and Gunpoint Sojourners passed the test!

On Monday after we uploaded our first Web Version, some members of our team went to a social gathering (weird I know) and we casually pulled out a mobile phone to test it on Android. For some reason it works even better on Android! We were complety stunned! Even the camera movement and hover effects are translated well. Web GL really did well for us this time.

Checkout our Game

I was a bit burned out after the weekend, but 2 good nights of sleep do wonders so I am ready to play some of your games!

Drop them in the comments down below and I will try to have look later today!

In case you want to do us the same favour please check out our game too! You can play it right in your browser thanks to WebGL!

Ready for an adventure filled with magic, danger, and tiny forest creatures? In Leafkin Quest, you'll play as a brave Leafkin on a mission to protect your homeland from pollution. 🌳

🗝️ Explore mysterious dungeons, unlock the powers of a magical grimoire, and collect Sacred Leaves to restore the balance of the forest. Each dungeon holds new challenges, enemies, and exciting gameplay!

🔮 Fast-paced combat, enchanting visuals, and a unique magical world await. Can you protect the forest and uncover its secrets?

⚔️ Features:

• Fast combat with spells and dashes!
• Collect Sacred Leaves.
• Beautiful world crafted with love (and a few assets 😅).
• Ability system with healing and offensive spells!

Join the adventure and try Leafkin Quest now! 🌟

Hello! Day 2 of playing your games live on twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/siraeron

if you havent, try our little cute golfing game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/animal-golfing

We'd love if you guys could check out and rate/give feedback on our game, Weaver!

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

We spent a lot of dev time for this jam polishing the simple gameplay and atmosphere - hope you enjoy it!

Feel free to leave your game in the comments aswell.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/survival-of-the-shadowlings

Check our game, available in browser.

You need to move circuit elements to establish stable current flow.

Up for challenge? Try to use as little charge carriers as possible.

If you can help the little spider, offer some advice, the little spider will thank you very much!:D

Background made with simple GB Tileset asset: https://alexjl.itch.io/simple-gb-tileset

Play the Apparatus in the browser

I am a software engineer by trade, and have always loved programming. Inspired by Zachtronics' games and niche esoteric programming languages, I've been tinkering with 2D Turing machines for a few years by now. There is a whole folder of unfinished ideas revolving around one concept - a 2D grid with a playhead, making something happen. A major struggle with these prototypes was that it was too mathematical - I couldn't come up with any challenges for the player that wouldn't directly ask them to solve some kind of a programming task - like sorting an array. Here is one of those prototypes:

When my teammate @erasemenot and I sat down to brainstorm ideas for the jam, a breakthrough happened. With jam constraints, we understood that we should be very careful about the scope of our game. I brought this 2D grid idea, and @erasemenot was open to it, even though it's not the typical kind of games for him. Communicating ideas to another human being is a great way to see holes and problems with your ideas - that often somehow stay hidden when the idea only lives inside your head. We both used to play a lot of Magic: the Gathering, and we both love deck-builders and turn-based games, so our initial idea was to make a kind of deck-builder, where your cards are blocks for the machine. You put together your combo play, and watch the machine fight the enemies, step by step. Enemies were supposed to have their own programs running in parallel. You were putting together a mana stack and spending it on various spells. There were like 5 themes that our game would match very well.

And then the theme was announced - tiny creatures. Damn! Not the theme we wanted. We gave ourselves 2 hours at most to make final decision on the game we're making. A radical pivot was proposed - let's replace our spells with summoning creatures, and have other creatures come and attack us. And make the whole thing real-time. It felt like a huge shift from game ideas we have been fleshing out for the last few days. But we decided to go with it - and we're so glad we did. @erasemenot went deep into the art - the machine, our creatues and all other elements of the game. And I went into Godot trying to code everything we have envisioned. Here is what we had by the end of day one:

At the same time, @erasemenot had great progress with art, so we ended the first day elated and excited about how smooth everything is gonna go on this jam and proud of ourselves how manageable of a scope we have chosen. Oh boy, how wrong we were. The next day we woke up and realized even though the fundamentals are in place, there is so much more we have planned for the game. We wanted to have more than 30 different blocks for the machine - various logic gates, turns, switches, buffs. And at that point we had only like 5. So the crunch began.

Creature behaviours, block logic, animations, arrows, so so many things to make it work. Time to cut the scope yet again. Begrudgingly, I agreed to leave out all the logic gates and switches. The machine was becoming too simplistic - no longer a Turing machine. Without logic and math operators - mana costs that we came up with became more confusing. Nonetheless, our sight was set on finishing the game no matter what. So I coded and coded and eventually had this on my hands:

Now, only a few things remained on the coding side, so I could take a break and make some music. We wanted 2 themes - one for when the machine is paused and you're thinking how to arrange the blocks, and another for the battle. Without much time for two different tracks, I decided to pick 80 bpm tempo for the slow part, and double it for the battle part, bringing a couple elements from one part to another to glue them together. I used Ableton and samples from Splice to make it happen, and both parts came together surprisingly quickly.

As you can see the final game looks much different. That was @erasemenot crunching his part, adding all his art to the game and making it look amazing in the very final hours of the jam. And here we had it. We made a game! It looks like a game, it quacks like a game, it is, indeed, a real game. Short, bugged, but real. What a feeling! We are super glad and thankful for all the wonderful feedback we're getting, and seriously considering taking this game further - with more logic, more creatures, more challenges. Your feedback is super valuable to us to better understand which direction should we go. We don't have anything set up yet where you could follow the game progress, but if you're interested to see where it goes you can follow me on twitter and itch. Thank you, Ludum Dare and all fellow jammers!

Art postmortem by my teammate

I did the same mistake as the last game jam, I spent too much time thinking about a concept and too much time creating assets.

I had some cute doodles and a simple concept but it was not fun and it was sunday evening. So I ended up doing this little game with the 4 hours remaining. I used nothing I did during the week-end.

I focused on the mood with a minimalist approach, I didn't have the choice.

I really need to focus on the gameplay next time.

Here's the game :

The Ludum Dare Page

Play it on Itchio (HTML5)

This time we made our first puzzle platformer, where you control multiple characters at once.
Please come give us some feedback!

Play fullscreen
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tara

In Fleaes, you must help the fleas carrying stones to build a bridge so they can reach the other side, but unfortunately, the weather is not on their side.

We hope you enjoy the game! And feel free to give us feedback!

Play here

Don't let yourself get too large... And remember too-

smol link

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-suspect If you like detective-like games, maybe you'll enjoy our Tiny Suspects, where using clues and descriptions you have to find out and arrest the criminal.

:lizard: Come join the hunt at Dino Island Safari! :lizard:

What's the prey?

Just a couple of tiny creatures... with guns.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/dino-hunter-safari

We fixed the bugs that caused the generators to malfunction, which previously prevented access to the final room and the opportunity to witness the cutscene. This resolution opened the way for players to fully experience the climax of our game, enriching the overall gameplay and narrative conclusion. And also we fixed the sound system, so music playes propperly now!

While we’re incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved so far, there’s still more to come! We are continuing to work on adding even more animations and sound effects to elevate your gaming experience. Additionally, we’re committed to optimizing the game to ensure it runs smoothly for everyone.

Stay tuned for more updates, and thank you for your continued support.

https://www.twitch.tv/xpmonsterx All genres are welcome!