It is a little post-production blog about our freshly made group called Bucketheads. As we now finally got back to our normal lives, we found it interesting to share our work process and the problems we encountered along the way.

We are all first-year students at the faculty of design, specializing in Game Design. Only one month in, we were already assigned to create a game prototype from scratch, with zero previous knowledge, to compete with hundreds of games and thousands of participants. With our grades at stake, the overall stress was high from the start, and problems appeared even before the theme was announced. We didn’t have graphic tablets, and none of us had in-depth programming knowledge, so we had to improvise. I (artallester) did all the coding, while we had three people on the "design team" and one who provided the music (Maybe you will see their comments down below). The graphic designers had mostly worked in traditional art before this jam and had little to no experience working digitally. The only programmer on the team knew what an Integer is, and that’s about it.

Nevertheless, the theme was announced at 1 AM on the first day, and our first call on Discord took place at 8 AM. After a quick brainstorming session, we came up with the idea for the game, which involved a grandma (called Tamara, by the way), and we were ready to conquer the world! The graphic team stayed on the call all day, while our music guy was in the recording studio. By the end of day one, we had a little prototype with basic mechanics finished, and we were all hyped, thinking we could make it in time.

Day 2: It turned out that on the first day we were already quite tired, and the real work was just beginning. Speaking for myself, implementing a second level with a saved score and upgrades made everything not only difficult to control in my spaghetti code but also constantly breaking, so it was scratched entirely as you can see in our game. My lowest point was spending 5 hours trying to make the weapon spin around the player based on mouse position, and not finishing it. As you can imagine, it was frustrating. During this time, all the main characters, animations, and backgrounds were done, as well as the sound, so the game started to have a visual aspect and some vibes.

Day 3: The graphic team worked like a Chinese factory before Christmas. The number of sprites we had for this game not only surprised me but also crashed Unity the first time I tried to import them. After some tweaking and "balancing," the game reached a somewhat funny stage, where we started decorating the apartment as if we were playing The Sims 4. And of course, what’s a game jam without forgetting something important? We forgot the game icon! So while the draft of the game was uploading and being tested five times, the icon was created. We also realized the music was too loud with only 30 minutes left on the timer, so we just prayed for the health of our players’ ears.

A separate message from the designers: In the final hours before the deadline, we didn’t just start going crazy on Discord – it felt like we were turning into those cockroaches ourselves, while also trying our best to improve the visual aspect of the game. We hope we’ve managed to capture at least a bit of your attention.

So, after 3 days of little sleep, quick learning, and going crazy 🐀 from constantly being on Discord, the game was made. Basically, this is the first step we’ve taken into the industry, and we hope to get your attention on this game as we gave our absolute best (considering we had zero previous experience) in creating this product. We hope you find it interesting, and remember the saying: "Don't resist the mutation if you’re not a chicken!" And if it lags, just reload the page. I remind you, none of us really knows how to write working code.

Go check it out!

<3

I've played a lot of games in this jam already. And I don't understand why so many amazing games are rated 20 or lower 😭😭😭. So I made my personal top 3 games rated 20 (or lower):

1️⃣ Drawer Sheep https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/drawer-sheep

🐑 A stylish 3D puzzle that will test your logic skills! These puzzles are HARD, but fun 😅. Be prepared for a lot of trial and error. The 3D aesthetic is stunning, from the detailed environments to the animations - so stylish!

2️⃣ Tara https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tara

🌟 Cute art, clever mechanics, and smooth animations are what this game is all about! The clone concept is unique and adds an addictive gameplay experience where you can kick and jump off your clones to solve puzzles. 🧩 The puzzles are well designed, offering a good challenge without being frustrating. The retro style with charming visuals and music create a delightful atmosphere, making this game a standout for puzzle platformer fans. (Would love to see more levels and even a mobile version!)

