Hi all! We're really glad you're enjoying Blob, To the Top! After seeing people play our game and after reading all the feedback we made some small improvements to the game.

Blobs have been rewritten and the game now runs way smoother. No blobs suffered in the process.

Aiming is now faster, less sluggish and more precise. Blobs are happy that they will no longer hit the walls so frequently.

Difficulty in a few levels has been adjusted based on your feedback. Wake up! New Blob, to The Top update just dropped!

If you haven't played Blob, To the Top! yet, check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/blob-to-the-top

The full changelog is also listed out on the game page.

Thank you again for all the feedback and ratings ❤️

In this buzz-worthy rhythm real-time strategy game, your dance moves are the key to guiding your hive to the sweetest rewards.:cherry_blossom:

But it's not all about the rhythm — enemies fly between you and your prize! Can you keep the bee-t, outsmart your foes, AND bring home the nectar?

Jam to some bee-utiful tunes while you bust out your best moves to waggle, weave, and win! :bee::musical_note:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/bee-bop

Yesterday was wild :smile: @civmaniac @fabula-rasa @wendel-scardua

https://www.twitch.tv/tobugis/clip/OpenMoistBananaPogChamp-gOt6IXEcgtTkHqv2

Initially we wanted to make simple animations, but they didn't work well with lighting so we had to give up on that idea... (we probably didn't have enough time anyway)

P.S. to Unity experts out there. Any idea on how to make mesh renderers work with URP 2D lighting?

I suspect there is a user doing foul play and leaving AI generated feedback on people's games to generate a high karma score at the cost of genuine insightful feedback.

I don't have any contact with any staff so I hope influential members of the community see this and highlight this issue.

There is user called Sviborg who has been leaving GPT generated comments on folks' posts. I think they are doing this to generate a high feedback score. As of writing this user has left 320 ratings and given the gamification of the jam they are doing, I'm suspicious that they are just leaving low score (can't prove this)

I've attached some images as an example highlighting their comments. I would link more but unfortunately I don't have the time. The things I'd like to bring your attention to are that they use emoji's in a similar fashion to AI, only reference critique from prior comments (I believe they are copying earlier comments into their GPT prompts).

I think this needs to be addressed, as it goes against the fair and communal spirit of the jam. While we are competing, we are competing on the basis that we are giving each other genuine and useful feedback so that we can all improve. This is not that, this is gaming the system for personal gain.

In the words of ChatGPT:

*Leaving AI-generated feedback in a game jam is problematic for several reasons:

Lack of Genuine Insight: AI-generated feedback often lacks the depth, context, and understanding that comes from personal experience with the game. This can result in vague, generic, or irrelevant comments that don’t help the developer improve their game. Constructive feedback requires a real player’s perspective, understanding of design, and experience with the gameplay—something an AI cannot replicate fully.

Erosion of Trust: Game jams are built around community spirit, where participants give honest, thoughtful feedback to help each other grow. If people rely on AI to generate feedback, it undermines that trust and can cause participants to feel disrespected or cheated. The sense of community is weakened when feedback becomes formulaic or insincere.

Gaming the System: In many jams, feedback plays a role in scoring or ranking. AI-generated feedback can be a shortcut to artificially boosting one's score or reputation, giving an unfair advantage to those who use it. This creates an uneven playing field, as others invest time and effort to provide detailed and meaningful critiques.

Missed Learning Opportunities: Providing feedback is a valuable part of the learning process for participants. Writing constructive criticism requires reflection on what makes a game work or not, which can help developers become better game designers themselves. By using AI, people miss out on developing these critical evaluation skills.

Diluted Quality of Feedback: When AI-generated comments fill up feedback sections, it can clutter valuable feedback channels, making it harder for developers to sort through and find meaningful, actionable advice. This can be frustrating and discouraging, especially in a context where creators rely on the feedback to improve.

Ethical Concerns: Using AI to leave feedback, especially without disclosing it, can feel deceptive. Developers may believe they are receiving thoughtful input from a peer, only to later discover it was machine-generated. This can create tension and resentment within the community.

In short, AI-generated feedback can harm the quality of interaction, fairness, and community trust within a game jam, which thrives on collaboration, honesty, and shared learning experiences.*

Then this game is for you, in 3D platformer "Tiny creatures" you control tiny mischief Dommy who with his tribe tries to reclaim territory from new home owners by wrecking havoc in the house. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-wreckers

this is more about the trust of the individual, I will not play a game that requires a download, who knows who put what in their rar files or zips, or exe, you could go to play the game and get a bunch of malware.

now is this everyone always, no!, but it does happen, so as a safety precaution always make a version of your game playable in the browser otherwise you might get skipped over.

