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

'ello again!

I sat down looked out my window and pondered "man I really should try a larger project with max effort and all fun" something just large enough to keep me entertained and working for a while on my game dev stuff, but not so much as to demand a team... don't get me wrong working in a team would be great, but finding people that have the same vision as me to help me out is hard, and still not confident I can manage and get a tteam running again...

So that leaves me with 4 choices!

A. I could push a rework/update for John's Visage (LD 55 entry of mine) so it reached maximum potential because it's my favorite jam game...

B. I could retry with Bermuda, concept has been refined in my head and I truly hate how it came out... a retry/redesign would let me sleep soundly knowing it is not awful now...

C. I could start a fangame project for a game got this idea to combine my stuffs with this game's stuffs and I know one of the devs would be thrilled!

D. keep making whatever the hell I'm making in HTML... yeah I got into this checkbox pseudo-minesweeper coding for my class and I really like it, just need to add all the effects for the different checkboxes and it would be done...

So yeah lot's of things I could try doing, and sure looking for a team to start up maybe in advance to LD 57 would be fine but more so those 4... so yeah erm...

INTERACTIVE SEGMENT!

Randomly pick one of the 4 letters above! most voted might win or I may spin a wheel!

And share your future plans with game dev! I saw many cool games so I'm hoping atleast a good portion of people will update their games!

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Cleanse the undergrowth from a grub infestation in this fast-paced, challenging archery shooter!

11 challenging stages, can you beat them? Let us know what you think!

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

I somehow got enough ratings pretty fast despite Mimic being 'just' a text adventure. Its not 'just' anymore now with the feedback that is positive and guiding- Plus how frustrated I could get with only writing, writing and more... WRITING :rofl: . Goals for next time (when solo) in order of importance: - Experiment with the thing called stylesheet more. - Learn how to add art. - Learn how to add sounds.

I hope to continue keep rating other games (no downloads usually) but for now I have to prepare my DMing sessions as LD56 delayed them :sweatsmile: After that, my priority is to play web games of those who left feedback with me and the dangerzone ones. :blueheart:

There will be a next time, solo when SO is with his friend. I will continue practicing this kind of game and with Twine! LD is perfect to give met one time projects to learn with purely because of being able to do things and the great community.

:video_game: Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/karma-keepers

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My game has reached 60 votes, and I thought it was a good time to share how I made it.

The last time I participated in Ludum Dare or any game jam was 10 years ago. Since then, I didn’t have the time or energy to commit to making a game in such a short timeframe. But this year, everything aligned. I had free time, a quiet house, and a new Rust framework I’ve been working on for the past month. So... LD 56 it is! I chose the compo and used my custom engine, sounds crazy, but I wanted to have fun doing something I enjoy.

For me, the theme reveal was at 11 PM. I brainstormed for a few hours, trying to find an idea that excited me. Interestingly, I had originally voted for Tiny Creatures because I had a concept in mind. However, just a few hours before the event, I changed my vote and removed Tiny Creatures because I’d forgotten my idea :sweat_smile:

Anyway, after discarding a few concepts, I came up with one I liked: an incremental game where you, as a god-like figure, lead tiny creatures to convert corrupted souls to the light.

With the idea settled, I went to sleep and started fresh the next day.

I began by defining the map size, soul spawning system, and a karma system that ranged from -2 to 2, where: * Neutrals: -1 to 1 * Shadows: -2 to -1 * Luminals: 1 to 2

And then added interaction with the mouse:

At this point, I realized that RNG was playing too big a role in determining whether players would win or lose, so I made some adjustments. One change was introducing Eternals, a new kind of soul that’s incorruptible. I also implemented blessings, passive power-ups that increase the chances of winning.

On day two, it was time to work on the visuals. As a programmer, I was a bit worried since I’m not much of an artist. But for my first attempt at art, I think it turned out pretty well! It’s obviously not the same as having a dedicated artist, but I really enjoyed learning Aseprite and creating some simple pixel art.

Suddenly, it was time to submit the game. The compo was ending, and I had to rush. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to add sound, so my game was released without any audio :pensive:. I also made a few last minute gameplay tweaks to make it easier before submitting. I had some issues embedding the HTML game due to absolute paths in my index.html, but I managed to fix it. Then, I finally went to sleep.

