Yop ! We are about to get the results of the jam so i want to post something to say thank you :D The game jam was really fun and i did discover some really cool games ! I even discovered the compatibility issues between ld's web game integrations and godot T.T jkjk That's pretty much all... Take care and be proud of your work ! (Sry 4 misspellings i'm too tired to check my post O.O)

-Color indication for hands when grabbing and attempting to grab!

-Bottom nook entrance for easier cave deliveries!

-Zoom in minimap button

-Better "How to Play" pannel!

-Balance fixes!

-ENEMIES CAN NOW ROTATE FOR MAXIMUM WWE SHENANIGANS!!!

You can try Score Chasers verion for an extra challenge if you're feeling extra confident!

BoroPoro

To all our amazing players, supporters, and fellow devs:

Wow—what a wild ride Ludum Dare 56 has been! From day one, we went all-in with Monkepok, but it’s been your feedback, your playtroughs, comments, and love for the game that truly brought it to life. 🧪 Whether it was enjoying the retro graphics, diving into fusion chaos, or giving us much-needed insight into how we could improve, every bit of input made a difference - you made a difference!. We're very proud of what we achieved within 72 hours and were happy to see your fusion chaos even on some live streams and YT videos!

Your creativity and enthusiasm inspired so many of our upcoming updates—from buffing up the health bars and tweaking the battle UI to making sure you don’t need a magnifying glass to track your monster’s stats mid-battle. We threw in everything, including CRT effects and epic new backgrounds, to make Monkepok as fun as possible, all thanks to all of you.

We've additionally decided to add new systems as well: Save/Load, Material farming, Creaturedex, Achievments, Creature-Reconfiguration and Generator-Upgrades are planned for now! Not talking about the Gazillion new Monkepoks we're already cooking!

In the end we really wanna say it's been an honor to create alongside such a supportive community. Thanks to all of you, Monkepok has evolved into a chaotic lab of monster fusion dreams. We’ll keep refining and growing this mad little game, so stay tuned—there’s much more Monkepok madness on the way. Let's connect on itch.io until we define our steam page:

https://dekisenpaitm.itch.io/monkepok

Here’s to endless fusions, wild battles, and creating unforgettable monsters together! 🎉 Cause a dream wouldn't been fun without the people to share it <3

Thank you, and see you in the lab, The Monkepok Team

Greetings!

I have been waiting quite a long time to write up my post mortem for this Ludum Dare! I plan to separate it into the good, the bad, and the ugly! So let's begin!

The Good!

As usual rating games was really fun, I also found a newfound love to rating dangerzone games and helping small devs, I found what are essentially hidden gems playing dangerzone games! Alas I also reached the quota to be rated at the end of the Jam so really nice thank you guys for rating my game with relatively positive notes! (mainly about the music, voice acting, and graphics)

The Bad!

As usual we got the bads, basically some people abused the rating which kinda soured my mood, I also believe I could've tested more games but got caught up with life and a bit of laziness X) Alas the jam for me was a bit messy, especially in the coding and before the jam, had some analysis paralises but alas I still delivered a game... speakng of...

The Ugly...

The game, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it Bermuda is a massive fail in my eyes and for really good reasons, the game loop is a mess and somehow way more basic than John's Visage which was a VN by me, the theme really threw a wrench in my machine as explained in the segment above, secondly the game is buggy with key features missing, somehow underperforming Narrowlabs Rumble, a buggy and messy FPS of mine... sure the graphics, music, and VA is nice, I love doing those bits, but I wish the game was more co-hearant and less buggy, I figured out why those are... unfortunately those won't matter next time around (I'm swapping coding language and engine) so yeah Bermuda was a great character... the game introducing him was a huge mess... and eventually maybe 1 day I will try to rectify that in a more expansive browser game, but alas life is busy for that now, so we put Bermuda on the shelf with the other games, to be revisited one day perhaps...

Hey everyone! I feel like I always struggle to decide on how to rate games. I want to leave room for better and worse grades, so I usually think that 3 starts is decently done and 4 stars is for when I really liked something leaving 5 stars for games that really nailed some category. This leaves me with this distribution:

What do you think? I'd be curious to see your graphs so we could compare our biases.

The windows binary and the source code are now available.

Download the Windows binary from the game's page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/mediator

The source code is at: https://github.com/andriybyelikov/ludumdare56

I've also added some screenshots, here's one of them:

I am playing game jam games today on my weekly stream.

Starting with Ludum Dare 56 if you have a Ludum Dare game you would like to share.

https://www.twitch.tv/tiger_j

I am also posting VODs of my recent LD56 gameplay on a youtube playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOQvnWwS2QI&list=PLsi31W-raUDA2dhmyYDSpcQbBUn0jxrW&abchannel=TigerJ

Thanks!

I've been working on the post-jam version!

Try it out here: https://weirdbitgames.itch.io/rpigg

A lot has been changed like you can now go infinitely to the right, food was replaced with money and I've added rogue-like power ups too!

Due to the abhorrent toxicity, the blocking of the country of Brazil, and the complete lack of a viable free API, we are deprecating our support of X (formerly Twitter). With that, I've removed our links to Twitter from ldjam.com, and recommend an alternative instead. We will continue to post announcements there for the rest of the year, but unless we find a way to automate posting, we will stop using it entirely in 2025.

Where to watch the Top 15?

Right now we're using Bluesky as our main social media feed, and we've made that feed available a few different ways.

• Bluesky: @ ludumdare.com
• RSS: https://bsky.app/profile/ludumdare.com/rss
• Mastodon (or Threads): @ ludumdare.com @ bsky.brid.gy (nb. jammer.social is currently down)
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14195373/ (for resume use)

Why Bluesky? I found their AtProtocol to be extremely easy to use. In the future I'd like to support more open protocols like ActivityPub and IndieWeb, but AtProtocol was the easiest place to start.

EDIT: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/all/tags/ludumdare

I achieved an all-time record for one of my games: 80 reviews! Thank you all for the incredible feedback on Fifty-Six Lilypads! I’m thrilled that so many of you enjoyed the game’s strategic depth, the charming frogs, and the multiplayer potential. Hearing that brought to mind board game favorites like Hey, That’s My Fish (my clear inspiration for the game mechanic) and Blokus really made my day!

Your comments on ways to improve the game have been super helpful, too. Many noted the AI could use a bit of a boost for a tougher solo challenge. When I started the jam, my goal was to design the AI, and I had in mind a great idea on how to address that, but making the game took all the time, and I resorted to an almost random AI player (I call it Jarjar). I really want to take the opportunity to rework the AI post-JAM. There were also a few requests for better game-ending cues/automation when one player is done playing, such as adding frog-movement animation from Lilypad to Lilypad. I'd like to write another music to go with the game.

Come show your interest, by staring the project on Github, it'll help get me going! GitHub repo—updates will be coming soon, and I can’t wait to share them with you all. Thanks again for playing, and for the great suggestions to make Fifty-Six Lilypads even better! 🐸

Molerat Rescue got the required 20 reviews! As a first time jammer I'm happy to get scored :')

I'm working on a post-jam update with improved player controls and more music!

Thanks to everyone who played our game! It was awesome.

The reception was much better than I was hoping for and I am very appreciative of all of the feedback. This was a great and friendly jam and I can't wait for the next one!

Now that Ludum Dare's voting period is over, I can post the post-jam version of the game, polished with the comments given to me in mind. Thanks for your comments, I appreciated every single feedback!

If you still would like to try the jam version of the game, you can play it here, download the file here, or download it on itch.io.

v1.1 - Little Guys! https://ramchops.itch.io/little-guys/devlog/822705/v11 #indiegames #ld56 #ludumdare #indiedev via @ramchops-games

Hey Ludum Dare 56 devs! If you used Git and GitHub to develop your game jam or compo entry, let’s do something cool together to promote our work and learn from each other's development processes.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Update the title of your repositories (links to previous name still works)
2. Set a social preview (cover image) to give your repository a visual touch—think of it as a mini poster for your game.
3. Add tags to your repository (e.g., game, game-development, ludum-dare, ludumdare, ludumdare56, ludum-dare-56) to make your project easily discoverable.
4. Pimp your readme and Add badges to highlight your participation in the ld: md ![Ludum Dare](https://img.shields.io/badge/LudumDare-56-f79122?labelColor=ee5533&link=https%3A%2F%2Fldjam.com%2Fevents%2Fludum-dare%2F56) ![Ludum Dare](https://img.shields.io/badge/LudumDare56-Compo-f79122?labelColor=ee5533&link=https%3A%2F%2Fldjam.com%2Fevents%2Fludum-dare%2F56) I am quite proud of my repo, come check it out : https://github.com/dhmmasson/lilyFrogs
5. Star repositories from other Ludum Dare 56 participants to support and acknowledge each other’s work.

I've put together two lists from the games I have reviewed during the LD:

• Compo Entries: Projects created by solo developers—typically leaner repositories with clear code from single creators. Explore here
• Jam Entries: Games made by teams, so you’ll often see more commits, collaborative workflows, and perhaps some complex Git histories. Check them out here. One even as has a record breaking of 580+ commits!!

Browse, share, and leave a star on repositories you find interesting! Let’s celebrate our code and creativity together.

Have you used Git during the development or just Git Hub for the final code deposit? Drop a comment if you're in and have a GitHub repo to share! (If you have used gitlab/bitbucket, you might start another list maybe on those ?)

