Congratulations for everyone!

I've made a small table with all PICO-8 games submitted to this ludum date (that were tagged as LD and PICO8 on itch). Some very high scoring pico-8 games this time around! (#1 in sound? wooo)

If your game does not show up here, please leave a comment!

| Name | Author | Overall | Fun | Innovation | Theme | Graphics | Audio | Humor | Mood | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Hyper Harvest | @orion-black | 12 | 14 | 87 | 259 | 96 | 134 | - | - | | Adelie - Water Under the Bridge | @meep | 17 | 6 | 121 | 127 | 12 | 122 | 111 | 51 | | The Crystallographer | @pianoman373 | 32 | 68 | 24 | 13 | 18 | 50 | - | 32 | | Froot Processor | @joel-davis | 35 | 51 | 19 | 244 | 59 | 89 | 197 | 131 | | You're Under Harvest | @mastoast | 59 | 27 | 156 | 90 | 106 | 1 | 95 | 98 | | URSA MAIOR | @zahkros, @bartalomew, @ekaktusz | 65 | 142 | 183 | 436 | 165 | 172 | 19 | 71 | | Harvest Tataki | @caranha | 71 | 57 | 245 | 209 | 68 | 22 | - | - | | Nesting | @hypernoodlejon | 87 | 80 | 132 | 226 | 120 | 204 | 166 | 134 | | Build a Frank | @elastiskalinjen | 154 | 218 | 99 | 238 | 137 | 210 | 63 | 219 | | Last Harvest | @resevoir | 285 | 239 | 125 | 192 | 264 | 112 | 250 | 274 |

(edit 1: Added "Build a Frank" -- How could I have missed it?)
(edit 2: Added "Froot Processor" -- thank you for the comment!)

My game got 13th place, which is insane. Thank you so much! :tada: I also wanted to congratulation all other participants for managing to create and release a game, especially in such a short amount of time, whether you did compo or extra!

Hopefully I'll see you all next Ludum Dare!

So how did Bittersweet Harvest fare in terms of scores?

In terms of mood, the ranking is acceptable, since every element has to tie in together. But I'm kind of surprised, in a pleasant way, that the game was ranked quite high in terms of humor, when the story is meant to be serious in the first place. Maybe it's those little lines that made players chuckle.

Finally, I changed the game's description a bit, now that the stage is set for the Global Game Jam, and I'm more than ready to give this game the epic closure it needs.

Thank you for playing, and look forward to the explosive finale!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/bittersweet-harvest

Okay, results are in and The Night Harvest is now officially my worst performing game :laughing:

I joined LD53 after a long hiatus (my last game was from LD43) so I'm still really happy with the result. Also, personally I think the game wasn't that bad :smile:

Conclusions

Only one very important conclusion - I should always assume the game will be much more difficult than I planned it to be. This was the case for all three jam games I released so far. I think it was the most pronounced in this game - my last games were at least supposed to be challenging (and I was surprised that they were much more challenging than I expected). This time I actually thought I'm making a narrative heavy game that everyone will easily finish in 5 minutes, and by accident created a super tough game...

Happy Tree Harvest scored 4th place in Theme!

I truly couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the rankings posted. I'm completely awestruck that I got into the top 100, much less the top 10. But here I am, with 4th in Theme, and 62nd in Innovation too!

I can thank everyone who played, and most importantly, who connected with my game this round. It was really special and humbling to see and hear the reactions of players, and to receive comments on how they experienced everything I hoped they would, and appreciated many of the little details I put into the game.

To be honest, I was in an especially dark place going into this game jam, having just suffered through a natural disaster that destroyed many precious and treasured things. I was originally going to make the game much more dark spirited and mean to the player. However, I had a really good conversation with a dear friend of mine, who convinced me to work in some positivity and hope.

The message and core of the game didn't change, but I altered some of the rules to offer players a path to a good end, if they choose it, instead of just doom. All of the feedback from you all in the comments reaffirmed to me how important it is for games to be fun and rewarding, not just punishing and full of ire. This is probably painfully obvious to most of you, but for some reason, I have a tendency to want to twist and hurt the player when I design games. I'll do my best to make sure there's a path to the light in my games going forward!

