So, started off as it usually does. With me waddling through some tech issues, figuring out a reasonable game idea that feels novel to what I feel like I usually do, and drawing a bunch of thoughts and such onto a virtual canvas.

Then my computer froze. Luckily I had some post-its and a pen on hand to scribble down my thoughts onto paper before forcing a reboot.

And with that, here's a quick shot of the first day of progress for me; (Feels reasonable for just three hours)

A little field of basic pineapple plants, sitting in a void of cornflower blue.
Going to be adding more plants, improving the render quality, making a random generator instead of static plants, and more tomorrow.

I have never done a gamejam before, but i decided to hop on because I thought it'd be fun. My basic idea is a bullet hell game where you fight evil mutant plant things.

ModType ld_mods = ModType.BEST; anyways heres the basics of what our game is: magic harvesting & totally good graphics

okay another idea you are a monkey and you must take banana from tres what you think

Some gameplay mockups before we start prototyping. Game is gonna be about an ant colony that farms and harvests fungi, inspired by the fungus-growing ants of nature.

(It's not a farming sim.)

I just hope I can pull it off! Feeling a little sick and might need to rest before doing anything presentable

I did animate a few sprites for my player character, though. Take a look:

I am pleased to present to you my radish:

This may fail on day 1 but here we go - 3d .

I'm back! I did quite well with what I accomplished last time but this time I'm a bit less confident for some reason but I'll give it a go! A farming sim might be obvious but I may go with it anyway tbh! I'm more deciding on theme when it comes to that.

This time I've managed to get started a bit faster but I had to slow myself down by experimenting with state machines and making my game code a bit more complicated! I think it should result in something much more robust that allows me to do more but I'm not sure just how much it will slow me down. I've also started up a little settings menu for the first time as a fair few for my last game mentioned they would prefer something being different so I'm giving options this time!

A few things I'm most worried about are getting the art and audio done in time but I'm also not sure whether I want to go for something frantic and chill or something that's slow and chill. So many decisions and no time!

Hope everyone has a fun time making stuff! I'm about to go get some sleep so I can make the most of the day!

I thought maybe I'd be able to join on a very off chance but alas Covid has me pretty well down for the count. I'll be rooting for everyone from my bed.

Not been feeling 100% lately so I wasn't thinking of entering but I had an idea today I really liked so I'm gonna go for it.

Good luck to everyone!

around what dpi do you use? i need to find a good default sensitivity for the game

So after a while I decided it would be a sin not to attend

I'm in doubt on this topic Harvest. harvesting means harvesting only some vegetation? Or will it be random harvesting like harvesting eggs, coins, etc.?

My last game jam was Ludum Dare 46 that was 2+ years ago I assume. I'm done with game development (Now I'm a web developer), but I'm in mood to make a simple game and connect with this great community. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

This is my first jam/LD. Currently taking a break as I have finished up the core game loop and have the opening and ending finished. Now time to dump a ton of hours into art.

How is everyone else doing? Was this theme one of your stronger ideas? It was for me.

Quite raw ouput, our best men are working on it 😁

Will probably be changing the numbers all weekend as we add the world around him, but I've got the basic character controller in for my game! Slopes have made the vector math a lot more complex.

Mockup of the game I will probably make. It will be a spin off of my game 'Combo Postage', about harvesting radishes, carrots, and celery. You will get lots of 'points' by batching together the same kind of vegetables.

Had lots of obligations before this but I'm ready to start making my game.

I plan to use Godot, GIMP, BeepBox, and SFXR.

This is late, but hey - it's traditional. So:

I'm in!

Plans?

• Unreal Engine - Probably won't publish to the web, but using a cool engine is fun. Also, having some previous experience with it is nice.
• Blender - for 3D-ing
• Krita - for painting
• VS Code (free)/JetBrains Rider (not-free) - text editors; gotta have 'em. One day I'll explore the wonderful world of custom language servers and intelligent code add-ons for vim. But until that day... Rider.

Ok. That should be it for the moment. Good luck to everyone! I look forward to playing your games.

Placing & shaking tree trunks. Not that much, but time to sleep already... 😴

• Haxeflixel for engine

• Flash 8 (Maybe?) for graphics

• libresprite (Maybe?) for graphics if Flash 8 is not a viable option

I was like.. hmm, I just woke up and I'm bored. Hey I wonder what LudumDare is up to? Wait a minute I remember they had a round going on in January. Is it over? Is it coming soon? Lemme go check

And I just casually come in and it started JUST 5 hours ago. I swear, can you imagine?

Well... okay! Let's just drop everything else for the next two~three days, I'm in!