Compo

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/results/overall/compo

Jam

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/results/overall/jam

Do better next time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKAmJgkq6sA

COME STOP BY! HAVE SOME FUN!

Hoping everyone had their fun ! It was an awesome experience, and I believe everyone felt that way ! :fire:

Check it out to experience the unsurpassed joy of a sensible UI, less floaty physics, jump buffering and coyote time, and a special secret:

Hold down the backslash and press "o" to toggle from the 8-color Rainboy palette to the 40-ish-color Rainbow Rose palette! Not yet available on all screens.

Shoutout to @wraithind for the spooders pausing in their mad rush from point A to point B, and the aforementioned coyote time.

First, a quick aside because I'm really excited to share...

I'm making a real game!

It's called Moonsigil Atlas, and it's a deckbuilding roguelike with a geometry-based resource system. There's no conventional mana or action limit - your only restriction is piecing together the shapes of your cards in the space you have.

If this looks a little familiar, it might be because it's based on the main mechanic of my LD52 game, Fallowtide, but more in the direction of a traditional roguelike deckbuilding game like Slay the Spire. I've been developing the full version with @daniel-alhadeff for the last several months and we're really excited to start sharing it with people!

There's no Steam page up yet, but if you want to stay in the loop for the development, release, and potential demos or playtesting opportunities, please join the Discord server by clicking the banner!

Onto the postmortem!

The postmortem

This year, my LD entry was My Keyboard is Full of Ants!, a game about your keyboard being full of ants.

Choosing an idea

In a couple past events, I've considered making games where the location of keys on a keyboard has gameplay relevance. This is partly because I think it's a fun design space, and perhaps partly because my first ever Ludum Dare game tried this but was not fun at all, so it's an opportunity to take a second crack at it.

"Tiny Creatures" turned out to be a great theme for a keyboard-based game, because you can contextualize it to the player's real-life keyboard, which could have tiny creatures living in it! The concept of ants living in your keyboard and typing in order to smoosh them struck me as more funny and appealing than it ought to be, so I ran with it and used it to inform the specific mechanics and other design decisions.

The good

Several things went well this game:

• The graphics: I went a fairly safe direction with the visuals, but everything came together into a clean whole, and I'm happy with the consistency and clarity of the final product.
• The bugs: There are tons of bugs in the final game, but they are (almost) all intentional. There was no huge technical hurdle or major bug that took up a lot of time, unlike last event where I spent a lot of time figuring out hosting.
• The web build: I continue to get much more traffic to my LD games on Itch with a web build. Even though it's a little bit sketchy to do with Python/PyGame, it's proven to be worth the effort every event I've done it. For a little while, I was in the top ~30 games on Itch with the Ludum Dare 56 tag, which would be way harder with a download-only game!
• That one super obscure joke absolutely nobody saw but I'm way too proud of: The soundtrack has the word "ANTS" spoken a couple times, but I also included a "karaoke version" in the build files that is identical without the word "ANTS." Worth it? Absolutely.

The bad

• The secondary game loop: I think I spent a bit too long fleshing out the core mechanics and adding enemies and power-ups that the game's high-level structure suffered. The game is level-based, with a fixed ending, and it's not possible to lose --- you just get a better or worse score based on how efficiently you squash ants and apply multipliers. I think this is a less compelling way to play than, for instance, a wave-based game where your goal is to survive as long as possible, even for people who care about high-scores. However, in the time I had, it seemed like the best way to get the average player to see most of the game's content without extensive balancing.
• The humor: It wasn't bad per se, but I think I could have leaned further into the game's absurd premise and found more areas to inject jokes and comedy (I think I did this better in LD53). As it stands, I think the game sits in the middle of the road in a lot of respects, including humor, without excelling at any one thing, and humor would have been a good opportunity to take to the next level.
• The play-and-rate: I've had an extremely busy few weeks, especially with the development of Moonsigil Atlas, and have not been able to play and rate nearly as many games as I'd like. That unfortunately means there's no fan art compilation this time around, although I did draw a couple quick sketches for some games you may find floating around!

Takeaways

• Be deliberate about your game's identity. I think I found an appealing and consistent visual direction, but failed to make strong decisions on more fundamental parts of the game. Is it trying to be an arcade-style high-score game? Is it trying to appeal primarily through humor? Are they supposed to be pharaoh ants or grease ants? On game-jam timelines, you usually want to do one thing really well and use the other parts of the game to support it; but I never quite figured out what I wanted this game to do best.
• Take the time to make systems extensible, when it's worth it. I very early on made the system for text effects when you smoosh an ant, then used that constantly for bonus points, multipliers, and special ant effects. This saved me a bunch of time and also made the game more usable and legible for the player when a lot of things are happening. You do need to be careful about this on game jam timelines though --- sometimes it makes more sense to do the hacky solution in 20 minutes instead of the clean one in 2 hours, especially on the last day!
• Brass instruments are hard to play. Every time you beat a level, you get to hear my very underwhelming bugle playing. I'm thinking I should stick to piano.

The Results

This game did wildly better in results than I expected!

Thanks so much to everyone who played the game during the rating period. Ludum Dare has been an amazing experience over the 7 years I've participated, and while results are far from the most important part, it's extremely heartwarming and validating to get positive feedback because it means people actually enjoy the games you make.

Interestingly, I expected Graphics to be a strong point and Humor to be more of a point for improvement --- I think the results just go to show that a) sometimes you're not always able to view your game from an outside perspective, which is why playtesting is so important and b) there's enough randomness in LD results, especially in the top ranks, that the specific numbers don't matter as much as high-level trends over multiple events.

Congrats to everybody else who participated, and especially those who made it into the top 15 --- every game ranked that high is fantastic and just as easily could have taken the top spot, and I wish I had the time to play all of them. (If you haven't played Prince Charmony yet and like puzzle platformers, play it now!)

Thanks for making it all the way to the end, and here's to an even better LD57 next year!

The best of all the games I played on my stream at https://www.twitch.tv/xpmonsterx (72 of them) :smiley:

While not all games got a place, I have to say that I did loved every single one! :heart:

You're all amazing, keep creating amazing games and I can't wait to see what you'll make in the future :sparkles:

Not official Ludum Dare ranking!

The Best of The Best :trophy:

Among The Deep

@langotriel

Runner-up: Fear of the Ungnome & Ponding Experience

The Best of Compo :muscle:

Tiny Checkers

@thyoi

Runner-up: Moldable Monster of Mine

The Best of Heart :heart:

Tiny H.O.C.'s Pro Creator

@peter-dam

Runner-up: Critter Conflict

"Best of Heart" meaning my personal favorite, all objective points aside

The Best of Graphical Design :paintbrush:

1. Fear of the Ungnome
2. Animal Golfing
3. Chumini: Tiny Army
4. Waddle
5. Bento Bugs
6. Echo Echo
7. Sammich
8. Mystic Mites

The Best of Sound Design :loud_sound:

1. Among The Deep
2. Ponding Experience
3. One Million Microscopic Kittens!
4. Critter Conflict
5. Fear of the Ungnome
6. Tiny H.O.C.'s Pro Creator
7. BomBom Wash
8. Blob, to the Top!

The Best of Original Soundtrack :musical_score:

1. Cyber Critter
2. Planet Maxim
3. Critter Conflict
4. Sammich
5. Neckmeat's Tiny Adventure
6. Small Problems to Grapple With
7. Among The Deep
8. Snake Rolls

Might be a bit incorrect as with some games I couldn't confirm that it was original

The Best of Fun Factor :video_game:

1. Mooovement Game
2. Bento Bugs
3. Critter Conflict
4. Tiny H.O.C.'s Pro Creator
5. Grablin Battle Festival
6. Tiny Checkers
7. Slime King
8. MonkePok

The Best of Immersion :earth_americas:

1. Among The Deep
2. Fear of the Ungnome
3. Tiny Creatures - Lost Kittens
4. Poppet
5. Ponding Experience
6. One Million Microscopic Kittens!
7. The Blueberries Dawn
8. The Fleshfather

The Best of Level Design :city_sunset:

1. Waddle
2. Animal Golfing
3. Mooovement Game
4. Swamp Axe
5. Blob, to the Top!
6. My Tiny Friend and I went on a Puzzle Adventure in the Forest...
7. Dino Island Safari
8. Oddball Assembly

The Best of Narrative Design :books:

1. Ponding Experience
2. Among the Deep
3. Critter Conflict
4. Detective Roach
5. Ego
6. Those Who Die as Cattle
7. My Tiny Friend and I went on a Puzzle Adventure in the Forest...
8. The Fleshfather

The Best of Game Design :game_die:

1. Moldable Monster of Mine
2. Tiny Checkers
3. Tiny Push, Big Nap
4. Inside Creatures Out: What is your gaming MBTI?
5. Flea Circus
6. Rattalion
7. Cyber Critter
8. Critter Cannon

That's it!

P.S. If you want to see the final version of my game, Sea Beckons, consider following on https://empyreans.itch.io/sea-beckons

Farewell till next Ludum Dare!

~ Best wishes,

XpMonster

Atleast the audio was tolerable...

(psst! since people like my music and VA... you can check the music out... here)

Thank you to everyone who played and rated our game!!

YIPPEE

Well, it's a pretty average result, but I think it's alright for a first attempt right...? I just hope this serves as a good confidence boost after the commercial failure of our first game.

...I am in shock. I actually don't know what to say.

I felt that I had struck a good balance between content and polish this time really early but to see numbers this good... I didn't expect it.

