so I had to make an entire game using that look

Mistakes

Like usual I made many mistakes, I still found a way to over scope, maybe not mechanically but content wise. I realized that if I was making a game that had a simple collection mechanic I needed a lot and I sure do mean A LOT of content. I wasn't really happy with how few fish managed to make its way into the game, nor was I happy with just the one map. If I had the chance to do it again I wouldn't have spent so much time on cleaning up the mechanics of the game to be a super 100% polished experience and instead I would have just chosen to add way way more to the game.

Conclusion

Overall, this is the happiest I've ever been with one of my games. I am so insanely proud of my work on Sticky's Aquarium! I can't wait to play and rate more games this jam too! Everyone did amazingly!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbHFyt20SjU

Try our PONG COMBAT and feel the sensation of descending the 9 circles of hell.

With pixel art graphics and chiptune sound, A New Hell is a challenging and intense game in its simplicity.

Hey guys! Hope everyone’s brushed their teeth? 🦷 No one forgets to do it morning and evening, right? 😎 Here’s the deal: not everyone can brush their teeth properly because not all bodies are built to reach their jaws with their hands. One crocodile 🐊 is asking for your help with this! HELP CROCODILE

Shine with a smile and have an awesome day! ✨

I've decided that someone there might be interested in how i made game (with big G) design for my game.

First. You explain to the artist how the game will look like.

Second. An artist draws a color sketch

Third. Polish the game to perfection!

“Who are these people … ? I can’t remember anything …”

Waking up from an accident, a young woman tries to reminisce.

If you like narrative games you should try our game ! (+ There's voice acting :wink: :sparkles: )

Let me know in the comments which game I should play :smile: :joystick:

(I appreciate you also playing & rating mine: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/dyamid :gem: )

Our First Game Jam: Shelter from the Blight

For a long time, my friend Yiraa and I have shared the dream of making a game together. We’ve been close friends since engineering school, and every now and then we’d talk about cool game ideas, build some lore, and say, “We should make a game!” We’d start something, tinker for a few hours, three, maybe four, and then it would quietly fade away.

But this time was different.

A few weeks ago, Yiraa said:

“Let’s join a game jam.”

It felt like the right push. Unlike our past attempts, this would give us a deadline and a reason to actually finish something. Ludum Dare was coming up, and it felt like the perfect opportunity.

Neither of us had any prior experience in game development, but we're both developers. I'm fairly experienced, but Yiraa is excellent, especially when it comes to quickly learning new concepts and solving tough technical problems.

To work efficiently, we decided to split tasks. I had touched 3D modeling briefly more than a decade ago, so I took on the modeling and helped shape the game design, while Yiraa focused on the core systems and logic.

The Game:

The theme was “Depths”, and that’s how Shelter from the Blight was born, a 3D hex-based strategic building game where players dig down through the earth to escape a creeping corruption from above. Each new depth unlocks new resources and buildings, creating a satisfying sense of progression and pressure.

We didn’t want the game to be too easy. In fact, our goal was to create a kind of die-and-retry experience, where players learn through failure and slowly master the systems. That said, we didn’t have time to fully tune the difficulty or resource generation, something we’re excited to work on in the future.

Creating Under Pressure

We were realistic about our ambitions. It was our first game jam, and we knew we’d be up against the clock. To save time, we reused and adapted design ideas across levels. The only thing we knew about a jam is it is all about making tough calls quickly, and sometimes that means recycling mechanics or models to keep momentum.

That strategy helped a lot. I even had time to do some sound design, using random things around my apartment to make effects. I probably annoyed Yiraa by banging on furniture, but it made him laugh, and it was part of the fun.

Learning by Doing

Creating even simple 3D assets was a challenge for me, especially early on, but I learned fast. With each new model, I got a bit more confident and efficient. Maybe I have strong instincts for modeling, but for sure i can thank my last experience, the fact that necessity is a great teacher, and the jam pace forced me to improve quickly.

One unexpected bonus: my dog. Thanks to her, we had to go outside every now and then for a walk, which turned out to be the perfect excuse to take breaks and get some sunlight. These little pauses helped us reset and come back with fresh ideas.

Of course, doing a game jam after a packed week of our full-time jobs was intense. It wasn’t exactly relaxing, but it was energizing in a different way, a creative rush that made the effort worth it.