3️⃣ Bugged Off https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/bugged-off

This game features a unique light control mechanic where you control bugs using light sources to solve puzzles! 💡 The physics-based gameplay is both clever and enjoyable, with simple yet clean pixel art and atmospheric sound effects that create a relaxing environment 🎶. The nighttime atmosphere really enhances the experience 🌙, making the puzzles even more exciting. Original, polished, and fun, this puzzle game stands out!

Of course, I came across a lot more cool projects in this jam, but I don't have enough space to present them all to you.😅

Let me know your most underrated but cool games in the comments. I'm so curious.🤩

LDJAM rules page is unclear on this, but what are the rules regarding patching a jam game post submission? We've been holding out on any patches, besides posting on itch for fullscreen support and changing like 3 variables in itch version for a slightly better balance. Leaving the original submission on LDJAM completely unchanged. I am under the impression that it is fair to other participants to only present original 72 hours work and not add anything during the rating time. But I see other teams releasing patches for their games and began wondering if that is allowed and to what extent? Performance optimizations? Bug fixes? Adding a few missing UI elements we didn't have the time to add during the jam? If it is allowed we would love to continue improving our game for a better experience. That would be super helpful if anyone could clarify this! Thanks!

We've entered The Red Beetle Squad in Ludum Dare, and we need your support to climb the rankings! With just 20 votes, we can secure a spot on the leaderboard. 🪲💥 And we've got 16 for now !

If you enjoyed the game, please take a moment to cast your vote and help us get there! 🙌

🔗 [https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/the-red-beetle-squad]

Thank you so much for your support! 🙏

Heya everyone, as the title says, we made a quickie trailer for our game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pvPP7XKG18

Thanks everyone who checked out our game and let's have some fun rating eachother :)

Play Survival of the Shadowlings in your Browser now!

Survival of the Shadowlings is a Lemmings type puzzle game with 10 increasingly harder levels.

Help those little fellas to survive.

Horseless Headman is now playable in browser!

Sadly the cool intro that Swan made is not watchable in this build, but everything else should still work as in the executable build, so if you were waiting for an html5 version your time is now!

It took some time to get this figured out because web exports in GameMaker have a lot of really annoying lil quirks, but we are finally over that hump, and now that both of us are a bit more free we can actually start working on the Post Jam version, with a lot of the cut content that was out of scope for the Jam, and polishing up a lot of the bugs that still exist.

And also we both wanted to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all your amazing feedback, compliments and even fan art! This project means a lot to us and being able to share it with such an amazing community has made an already incredible experience even better <3

-Swan and Boat

So kick some here!

Thanks for all the adivces. We finally come up with a way to UNDO in our game Mission: Runaway. Please check out our new 1.1 version with undo and smoother moving!

If you haven't play this game, but a fan of puzzle solving, welcome to try this! ↓↓

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/mission-runaway

I wasn't trying to go for a humour score with my game, but I wasn't actively avoiding it either. No idea why so many people decided my game just isn't humourous enough for them. Not complaining or bragging about the number of ratings I've had though, I'm honestly blown away by just how many of you have given it a go and left feedback.

Using cellular automata as my tiny creatures was the initial idea and it looked cool right away. Making it into a game in stead of a cool graphic however took a few prototypes but I am satisfied with the game because it really makes use of the weird dynamics of the automata. Let those morphs go crazy! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/multimorph https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/multimorph

I really wish there was more games with pikmin-like crowds to control ! And LD56's theme was perfect for that kind of game ! So we ended up with Chuminis: Tiny Army, a vampire-survivors style game where instead of weapons, you have crowds of tiny creatures with different behaviours ! I'm really happy with how it turned out !

you can play the game here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/chumini-tiny-army

Have you played our game yet? Check out this cute little skeleton! If you haven't, no worries—let's dive into some fun behind-the-scenes news before we move on!

Honestly, this is my first time participating in a game jam, and if you've checked out my introduction, you'll see—yep, that's right! I'm a 3D artist, not a programmer at all. My coding knowledge is limited to what I learned about C language in school. But we had so few members in our team, and making a 3D game was a bit overwhelming. So it was like— "Hey, I heard you know some programming, right? Well, you're the programmer now!" And that's how it happened.