I'm especially happy with my graphics score, the visual aspect of game making has been my weak point for so long and to receive the highest rating I've ever gotten in any Ludum Dare in that category shows me that maybe I am making progress. It's just a nice little extra motivation for next time.

Thank you all for playing, voting and being cool people. I'll write up a detailed proper post mortem in the following days. It's gonna be epic and lit.

Super happy wih the placement! With this being my 3rd ludum dare it feels like my team and I have grown significantly from from our first game being 324th overall to now being 56th overall in this jam! We really appreciate all the positive feedback and all the people who rated our game it means alot! <3

Well, as it turns out, not as hot as I expected. In terms of scores, Lily Adventuresses! Episode 2 Prologue did a bit worse than my previous LD game, Project Missionary. Well, this has something to do with the story and overall length. Project Missionary has a pretty much complete story (spanning around an hour at most), while Lily Adventuresses! Episode 2 Prologue is, yeah, just a prologue to a much lengthier game.

But in terms of rankings, this had performed a bit better, so at least there's an improvement, perhaps?

Regardless, I really love the comments left on my game, which all have something to do with the old-school RPG feel. Well, what else do you expect from me using one of the oldest RPG Makers in existence?

Going forward, I'll definitely continue working on the entirety of Lily Adventuresses! Episode 2. Chapter 1 will be made for the upcoming GameJamPlus 2024/25, which will happen next month, while I'll continue working on the rest next year.

I wish we could see the curves of the results.

The strong majority of comments on this one were radically positive, far more so than on my previous jam which scored quite decently, making me assume they were ratings 4-5 on multiple categories(which would have been exceptionally more than I would have expected on this design). The results were casually 2.5-3 (with the exception of the Mood category, which scored well).

This telegraphs, either, that those radical positive comments were overemphasizing the actual ratings they were giving, or that there exists some relevant number of heavily negative ratings to balance it out. A charted curve would answer this.

For reference, I find the final ratings to be relatively where I may have placed it myself, with some minor exception of perhaps a difference of 0.5-1 point in a given category, so I'm of course not complaining, but I'd find it really interesting to know if this was a Bell Curve result, or if the perception was much more controversial and it was actually a Reverse Bell Curve. The comments potentially statistically telegraph the latter.

I'm very happy my game Gunpoint Sojourners got 13th in mood. I wasn't very sure I'd get any good marks because the theme is heavy and can be understood as polemical so thank you so much for all of you that played and rated the game, it means a lot.

maybe..

We put the jam theme very much on the back burner and worked on the world and graphics more than anything else. Those are the categories that got the highest marks %)

If we had left the humor category, it would very likely be the worst, since there are no jokes in the game at all. It seems to be difficult to put humor in such a lore so that the game does not lose quality.

This time we worked out the graphics rendering "128 frames per 360 degrees". It's quite labor-intensive, especially if you don't write a special script for Blender. Next time we will put more emphasis on covering the theme and “stickiness” of the game. It seems story games aren't really suited for the jam format. Also we already have a small lore, which in theory can be adapted to any theme, and therefore some meta-narrative can be written into the game

Thank you very much for your evaluations and feedback!

My previous Ludum Dare (LD54) was my best performance since LD44, and I've now gone and eclipsed that. I have my best ever rankings in the Fun, Graphics, and Audio categories, and only my second ever top 100 placement. That's tempered by the fact that there seem to be fewer entrants this time round, but my scores are also among the best I've ever gotten - this is only the third time in 14 Ludum Dares that I haven't scored below 3 in any category.

I'd like to say a massive thank you to everyone who played Color Critters and gave it such wonderful ratings and reviews. I've already started working on the expanded post-jam version, with far more levels and features, and while I don't have enough to show off quite yet, I should have some updates soon on my Bluesky profile.

Well done to everyone else who finished the jam! Hope to see you all again in April for the next one!

I'll take it. This was my first game jam of any kind ever, and I thought I had 3 days but found out on the first day that I only had 2. Also I had been thinking of one kind of game in the days leading up to 56, and then just... sat down and made a different kind of game. I do not understand why. Anyway, lessons learned. I'll do better next time.

Thanks everyone! つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Results are in and I honestly thought we would get slightly higher then where we landed, almost everything is significantly worse than my last jam about 6 years ago. I wasn't expecting top 10, but i thought we would land a bit higher than were we did.

My main goal was to try and beat my previous graphics score of 186th and this time i landed at 304th. I'm not sure what i did wrong, I honestly felt like I had improved the graphics from my last game jam, maybe I've just got rose tinted glasses on.

Would love to hear peoples opinions on what I could have done differently (mainly on the art side).

Here's the game if anyone is curious:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/whisker-warrior

"I better not touch that Postmortem Ruining Device 3000."

"Oh no! Somebody else made this postmortem too long!"

The idea:

So the theme was "Tiny Creatures" and the first thing I though of was a disney princess singing to woodland critters as a means to make them do your bidding. Unfortunately, I'm a Bass/Baritone and not a Soprano, so let's make the princess a prince this time.

Prince Charming... singing a harmony. Charming... Harmony... Charmony! Good enough for me!

Goals:

I've been trying for 8 Ludum Dare's now to make a really good "tree swaying in the wind" shader. There's a good screenshot in my LD54 postmortem of the tree shader going wrong and being abandoned. Actually, to quote my previous postmortem, "I could absolutely boost my graphics ratings with some neat shaders." I wanted to go all out on graphics this time. It's been a while since I've scored in the top 10 of graphics, and my art has improved a ton since then.

On top of focusing on art, I wanted to mimic the story-telling of my LD 53 game, Inbox Fool. Having a villain that taunts you in every level (as well as making bad jokes) is a very natural way to put my bad sense of humor into my LD games, so I plan to do that too.

These goals will be explained in the following sections: * Shader-land * The Critical Blunder * Okay, what the heck was that story? * A lot of singing * Let's talk about why I ran out of time.

Shader-land:

Let's make some trees that sway in the wind.

Step 1, separate the trunks from the leaves.

To make the leaves sway, we'll create a texture for the shader. The purpose of this is to seperate each chunk of leaves into their own sections that sway individually. We want the tops of the leaves to be fixed on the tree, but the lower parts sway further than the higher parts. Imagine a gradient from black to white, where darker shades of grey represent less movement, and lighter shades represent more movement.

Now in the shader code, just scoot the pixels of the leaves over to the right some distance, multiplied by the brightness of that pixel in the lookup table texture. (Multiplying by a dramatic amount just to highlight the effect. Obviously the trees swaying this much looks bad. The key is being subtle.)

Modify the amplitude of the displacement by multiplying by some sine wave over time, and you've got some reasonable tree swaying!

There was another effect I really wanted to create. You know when you're walking through a forest and there's a patch of spotlights as the sun pokes through the leaves? A bunch of little pinhole spotlights would really make the forest scene a delight.

Step 1: Make a circle.

By adding some "cutoff" value, we can make the circle solid instead of blurry.

Step 2: Fading luminosity.

I want the circle to be bright when it's near some target point, and fade away as the circle moves from the target point.

I started by adding the target point, and setting the pixel's brightness to be the pixel's distance from the point:

Not quite what I was going for. Instead, set the brightness to the distance of the circle's center from the target point:

Looking good!

Step 3: More dots.

Okay, so how do we scale this? The way I'm creating the circle reminded me of voronoi noise! (Which is way too much code to put in a single screenshot, so from here on out, I'll just show the results)

Applying the fading luminosity, and we got something looking like this:

Step 4: Replacing the luminosity "point" with perlin noise.

Using a perlin noise texture, I performed some math to create "blobs" that would be hotspots for the pinhole lights.

Now instead of using math to calculate the brightness of the circle, I just grab the value from the perlin noise:

I also added multiple layers when I move the dots around, so they aren't all in unison.

Oh yes.

Make all the local texture coordinates into world coordinates, and you've got yourself some neat tree pinhole spotlights!

The Critical Blunder:

It really wouldn't be Ludum Dare if everything went right. So there were framerate issues. I was half-joking with a roommate that I'm being punished for having a really good GPU, but in hindsight I really do need to test my game on a laptop or something. I think a lot of us have been in a situation during Ludum Dare where we are mentally exhausted, we're rushed for time, and not thinking clearly. This is one of those situations.

So the pinhole shader is looking cool, but I want more spots, you know? Let's loop the existing code, oh- I don't know... 60 times.

I'm such an idiot.

Now, initially I set that number to be like, 100. It looked great, but in the Unity Editor, I was also getting some dips in performance. Granted, this was with the scene viewer, which on my monitor was around 2500:1000 pixels. I forced the resolution of the game to be 768:512, which dramatically cuts down on the number of pixels in need of calculations, which fixed the performance on my end. I also then cut the number of iterations from 100 to 60, so I figured it was good to go.

After reports of bad performance, I knew exactly what the cause was. I modified the shader and capped it at 4 iterations, making a Post-Compo "light GPU build". It looks basically the same.

Dang it.

Okay, what the heck was that story?:

Or, "How I recorded a ton of lines that never got implemented because I ran out of time." I ran into a similar situation in LD52. Voice lines were recorded, but there wasn't enough time to implement them. Here was the plan:

The story of the game is as follows. Your golden parrot is stolen. Now, under the control of The Dissonancer, your parrot will act as a messenger, delivering the stupid messages the boss has to say. The message for level 1 read:

"MYRAH! Look, I'm your parrot! I'm loyal to The Dissonancer now! Ha, just kidding. It's me! The Dissonancer! I already taught your parrot how to say this message. Uh- Don't question it. I'm just going to be "mocking" you through this "bird". Squawk- this is your parrot speaking now. Ohhhh, you're gonna miss me! ... Okay, how do I tell the bird to stop recording? Is there like, an off button or a command? This was a good message. You should fly over to that Charmony dork and let him hear it."