Well anyways, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all once again for connecting with my game, and for reading through my ramblings.

Looking forward to playing with you next time,

Sakura Magika

Full ratings:

Mandatory post-jam reflection so i don't make the same mistakes next jam :))))

Making the game:

This game was definitely the most ambitious game we have tried to make so far. Now we have made a "platforming" game ☑ because we couldn't think of any better ideas for this harvest theme. The ideation stage was the longest yet this jam, and it definitely didn't go as well as we hoped for. Music and art was going pretty smoothly this time, but programming was difficult. Level design was also a new thing for us. In the end we had to submit for Extra, but I think it was worth it, this was a beautiful entry even if it's not perfect.

Things we did well:

• This was the biggest team we've had so far (3 programmers, 1 audio/music, 1 art) and I think everyone did so much to carry the team whenever the others are tired or close to giving up. Big shout out to our audio/music person Catherine who single handedly carried our rating balance.
• Art and music was for sure shipping out assets faster than the previous jams, we're getting more efficient and more organized with it.
• We had a general GDD, it definitely needs to be more detailed but it was in the right direction.
• We didn't dwell on making the complicated UI first, I think we realized that UI isn't always mandatory for a game jam, in the past we always made a separate title screen, pause screen. Keeping it simple is the way to go!

Things to improve on:

• TAKE MORE BREAKS!!! schedule mandatory breaks so people don't burn out. And please, sleep sleep sleep. Not finishing the game is not the end of the world.
• Communicate on progress at least once every 4-6 hours. Especially between different teams. It was devastating to realize that we're not on the same page in terms of progress on the night of day 2.
• Always have a plan B. If the initial game plan doesn't work out (the prototype couldn't be made within the first 2 hours after the idea shipped), just scrap it, it is definitely out of scope and we will have no time to polish. Don't be stubborn about it.
• On the GDD, I should also write out how many assets (art, animation, sounds) need to be produced, for easy organization and to have a general scope of how time consuming it will be. Use a spreadsheet instead of docs.
• DO NOT level design before the basic technical test is passed. I added in too many extra mechanics in the level design thinking that it would be very easy to implement (it was not), and then realizing that the programming team couldn't even get the moving system to work.
• Before making any assets, be set on the screen size/ratio first.
• If I'm going to sleep at a different time than everyone else, leave a note on what is uploaded, and how it should be used. Programmers: please don't use my sketch as a guide for where things go next time :')
• I will also download unity and learn how to use it + import animations so it saves time for the programming team. Also easy playtesting.
• Playtest before shipping the build, dammit.
• Don't be hangry, just go eat.

We might need a game jam caretaker next time, someone who just cooks, cheerleads, and project manages for us. hmmmmm...

We definitely learned a lot this jam. Even if we didn't make it on time, I'm still really proud of our entry. Big thank you's to my teammates @gabriel-chan @chan-gim @iiandii @cat-lab for working on it so much even after the jam ended, all the late nights learning and reflecting. I'm also really grateful for all the comments and feedback we've gotten, I was relieved to see that our efforts didn't go to waste.

here's the game link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/souls-path

See you 90 days later <3

I'm stunned by my ratings. There were less entries this year, but I still beat all of my previous scores with that factored in.

(Credit for the list goes to https://nathanistace.be/gamejams/ld-stats/. The creator was kind enough to publish the source here: https://github.com/nistace/ld-stats)

Big thanks to everyone who played my game! I'll beat my first game's record in the theme category next time :P

youre awesome and i thought your blog post was funny

When starting out with Ludum Dare I myself got intimidated by all the posts of the ratings of all the amazing games. If you feel the same remember these points:

• Everyone started somewhere. To make this more visible I just published the scores of my first game back on the old website. The top rated jammers themself gained experience in Ludum Dare or outside of it.
• It may feel like the vast majority of games got into the Top 100/10, but thats obviously not the case!
• The ratings shouldn't matter too much. Try to learn something you can improve next time and apply it. You will improve your skills!