So, I ended up using a crazy approach to bring our idea to life, given that the only thing I really know how to write are IF statements. Check this out—Animator！

Back to the main topic. For this game jam, we decided to focus on the idea that "tiny creatures build nests and gather together to become stronger" as our core concept. In the end, when these tiny creatures actually start driving the skeleton of that fallen "giant" they might just realize that they're still just "tiny" after all.So here, "tiny creatures" actually refers to both—the three different species building the nests and the little skeleton itself.

Early concept art

Of course, as many have pointed out, this game is also our attempt to explore the concepts of "life" and "death." Flourishing growth, vibrant life, and peaceful coexistence are things we all hope for.

What? Too much and too heavy? Forget it then! Check out these adorable little pixel creatures! We just updated the web version today, so you can play without downloading anything! Don’t forget to leave your feedback—it means a lot to us. Love you all!

[https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/the-little-life]

And we're planning more! For example, adding clearer game guides, more animations, new BGM, and streamlining the game code (goodbye, Animator!). Of course, none of this will be part of the jam . feel free to reach out to us anytime! That's it for now!

Ready to join your army with great pleasure!

https://ecaterinaaa.itch.io/escapefromwonderland

Hi everyone, my game scored very high, this is my first COMPO and I didn't expect this, thanks to everyone who played my game and comments! Boyz will not be forgotten))) :mushroom:

I plan on finishing the game, as a lot of things just didn't make it. If you haven't played it yet https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/follow-me

I'd love feedback.

Initially, when @megurt invited me to participate in this LD we discussed what kind of ~atmosphere~ we would like seen in the game. we both like starry/cute themes so I drew a little witch and stars that in my head hung on strings and could be moved by physics.

Afterward, we studied games that other people had made earlier. Meow Summoning `https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/meow-summoning i so much LOVE it that i got the idea to definitely make a game with kitties. (tbh their game on this LD is just SO great too, check it out - Inside Creatures Out: What is your gaming MBTI? https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/inside-creatures-out-what-is-your-gaming-mbti)

so, after announcing the theme, we started to discuss the main plot and I came up with the idea of making a mama cat and tiny creatures kittens to be controlled separately. my cats helped me too!

This is my first time participating the LD and pixel art too, so it was very difficult for me to calculate and schedule the time and possibilities. I assumed that we will have a night park, and around the cats will be ~mysterious_magical~ light. But all i had time to do was to watch a video on youtube how to create lighting maps. It was too complicated for me but i hope after LD i’ll try to make it!

I also had a problem with the cat sprites. Placing a small-pixel-witch-hat on a small-pixel-cat is VERY difficult. And although @megurt really wanted this hat, I found a way out by making a beautiful hat for our witch :stars:

and most importantly, only two hours before the deadline I realized HOW I should have saved the tiles correctly! and there was no time to fix them all, but that feeling of realization helped me so much and lifted my spirits. Because I felt I was totally dump.

thank A lOT very much to everyone who reviewed our game, it's a pleasure to read it :sweatdrops::sweatdrops: I hope next LD we will participate again and I will be able to do my job better with new exp. and thanks @megurt for inviting me to this event. this post about our games Candyween https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/candyween

p.s why i can't see my post in feed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9qdIfiLypE

Antwars: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/antwars

Hey everyone! I just released my first game for Ludum Dare 56, but I ran into a little problem—tags on Itch.io aren't working, so it's hard to find my game. I’ve contacted support, but it's been two days with no reply.

If you don't believe me, try searching for my game on Itch.io by its name—Sweet Home?—and you won't find it!

In the meantime, I’d love it if you could check out my game and maybe leave some feedback. It would really mean a lot!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/sweet-home

Visit: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/oh-god-please-dont-kill-me-mr-frog

Hey, all you animal lovers out there! Feeling like your life could use a little more wag, purr, or maybe even a squawk? Well, look no further than our awesome pet store! We've got a whole bunch of furry, scaly, and feathery friends just waiting for you to scoop them up and take them home.