The next day, I noticed the game was really laggy in the mid/late game. I found the issue in my engine, made a fix, and uploaded an update that improved performance. The lag was somewhat expected because the game features thousands of entities on screen, but making the game run smoothly was a priority for me to ensure players could enjoy it as I envisioned.

And that’s it! I’m really happy with the end result, even though the game is challenging, unclear at times, and lacks sound or enough feedback for players to fully understand what's happening.

I’m grateful for the feedback I’ve received and am taking it seriously. While it’s too late to improve this version, I’m planning to develop this game into a “real” project, hopefully one day on Steam. Thank you all!

https://twitch.tv/funbasealpha

... And if you are already here

PLAY AND RATE SHRIMPY ON YOUR BROWSER!

Still going back and playing games in my spare time after work. Looking for hidden treasures with low ratings. If you are just a little short of 20, you can leave a comment and I will try to rate your game!

And we made a game about space, resources, destruction and cats, check it out: There's no place for us https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/theres-no-place-for-us

We want YOU in our team, mostly to play our game, but still, we want YOU!!

When creating our entry we decided to do a mix of 3D elements as well as 2D sprite work. Whilst it didn't create the most coherent end product, it does make it unique.

For the weapons, I 3d modelled a really rough version of the weapons before rendering out shrunk down (pixel count) version of all 8 directions for aiming. This allowed for rapid re-rendering if we didn't like the look of certain renders (different angles for example) or wanted to change the colours. However in hindsight I wish I hadn't rushed so much and spent time creating a full lighting rig to ensure consistency.

We also have part of our intro cutscene pre-rendered. If that sounds interesting check out HAIRDIVERS at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/hairdivers

Hey, all! The Tech Valley Game Space community will be live-streaming ourselves playing Ludum Dare games tonight, October 12th, from 6:00 - 8:00 PM EDT on twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace and youtube.com/c/techvalleygamespace

To have your game in consideration for playing and judging, you can sign up on this form: forms.gle/kbUdacxVfnVaGrq17

As the form states, we do enforce a Code of Conduct in our live-streams. As such, we do reserve the right to cancel streaming and rating a game for any reason.

Hope to check out your games soon!

Thanks so much to everyone who's played the game and given me feedback :) Molerat Rescue is on HTML5 now! TIL that checking the "enable progressive web app" box while exporting a godot project makes it work on firefox (fingers crossed :D)

Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/molerat-rescue

Just some stress testing for Beetle Era. Can’t believe it’s already been an entire week.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/beetle-era

Got underscore hints into my terminal game (Rust)

The problem was, it was very difficult to determine how many characters to guess, but now it's clearly indicated.

I used a simple little algorithm to get it to format it just the way I wanted! With rust, it was fairly easy to build out my intent, using psuedocode first, and then translate that into imperative statements, blocked into functional code.

edit: oops im still calling the whitespace asterisks in one spot XD

A post-mortem thinking about Quasar Shrine's last Ludum Dare entry God Awakener

Introduction - Hello world :computer:

Hey and welcome to this Post-mortem ! I'll talk about what happened or went well, what went bad and our overall feeling about this this Ludum Dare :)

Hope you'll learn things or have advice or subjects to share and the comments :)

What happened - A rough start :head_bandage:

The start was a bit rough 'cause 'Tiny Creatures" was absolutely not the theme we wanted. It didn't inspired us... Or I may say "didn't help us a lot".

The thing is that creativity is boosted by constraints. And a theme like "Tiny Creatures" is... WIDE. There is not much constraints in it... It's like just a "skin" to apply to a game. We were at this strange crossroad where too much freedom give you no clues on what to do.

But we had to find something...

We thought that "tiny" was easy : it's size comparison so we'll add our game space into a "big thing"...

So we decided to focus on the "creature" part of the theme.

Creatures - a walk in the park :park:

We asked ourselves : "What does something can give to players the feeling to have creatures in front of them ?" What make a simple square, on a blank screen, feel like a creature ? And this without a text telling us it was a creature, or a sprite of a mouse :mouse: , bee :bee: , microbes or others tiny creatures. The answer was "free movement like they have their own will". To achieve this we thought of making our squares moving around and going back and forth to predetermined places, so they act like they were moving on their own.