Oh by the way... Unity, Aesprite, FL Studio

Managed to arrange my setup somewhat decently just before the JAM started. :computer: :pencil2: :musical_keyboard:

I had quite a good flow during the first hour and came up with an idea and a very rough mockup. :seedling: :slight_smile:

After that I had to attend to some other business for two hours or so, and when I returned all of my inspiration and energy had drained away. 🧠 ❌ :angry:

I guess it's a good indicator for some sleepy-time, although I would've wanted to get some rudimentary game-play intact before that. :sleeping_accommodation:

Went out of my way and will try making something simple that should be playable on a mobile device in portrait mode.

Happy jammin', everyone!

I'm heeding the cautionary posts I've read about paper prototyping, defining scope, and keeping things completely within my wheelhouse.

haha becuase fungi get it do you get it

Got the main level layout in, plus some things I'll need in the future. Next will be getting the plants falling into place and getting the 'logic' set up, then probably 'veggie throwing', etc...

...if you can bounce the falling fruit into the right basket:

This is how my prototype looks so far. The idea is that the ripe fruit need to be bounced into the wicker basket on the right, while any rotten fruit need to be bounced into the bin on the left. You have to collect a certain amount of fruit in each level, within the time limit and without collecting too much rotten fruit, and the game gradually ramps up from one level to the next.

There's obviously a lot of balancing and polish still to do, but the basic gameplay is working, so compared to most Ludum Dares I'm way ahead of schedule. Let's see how much I can get done tomorrow.

I'm joining using Bevy (Rust), CLion & Aseprite :v:

I made some funny fruit today, it will be a puzzle game and a fruit won't always smile :green_apple:

I asked ChatGPT to write a limerick about Ludum Dare:

There once was a game jam called Ludum Dare

Where developers would gather from far and near

They'd build and create

Till the early morning's late

And emerge with a game that is rare

So we're 6 hours in roughly, and I have my idea down. Got my first main character art done (not animations yet though). It's my first time really doing pixel art. A little bit of a slow start, but going to sleep early and wake up fresh and work all day tomorrow to finish up my art and then start programming the game. Like I said before I don't want to divulge my ideas too much yet, but it's super cool to me. I just hope the scope isn't too big to finish in time. Worst case I'll just submit for the jam, but I always try to submit to the compo. We'll see what happens. Good luck to everyone else on your games!

I like to make puzzle games for Ludum Dare... hopefully the mechanic I have in mind will lend itself well to interesting puzzles :sweat_smile:

Starting prototyping now

I have started making a game! The game is about harvesting herbs, berries and fruits from your yard outside your own potion shop and combine these to brew the most potent potions and remedies your customers are ordering!

Just got done with the building blocks of the brewing system, now let's create some whacky combinations!

Go here for event details: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52 (TL;DR same as September)

My apologies for the spottiness of details leading up to the event. I didn't appreciate how difficult it would be to pull together an event around the holidays, nor did I expect to become ill right after Xmas. Suffice to say, if all goes well we'll be doing our next January event on the 2nd week of 2024, not the first. :sweat_smile:

I wrote and was planning to share a blog post talking about the craziness of 2022, from the insanity of Twitter and them shutting down our newsletter, to the social media community fragmenting (we're on both Twitter and Mastodon now), to being overwhelmed by spambots, and all the difficult questions about AI that have essentially made many of our rules archaic and obsolete, but it was more important to kick-off the event. :laughing:

To put things mildly, we and so many others got a wake-up call in December as our outreach partners (Twitter, Revue) basically imploded. My task this weekend is to add more ways for you to connect with us, so you can be notified and reminded of upcoming events. Our current active list includes:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ludumdare :whitecheckmark:
• Mastodon: https://jammer.social/@ludumdare (also me :whitecheckmark:
• RSS: https://jammer.social/@ludumdare.rss :whitecheckmark:

Some new/updated methods may include:

• E-mail: https://newsletter.ldjam.com/ (our host Revue is shutting down in about a week) :x: :wrench:
• iCAL: TODO :wrench: (I believe we can generate a calendar URL that Google, Apple, and Proton can subscribe to. TBD)
• LinkedIn: TODO? :question: (begrudgingly, but it does look like we should take this one seriously)

Let me know in the comments below if there's some way you would like to be notified (i.e. YouTube, TikTok, Hive?).

Thanks everyone, and best of luck this weekend!

I don't participate in a Ludum Dare for like... 5 years. Will try to make something simple in React now I'm Web Developer. Next time I hope I can make in Godot. :D

It is not appropriate to design a game about organ harvesting, as organ transplantation is a serious and sensitive topic that should be treated with respect. The topic of organ transplantation involves real people who are facing life-threatening medical conditions and their families, and it should not be trivialized or used as entertainment.