And I had stupid banter for some other levels as well, but I was RUSHING to finish everything and it didn't make it into the game, which is devastating because there were some really bad jokes in some of those banters, and I really wish they made it into the game.

Anyway, all that's left of the story now is: the wall is destroyed, the Dissonancer steals the parrot, the parrot sings the boss fight music (but there's no animation or indication that it's the parrot singing it.... oh well), and then you get the parrot back and explain why you can't pay to have the wall replaced. There were more references to the wall in the unused dialogue, and it would've made the payoff at the end so much stupider.

A lot of singing:

This is the sixth Ludum Dare in a row in which I've added Acapella music. I'm still not an expert, but it's fun!

Since this game revolves around singing to creatures, naturally I had to sing some music. I'm not actually a professional, (and I thought it would be really funny if it's obvious Prince Charmony isn't either) so his "singing" is mostly him going "Doo doo doot doo doo! Blah bomp. Bwa dunna domp blomp womp!"

Before I talk about the boss fight music, let me take a brief moment to talk about the new things I tried with my synth music. I picked up some slap bass VSTs, and oh my god... I cannot believe I hadn't been using slap bass this whole time.

And as always, the acapella is way easier to make if I already have a synth version made first.

As for the acapella boss fight music, I had big plans. I know I've done it a lot this postmortem, but allow me to refer to a previous postmortem. In my postmortem for LD55, I wrote "I realize I forgot to do some cool stereo effect, with one set of vocals specifically in one ear, and another in another. Oh well- Next time!" and I can safely say, ladies, gentleman, and everyone still listening, "we got 'em".

For all those who doubted me, I say:

I can't honestly think of something that went wrong with the music, which is a relief considering a lot went wrong with the graphics. I added stereo effects, chords, and it sounded great! Perhaps the music could have been a longer loop, but I haven't heard anybody complain about the repetition.

Let's talk about why I ran out of time:

Okay, so I over-did it on the art. I spent 5 hours on the background. And in Ludum Dare Compo terms, that's a LOT of time. It wasn't just to try and score well in graphics, but more importantly, I really struggled to make a "game" from my concept.

One idea I had for the gameplay would be to set up a rube-Goldberg machine using the animals to move an orb to... I dunno, a sleeping deer or something. Another woodland creature of sorts, who would then point the way to the next level. The puzzles would be all about setting it up, and watching it go, but I was not sold on that idea.

I wanted to make a puzzle game akin to my LD53 entry, Inbox Fool. I scrapped the rube-Goldberg machine idea, but the phrase "solid cube of birds" rung comically in my mind. I needed to make that. Frogs being bounce pads also made sense in my mind. I had a game coming together.

I initially couldn't come up with enough interesting mechanics from the critters, so as I brainstormed, I drew art. The rabbits were specifically the animal I struggled with. The birds and frogs both provide vertical movement, and I needed to make sure the rabbits were actually important. My first draft ideas included them becoming a ladder (vertical movement. bad.) or a placeable singing-platform. For people who didn't play me game, the singing platforms are where you can command the animals, so being able to place one would make for interesting puzzles. I assume.

In the end, rabbits making tunnels sounded really cool, but wow that's more vertical movement tools. I guess they can also make a bridge, I don't know. And viola! All creatures got ideas, and wow I spent 5 hours drawing the background while I figured this out, it's time to program stuff now.

Polish as you go.

Call me dumb all you want, but you cannot deny my games have presentation. (and yet I wonder why I run out of time so often)

Once the trees were moving, the tree-pinhole-spotlights glowing, the character moving, and the camera smooth as butter, I got started implementing the woodland creatures.

The big takeaway from my LD52 game, "The Bountiful" was (and I repeat this in every postmortem) "Focus on a single main mechanic, and let the story come second".

Despite "commanding woodland creatures" feeling like a single main mechanic conceptually, it was really 6 individual mechanics that all needed to work perfectly together. Birds need to be solid cubes and double jump zones. Frogs need to be bounce pads and boosts to jump height. Rabbits need to be bridges and tunnels. Then I need to program the singing-platforms and the HUD elements to go along with the animals.

Then I wanted a boss fight akin to Inbox Fool. That game flipped the main mechanic on it's head, but I couldn't find a way to flip the animal commanding into something new. You basically just collect the animals and use them to defeat the boss.

And I wanted 9 levels before the boss. 3 levels for each animal to be in the spotlight.

The timeline of this LD was: Draw characters and all animations, draw woodland creatures, character movement code, QOL features like coyote time and buffered jumps (pressing jump briefly before landing will still jump after you land), sleep.

Draw foreground elements, background elements, shader code, program birds (fun hopping animations, cool patterns in bird-cube-mode), singing-platforms and HUD, program frogs, start writing music, title screen art, sleep.

Program rabbits, make 3 bird levels, I made 1 frog level, 3 rabbit levels, finish writing level music, and sing the acapella music, make the boss room, draw/animate/voice both cutscenes, record a whole bunch of banter dialogue that got cut, make the remaining frog levels (all levels complete!), add code to progress from one level to the next, pressing R to reset a level, implement the title screen code, add the victory screen + speedrun timer, program the boss fight (the barrels are just a copy of the player movement code, you can tell I was panicking!), pause menu, and publish!

The pause menu almost didn't make it. I was rushing the whole weekend.

Reflection

I'm writing this before the results go live, so these are my genuine feelings about the game with no bias towards how the results may ruin my opinions.

I like it. I'm comparing the art from my LD45 game that scored 10th in graphics. It was another game featuring a forest as the backdrop, and just look at the difference!

As for improvements to the art, I think the solid-black parts of the foreground should have been a dark brown. I think the background might be too saturated, and some parts could be confused for solid objects. I've also been told a few times that the background does not match the art style for the playable character, which... yeah. As I become a better artist, I should probably do something about my character art style. I absolutely love the very simple designs (and I'd like to emphasize how quickly I can draw in this style) but if the character does not match the background, it feels weird. Perhaps the real issue is the background being too detailed, ha! I'll try and make the characters match the scene next time.

The puzzles in my LD53 game, Inbox Fool, were poorly tutorialized, and I think that applies here as well, but it's slightly better than my LD53 game. Some other shortcomings with this game include janky corner clipping. You could sometimes clip upwards and reach platforms you otherwise shouldn't be able to reach, which could potentially cheese a puzzle, or confuse someone who accidentally clips up thinking it was intended.

I think the music was perfect with this game.

Reflection part 2, What did we learn?

First of all, let's address all the points from the previous postmortem.

"Focus on a single mechanic, and let the story come second"

It became 6 mechanics, but I think I did a good job. There was a lot more emphasis on the levels and design than emphasis on story. (Story elements were even cut because I ran out of time)

“Get feedback before the deadline”

Okay... so my roommates were both gone this weekend too, ha. I reached out to some friends on Discord when LD started saying "Hey, will you be around to test this on Sunday around noon? (6 hours before submission)" and I got a handful of people ready. Alas, I was so rushed for time I wasn't even able to make a build for testing. I had too much to do, and, wouldn't you know it, that came back to haunt me.

Okay, what would we have learned this time? The framerate issues. One of the puzzles consistently stumps every one of my friends, and some corners were clippable. All of that could have been fixed.

This is something that I will make a priority next Ludum Dare.

“Make sure the camera isn’t jank”

I made a 2D game this time, so that was easy. I actually started with the camera before I even figured out what I wanted the game to be. I wanted it to be smooth as butter, and I can safely say I did that.

"Make another game with an interesting mechanic, broken into a series of small levels."

I took that to heart, and you bet it worked out. This game was a lot more fun to make than my fancy cutscene/dialogue engine with a game attached.

What did we learn this time?

I pretty much want to just repeat the lesson from LD53, about getting feedback before the deadline. To actually add to my repertoire of lessons from each LD, I'm going to say the big takeaway here was test the game on the worst laptop you own. My roommates have computers of similar quality, so the framerate issues present in the game wouldn't have even been noticed by having them test it.

Also, if I'm going nuts with shaders, just don't be dumb about it. Perhaps that's the real lesson.

The Results

• 13th Overall

• 15th Graphics

• 6th Humor

• 1st Audio

Reflection part 3, and Conclusion

Honestly, I'm satisfied with the results. I'm a bit befuddled by my score in graphics just barely not being better than my game from 11 Ludum Dare's ago, but I've noticed LD results are incredibly varied sometimes. Luck of the draw on who rates your game, I guess? But also the frame rate issues likely played a part in losing a few points there.

Honestly, now that it's all said and done, I think I should spend less time drawing detailed background, and perhaps trying to stylize the heck out of things with simpler designs. I spent so much time on the art that the rest of the game was rushed, but if I'm going for cartoony, why not go all in, you know?

And, Woo! Another trophy in Audio! The acapella music seems to work. It's such a shame there were voice lines that didn't make the cut, as that probably could've boosted my Humor score a little more, but oh well. We'll get 'em next time.

All around, this one was a great time! It was fun to develop, which instantly makes it better than a few of my previous jam games. I like the puzzles I made, and the world I built. I really can't ask for more.