Looking back

We’re incredibly proud of what we made. Shelter from the Blight may not be perfect, but it’s a complete, functional, fun game that we built from scratch in just a few days. That alone feels like a massive win.

We're already thinking about a V1.1, where we can polish the gameplay, improve the balance, and expand on concepts we didn’t have time to explore.

More importantly, this experience gave us a lot of confidence to keep going. Some of our friends were hesitant to join the jam, worried they wouldn’t be able to contribute. Now that we’ve been through it, we know they absolutely could. And hopefully next time, they’ll join the adventure too ...

Because in this kind of experiences you can surprise yourself with what you're capable of.

I have published the game as a demo version and plan to develop it further. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3667820/ReLinked026091975Demo/

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/relinked-0-26091975

As a JavaScript developer, I'd love to test your HTML5 game:

• Leave a comment with a link to the LD page of your game.
• Please wait a few days while I test.
• Feel free to test my HTML5 (Vanilla JavaScript/WebGL) game Souls Rider 1D (COMPO) in return.

On for another round of playing your games. I got my list ready! If you're in the stream, let me know. Priority for present public ofc.

Another Round of Ludum Dare 57 Playing and Rating!!

Hi everyone, it's that time once again! I really enjoyed playing all the games you gave me last time so I thought I'd do round 2!

Later today I will be playing and rating some games again so feel free to drop yours in the comments if you need ratings:)

I would also really appreciate it if you could give my jam submission MESSIER 104 CBH a shot and tell me your thoughts!:)

See you in The Void :rocket: :frog:

Everyone can also leave their links! I will make time to experience it!

Hey, guys!!!

I want to thank you for your comments about our game! And on behalf of all the artists on the team, as the lead artist of the game, I want to thank you for the kind words about our work, we really appreciate it!^^

In honor of this, I'll send you some content that didn't make it into the game and tell you what the point was!

If you don't know what this game is about, PLAY IT HERE and spark your interest!!! >:)

End screen. Every time after completing a level, this screen should have appeared:

Shop - You can buy new bombs with the gold you have mined, You only have the "Regular Bomb", the rest you will have to buy yourself!

Rank System - Depending on how you completed the level (health remaining, gold earned, and the time it took you to complete the level), you will be assigned a rank.

Two-three more bombs. These bombs didn't make it into the game:

Sticky bombs - Sticks to multiple enemies, continuing to move by inertia. Then explodes, damaging sticky enemies.

Cluster bombs - After hitting the target, the bomb explodes into several "mini-bombs". (there should have been 3 of them)

Mini-bombs - They work like a "Regular Bomb".

Splash Art. This was made for the presentation of the game (after ludum):

The boss "Big-Cart" is "Bull-Cart". Our boss looked a little different, but due to time had to change a little, for better animation. Here are all his versions (new version updated after jam):

Thank you for reading this till the end!

Here is your true reward that you deserve!(«◠‿◠»)

https://www.twitch.tv/xpmonsterx

Submit your game via our Discord server and be present on stream :)

Empyrean's server: https://discord.gg/4h5scpz6ek

Games played count: 26

Last games:

1. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/deep-fry https://youtu.be/lvom2wTdAHQ

2. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/upstream https://youtu.be/9YkF3lvas8w

3. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/nine-lives-deep (to be reshot for YT later)

4. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/helmet-man https://youtu.be/RXi5e26Zm0s

5. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/serp-slurp-spicy-hot-chocolate-3 https://youtu.be/-VhX3o-tAAU

~Xp

I mean games that are REALLY good but didn't get the attention you think they deserve.

For me it's definitely https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/puppeteer by @benskca. I loved every second of it, the idea and execution are great and my only complaint is that I want more levels.

Let’s play and review them! What's yours?

(Hehe, hidden gem… depth theme… lol sorry)

As usual I’d thought I’d do my quick post jam break down of my game for LDjam 57.

Dawn of the First Day

I can't believe it but I didn't mind the theme for once! What is this?! Anyway I decided to go down my usual route of, guns, shops, collecting things and blasting up enemies. The first day went down doing the usually making a basic engine, with the general gameplay, a single enemy and all the gubbings I need to make it into something fully fleshed out.

