I have noticed a trend in Ludum Dare themes, there are two categories that I have identified, these are descriptive themes and meta themes.

Descriptive Themes

• Roads (LD13)
• Caverns (LD15)
• Islands (LD17)

These themes have no design requirement, they just require you to have your game themed with this setting.

Meta Themes examples

• Delay the inevitable (LD50)
• Stuck in a loop (LD47)
• Keep it alive (LD46)

These themes are more of a design constraint for the game designer. The challenge of this type of theme is to create a game satisfying some requirement, such as having something inevitable eventually happen or being forced into a loop.

Which ones do you prefer?

Most recent LD themes have been meta themes, except "Unstable" which is a bit of hybrid. For this reason, I would like to see more descriptive themes like "Garden", "Ocean", etc.

This time I am sure that one of my suggestions are going to get to the final round!

I am working on an Interpreter written in JavaScript. I speculate to challenge myself by using it for the upcoming Compo. I think it will be funny and frustrating at the same time... But... damn it... I'm in the mood for it XD

Me. In LDJAM 51. Can't wait to torture myself for 48 hours straight when a random tiny bug eats about 20% of my time again.

Let's get the theme thing out of the way first:

The funky tool lineup consists of (and this is basically the same as every single jam I've ever participated in):

• :video_game: GameMaker Studio 2 for coding bugs
• :paintbrush: Aseprite for making pixel art that is honestly decent at this point
• :musical_note: Ableton Live 11 for making the banger soundtrack
• :pencil2: Typora for taking notes in a slick and stylish fashion
• :globewithmeridians: GitHub for hosting my code forever so future generations may avoid my codestyle

Yeah that's pretty much it. I think I'll stream the entire thing on Twitch again so if you decide to not make a game but still want the feeling of time crunch and dread or if you just want to check on my progress, feel free to stop by.

Have a nice day, see you in two weeks :D

Cause it's time for the "I'm in" posts...

I have a feeling this is going to be good! I wish good luck to everyone else who will be participating as well.

I will be using:

• Clip Studio Paint - 2D Art
• Aseprite - Pixel Sprites
• Visual Studio Code - Programming
• Audacity - SFX
• HTML/Javascript - Platform

Still haven't decided if I will be doing pixel or vector art, I think that will depend on the idea I end up having.

My submissions from previous Jams that I'm proud of:

LD 50: Ydunian Prune

LD 47: Loophole Kingdom

LD 45: Ground Zero

Let's hope the theme doesn't suck too much this time!

This will be my 28th ludumdare in a row. xD i started at LD24, and am still here apparently. I’ll be using these this time:

IDE: Eclipse - Eclipse Foundation

Engine: LibGdx - Open Source, originally written by Mario Zechner

Graphics: aseprite/paint.net -david capello/Rick Brewster; Tiled - Thorbjørn Lindeijer; TexturePacker - main guy: Metaphore, also: tommyettinger, devjn, terafog, thefacecore, hangman and voidburn.

Fonts: FontForge - George Williams and the FontForge Project contributors

Sound: Audacity - Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg

Music: Cakewalk by BandLab

Timelapse: Chronolapse - keeyai

Good luck fellow Ludumdarians. Also, drink up Unicorns! I'm hoping to avoid the deployment headaches, but so far I haven't gone a recent LD without tooling issues. Test out those tools prior to the event!! :D :O :/ haha!

I'm gonna join my third jam! Tools are TBD though. Good theme ideating ;)

This is my first jam since #40 whew time :o

I have gotten more comfortable with developing in C++ and want to use this as an opportunity to try and release something that way and see if it works out.

Hope to finish something small, reasonably polished and very dumb.

Expected setup:

• Language/libraries C++ and SDL2
• IDE Visual Studio Code
• Graphics Aseprite
• Music Ableton Live + Serum VST
• SFX Same as music + some library sfx I guess

I'm in

Here are my suggestions:

I'm gonna be busy with other things, and then I'm doing this... Life is gonna suck!

Finally had some decent ideas for a theme to suggest... Though I still like the words "Jiggly wiggly" :/ I just can't imagine what to make from it, except a jelly simulator or smth.

I'm currently browsing and looking at various game engines/programs to find one that I like better, but so far none of them has really caught my attention :(

I'd love an engine/framework/something that really allows you to handle text in a creative manner, but so far all I've found has been the same kind of print text to screen. No animation or transformation like skewing.

Let the game (development) begin

I'm going to spend a little time this weekend touching up the code base I used for LD30 and LD48 and try to get that published before the compo.

Super late update: I've published my starter code base here: https://piratehearts.com/files/LD4851Base.zip

Using Godot this time even though I'd rather use my custom stuff but I need a job so bad and I have no time

So last time, my first jam...well I went with a game idea I concocted beforehand that barely bent around the theme. Plus it just didn't feel fun to play. Or code, for that matter. But, I've got 6 extra months on my engine of choice under my belt (Godot), and an itch to make a project by myself that I can keep simple on launch. Still haven't...made any, full games...from Godot. But I had a lot more engine tinkering since then. Something that will keep me from programming for most of the damn thing.

Doing digital archeology on old projects and discovering you'd wasted the first hours of a compo doing a completely different game to your final entry. Couldn't find the music files this time though. :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ha54wABPgQ

First time, inexperienced, scared but excited!