Back again for my fifth consecutive LD and my second one with a team, can't wait to dive into this craziness again!

My first Ludum was #24 and entered off an on since. This is my first one in a while and will be entering the Jam with https://twitter.com/ceceedraws. I'll likely be streaming a lot of the jam. :)

Follow me here: https://twitter.com/BradleySmith93

Hi everyone just launched a kickstarter to finish a game that begin in Ludum Dare, Roadout [https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/roadout]

The kickstarter will make it possible to create game content in a safer way for everyone in the studio, allowing our first release to meet our expectations and the expectations of players, thank you for your attention and take a look at the project page. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rastrolabs/roadout]

I can't wait for the next LD, what will come out?

Hey there, Godot devs! I'd like to share some goodies to help your Godot 3.5 projects go more smoothly.

The first is what I call the Godot Project Starter. If that looks/sounds familiar, it's because I've posted about it before. It still contains pre-made scenes that you'll most likely want (title, how-to-play, credits) and other UI/UX items like scene transitions, and a HUD with pause menu and game over dialogs. Recently I've added a settings dialog/scene so that you can include key rebinding and other settings (mouse sensitivity, invert mouse y, volume settings for music, sound and master) in your game. Settings are also saved to disk. There are a few other things included. Just check out the github repo for details.

The github repo page is https://github.com/jhlothamer/godotprojectstarter

I also made a helper pack with useful utilities and components. You can checkout the github page for that here: https://github.com/jhlothamer/godothelperpack

The helper pack has a github wiki describing everything in the pack. One recent addition is a tool that distributes meshes in the MultiMestInstance2D node. I used this to create the levels in a game we made for one of the recent Metroidvania Month jam. The tool also carves up the collision polygons in a StaticBody2D to create the walls of the levels. You can check out the game at https://jlothamer.itch.io/glowstar-empire if you want to see the results.

All repos are MIT license and free to use, no attribution required or necessary. Hope some of this helps! If not directly in your game, then maybe you can get some ideas from it.

I got there in the end though!

I skipped last ld cuz i think i forgor it was happening, anyways excited for this!

I know it's hard to remember all the themes in the slaugher (assuming you've done some slaughtering), but from what you can remember, what is the one theme that you won't feel bad if it ends up winning!

I think my favorite was something like "you control the level", but again I can't really remember them all

Why didn't I think of that as a theme. Facepalm emoji.

I think I should make my game just like Theme Slaughter. You have 15 minutes to remove all themes that have never been chosen ... thinking face emoji.

Greetings!

Over the years, I've participated many game jams in order to improve my skills in game design. This Friday will be my first ludum dare. Looking forward to working on something amazing!

I will be participating.

Hopefully will do better than last few.

Uncle Chris

This one (mostly) paid off in terms of keeping to a simple idea and not throwing in too much complexity to bog down gameplay. I still don't think it was much of a game, but it was 'finished', and a home to one of my favourite vocalists/front-men taken too soon.

https://youtu.be/B2PrdGNPrko

ludum dare 51 will be my first game jam as a game developer XD hoping to make some memories here (I started developing 4 months ago btw)

didn't record my votes last jam so when i went back to see them i was disappointed lol

I'm not going to explicitly endorse or decry any particular themes, but I will offer my thoughts on a select few of them which happen to catch my eye:

Out of Bounds - This is an interesting theme to me. Video games often have, like, a "play area" where all of the action takes place. Normally, leaving this area is impossible - you can't go "out of bounds" of the game. But what if a game let you leave the usual play area? This is an interesting concept - however, it also feels conceptually limiting...

Ascend - This theme is interesting to me because it suggests both gameplay-related and story-related ideas. "Ascend" could be well-suited to a simple game where the player tries to jump or climb as high as possible. One could imagine a simple mobile-game platformer where the main character simply tries to jump up to higher areas. But "Ascend" also lends itself to ideas of progress, becoming stronger, etc. Basically any game where a player surpasses their earlier self could fall under this category.

Side Effect - I think this theme is interesting since it immediately invokes trade-offs. Many games feature mechanics where you get some benefit at the cost of some detriment. There are countless games which could be envisioned with some central trade-off at the center: the player gains some notable benefit, but is saddled with its corresponding "side effect" which they must deal with.

Everything has a Price - It's very common in games for actions to have a price in terms of some in-game resource. So one sense in which you could interpret this theme is this: what if in-game actions which normally do NOT have a price, actually did have one? I think this is an intriguing design question, but again a limiting one.

Ecosystem - I think this theme is interesting because "ecosystems" are complex and natural things. For a game to have an "ecosystem", it would need to have some fairly complex set of rules which already existed even before the player became involved. This could lead to all sorts of interesting rulesets... but in some ways, the idea is an antithesis to many sorts of games. In many games, the actions of the player are most important, but "ecosystem" suggests that the functions of the player's environment are perhaps more important than their own decisions...

I'd be curious to see what other people think of the various themes in this round!

Hello my old friend "Everything has a price", aka "Your life is currency", probably better known as "Sacrifices must be made". I see your doppelganger "Side effect" is here as well. How glad to see you two again. Also hi "Keep it moving"! I see you've upped the requirement from merely being alive, but isn't that a bit inconsiderate of our plant friends? Inclusivity, remember! ...Oh "10 seconds"! Of course, wouldn't be a jam without one of you timer homies. Bestest of regards. Anyway I've got to go. See ya next LD!

Now that I took part in quite the number of gamejam, I think a lot more about what make a good theme. Still no solution. However, I've noticed that I judge themes more by thinking about the game testing phase than the creation phase. Which theme won't give multiple copies of the same game, which theme is too complicated to apply to a jam with so many people including many newbies. I find it interesting to have gone from an individualistic vision of my theme choice to a collective one, precisely by spending time to note and analyze the games of the others.

Is that tool as any other or not?

Please either disable motion blur or add an option for players to disable it.

That's all. Happy jamming!

I've learnt a new Game Engine and I'm working with a friend who I haven't worked with before! I'm very excited! :D