Then we needed some way to interact with the player. For this we had the idea of something like a "ping", or a beacon that* would incite/motivate creature to go see where the player clicked*.

Then we came with some ideas : - A puzzle game were you have to push/incite creatures to pass through traps and mazes - A disk where creatures would wander upon its edges. The disk/2D planet would molder over time and you had to keep you creatures alive the longer you can - A "big thing" need the tiny creatures to be in some place for a said time to make the "big thing" move/act/wake-up...

The initial concept - Awaking an ancient God :clock:

So we chose the later idea : Tiny creatures interacting with the inner body of a fantastic beast to help it wake-up.

• A journey

Under the surface of a dead planet, an ages-old god was let dead. It body lying in a deep dark cavern. But by chance, a lost tiny elemental creature made it into it's body. This elemental tiny creature, led by pings creatures by the player clicking, had the power to activate some magic ("shut up it's magic" time) part of the host's body that could summon more the first elemental. This part would also make the host start breathing again.*

We had also in mind that the player will start with only one tiny elemental. The game would tell they to click somewhere to show that the creature would go there, at least for a moment. Then we would led the player to understand were the creatures should go to activate host's functionalities. We wanted an organic tutorial.

Then, after summoning other elementals, they would be able to activate a new host body : making open its eyes so the player could see the host surrounding. Then a new type of elemental would allow the host creature to walk.

The host would eventually walk into different area which would change how the inner body was to function, forcing the player to move elemental in a new way.

Example : if the host was walking under water, the inner body would be flooded, water elementals would thrive, fire ones would disappear and rock ones would act slowly. The player would have to move elementals to different body part to make them keep the host walking until it get out of the water.

And so on...

Eventually the god-host creature would get out of the cave system, would then look to sky and make a long scream that would bring back life to the planet, ending the player journey.

What went well - Gnocchis with lardons, music in our head :musical_score: :bacon:

We are 3 friends and therefore we easily laugh and have good time together. So, this is a good thing to start on :) We ate well (and a lot of snacks too) and listened to Metal :metal: and Synthwave :wavy_dash: all 3 days long.

It was not our first jam so we knew some traps to avoid and some ways to generate ideas, so what could go wrong ? :angel: (foreshadowing...)

Saturday morning we were confident about finding the right ideas and put them together by the end of the day in a prototype

Could be worse - right? ...

We struggled a lot (as you'll see below) but we managed to publish a game, just in time, with only few minor bugs and some friends (@freego and Zat) successfully made a music for our game :notes: We also recently pass the 20 ratings received mark so we will have a ranking :trophy: (thanks to all of you who dared reviewed our game !)

But shadows were casting darkness upon us all along...

What went bad - Turning in circles :recycle:

Game Design is hard - We thought we knew this...

The first, and I think the biggest, of our mistakes was to go head first into creating a world for our game that wasn't even a prototype a this point... We created goals for a gameplay loop that wasn't even fully conceptualized. This lack of focus on the main game mechanic (the ping thing) left us with a taste of "meh-ness". We hadn't identify yet that is was the main problem, so we thought that adding things around this (not enough developed) game mechanic would help.

Saturday evening we hadn't even started coding yet, we were busy arguing about why adding this or that, about how to best identify better game mechanics to get out of the "meh-zone".

We eventually decide to go ahead anyway and add those "add-on" around the "ping". This led us to making a sort of management game with lots ponderation, statistic of creatures movement, percentage and so on... This should have alerted us... While @arktas was coding the creatures decision system, @lut1n coded the path finding and I was thinking of more graphic design and creating sprites that we already needed. But we were feeling that it will not be our best LD entry.

Git - Your best friend and sometime your worst ennemy

Git ! We love you but FOR GOD DAMN SAKE why did you failed us ? :sob:

Two times, our private Git repository just... removed several commit from our main branch ! We didn't, and will certainly never will, understood what led to this. It was the first time we saw that, and just to let you know, we're 3 pro IT developers and are using Git in our daily work life.