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

I'm looking to play some more games soon, please leave some in the comments to get you all to those all important 20 ratings! I prefer games I can play in the browser, so please bear that in mind :)

If you have the time please also check out our game and try to save the local kindergardeners from certain death!

Even for a small simple game, even if it's just a screenshot of the project's development window (like I did), add a screenshot! It will make your game much more popular. Most people don't have much time, so they'll play the best looking games first. If your game doesn't have a thumbnail, there's no way for them to judge how good your game might be.

Based off of the ultimate meme, Tako-Luka, Tako is a cheap blog unit that comes in a small pack! Useful for both swarming enemies on the attack or providing a distraction for more powerful units like Mipaca or Agent Lemon, and cheap enough to be played in a pinch!

Tako is one of the first cards drawn by our artist, Miku, and went through a decent amount of style iteration before we landed on her final form.

Play here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/mikus-minion-madness

Warning: There are several loud sounds in the game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/dont-get-caught

My game for ludum dare 56 (compo) its a so little platformer about fairy which got into the house of a butterfly collector!

P.S. Its my first compo, and first game jam for which i did a not bad game. I am very grateful for the feedback which u give me!! In future game I'll try to fix all about u say and make a better game

I made this little game in 4 hours. Next time, I'll try to focus more on the gameplay. This time, it was the mood.

Here's the game :

The Ludum Dare Page

Play it on Itchio (HTML5)

My goal this jam was to try out rigging a character for IK and procedural animation, and I'm super happy with how my little bug legs turned out.

Springtail is a Foddian/rage game that plays similarly to Jump King, so expect to fall a lot. It's not a genre for everyone, so I describe how to enable cheat tools in the game description!

Play Springtail

Heyhey! Just wanted to share my game and some behind the scenes of the development. Since there is not really a close up of the creatures in the game, I thought you might like some ones right here. If you havent tried it out yet, don't hesitate to do so and give some feedback. It's playable in browser :grin:

I originally wanted to join the compo but i missed the deadline by half an hour so decided to work a little bit more on it the next evening and joined the regular jam! I didn't balance the numbers that much but I still hope you enjoy it! Enough yapping, time to waddle off :walking:

This was a good theme to channel my love of squirrels :grinning:

Play as a squirrel using your squirrel friends to solve puzzles.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/squirrel-mail

Also as an incentive, meet the cute squirrel in my backyard that inspired this:

Okay, the title is a lie, but since you're already reading this post, why don't you check out our ~~little~~ tiny game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/ant-save-the-queen :sweat_smile:

Don't forget to care for yourselves everyone!

But who is 'he'?...

https://ecaterinaaa.itch.io/escapefromwonderland

Poppets can be quite mischievous and require professional intervention to properly cleanse. Only the best can exorcize the spirits before they become too powerful to control. Can you survive the whole night?

Our first horror project and our first time using Godot. We'd appreciate your feedback and hear about your experience.

Give Poppet a try: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/poppet

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

Come hang out with me tonight if you wanna as we play each others' games! Please lemme play your games! I need moar games in my liiiiffeee!!!

www.twitch.tv/flyingkaida

See you all soon!

Here's what we did:

• Re-balanced Needs

• Fixed fullscreen bug

• Added UI to clarify Wally interactions

• Stopped game closing on death

• Fixed day/night scale

Even more coming soon!

You can play it here!

link on game : Fridge Life

Need a Little Support—Itch.io Tag Issue 😅

Hey everyone! I could really use a bit of support right now. I recently submitted my game for Ludum Dare 56, but I ran into a snag—tags for my game on Itch.io suddenly stopped working, and it’s making it hard for people to find my game. I reached out to Itch.io support, but it’s been two days now, and I haven’t heard back from them.