I decided I didn't want to do anything with going into the depths, but instead of escaping them. I found there might be quite a few games about exploring them, mining or travelling down them so I thought I'd be cooler to do the opposite. Originally I planned it being an auto-scroller going up but I settled on the camera just panning up once you land on a solid ground. I had to figure out a quick and dirty way of respawning if you touched the bottom, which ended up turning out fine, (I hope.) The original plan was to make it a semi-rogue like with randomized levels, (you'd play five randomized levels from a seed of 10, however after the second day I knew I wouldn't have enough time to make 30 levels, so this concept was dropped.

Once the main core engine was finished I decided to add in all the weapons, upgrades and enemies. This took a few hours so I didn't go super overboard with them. I also didn't bother to sprite new looking guns for all the weapon types, that saved a few minutes too. Along with this, I kept the graphics simple and basic so they too wouldn't take an age to make. I decided to use the Master System palette because that console gets overlooked sometimes!

Anyway once all that was done I was finished for the first day and ended to bed!

Dawn of the Second Day

I woke up after about five hours of good decent sleep, refreshed I decided to make a pot of coffee and get back to it. I started working on the graphics for the levels. I had planned three distinct levels and I wanted to keep to this goal. This was the next couple of hours designing the tilesets, so they were ready to be used for when I get around to making the actual levels.

Once this was done, I started to make all the menu screens, pause screens, the shop, intro/outros. Basically anything that text/menus I decided to work on that because I can't stand doing this. It's better for me to do this when I'm awake and refreshed than when I'm super tired. After about a good four or so hours I had all this done! Although I say I hate making them, I did highly enjoy making my silly little intro for the game.

And with that, I had about a few hours left of the second day and just got down to crunching out levels. It was at this point I could see myself not making 30 different levels for my rogue like, so it ended up just making as much as I can and go with it. With that at the end of the second day I had the first stage fully completed with eight different stages and I went to bed.

Dawn of the Final Day

After about another five or six hours sleep, I awoke to what was the most easiest day of them all really. Nothing cool or interesting other than making levels. That was it. Just sat down and made levels and tested them. For the first time in my LDjam history I was ahead of schedule! With this by about 4 hours left I had made 22 levels and thought best to call it quits there and focus on two other important things, music and something extra to end the game on.

So with that, I spent about two to three hours making all the audio tracks for the game and about an hour on just a little extra for the end. (A small boss, nothing special just something other than "you escaped the final level".) I should of spent a little more time on the boss because it was a little underbaked, upped his health a little bit or did something but as a quick little add-on I can't complain.

And with that, I was done, finished with about 30 minutes to spare! I uploaded the game, recorded a video and it's done! Honestly this was such a lovely peaceful jam for me, I didn't panic, I didn't burn out and I just sat and had three days of fun making a silly little game that took inspiration from Cave Story, Momodora and Castle Hydra. That was my vibe with this game, and I just honestly enjoyed every second of it.

Fifteen coffees, two bars of chocolate, one bottle of store brand cola and a tube of pringles later and I made a game.

I've finally getting around to making this post and also playing all the wonderful games I've seen through this jam, it's great to be back after such an awful year!

Anyway I hope you enjoy Abyss Vaulter: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/abyss-vaulter

And if you can't play it, 'ere is a full playthrough of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GClSKA7fJ68

Much love - Joel!

Top-down fantasy hack n slash: https://staticleapstudios.itch.io/raid-the-abyss The performance required was a bit too much for the browser version, but you can get the Exe on the Itch.io page as well. It is codesigned so you can disregard the Windows warning. Credit: Game - Emery Smith (staticleapstudios.com) SFX and Music - Smthngclvr (https://youtube.com/@smthngclvr?feature=shared)

I loved so many of the entries this round and I am so thankful to everyone who took the time to play through my game and comment. I can't wait to see you all again for 58 - me being hopefully wiser and brighter!

We would love to see what you think of Voidwood! Rate and leave a comment on the game and we will play your game in return.

We've played a ton of games already and hit diminishing returns for smart balance, but we still want to get more ratings, so link your games and we can both get more!