Anyway, that's it for Ludum Dare 56! I'll stop myself from rambling even more. See you at the next one!

☃

I'm very happy with my results, especially considering this was my first published game!

Thank you to everyone who played Koi and left great feedback! You're all awesome. :heart:

This was Swan’s first time in Ludum Dare and they left the whole event with such a positive impression of the game jam community. All the kind interactions were very infectious, and they made us want to interact and engage more with the amazing things everyone did in such a short amount of time. It’s very inspiring to see what people can create and everyone should feel proud of what they’ve accomplished.

We are both very thankful for how receptive people were to our first time working together on something like this, and everyone made what was already a very special occasion even better.

Hoping we can join again in April!

-Swan and Boat

Just a quick post to follow in the footsteps of many other teams, and to say a big thank you. :two_hearts: Thank you for your many relevant comments and your kind words. When I write stories, whether for literature or video games, my aim is always the same: to make readers/players feel emotions. And with Tiny Rescue, it seems we've achieved that goal.

It was our first LD, and the end result is a huge encouragement for what's to come (because YES, we intend to go all the way with what we had planned for Tiny Rescue :smile: ). I also hope we'll be there for the 57th edition.

Thanks again, lots of fun and games for you, and a big BRAVO to everyone!

I got 52 comments that were quite positive, but in the end, I got a medium rating in all categories... I'd really be interested to get more data on the vote. For each rater (anonymously) the rating in each category and if the rater let a comment. To get more insight on how to improve (like stats of you receiving a poor overall with people that rated audio poorly, for instance).

I remain convinced that to get a good rating, you should aim for just above a 20 rating, you can get lucky with a subset of nice raters and avoid people who randomly or hastily rate to get their game more rates.

It might appear sour, but in the end, the grade doesn't really matter, commenting and receiving comments is what I love in Ludum Dare. 56 lilypad is one of my favorite entries I made so far. I loved almost all the game I had the chance to play, and the comments I got. I f you want to cheer me up to leave a star on my repository if you can to cheer me up! https://github.com/dhmmasson/lilyFrogs

Thank you to all the raters! Thank you to all that made a game, see you in April!

My platformer where you can't jump, Snail away, did super well! My best results by far!

I even got featured by Mike! Last (or first?) to get featured because 16th, but featured nonetheless!

I couldn't be happier! A huge kudos to everyone who played and left great feedback! I appreciate it :)

I'll try to be back with more awesomeness for next LD!

I had so much fun making this game and seeing what others had cooked up during that weekend. It was really cool to see in what kind of different directions this theme could be taken.

Also, I was quite surprised to see how many of you gave my visual novel a try - more than a hundred ratings is a lot, holy shit! Thank you so much for playing and rating. I really appreciate all the feedback I got <3

Comparing this to the last time I participated, this is such a huge improvement.

~~(Not surprised about the results for "Fun", "Innovation" and "Theme" compared to the other ones I got - I mean, it's a visual novel about grief and depression, how fun can it be haha ^^°)~~

So happy about "Graphics", "Audio" and "Mood". This is the stuff that can make or break a visual novel (aside from the writing, of course). Feels like I seem so have succeeded in that regard :)

Also: 137th overall? Woooah!

Once again, thank you all soooo much. I had a blast!

We may not have been able to finish the gameplay and mechanics of our game, but at least it seems people found the stupid soundtrack funny! Thanks for all the votes and time spent playing our game :)

Here is the second devlog of the post jam version of Tiny adventure
(thanks for all voting and comments, result is not bad :wink:).

Devlog 1

Devlog 2

I continued to work on essentials mechanics of Zelda Like 2D.

Completing devlog 1 next steps : * Manage layer in order to avoid sprite overlapping.
* Add action of launching wearing objects.

Add a shield!
Shield is as essential as sword, there it is!

For next steps, now that the votes are closed, I'm going to try to update the game version on Itch.
I'm just going to try to add a new enemy to diversify the situations a bit.

Hey everyone! I finally finished a game for this jam. It took a while as I was testing out my new C++ game engine, but it’s working. There’s not much to it, but it’s honest work.

Check it out here

Heyo! I started doing post mortems for my jam games and other stuff on my site. I just published the one for the LD56 game i made. 11th Ludum Dare in a row! Check it out if you're interested. We didn't score super highly, but it was still a fun experience.

https://blog.bluepinstudio.com/posts/Save-Nebuville-Post-Mortem/

I'm speechless.. this was my 2nd Ludum Dare and my teammate's 1st one.. and we got to the top 200! (*For comparison my 1st Ludum Dare game got 6 ratings... *)

We got soooo much amazing feedback from you all, thank you! After such a positive reception of our little blobby game, just a few days after the jam we decided to continue working on it. We want to create a combination of Jump King and World of Goo that will be fun to play for everyone, with additional, harder goals for those hungry for a challenge. Currently, work and university are taking all of our time, but we would love to start working on this soon and eventually release it as a full-fledged game.

Congratulations to everyone and don't let the ratings make you unhappy! The single fact that you made it this far and finished your games in such a short time is an incredible achievement on its own! Don't let this experience go to waste--keep on game-deving and pursue your dreams!

If you haven't played "Blob, To the Top!" yet.. feel free to give our game a try and leave some feedback. We are open to read your opinion on the game, and we'd love to know what you would like to see in the final version. We are kinda skilled programmers so we might be able to pull off even the most crazy ideas :D

Hi all! I just wanted to share with you that my game is now uploaded on itch for Windows users.

Play here: https://coltonphillips.itch.io/tiny-creature-support-group

For some reason, my docker instance isn't building linux right now. If anyone is reading this, and wants to build a Linux/Mac version of the game for me, in Rust, that would be much appreciated.

Link to code: https://github.com/ColtonPhillips/ludum-dare-56

Finally, if you appreciate Rust gamedev, or Godot gamedev, please consider following me on twitch where I sometimes stream that stuff: https://www.twitch.tv/coltonphillips

Take a moment to checkout my video of Moldable Monster of Mine, Play With Me, and Fishfestation.

Game links are in the description and below!

https://youtu.be/zKSwIrrLCQw

Games: Moldable Monster of Mine is a creative 2D action art game where you craft a monster by assembling pixels and slaying enemies. By SheWrote(@she-wrote): https://shewrote.itch.io/ Game Link: https://shewrote.itch.io/moldablemonsterofmine

Play With Me is a digital pet sim horror game with lots of charm. By AslanGames(@gord10ahmet) and Merulon(@meru): https://aslangames.itch.io/ and https://merulon.itch.io/ Game Link: https://aslangames.itch.io/play-with-me

Fishfestation is a wild ish Bullet Hell Survival RPG with delightful narrative. By ProStoCupOfTea(@prostocupoftea): https://prostocupoftea.itch.io/ Game Link: https://prostocupoftea.itch.io/fishfestation

I am so proud to be rated among the top 100 of this LD56 !!!

It also made me think about what I created as a whole during my 7 participations. I think I reached a ceiling with this "formula". During my last entries, I tried to produce large levels, too long to produce without good organization and for few results on the gameplay side.

For me future entries I will try a new formula more punchy, giving more possibilities for innovative gameplay!

Thank you so much to the people who rated my game or just played it for fun, it is a true motivation to see people enjoying what I crafted. (And thanks to my amazing GF who managed to secure a 4.15/5 audio score even if she didn't liked her audio tracks!)

I couldn't be happier with the results and the feedback I got. I was hoping to make it to TOP 100 in all categories, and I did! It's always so cool to hear that things worked out, even though I wasn't sure about them while doing the compo. I might even continue working on this game if I have time. :)

See you in April!

But first, a quick word from our sponsors...

A full and expanded version of my LD54 entry is coming to Steam as QuantumPulse 2A. If you didn't get a chance to play it during the jam (or did, and want more content!), add it to your wishlist now!

Post-jam DWARFS Update

My entry for this Compo, DWARFS, was ranked in the top 10 for audio and graphics, my new personal best in both categories, thanks for that! The Fun rating, however, was close to my personal worst (around the 50th percentile) :laughing:. However, I realized that was the case basically immediately upon sitting down to play through the whole "campaign" immediately after the Compo ended. I liked all the pieces of my game, but they just weren't meshing together. Thanks to some detailed feedback and players trying out various iterations I made on my post-jam version, I think I ended up with something way more fun, almost entirely by changing the glue that holds things together so that it feels like there's a reason for you to play the minigame, and that you feel rewarded for doing better in the minigame.

The general changes are: * Progress is saved between sessions * You now get bonus cash for completing the minigame well (4x for being nearly perfect, 2x for being good), which encourages playing aggressively / makes it more rewarding and therefore interesting * Greatly increased the match weighting for which exotic is found and their value (higher weight for DW/ARFS for which/value, and now the square of the match is used for the weight instead of just the raw match), so your configuration tweaks should have a more direct impact * The pattern of danger now loops (about 2 times if you're doing well) when doing the minigame, so if you're paying attention you can use that to your advantage * The pattern of danger is now pre-determined for each Exotic, so you can probably notice which exotic is "on the line" as well and use that to your advantage when hunting a specific one * Cash is now the stated primary goal (instead of just "18 probes launched" to finish a planet), so doing better at the minigame should feel even more rewarding * The Survey Bonus is now given per-Exotic when it gets to 100% knowledge instead of a single big payout, and increases with each bonus you claim * Moved affinities to the seeded random, so everyone should have the same difficulty (only the positive/negatives are flipped in a way that doesn't change the distribution), and ensured a better spread (should generally be at least 1 of each pos/neutral/negative for each affinity somewhere, and the closest two Exotics will never be very close) * If you start mining by clicking, time doesn't start passing until you actually hold down space/mouse again * Improved gamepad controls and informational tooltips

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

Thank you everyone for taking the time to play and review my game! Nobody found my easter egg (or at least commented on it), so that's still out for discovery. There is a hint toward the end of the game's description (and apt for this time of year)...