Tried to go for a jrpg-ish with a battle-ish system-ish but that took a sideline indefinitely because i add new collision layers like taking out loans that can pay off my previous loans. There's also no inventory system so picking up items is literally picking up items and moving their entire entity body on top of player so that's also a yikes AND THEN there's also npcs to have conversations that are shorter than a haiku with WHO ALSO need to detect player range AND the only item i have working ALSO EXTENDS NPC class which is yikes and not to mention that picking up items and interacting with npcs all living on the edge of dependency of how many bodies are overlapping with each other as a if check who also have a fetish for Not Null player instances which is

yikes

In conclusion: yeah it's a mess : >

after an unfinished and an extra entry where ratings haven't been invented yet, it's nice to see improvements from my only other rated "game" from ld49 so cheers to all the folks who donated to a wonderful charity, me.

next time i feel like a visual novel, or 3d who knows i've never made 3d before how hard can it be : >

Can't believe we pulled this off!

Still can't decide if we are getting better at making games, or if we are just lucky idiots. Maybe both!?

This was our third jam. Our Overall score has progressed from 1200 -> 151 -> 98.

Going to be riding high on this one for weeks 😂

I thought from the positive reviews I'd gotten that my game was going to do well... then the results came in...

My rankings look great position-wise, but with far fewer entrants than usual, they're actually quite poor. With the exception of Fun, my scores have taken a sharp dive, and percentile-wise, many of my rankings are actually among the lowest I've ever received in a Ludum Dare. I'm not surprised to do badly in Innovation and Audio as I always struggle with those, but my Graphics score is the second-lowest I've ever received.

I think for LD53 I'll be going back to my story-driven approach and trying to push my boundaries again, rather than playing it safe with an arcade-style game as I've done for the last two jams. It was fun trying to mix it up but it clearly hasn't worked.

And the ratings are in... something went wrong?

And for your nice feedback and ratings!

I have read and thought about your feedback and created a post-jam version. Movement of humans is more intuitive and the difficulty curve should be better :) There are also more levels.

Play post-jam version here!

This was our first time participating in LD Jam and our first time joining this community. Thanks to your ratings, we could get such an incredible result. 🥺

Nothing can be more inspiring than your precious advice and encouraging praise! 😘

We will keep on progressing to make our games more interesting and bring it to you!

I remain completely gobsmacked by this

i'm so happy with my results!

i know this edition had fewer games and 4x top 100 doesn't mean a lot, but i'm really happy with my scores (my average score is ~0.5 higher than LD51), so for my second jam ever, it's unbelievable!! :heart:

i really want to thank everyone who has played and liked Buzzy Business!

and don't forget there is the post-jam version with some additions you might like!

The Time Traveler's Garden places 46th Overall!

For this being our first Ludum Dare, I'm frankly just really surprised to be in the double digits in any category! Overall, we're very pleased with our well our game performed. Thank you to everybody who played and rated our game, and especially those who left comments, as they were very encouraging!

All in all, we were very happy with the concept we came up with. It took us around an hour and a half of brainstorming and discussion to land on the idea for the game, but I think the time spent was worth it. A lot of the people in the comments seem to see the same potential that we see in our game, so it's quite likely that we'll be expanding upon this concept in some form in the future.

Final Thoughts

Our biggest shortcoming was definitely the game feel, particularly in the combat department. We started thinking about audio way too late in the process, and visual feedback for dealing damage and taking damage wasn't given enough emphasis, so I imagine that was the biggest detractor in the fun department. The way enemies operate is definitely something we'll want to refine.

But 23rd for innovation? Not too shabby! And it's nice to know that other people found the concept as amusing as we did. It may not be top 15, but it's a win in our book. I can safely say that we'll be participating in other Ludum Dare Jams in the future. Maybe not 53, but perhaps 54.

Thanks again to everyone who played our game. Perhaps we'll be seeing some of you around out there in the wild! There's definitely some names that I'll be keeping an eye out for, and some people I gotta follow on twitter (If you get a follow from a cartoon man with spiky hair and glasses, that's probably me =P).

It's been my goal since many Ludum Dares back to make it to the top 100 overall, and I was blown away when I saw I placed 60! Also top 100 in all categories except fun, this is by far the best score I've ever gotten! Thank you all so much for playing and rating my game!

First time cracking the single digits!!! Thanks for your support :))))))))