While I wait for a response, it would mean the world to me if you could check out my game and give it a try! Any feedback or even just a playthrough would be greatly appreciated. It’s my first Ludum Dare entry, and your support would make this experience even better! 🙏

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

Thank you so much in advance, and I hope you enjoy the game! 😊

Hello everyone! Sorry I'm late introducing myself at this point. I'm Wraithind, Logic Monkeys partner for this Ludum Dare. I didn't introduce myself before because, well, this whole things been a bit chaotic for me. See, I've always wanted to make games, and in my younger years I always dabbled with the idea. First with code, that went horribly and I had a mental breakdown over an error caused by a spell error on my part that ate up an entire night of my life, something I'd learn is a fairly normal thing actually (Note to self, there's only two m's in ammo...) then I moved onto trying art, which I was terrible at, and ended up going to school for 3D graphics, which I never got particularly good at either. But, I never stopped thinking about it and fantasizing over all these games I'd like to make. I loved the idea and my mind just couldn't let it go. Fast forward more then ten years to a little over three months ago, and I decided I wanna give it another honest try. This time, I tried my hand at coding in Godot, and to my surprise things were actually sticking this time. Yes, I'm still a novice in every description of the word, but I was making progress and having fun. So, Logic Monkey, who unlike me never gave up on the dream of making games, decides to drag this rookie coder kicking and screaming into a game jam. That's a perfectly normal thing to to right? Well, I'm glad that he did, because this has been one of the greatest experiences of my life, and I look at what we created together and I feel honest joy over it. I won't fool myself into thinking I'd have any chance at doing anything even close to this without Logic Monkeys help. He was with me the whole time, answering every question I had and walking me through things that I just couldn't figure out. But in these 72 hours I learned more then I had in the three months prior. So, it's probably safe to say that you'll see me here again. And to everyone who's played our game, Get In Ma Blunderbuss, thank you for playing our game! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do. And for those that haven't, please give it a try if it's of interest to you and let us know what you think.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/get-in-ma-blunderbuss

=> Play here!

I thought this year's theme was very open-ended, so I made something I always wanted to make: a minesweeper variant!

In the future, I want to make an RPG-style minesweeper game where almost everything is hidden in tiles — weapons, items, enemies, even NPCs and special encounters.
Leave a comment if you're interested to see more!

Mix and match tiny dino bones and watch your creations run around like the little creatures they are! Then build an army!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/the-b-team

Can we some "<3"s in the chat for Pteraocaris Mammoth

Streaming some more games today! Come say hi! http://www.twitch.tv/coltonphillips

If you're in the compo category, you can link your game, but I may not see it or get time to play it.

If you haven't tried it yet, now's the perfect time to enter the Particle Wars! :sunglasses:

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

WW91IHNlZW0gbGlrZSBzb21lb25lIHdobyBtaWdodCBlbmpveSBteSBnYW1lIFNocmV3IQpJdCdzIGZvY3VzZWQgb24gZXhwbG9yYXRpb24gYW5kIHB1enpsZS9jb2RlIHNvbHZpbmchCmh0dHBzOi8vbGRqYW0uY29tL2V2ZW50cy9sdWR1bS1kYXJlLzU2L3NocmV3

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

Keep playing and ratings games!

... And if you are already here

PLAY AND RATE SHRIMPY ON YOUR BROWSER!

In Duke Flywalker's Crap-tastic Adventure, our little hero went through a handful of looks before arriving at his final form.

First version:

Originally a cartoony fly, this design was tossed because it was too simple looking, and also because it looked a lot more like a spider than a fly.

Second version:

This was the redesign, with more fly-like proportions and less googly eyes. Unfortunately, I - the art was my responsibility - messed it up along the way and had to start again.

Third (final) version:

Here's the final design that found its way into the game. With a less tubular form, faceted eyes, and the addition of a probiscis, we were finally satisfied with this final fly form.

Rendered version:

This is same as the in-game version, just with a fur coat and faceted wings, and used only in the menus or promotional posts.

If you haven't played/rated it, please do so here - it would make Duke a happy little fly.

We weren't sure we would get the multiplayer part working in time for Mon, so we were making Mon more customizable in parallel in case that didn't work out and we needed to go more single player.

Here's some of the customizations we were preparing (with the help of a godot tutorial for the ui :p) And a resulting alternate version Mon :smile:

You can play and rate it in the Ludum Dare page Mon - Shared Pet Simulator :blush:

Then please try my comedy text adventure "Bean There, Done That". You don't need to type, just click 😅

🪄► Bean There, Done That

Hey Ludum Dare community!

I’m beyond excited to share that our game Papercat Farms has officially crossed the threshold of ratings for official rankings! The sheer speed that this happened is a personal record for me—I'm not sure about the rest of the team, but it's a huge milestone that we are so proud of! A massive thank you to everyone who has played, rated, and given feedback on our game already—it means the world to us!