Well, we took 657th, but 50th in humor is a huge compliment, so I'll take it!

Thanks also to the people who ran the compo; I can't wait to participate next time.

Thanks so much to everyone who played Let’s Eat Grandma!
It was my first Ludum Dare, and my first time attempting audio and graphics by myself, so I’m super happy with the results! 😊
Seeing you all enjoy the game and share your thoughts has been seriously awesome. It means a lot!

For those who haven’t played yet, give it a try here and see if you can save Grandma!

Hello everyone,

I created with other musicians from the jam a playlist of the music composed during the LD56.

We have currently 15 tracks and that already answome. Come in the thread and share the youtube link of your best song if you want to be in!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIjR-zaySirD_JKPtusFdFpzB71Ub-Bfj

Hope you enjoy listening to all those great songs.

Kisses

https://youtu.be/1CYe-mjd5gM

Featuring

Da Eg Hatcha https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/da-eg-hatcha By @itsboats

Medic Mayhem++ https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/medic-mayhem by @wdc1913 @seppo-saamaki and @martta

Bug Squad https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/bug-squad by @civmaniac and @fabula-rasa

Thank you to everyone who played Dr. Shrink and the Horrors of the Infinite during the jam! I'm absolutely thrilled with my results and I can't thank everyone that played and reviewed it enough.

I know I'm late to the post-jam-blog-post-train, but especially since this was my first game jam, I thought I would take some time to reflect on my experience, and give the game the post-mortem treatment.

Post-Jam Version

Now that the jam is over, I've gone through each the major bugs that people encountered in the game, and fixed them all. The new post-jam version is available on my itch.io to play right now! (There's a devlog post over there with all the listed bug fixes)

Play the post-jam version here!

The Results

Overall, I am extremely pleased with the results. This was my first game jam, and I completed it all solo, so scoring sub-35 in both Innovation and Theme has made me absolutely over the moon! I'm also very pleased with the rest of the results. I reckon 268th overall is a pretty respectible result, but at the end of the day, the rankings honestly haven't been as important to me as the immediate feedback from people who played the game.

Feedback

I think my biggest takeaway from this whole thing has been that feedback is absolutely critical for creating an enjoyable experience for your players. I found both the positive and negative feedback extremely satisfying and enlightening, and I genuinely think it will make me into a better game developer.

The most consistant piece of constructive criticism that I got for Dr. Shrink (other than the music not looping :face_palm:) was that the game was missing a few quality-of-life features that make platformers feel better to play - namely Coyote Time and Jump Buffering. I was aware of these features before I embarked on this jam, but given that it was my first time making a platformer, I was mostly just attempting to get the game out the door, and didn't think those sort of "fancy" platformer features would make enough of a difference that people would notice. Well, they noticed, so I will for sure be adding these things to future platformers in future jams (and they've been added to the post-jam version :grin:).

What Went Right?

I think that ultimately, Dr. Shrink's strongest feature is its idea. Any time a streamer or one of my friends played the game in front of me for the first time, their first comment was almost always "Oh, this is a cool idea!" I think the game's results pretty clearly reflect this, as I scored very well on both Innovation and Theme.

The game actually scored quite well in Humor, being 24 places shy of the top 100 in that category. This is obviously great to hear, and can mostly be credited to my derranged brain at 2am on the night before submission implementing all the dialogue in one hour on very little sleep (this includes the unhinged title that I gave the game).

In the end, I'm actually quite pleased with the level of challenge that the game seems to present people. I was worried that it might be a bit too easy, but people genuinely seemed to struggle getting to the end of the game. This is a double-edged sword, as I will mention in the next section, but I think there's a positive to be gleaned from making a genuinely challenging experience that completionists feel like they have to beat.

What Went Wrong?

Conversely to what I just mentioned, although the game was indeed challenging - which can be fun - much of the challenge that the jam version of Dr. Shrink poses is through tricky platforming with ungraceful controls (see Feedback section above), and enemies that are unavoidable in certain parts of the game. These two factors aren't the end of the world, and the game is definitely beatable, but the challenge can definitely feel unfair, and a decent number of players that played the game infront of me got frustrated and put the game down without reaching the end.

The other major thing that went kind of wrong is that my prioritising of tasks was definitely a bit out of wack when I was creating the game. I spent some time early creating sprites for things that could have just used placeholders while I created the actual gameplay itself. The final build of the game was also the first build of the game that actually played like a game from start to finish. This was stressful, and lead to a lot of sleep deprevation.

What Have I Learned For Future Game Jams?

The biggest thing that I have learned is that I absolutely love game jams. It seems like it is indeed true what they say - Game Jams are the best thing for learning game development, and motivating you to Just Make Games :tm:. I am absolutely going to be back for Ludum Dare in the future, and I'm already planning on participating in the GitHub Game Off starting tomorrow :slight_smile:

Otherwise, I think I have a decent idea as to what kind of things you need to prioritise when you're jamming. Gameplay needs to take top priority, and if there's a way to make the controls smoother, you should try to make time to add them. Additionally, having a submitable version of the game at the end of each day sounds like a good idea that would reduce stress a decent amount.

I think that next time, I'm not going to get quite so hung up on the purity of preserving the game in the exact state that it was in at time of submission. I saw a lot of other jammers link to a post-jam version while voting was still happening. I was reluctant to do this myself because I had assumed that it wasn't within the spirit of the Jam, but I see now that I was overthinking it, and giving the players a post-jam version is just simply a good idea to portray your vision for the game more accurately.

Finally, I'd really like to try my hand at creating entirely my own assets for future jams (either solo, or working with an artist). I ended up going with a mixture of self-made assets (mostly the background and level art), and some licenced / open-source sprites that I found on the web. This worked for Dr. Shrink since I was learning a whole lot during the Jam and was low on time, but I really like the idea of having a complete vision presented at the end of the jam.

Conclusions and the Future of Dr. Shrink

When all is said and done, I am just absolutely thrilled with how this experience went. I loved making the game, I loved having others play the game, and I LOVED playing all the other games that you all created with your incredible talents.

As for Dr. Shrink, now that the major bugs have been fixed, I am happy to put him up on the shelf and leave him floating as a singularity in the vast emptiness of the infinite, at least for a while. I think it's likely that I may come back and make some changes, but if I do that it'll definitely be a "Version 2" that I'd like to take some time with (and fix up the code. It's a god damn mess). That being said, if I decide never to do that, that's okay too :smile:.

With that, I think the post-mortem is complete, so thank you anyone who read this (seriously, this is very long), and see you all in April for LD57 :v:

[One final shameless link to the post-jam version of the game]

https://mrbeast20242.blogspot.com/2024/10/30-18.html

Well, might as well give my thoughts on where we're going next. There's certainly plans to make an improved version of We Love the Boys though both of us particularly our artist want to be quite a bit more ambitious with it. Particularly harnessing 3D. Meanwhile we have another project in the works in the background, which serves more as a tool than a game but should be interesting in my opinion. It's still early days though and our projects aren't really in a state they can be shown off.

https://youtu.be/U3oUCkpUDAQ

Thank you to everyone who rated or played Tossed and Found! We wanted to fix up a few issues, mostly collision issues, weird interactions and some leaderboard formatting issues.

We've loved seeing all the speed runners optimise their scores, congrats to everyone in the top 10!

On the backend, we used Talo to build our leaderboards. It made adding leaderboards during the jam super easy, and we can see all the players and entries in our dashboard too.

You can play Tossed and Found on itch.io here.

So, I've written up a Post Mortem for the first time in my life and honestly, it's been pretty fun. I might do that again for the next one.

If you want to read about my super epic journey of switching to Godot with basically no prior experience and a time limit of 48 hours (and some stuff about the game I made I suppose), click THESE SUSPICIOUSLY COLORED LETTERS.

Hi,

I am posting cuts of the best parts of all of my livestreams from Ludum Dare 56

You can use link below to check out some of the great moments that I had playing the fantastic games.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsi31W-raUDA2dhmyYDSpcQbBUn0jx_rW&si=vRWVOqa7BFa9hl9Q

more videos are on their way. ❤️

Thanks, as always. -TigerJ

(if you have a good time throw me a couple likes on the videos that would be amazing)

Very pleased to announce that our latest Ludum Dare entry, ‘Chumini: Tiny Army’, will be released on Steam around March 2025! It's a short survivor's game featuring tiny cute creatures instead of spells or weapons. Stay tuned!

I made a video about my time creating Last Rollbug for the Ludum Dare 56! How it originally started as one idea and made its way into something else, dealing a lot of the weird issues that I encountered throughout the process, and some other cool games I played during the rating period! Give it a watch if you want and let me know what you think! (: https://youtu.be/sODLkiO-4Og

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUM6bgl62IM

Hello my friends. I would like to share with you some news about my biggest project - StarDust - which is an exploration game with an unusual aesthetic using colors as depth. I made many changes according to the first release which got some good ratings in the categories #Mood and #Graphics for the 54th LudumDare (respectively 4th and 6th). If you want to test it, there is a technical demo on Itch.io and I will appreciate any comment or feedback. I wish you the best. Thank you for your help ++

https://geckoo1337.itch.io/stardust

Ludum Dare 53 was a first gamejam for me and my "studio" (which is basically me and my wife). During it we've made a game DETOUR which surprisingly got 8th place in Innovation and 25th in Overall, so we decided to make a full game out of it!