There are many other themes and gameplay mechanics that can be explored in a video game without resorting to sensitive or controversial topics. I would encourage you to consider alternative ideas for your game. If you have further questions or need help coming up with game ideas, feel free to ask.

... or how to convince me to explore the idea further.

After pondering on how will I interpret the theme (harvest), I've decided to lean on the spiritual aspect of the word. No, not the Grim Reaper, but a "harvester of bad memories".

As such, I will make a visual novel whose protagonist is one of those "harvesters", and he falls in love with a mortal. And as planned, I will conclude the story in the 2023 Global Game Jam.

It's Looking Pretty Wet Out Here...

For LD52, I am making a Survival Horror game about Rain

This concept has been in my head for ages, sparked by a horrendous Storm in the UK recently that destroyed many fences, umbrellas, and pairs of shoes.

But It's Harvest Season?!

Yeah, this doesn't exactly fit does it? I couldn't come up with a concept that 1. Stuck to the Theme 2. Interested me from a gameplay perspective and 3. Was achievable within the scope of a game jam. I struggled for an answer for almost 2 full hours, so instead of wasting more time I powered on ahead with an idea I already believed in. I've been toying with this concept in my head for a while, so what better time to bring it to life than Ludum Dare?

I do have quite a few ways to tie it into the theme, don't worry, but time will tell whether I'll have time to implement it or not...

Finishing a game is the #1 Priority, after all!

Good luck guys, it's 2:30am here in the UK, so I'm off to bed for the night. I hope you're all having as great of a time as I am! 😁

Inspired by "Papers Please", in this game you're an unemployment officer, filtering through people and resumes in a communist country's unemployment line. Harvesting the best talent and placing them in the correct work positions.

Pretty proud of this, I think it came out well!

After 4h brainstorming and elaborating the game idea, setting, game play loop and goals with @kalbshack, we are pretty confident this will be a good one!

Now off to bed, gather some energy, do the mock up and character design and blast through day full power!

Good luck and good rest to all of you too! Cheers!

After some testing I think I'm finally making some progress.

I'm sorry. Once I thought of it I couldn't get it out of my brain. Sorry. I have to make it. A game about making hair vests. I'm so very sorry.

Here we go! After skipping last LD (Family first), I'm back in business! Gonna be making my 6th NES game in Compo time! This one is going to be a bit different though, gonna make it more arcadey, which is actually better for an LD scope-wise. Anyway, I already have a title card ready! Stay tuned for more clouds, and more crows ;)

After a lot of brainstorming and a few failed 3D models, I'm finally taking a break on day one. My team and I have our concept ready, but I wanted to devote extra time to the visuals this go around, so that was my day today. Tomorrow, the rest of the coding!

Engine: Kaboom 3000! Audio: BFXR/Audacity Graphics: open source/Aseprite Fun Fact about me: My butt was on international TV!

Suddenly energized for no particular reason, I decided to ink and color my sprites... Yay!?

Pardon the slight glitchiness, something went on while converting to gif.....

Here our ideas from our discard pile. I really thought we were going to get a good theme this time, but somehow one generic one made it through and ended up getting picked. These are not order of descending sanity, but clearly the team has had enough.

1. "FarmRunner" | Plays like a temple run game, but you are a farmer running through the fields. As you encounter obstacles you must move into that lane an simultaneously select the right tool to handle what you run into. Like rabbit/shotgun, plant/shovel, weed/hoe, rock/pickaxe, etc..

2. "The Sixth" | It is January 6th and you are harvesting ballots (Plays like NES Paperboy) and you have a meter that goes from losing to winning to landslide, and if you don't reach landslide in time there is an insurrection.

3. "Contracts" | You are time traveling Kanye (Ye) West and you need to go to somewhere between 1933 and 1942 to solve a mystery.

4. "STEM" | Stem cells are hard to come by, but you have found an interesting way to harvest them, but you have to be careful, plays like a classic operation game.

5. "Dr Dex" | You are a surgeon by day and serial killer by night. Help your patients and rid the underworld of bad guys by harvesting vital organs you need the next day from murderers and then switch modes and complete a surgery to save people by day.

Vegetables will fall in from above. Yes, stuff falls in an instant like in Combo Postage, and when it hits the 'vegetable rack', it will shake the whole rack, and if you're standing in it, that's the end of Darryl's shift!! Anyway, the 'where stuff goes' system is different than in Combo- it doesn't care if you're already standing in a rack, but it will always try to send stuff to one of the racks with the LEAST stuff.