But we’re not stopping there! If you haven’t had the chance to play Papercat Farms yet, there’s still 14 days to jump in and share your thoughts. We’d love to hear from even more of you! You can play and rate the game here: (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/papercat-farms) .

What's Next?

In the next week or two, we’re planning to release a post-jam version of Papercat Farms based on all the incredible feedback we’ve received from the community so far. We’ve been taking notes and are eager to make the game even better, so stay tuned for updates!

The Community is On Fire

I’ve been blown away by the quality of games in this jam. Every single day, I’m discovering new gems that make me laugh, think, and feel. One game that really tugged at my heartstrings recently is Raccoon Romance—seriously, I wasn’t ready for how much it made me feel! 😭 If you haven’t checked it out yet, do yourself a favor and play it here: (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/racoon-romance) . You won't regret it!

Once again, thank you to everyone for the amazing support! Can’t wait to share the post-jam version of Papercat Farms with you all soon!

Stay awesome everyone!

Balimaar

Hey guys, first time Jammer here! Hope all your games are getting lots of attention. Due to our inexperience, our team absolutely overscoped. And a chunk of our animations ended up unused due to one reason or another. So I am putting some of them here so that they dont totally go to waste. Heres a link to our game if you wanna check it out. Thank you for this great community! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/the-pilgrim

I've noticed that the smart balance behaves very differently than in previous times. The value doesn't seem to change at all, even after waiting prolonged periods of time after rating and giving feedback. I guess this is related to the other issues the site is facing as well.

He's touching it

We apologize for forgetting to include the gameplay introduction in the description. I'm adding it here. How to play: 1. Click the left and right arrows on the cards below to switch card types either forward or backward. The numbers on the cards indicate how many of that type you have. (Note: there’s a temporary bug where the number may not update immediately after you consume a card. To refresh, just switch to the card type that you just consumed.)

1. Click the three magnifying glasses on the right side of the screen to view the three Petri dishes. You can choose whether to feed them the selected card, as different card types will affect the values of the three bottles in the lower left corner.

2. When you select "✔," it means one card of the current type is consumed, and a story panel will appear in the center of your screen. Please read it fully and wait for it to disappear before proceeding.

3. By balancing the values of the three bottles in the lower left corner, you can achieve the true ending before all cards are consumed. If any bottle fills or empties early, you will reach different endings.

4. Ultimately, these endings reflect your conclusions as a mouse scientist. You may successfully reach the true ending or fail early and receive a subjective false ending.

Moldable Monster of Mine!!

Get your creativity ready!!! Build your little monster the way you want, and fight… humans? In this abstract and psychedelic game!! There are infinite combinations to test your pixel art skills! Grab those colorful pixels in the background and turn them into parts for your monster! And receive black pixels to destroy your enemies!!

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

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

The positive feedback we received made us want to expand our entry to a full game.

Please give us feedback and suggestions for additional environmental obstacles and new mechanics so we can make the most of this experience.

Try it here

As always, we had way more ideas than eventually made it in the game. Here are some of the unused arts & their ideas (which may be added post-jam).

A rollable and pushable armadillo:

A bee to pop balloons with keys:

A butterfly that could carry stuff while flying:

The evil cat, for evil dialogue purposes:

The jam's page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/frogscape Play it in the browser on itch: https://jiri-one.itch.io/frogscape

~~because there's a lot of rating time, why not create another game for ld?~~ it seems like i can't :|

In our game you have the chance to be a kindergarten teacher and wrangle the little critters to not hurt themselves.

Your sole goal as the fearless teacher? Survive the day with your sanity intact and keep the little ones from face-planting into disaster. The kids, bless them, seem to be naturally attracted to danger like moths to a flame. Their favorite activities include:

Running directly towards live wires 🔥 (because why not?) Juggling pointy objects that are mysteriously lying around 🗡️ Jumping off very high places, testing gravity like it's their job 🪂

So, if you don't want to make the news, like this chap did Then do your best and keep the Tiny Creatures alive in Kinder Guardin'!

Give it a try. Though note that it can be a difficult game. Good luck!

Hello again!

As the title reads I'm looking for games in the danger zone (less than 20 ratings) I'm feeling particularly up for games today so I wanna give some love to games that got less ratings, so plop them down below!

Link them in the comments and I'll play them

I can't download anything so please only share games that can be played in the browser!