So, after 1.5 years, x10 length of the game, x10 mechanics, x100 fun and x1000 polish, we finally released full version: Robot Detour!

You can buy the game on Steam or itchio, or play the demo first. Itchio even has the web version of the demo :)

I hope it will be as fun to play as it was fun making it ❤️

In anticipation of its release on Steam, we've put together a trailer for our LD56 entry Chumini: Tiny Army! It's a chaotic minion-based survivor-like, to be released on Steam in early 2025!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvrzSesN6ik

We enjoy working on this game a lot!

2.0 is OUT NOW!

Added sounds to the game, with some bugfixes. I am currently working on the mobile port for it. Go, check it out on itch.io: https://appreacher-games.itch.io/ld56

Hi! I try to do a postmortem for each of my Ludum Dare creations, but I've been super depressed lately so this took longer than intended.

Despite that, the piece was really powerful for me, and I came to learn a lot about my priorities as a designer. I hope you can learn from it too, even though it's coming from an analog tabletop creator's point of view.

You can read the post here - it's a Patreon post but our Patreon posts are free :D

I mentioned it in my LD56 post-mortem, but I'm developing a full game for commercial release!

Moonsigil Atlas is a deckbuilding roguelike with tile-based mana. Cards have shapes you have to position onto a board of triangular tiles, and can get bonuses for adjacency and overlap. Here's the trailer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC3mk43oOpg

It looks quite a bit different, but it uses the main mechanic of my LD52 entry, Fallowtide - deckbuilding with a grid of triangles as a resource system. If you're interested in this kind of game, feel free to check out the Steam page or join the Discord server to get updates on development, playtesting/demos, and release!

Thanks, and hope to see everybody for LD57!

Wishlist Moonsigil Atlas on Steam

Wow, 11th on innovation!

The rest of the ratings suck, unsurprisingly. My goal was to make a game where you can solve problems by defining object behaviours through cellular automata rules. I didn't really have enough time that weekend to make it into something really playable.

My goal was to turn this into a super low code game maker. You can create games by defining tile pattern transform rules with a point and click interface. The last few weeks I've been working on finalising this. It's currently focused on quickly creating one-level minigames that you can share via a data URL or even a QR code. Multiple levels and more features are planned. So hereby I proudly present:

Cellspace IDE and editor

Check out this QR code which contains an entire game! Use this QR generator with error correction set to low, to create QR codes up to 2953 bytes.

this time i was not able make a team in time, thankfully i met dev Empyreans (@empyreans) he is very detail oriented and you can see how much thougth goes into his games, we couldt finish this before the time limit but its done now, you should try it before getting spoiled https://ldj.am/$398441 (you should also check "Death Beckons" his previous game) this time i had to work on a game that was already started, it was fun having to adapt to someone elses proyect instead of starting from 0, tho i made a small mistake when i made a colonial pirate ship for the protagonist, i didnt realize this was in modern times the ships took most of the first days, i was instructed to make them ships instead of boats, i didnt knew the diference then, but now im certain this are mostly boats, i guess its ambiguous since you see them from pretty far away, yhes after the ships was made, i focused on making props and tyles, and then the 16 ending screens (those where after the jam) i cant really show them all cause that would be a very long post, and over the weigth limit, but you can check the endings playing the game or in my portfolio (for cowards) this are my favorite bad endigs yhes, there is an ending where you romance the witch, peace

Like I did for Ludum Dare 55,

I released a video about our Ludum Dare 56 experience.

Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/@HelperWesley/videos

Get Prickle now on Steam!

(or try the free demo)

Hi Everyone!
We are excited to announce that our game Prickle, which started as a LDJam54 entry, is now available as a full game on Steam!

After the great feedbacks we got from you on our jam version of Prickle, we felt that we can do more with the game. We felt that the game mechanics and concept had a lot of potential, so we decided to turn Prickle into a "full" indie game!

Now, after a a year+ of work, Prickle is finished and available to purchase on Steam (with a launch discount).

Prickle is a grid-based, Sokoban-style puzzle game with a laid-back, wholesome vibe. You play father hedgehog in a quest to bring home all your prickly hoglets. The hoglets stick to you, forming a Tetris-like shape. The challenge is to build the Prickle correctly so you can navigate to the end of the level.

A hell lot of content! - 48 levels (Jam version had 12) - More unique mechanics, spread across the 4 seasons of the game - More story bits and cutscenes - Enhanced art and sound - Many quality-of-life features (e.g. controller support, translations, accessibility features and more)

So if you enjoyed the jam version, or consider yourself a puzzle game lover, you have to try this one out.

Prickle is available now with a launch discount on Steam, so grab your copy now (or try the free demo!)

Peace!

Get Prickle now on Steam!

(or try the free demo)

I'm doing Advent of Code this year. AOC is a daily holiday themed coding challenge. Every day at midnight UTC-5 (i.e. New York/Toronto time) a new puzzle is dropped. Each puzzle has 2 parts, and there's a global leaderboard of who completed the puzzles the fastest.

For a more chill group, you can join my private leaderboard: 4283248-a39e4c71

I'm using this as an excuse to practice TypeScript (see below) and Go. For the sake of the leaderboard I'm writing my entries in Typescript, then later porting my code to Go.

If that sounds fun, join in, and let us know in the comments below if you're taking part. :smile:

PS: Deno is offering free stickers to participants who build their entries in TypeScript. Follow the link for more details.

Hi!

We have used google docs for keeping track of todo-list so far in every Ludum Dare. However it's inefficient and becomes easily convoluted and hard to interpret.

That's why I'm planning to introduce at least some kanban-style tool to our team next time.

Now I'm asking you, the indie-dev-collective-mind: What programs have you used and found good to manage your Ludum Project? What tool do you recommend that would be light, free and easily put to use?

I've used Jira before at work but that feels pretty heavy-duty for a three-day project.

I didn't end up joining LD56 because I was busy with other things, and it was the first LD I've missed in a long time. My first LD was 24, I skipped 25 and 26, and from 27 onward I have participated in every LD up until now. That's a grand total of 30 LD's I've participated in, and it seems like a good round number to end on, so I'm officially retiring from the LD scene.

From now on, I'll be focusing on my own game development, but I'm still keeping the semi-constrained nature of a game jam with a new game dev series I started called "Dice Dev" (of which I currently have two episodes completed).

I appreciate being part of LD and definitely still encourage it for anyone wanting to get more involved in game development, as it teaches you a lot about the whole design and implementation process (and things like trimming elements or avoiding feature creep). I wish good luck to everyone in future LD compos and jams!

Chumini: Tiny Army's Steam page is OUT! 🎉

You can now wishlist our short & cute survivor-like, and you can sign up for playtests!

👉 https://store.steampowered.com/app/3310000/ChuminiTinyArmy/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvrzSesN6ik

Yo guys, it's been a while since Ludum Dare 56 happened but i decided to make a video about my experience. Go and check it out!

Video

It's been a while now, but I updated my LD53 game, My Flavor(ite) Kidnapper!

Version 3.0 brings many new things, most of which I was planning back for the original jam version, and others were new ideas that came in the way

This new update adds even more characters, a brand new Gallery where you can learn more about the people you kidnapped, some quality of life things like an in-game way to take notes, and more clear instructions. You can see the full changelog here: https://cosmicfox-games.itch.io/my-flavorite-kidnapper/devlog/830171/polish-update-version-30

I'm very happy with how the game is now, and I'm glad that people seem to like it! I love working on this project and the universe I created and it feels my heart with joy to see people enjoying it

Although the game is now in a state I'm happy with I'm still planning a follow-up update adding DLC and custom content support in the future. This way I can keep adding new content easily and give the player a chance to add their own too. And, if everything goes well, I'm planning a Steam release too

You can check My Flavor(ite) Kidnapper at: https://cosmicfox-games.itch.io/my-flavorite-kidnapper

Here's the original LD53 entry too: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/my-flavor-ite-kidnapper

I would like to remember that I'm also working on localizing the game, if you're interested, you can find out more here: https://cosmicfox-games.itch.io/my-flavorite-kidnapper/devlog/751368/help-needed-with-localization

More screenshots of the game:

Outline Update

-Outline sprites arts

-Bug fixed

-New OST Song

Newgrounds page: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/960577

Donate: https://ko-fi.com/sketbr

Credits: @sketBR and MayraKuriSaka (Newest sister) for some ideas

Thanks for Playing :D

Post-jam version of @meru and my Ludum Dare 56 entry, Play With Me is live!

• In addition to the original ending, there are 2 new endings waiting to be discovered.
• Some SFX are replaced and there are some new sounds that might surprise you.
• Some bugs are fixed, including the notes in Repeat After Me mini-game.

We hope you like the post-jam and wishing you all a Happy New Year!

Game

Play with 3 virtual pets living inside a forgotten toy you've just found. Each creature has their own minigames they are dying for playing with you! And don't forget to feed these cute and totally innocent creatures.

https://aslangames.itch.io/play-with-me

Hey folks, Mike here with some sad news.

To the point: I've decided to cancel our scheduled 2025 events.