And off-course this occurred when two of u had to push something important :sweat_smile:

Fatigue - Ain't no cure for that

With all of that we were more and more tense and exhausted. I personally lost interest in the prototype we were trying to make and was sure that we wouldn't be able to include all we had in mind first (The host-god and its lore, the animation, diversity and more important the organic tutorial) so I was less an less motivated to work hard...

@lut1n had warned us that he wouldn't work on the game jam on the third day, before the jam started, but @arktas and I just keep developping the game like we had a third pair of hands on the last day. Why ? I don't even know... Bu that was stupid, we should remembered what he said to us and re-scope our work because on the last day we missed him a lot :slight_frown:

On the last day, I was hope-deprived and was thinking to give up seriously, @arktas kept the line like warrior and managed to finished all the code we needed to make... our prototype... On the last day we had.. our prototype

But we had something to ship and @freego came with his music, after some back an forth, he handled us a sample that was a blast, it re-booosted us a bit and kept going.

I made a bit more sprites. I wanted to hint the player on were to move the tiny creatures. But because we had so little time left, I just went for some sprite that weren't to ugly.

And then it was time to publish.

While @arktas was building a web build, I had to prepare the Itch.Io page (we prefer using Itch.io than the LDJam site) but... I couldn't FOR THE LOVE ALL GODS log to the Quasar Shrine's page...

And to this day ItchIo support didn't answered me, to the email I immediately sent them, yet.

So I had, in full stress, to go to my own old Itch.Io page and upload our build there 5min prior to the end of publishing hour.

In the same time @arktas uploaded the zip to the LDJam, to be sure.

With all that tensions, I didn't add the Quasar Shrine logo and animation we usually add to our games. :cry:

Conclusion - "git gud" :end:

To conclude, that was not our best and most loved Ludum Dare for sure but we delivered... a game ? A tiny creatures vivarium ? Something at least and some of you seems to had liked it, so that the most important thing done ! :smile:

The most frustrating thing is that, we already did those mistakes but on our 2 first game jams ! Several passed after those two and we didn't repeat those mistakes until this last one.. Why ? Maybe a bit of overconfidence...

Anyway what he would have done was to focus on the very lone ping mechanic and make our prototype around this, then iterate with creating a world around it and add those "add-on" I talked about.

Keep it simple as heck !

And if you want an example of a game that has a really good an simple game mechanic for this game jam, I present to you : Souls of the Lost and Insignificant by @nondev. By the way go check their game, they have a problem we their LDJam account and can't make link to their game (it only appear as "link" in their posts :frowning2: ) and have only 9 ratings !

Good Gam Jam recipe - To sum up what we should have done

1. Get a cool and simple game mechanic, it's even better if it fit the Theme
2. Create a prototype of it (with ugly squares, don't bother add graphic or music yet)
3. If the proto is fun, THEN develop it, add colors, music, story what ever you like
4. Keep it simple and listen to your teammate

Now, have a nice day or night and go have fun, there are a lot of LD entries yet to test ! :heartpulse:

Like our "God Awakener", if you didn't checked it out yet

Turns out, I accidentally created an army of tiny warriors bent on world domination! 🌍💥

Who knew ants had such big plans ? 😅😂

If you can't launch the web build, you can download the game and enjoy the game and this cute icon on your PC!

Let me know if you face any issues with game.

arrow_right https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/candyween

it's simple. I used a late build of Lily Adventuresses! Episode 1 as a basis for this game, the prologue of Episode 2. Personally, I didn't mind some unused data, graphics, and music in the game, as long as this method increased efficiency and cut down on development time.

And regarding the names I used for the characters? Well, I'm gonna tell a short anecdote. For my future games, I have a stock of names I gathered from various sources, from receipts to internet posts to even spam email. But I noticed that the number of female names outnumbered the male ones by a huge margin, and thus I came up with the concept of a series of WLW RPGs, just so those female names will be used for the all-female main casts of all five episodes in the RPG anthology, as well as some NPCs.

Now then. Lily Adventuresses! Episode 2 Prologue needs six more votes in order to be qualified for scoring, so play and vote away!

Play the game here.

After rating comment below and Ill be quick to play+rate yours. :smile:

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

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!