Tired of all those try-hard git gut games? Why don't you kick back and raise some adorable creatures? https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-h-o-c-s-pro-creator

In Tiny H.O.C.'s Pro Creator you can manage your terrarium and fill it with different creatures that breed and give you more creatures! Sell them to collectors and earn some cash to buy more stuff. Feed them so they stay alive. Buy new eggs to have access to more body parts in your gene pool (collect them all, maybe?)

In Tiny H.O.C.'s Pro Creator everything is possible*!

* not everything is possible, it is just a game

so the first idea was like a dungeon game where you fight tiny creatures and when you killed em they're like getting cured and joining our team, the idea was cancelled because i dunno my game creativity is infinite

then i got an idea: dungeon is like really hard with all that room procedural generaion, etc. so i got another idea: make a game with endings.

everything goes like i thought, but because deadline was close, so i only made 1 ending, which is "you won"

should i continue the game?

...btw here's link

Here are some updates! Welcome play our game. You could find a web verison in our itch page! A cute and beautiful explotion! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/decay-and-rebirth

1. Add more sound effect and make it more fun
2. More tutorials and more clear info

Try and welcome comment!!!

It's rare in a game jam that you actually HAVE to leave your house to complete the jam!

To create our game, we started by going out to the local park and shooting 360 photos to build the point and click world that you explore in "Relics Return".

While we (like everyone) didn't get everything done in the weekend that we hoped too, we are still really happy with where this ended up and definitely hope to do more to polish the game with things like full character animations in the future! Cuz look at how cute Mushi is! They deserve to have their cap wobble!

Please go give our game a try if point and click adventure style games are your style! We would love to hear your feedback.

Play Relics Return HERE.

what's the weirdest bug you encountered mid-jam?

mine was a floating point error being caused by awaiting an animation player's "finished" signal then setting a variable to true, neither of which had anything to do with the float getting effed up & each line being fine on its own. somehow, it was the combination of these lines that caused the issue, and I'm still trying to figure that one out :thinking:

not being able to use both of those lines left me forced to keep in a mild gameplay bug lol, so it's technically possible to get super OP :sweat_smile:

Submit your game by dropping a link in the chat :) https://www.twitch.tv/xpmonsterx

The game Child of Entropy simulates the development of cells, where you can decide how to place them, but they behave within certain rules. While designing the game, the basic concept is how individual consciousness forms a unity, and the definition of "tiny creature" is fluid depending on the scale of observation.

Maybe you can change that:

A Flicker In The Dark

I drew poster for our game Beyound Fear, if you don’t play it yet, we will be glad to receive your feedback and ratings!! Also our programmer fixed bug, yeah

I thought I'd share some of the diagrams that I made while making my game, Dr. Shrink and the Horrors of the Infinite :slight_smile:

Here's my derranged scribblings while trying to come up with an idea:

Here's my first sketch of the level layout:

Here's my final design diagrams for each version of the level (you'll have to play the game for context for this :wink:):

And here's the final layout of the level for the sake of comparison:

I'm glad I saved all of these because it's cool having the progress to look back on :smile:

While I've got you here, come play my game!!!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/dr-shrink-and-the-horrors-of-the-infinite

https://www.twitch.tv/arcanerituals

Drop some submissions in sheet below and we'll take a look.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bieDY063coQpdTLPGkU0ItQ7yGw-LevH2SX5A6LTsLc/edit?usp=sharing

Preference will be given to games that haven't hit the rating threshold yet.

Early bird..

This Jam was probably the quickest start for our team thus far. We happened to be awake when the theme dropped and ended up spending 2 hours in the middle of the night in a voice call on ideation of our jam-game concept.

So when Saturday morning came along, we where tired - but started off the game-making running!

We had a good idea of the general game design, the look we wanted, what software we would use and that the game had to contain exactly no more and no less than one million microscopic kittens!

Thanks to our team we managed to take our concepts:

You can see in our design board, that early game design contained plans to implement tardigrades you could find to increase tool efficiency in an upgrade mechanic, but was cut for LD scope. The cat scanner was a quite early idea, but really came alive through Myzors concepts

And make them reality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OAMF3YwjQw

All assets except fonts where made by our awesome team during the LD-Jam submission window!

➤ Try it yourself!

Hey everyone!

A lot of people found my game to be quite confusing, mainly due to my terrible selection of font :/

To hopefully remedy this, I've written out a humungous guide that goes over all the mechanics and characters.

If you had a hard time with my game, I'd love it if you could have a skim through and give it another go <3

https://reecemungus.itch.io/gravelheir/devlog/814002/gravelheir-guide