The level has a definitive end, see if you can make it all the way there! I won't give anything away, but you'll want to at least make it to the halfway point (you'll know it when you hit it) for the best experience. 😉

Play Now

🎶 Sound On

Music and sound effects were made by @jb-rock

🎨 Fullscreen

Art was made by @vary

🗺️ Finish The Level

Level design was done by @manatee-webster

💧 Water Your Roots

Obstacles and powerups were created by @megl

🤖 Play The Game

General programming was done by @tobius

Thank you so much for all your feedback! Looking forward to trying your games!

Now that my game has achieved the minimum required amount of votes, it's time for me to discuss what went on in developing it.

Of course, before the jam started, I already had the "explorer sisters" concept in mind. And the character inspirations for the "sisters" Zinnia and Azalea came from four sets of twin sisters I know and like: Fuwawa and Mococo Abyssgard from hololive English Advent, Kei and Chihiro Shindou from ef: a fairy tale of the two., Ram and Rom from the Neptunia series, and Asa and Yoru Kazato from If My Heart Had Wings. These pairs of polar opposite twin sisters have their own sets of appealing qualities that I applied to Zinnia and Azalea.

Regarding the naming conventions, in terms of places and dramatis personae, I draw names from various sources, making sure they are appropriate to the setting. Since Baihaerun, the world where the entire Lily Adventuresses! series takes place in, is a typical Western fantasy setting with strong influences of Filipino mythology and culture, and also draws from many other different cultures, I implement names when I feel like it, with rhyme and reason put into it, of course.

Now onto Episode 3 itself. Since "depths" was chosen as LD57's theme, I set out to draw inspiration from Mega Man Legends, since both games deal with exploring ruins full of lost technology -- for instance, the refractive crystal Zinnia and Azalea find near the end of the prologue is a reference to the refractors from MML. The game also has strong elements of mystery that unfold upon exploration of more ruins, and this kind of storytelling is what I'll implement in the full game.

Of course, being a trademark of mine, I never fail to inject a reference or two to other media. For instance, the prologue's title, "This Ain't Made in the Abyss", is an overt reference to the manga and anime Made in Abyss. And did you know that in the entire Lily Adventuresses! series, I implemented messages you can read when you inspect already-opened chests? Yeah, they're a huge shout-out to the Trails in the Sky trilogy.

So there. Look forward to the entire Lily Adventuresses! series. Episode 1, She Who Lost Everything but Her Name is already out, Episode 2, Rise of the Arcritters, is around 75-80% complete, and expect Episode 3, The Explorer Sisters and the Deepest Depths, to be out before 2025 ends.

Episode 1: https://dagitabsoft.itch.io/lily-adventuresses-episode-1-she-who-lost-everything-but-her-name (FULL)

Episode 2: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/lily-adventuresses-episode-2-rise-of-the-arcritters-prologue (LD56; PROLOGUE)

Episode 3: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/lily-adventuresses-episode-3-the-explorer-sisters-and-the-deepest-depths-pr (LD57; PROLOGUE)

Have a blessed Good Friday.

Hello everyone ! I played a lot of games, and I have to say that I'm really impressed by this edition games !! I already found a lot of gems, and I wanted to share my fav so far ! With no order :

• The Hidden Depths by @nsadie, an adorable and beautiful puzzle game,
• Tiny Tinker by @shadyshade, an inventive and beautiful platformer (I swear it's not like others platformers),
• Antz vs Plants by @midnightmist, @keely-brown and @blue-pin-studio, a really fun and original tower defense,
• Granny's Gotcha by @joscco, a beautiful and fun puzzle game (art is amazing),
• Depth of Discovery by @camcomduck, an addictive exploration and upgrade game,
• Pack by @jeremy-ryan, a professional top tier looking puzzle game

Don't hesitate to leave a comment with your own game if I haven't played it yet ! :)

I did a game where you have to hold your actual breath to reach goals. I'd like to know your preference between "realistic minimalism" and "playful minimalism". Which one is more appealing to you (and why)? Thanks a lot!

Realistic minimalism

Playful minimalism

Play and rate here

No spoilers of last level :smile:

Here's mine https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/keep-hopping

Howdy all, been hard at work adding some more ~~jank~~ features to the game.

Have added some simple tooltips to the characters and towers:

And a big new win is the shop :raisedhands: currently just going with stat increases for gold but might add buying towers as well not sure.