That doesn't mean Ludum Dare is dead, but I wont be running any events this year, nor will I be able to assist with things related to it (not for several months).

Without getting into the weeds, I made this decision due to a number of financial, medical, family, and health reasons. I value my privacy, but I will say that financially I'm in a bad place, and I need to find work ASAP. I've actually been looking for work since 2024, and not to mince words, I've been screwed over by the long drawn out hiring processes of several companies. Some of those rejections were my own fault though, trying to get concessions for the sake of running Ludum Dare, and others ... I don't know, they probably disliked my use of the Oxford comma. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To be honest, I'm not sure when I'll have everything sorted. It could be 6 weeks, it could be 6 months, I don't know. It's a lot, I'm a bit scared, but I do know I'll be able to handle it better with fewer things on my plate.

I sincerely apologize for having to do this, but I need to take care of myself and my family right now.

You can follow the official Ludum Dare BlueSky account for event updates: https://bsky.app/profile/ludumdare.com

You can follow my personal account to see what I'm up to: https://bsky.app/profile/distraction.engineer

Since LD is cancelled for the year figured this would be a good time to post this. I’ve been working with some other members of the community on another site for the past bit which is essentially a community-run LD (so going to make it as easy as possible to contribute to it)

Community-run means that organization will be spread out between multiple people and anyone in the community can run their own things relating to the event with that advertised on the home page (including things like a community keynote, the score chasers tournament, etc.). Code will be completely open and ill make it as easy as possible to contribute code to the site as well

Threw together a splash page in 30 mins after the cancellation post with some links and will have it fully ready before LD would have taken place next. (name temporary atm, may change)

https://jam.edikoyo.com

https://​patreon.com/mikekasprzak

Given the news, here is another alternative gamejam that might interest you!

Alakajam! is a jam with now over 20 iterations (+ various side events) that started as a more community-driven Ludum Dare. The community (centred around our Discord) feels very friendly and there is plenty of feedback given to every game. We have a moderation system to fight spam, the website is open-source, and the ruleset is similar to LD's with a 48-hour solo division and a 72-hour jam division.

Our next event is starting February 21st, hope to see you there :video_game:

Alakajam! website | Discord

DISCORD JOIN LINK

LAST DJAM!

tl;dr Our priority as a community should be to help Mike to get back on his feet. Not to try and split this decades old community into multiple different jams with their own rulesets, hours after Mike announced his financial troubles.

Ludum Dare is a very big community with many community voices, and it's been a huge part of all of our lives for many years. I have participated without fail in every jam since Ludum Dare 25, for over 12 years, and it made my entire career, without it I would not be a professional game dev. So I understand well what it means for LD to suddenly be apparently cancelled.

I also see a lot of people attacking Mike for not relinquishing the keys to the website to any number of unspecified subsets of LD participants who do not speak for everyone and yet would like to presume themselves the golden group to take over a community they did not build and, moreover, implement completely different interests, ideas and agendas for the site.

The thing that has made LD (despite all the minutiae we grumble about) successful and elevated it above the dozens of jams that occur every month is its consistency. People have run their own game jam ideas and sites for years. 99.9% of them did not gain significant traction.

Trying to clamber over the presumed corpse of Ludum Dare to promote one's own game jams mere hours after Mike announced financial troubles on its own homepage - I find it to be against the spirit of the community. Mike is not just that darned guy who posts the results 3 hours late sometimes, he's the guy who has taken dominion over this site, organising it at a loss for decades and steered it well.

There are few community projects that have ever had the longevity of LD. Many people who want the keys have only been at LD for a few years. To my knowledge, aside from myself, the only two people who have consistently participated in every Ludum Dare since the day I joined are Sheepolution and Mike Kasprzak. 2 people amongst tens of thousands.

Community run projects that do survive this long tend to switch leadership, and rewrite the rules. Tamriel Rebirth, one of the oldest mods, regularly destroys old contributor work and rewrites their entire design codex. I have seen many games I was a member of be destroyed by new leadership and mass exoduses as somewhere down the line the new community heads disagree with the original premise which made them unique and popular, and the new players they attract got bored. Go and seek the entire forum era of the internet, and I will show you the sandy leg of Ozymandias. And yet LD stands under Mike's relentless work

I am not disrespecting anyone's hard work. I'm sure a community made game jam can be successful. I also presume they will tend to converge on something that looks like itch.io, something to which Ludum Dare has extremely different values - for the better. LD attempts to prioritise peer review above popularity, anti brigading, and widespread interpersonal user interaction and community.

My instant reaction to "Mike, the person who has tirelessly worked to foster this incredible website for decades" is "let's help Mike!!", not "bye Felicia let's do our own jam". Nothing ever stopped anyone from doing their own jams. There are dozens every month. People are using Mike's hardship as a marketing opportunity to try and replace the singular best game jam in the history of the internet with ones that never had that level of interest, instead of helping the guy who worked tirelessly so we could enjoy ourselves and build these offset communities for years.

The site has never been faultless, but it has been consistent. Mike rarely makes radical polarising changes, he never sold the website out to dodgy interests, the worst you get with Mike is stuff runs a day or two off schedule sometimes. In this situation, a rare crisis has happened, and many people seem to be trying to callously market their enterprises instead of helping.

So let me be clear - I do not want to cancel Ludum Dare. For that sake, I would love if we can support Mike enough to keep it going or find sponsorship. Failing that, I am totally in favour of a "Community LD" that takes part on the scheduled 2025 dates, with the goal of then coming back here after the crisis.

But trying to move us all over to 3 entirely different jams run by multiple different interests and fracture the community, I find unpleasant and undecorous. If the LD Jam discord, the largest sub community, wants to keep things going, we can just host a simple itch jam, much like Ludum Dare 36 for those of you who remember it, was a bootleg jam without official scoring. And the world didn't end.

Now, if Mike completely gave up on LD forever, of course I would change my tune and hope that he would hand over the reigns to someone who shares his vision. But as it is, we should be coming together as a community to try and help Mike, and to failing that to try and keep the community together under the banner Ludum Dare, as we always have, as we as devs exist To Give a Game.

I agree with most of what Alex said (the post right below me), though I feel like he misunderstood the "let's somehow keep LD alive" initiative as "let's rob this corpse for all it is worth".

LD is unique and irreplaceable, and while I like DJam because friends, I would never support any decision that would go against the core LD.

I don't see why one couldn't support LD and help Mike while trying to find a platform that'd make keeping the continuity of the guy's work possible in tough times.

Supporting a "side jam" is the first thing that came to my mind. I have no personal relationship with Mike and never talked to the guy, so I have no idea of what to do on the "LD front" besides supporting the guy.

That said: I'm not exactly from a rich country, and my spending habits are downright atrocious, so this hurts like a motherfucker, but:

Mike's patreon

I will keep this up as long as I'm able to. Some of you might find publishing this to be in bad taste, but I'm leaving this screenshot here with intent and as a plea to make all of you think really hard if you can't spend a dollar (or a ten, or a hundred) for the sake of a guy that spent decades creating a unique space for all of us, and imho deserves it.

Please go ahead and make your own bad taste screenshot posts, just remember to remove any sensitive data.

And also, once there, please don't let the atrocious tax that's a part of the payment discourage you.

Thank you all, and hope to see you next LD

I hate "problems that require one's immediate attention" with fiery passion

I assume that many people, including myself. check the Ludum Date website only once in a while, so I will post Mike's original post here for anyone to find easily and I encourage others to do so as well at the start of posts regarding this situation.

Original Post

Ever since I started my LD journey with LD 44, I haven't missed a single one and I actually haven't tried any other jam. The frequency of the LD jams is such, that I can always have something to look forward to. For me Game Dev is a hobby and I am certain that I have spend more time doing game dev within LD than outside of it. With every entry I try to do something new and unique to challenge myself to learn something new.

I get more enjoyment and simultaneously I learn more by participating in Ludum Dare than I would ever get by learning game dev from a paid course or learning platform and all of that for free!

When I read Mike's Post and saw people linking his Patreon it was a no-brainer for me to join and contribute, to help Mike and as a thank you to him for all the enjoyment and learning.

I don't know what his Patreon numbers where before, but with the current numbers it should at least ease his financial situation. I am sure that every euro or dollar helps!

Mike's Patreon

@pov I hope you get your situation sorted and find a way to continue running Ludum Dare. Be it next year or whenever you feel you have the energy and your situation allows for it. Thank you for everything

'Sup fellow jammers!

In light of Mike's latest communication, the [gamejam name] team would like you to know we're totally the best alternative.

Not only do we have [cool stuff like LD], we also have cool innovative features like [one example to make it seems like there's a lot]. :sparkles:

Pretty cool isn't it?

:muscle: We're surely the best alternative out there, as you already know we [find a topic on which we have some credibility].

Together, we can make this a true community-driven event, aiming for [decoy target to hide that Me and 3 friends should become the new gamejam lords]. :handshake:

You can join our discord here [insert link], we know you'll love to [incentive to build the thing for us].

Our next event happens to be taking place April 4th, 2025, see you there! :v:

I figured there'd be more money from people going to this. Many people here are talented and I imagine make good money, but then again that mIght not be the case. It's surprising to see a Kickstarter get $1,000,000 from 50 backers but not this haha.

Anyone got the creator of Minecraft's username? Didn't he say after retirement he was going to start doing Ludum Dare or Jam combo's again? Or did he decide jetskiing was more fun? lol

Mike's Patreon

Patreon Link