In here, we've got a whole crew of pets that are just waiting to become your new best friend. Whether you're a dog person, a cat person, or you're into something a bit more exotic, we've got the goods. From playful puppies to cuddly hippos to chatty bunnies and even some fish that are cooler than you might think, we've got a little bit of everything.

Got a crazy busy life? No problem! We've got pets that don't need a ton of attention and are happy to just chill out with you when you're around. Goldfish, ferret, and even some cool reptiles are just waiting for you to give them a new home.

And hey, we get that picking a pet is a big deal. That's why our pro shopkeeper Mr. Fly is here to help you out. Need advice on what to feed your new buddy? We've got you covered. Wondering how to set up the perfect spot for your pet to hang out? We've got tips for days. Curious about teaching your parrot to bust out some tunes? We can help with that too!

So what are you waiting for? Swing by us today and get ready to meet your new furry, scaly, or feathery friend! They're waiting to bring some extra fun and love into your life. Can't wait to see you there!

Visit: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/oh-god-please-dont-kill-me-mr-frog

Being an amateur-musician I consider sound design a high priority when making my games.

Only once before I submitted a entry where I had no time to put any music or sound effects. Even after two years it still kept bugging me, so wasn't gonna let that happen this time!

Earlier during the jam I first considered making something with acoustic instruments. But because I started to run short on time I just did something with my usual setup that I'm comfortable with.

Audio-production in Linux is a different kind of beast. But since I've been dabbling around for years I've found my way of doing things more or less efficiently.

JACK Audio Connection Kit serves as the backbone of the whole process.

I usually connect a MIDI-keyboard to amsynth and link the output to calf-plugins. Most of the time I just keep browsing around some presets and then start turning knobs until I have something that pleases me.

And then it's time to start looping...

Back in 2016 was the first time I booted up this software called SooperLooper, and oh boy did it blow me away!

Live-Looping is such a interesting way to compose music because you're essentially "jamming with yourself". I really think that you don't know what it feels like before you've experienced it.

I usually record something from 5-10 tracks which are basically the building-blocks for the whole song.

I import all the tracks to Audacity where I repeat the raw-loops 10-15 times and start mixing.

The whole song comes together quite easily by just adding fades and mixing the tracks to a proper sequence. The final touch here was to take the short "solo" (track #6) which I extended to a long ambience-layer with good old PaulStretch.

Before that I felt it was missing something, but that truly nailed it!

Usually I adjust the speed/pitch of the song to suit the games tempo/feel before doing a final export. But this time I decided to do that in the game's code.

Earlier I had implemented a "hidden HUD" in the game which displayed some rudimentary information to the player, but felt that beyond that it was a bit useless.

Since it was fairly easy to implement in Fusion, I decided to add a feature that allows you to mix the song's frequency yourself!

As of now it's basically just a gimmick that serves as a mood-enhancer. If I'll continue development post-jam I consider rigging the knob-values to the NPC's speed-attributes.

I used this 15 year old webcam (Lifecam VX-2000) to record the sound-effects.

It's amazing how good microphone it has!

All of the sounds were basically me making sounds with my own mouth, and then pitched lower/higher. One expection was the plop when the creatures fall to the glass.

I dropped a small snack-carrot to a waterglass for maximum authenticity. :carrot: :potable_water:

Well, I think that's it for now! I might do a post and elaborate some other aspects later.

Have a good day!

Tools used: OS: Lubuntu 20.04.6 LTS Software: Clickteam Fusion 2.5 (using Proton 5.13-6), Audacity, QJackCtl, amsynth, SooperLooper, Calf-Plugins, GIMP Hardware: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600, 4gb RAM, MCP89 [GeForce 320M], MCP89 HD Audio, Epson EH-TW5300, Microsoft Lifecam VX-2000, ESI Keycontrol49 MIDI-keyboard, graph paper, Artline 200 marker