Here's a little post about how I made the music in Pom Planet!

If you haven't checked it out, it's an action puzzle game where you have to guide tiny creatures. (ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/pom-planet)

Right away I knew I wanted to make the music more ambient than melodic, but I didn't want the ambient noises to be random.

I concluded that I would make a unique track for each of the game mechanics, inspired by the music in Pikmin 4. (Scruffy has a great video about it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAeYosWbXPc)

Making a track for every element is a lot of work, so I decided to make them all relatively short. The original plan was to make the music in 5/4 for an uncanny feeling, but I was struggling to figure out a drum beat that I liked, so I reverted to old reliable 4/4.

I tried to make each track match the feeling of the given mechanic. Some feedback I got from team members was that they wanted stronger melodies, and less sound effect type tracks. Later elements I tried to focus on making them oddly melodic and atonal.

Post your game here if it includes a web build. I test at a work laptop, so can't download builds

Thank you, thank you, thank you all sooo much for your amazing feedback!

While working on this project, I was so worried because the combination of visual novel + a heavy and very sensitive subject matter coupled with the fact that I usually write my short stories etc in German instead of English (I was writing and rewriting and rewriting bc I wanted to get it right) could have easily turned this whole project into a disaster.

But I really wanted to do this and I am so glad I did.

Again, thank you so much. Your kind words mean the world to me.

If you haven't already played "Are you listening?" and are in the mood for a visual novel, you can find it right here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/are-you-listening

Shameless shilling! I forgot about the the jam for a day so started a day late, but I'm proud of what I made :> Big thanks to the community for leaving so many nice comments, its been a nice routine to wake up and check comments on my LD submission :3

If you want to check out submission the link is here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/cat-tastrophe

(its about yeeting cats :PPP)

If you're into retro arcade classics, why not try out my own take on one and give Carrot Patch a go? I'd love to hear your feedback on it!

(oh and if you also made a game in pico-8 please leave a link to it in the comments I would love to check it out)

They sure scare us. That's why we made a close-up screenshot of our tiny creature!

Meet the Rat – our little friend will bring all her buddies to make the dungeon party a success!

We are amazed at how many people are interested in our game! Although it is far from the simplest, this game was able to hook some of you! If you havent played our game, so try and challenge yourself here :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/drone-brigade

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-wreckers

I have seen so many awesome games already, ya'll are amazing!

All I wanted to say is that

... And if you are already here

PLAY AND RATE SHRIMPY ON YOUR BROWSER!

I was watching how different people play my game, and noticed an interesting common issue with the tutorial. Tiny Inc. Repair Shop is a puzzle game, where you need to place tiny creatures on the board in the correct position, so that they bring electrical charge to a battery (gif probably explains it better). Every creature is special: - one is going only left or right - second up or down - the third one charges and pushes any creature on it's way.

The tutorial that I could afford making during 2 days of compo, looks like notepad on the side which shows creature description when you hover the creature. Like on this gif

The problem with this is that people don't notice that the text in the notepad changes and can't understand how the creatures work, as their eyes and attention are at another place. What I saw is that players rarely read the notepad at all, they just put the creatures on the board and try to understand what they do after.

How could I help player to understand this better?

One way might be to show gif in the notepad (or pictures) instead of the text. The blinking should be more attractive to the player's eye, and catch their attention.

Another way I quickly implemented is that creatures just describe what they do while they sleep and wait for player to take them, something like this:

The reason I like this idea is that apart from exposing player the information about how creatures work, I also convey their personality through the short line of text. Something I used entire notepad page before could actually be just three words of text in a bubble.

What do you think, is it helpful or too vague? Any other ideas on how to make tutorial in such games?

If you want to play, btw, here is the link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-inc-repair-shop

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/glow Play and enjoy! It will be nice if you leave comments and ratings!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/glow

Wow, my first Ludum Dare was an amazing experience. I finally made a dream come true: be part of the creation of a video game. And all thanks to @togis and @burchyn who were the best team mates for my very first (LD) experience. It is also crazy fun to see how most people are wholesome in this community. Thank you for the positive reactions :)

I hope this post gets seen, as there were some issues showing my posts during the LD. In case you missed my posts: we made Fry Quest, a game about a potato who wants to become a Belgian fry. We made a clickable story with amazing art and very enjoyable minigames.

Do try it.... Rumors say that if you do not play the game within 7 days, that you might up end up as a mashed potato in this or a next life.

Play here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/fry-quest

Thx :v:

Of course you do! Manage a bee colony, grow your army and protect your dear home from predators in Nectarmancer!

Check it out here! [HTML/Windows]

Heya! We made a 3D game where you play as a pixie wreaking havoc in a goblin’s apartment - so come check it out, pixie-please!

>PLAY HERE

If you’re not interested or have already played it, I’ve got something else for you: some concept art!

Here are my original doodles that I gave to our artist:

And here’s what the artist came up with shortly after!

Originally, we planned to have three main characters (five if you include the antagonist troll and a quirky side character, the gnome)

The idea was that you could switch between the three characters and upgrade their abilities with the things they stole. But pretty quickly, we realized that making all the logic and models in just 72 hours was impossible for our team. So, we had to scale back our plans and focus on just one playable character.

This guy looked the most charismatic of the bunch - a brat with burnt wings (probably from trying to steal and smoke too many cigarettes). Though I still love the idea of a big, chubby man-fairy with tiny wings!

Sadly, Mr. Troll didn’t make it into the final version of the game. In the last hour, we replaced him with Boblin the Goblin from Gizart’s asset pack. He’s got a similar vibe, too bad he doesn't wear ties...

Here's our concept board, I guess...

And here are some early random sketches of characters interacting, would be cool to see them in the game somewhere, but eh

Thanks for reading and looking at all of that! Maybe now you'll want to check out Pixie Pilfer? I’ll even throw in a cute pixie for you if you do, here ya go:

Bob wouldn't mind eating a couple of bugs. Feed him!!!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/hungrybob https://chingiskhan.itch.io/hungrybob

My team made an idle game about little fish making a rocket! I just wanted to make a post to see if any idle game enjoyers want to try it out! :tropicalfish: :blueheart:

Play Here!

We are closing in on 20 Ratings. If you love a cute puzzle game where you need to find the path to get all tiny creatures to the goal. Go an check out Perdita Creaturae

Play it Here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/perdita-creaturae

So I apologize in advance if anyone is insulted by what i said while playing their game, most of them are bangers, some of them are just kinda ok, and only 1 got a real negative review but it's mostly because im dumb, and i couldn't read the instructions.

timestamps are in the description

Games Played:

@plasmapuffs - Hexobane https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/hexoban

@Jordantanner - Quantium 47X https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/quantum-47x

@thomas-bringer - Snail Away https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/snail-away

@thesand - Microstrike https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/microstrike

@Nickhellquist - Particle wars https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/particle-wars

@paroxysmal - W.A.S.P - Warrior And Scout Protocol https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/w-a-s-p-warrior-and-scout-protocol

@shared - Forest Tower Defense https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/forest-tower-defense

@kiv - Attack on the piper https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/attack-on-the-piper

@reecemungus - GravelHeir rldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/gravelheir

@ellaris - Ladybird Samurai https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/ladybird-samurai

@setter Shadowy Pals https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/shadowy-creatures

@rezistor - PPL. Converter https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/ppl-converter

@mrspeaker - Those Darn Nanobot AI Will Be The End of Us All https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/those-darn-nanobot-ai-will-be-the-end-of-us-all

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

What a fun jam. I think this was the smallest and most focused jam I've done in a while. My favorite was the first tiny game. If you have a web build rate/comment my game and I will get back to yours!

• https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/creepy-crawly-mansion

it seems to work on mobile browsers; the second tiny game requires you to drag, it's designed for mouse movement though