3 hit basic combo is now animated and confirms I programmed the system correctly! Unfortunately GIFs don't have sound, but all you're missing out on is a kick drum playing quarter notes.

Dice will roll...

Hiiieeeeee everyone! Good luck! Work hard! MAKE ART... have a blob.

So I know that this is an idea that is probably already been beaten to death lol. But this is my husband and I's first Ludum Dare ever, and we knew we wanted to do something with that concept.

So our game idea and the one that we'll be working on is:

You play as a necromancer who has been given their powers by an ancient malevolent Being. You are tasked with protecting that being, and feeding it souls. You will then use those harvested souls to raise corpses from the dead. Those corpses can be used to fight off the army of the King's soldiers that are attempting to kill the Being.

So, the mechanic that we're going for is part Tower Defense, part Metroidvania.

My husband has been working on the code side of things, as well as audio & music, and I've been working on the art, animation and writing. My husband is a musician and producer by trade, and I work in the video game industry however not in an art or design capacity. It's just a fun hobby for us to try and hone our skills and learn new things! :)

I will share some of the art I've been working on! Just got a few character concepts down. We've got the Necromancer, the Being, a Knight and a sword for the Necromancer made. Now I just need to concept out a couple more enemies, and then get animating, which is something that I've never done before! I only learned how to make even any sort of pixel art this past year so I'm still pretty fresh, bear with me.

Hope everyone is having a really fun time with this! Remember to take care of yourself- drink water, eat food, get sleep! <3

And I finally got an idea which I am happy about. 40 hours to go.

I am sharing this for people who has a block because of this theme As I had.

It is possible to come up with something what is not about harvesting something.

My way to get to the idea was think about stuff around harvesting season - how if affects life on the village, of animal, of people, habbits around harvesting, impact on land, what is happening to harvested resources after..etc.

• Brainstormed a couple ideas
• Went with one of them :)
• Created project
• Got basic canvas rocking with a level display and countdown timer.
• Committed the code and called it a night.

Good luck, jammers!

but i honestly really wanna get the Basic Vibe down musically so time to open beepbox

Well, a late start means late progress. But progress is progress.

The concept is chosen, the programmer art is real, and at least the player can move around. Hopefully tomorrow morning will see the basic mechanics completed and me a bit more rested.

Until then, have a good night!

• I got enemies that chase the player!
• The player can collect things!
• Asteroids that disappear on overlap!

We've got a character and a level for him to jump, slide, and grab through! Now we just need the gems for him to harvest and the hazards to avoid.

I have no idea what I am doing

Lol fell aslepp after checking the theme last night... need to start working and brainstorm ideas now

I have made the best video game in the history

But jokes aside, I might actually end up with this as my submission. Sometimes it's just not a good time for creative effort.

I fought with the code for a camera for literally two hours, but I eventually got everything done. The game has pretty much all the basic mechanics done so I am gonna probably end up finishing up the easy parts tomorrow morning and then start polishing through the afternoon. I am feeling good about this.

It ain't much, but it's honest work

We didn't even realize LD was happening till 2 hours after it started :O We quickly hopped on in hopes of not making the same scope creep (and a heap of delaying content integration) mistakes as last time.

Really happy with where we landed, mechanics work well in paper prototype (rolling dice is fun) and we cut all the not must-haves as stretch goals, gonna focus on a full and playable game that we can add all our fun silly ideas to later!

Good luck everyone <3

This is an opportunity to make an idea I've had for a long time.

My game has a time mechanic where every minute or so the enemies gets more threatening, I want to bind this to the in game time and I could make a simple custom timer and there's that.

My question is: is this necessary? Does the timer node already used Delta? (So far I couldn't find answers)

Harvest! :maple_leaf:

I'm so excited to play everyone's games. I'm really fond of autumn colors, and a lifelong Stardew Valley addict, so bring on the farming sims.

I'm also super curious to see everyone's unique takes and twists on the theme and what directions they take it in.

New Challenges

Challenge #1: JavaScript!

For the last year, I've been intensively self-studying in game development and design, and have made all my games in Unity (and have dabbled a bit in Godot). But this Ludum Dare, I wanted to try something new that leverages my experience as a front-end software engineer. So I thought I'd try building something using JavaScript, HTML & CSS. I'll be using the Phaser game engine, which is a JavaScript-based game engine (maybe I'll try 100% vanilla JavaScript for a future jam - that would be a fun challenge!)

My hope is it'll be easy to set this up to embed on the ldjam site, but I have no idea how Phaser games will feel about being inside a iframe, so we'll see how it works out. In a pinch, I can always upload to either itch or setup a Github page.

Challenge #2: Compo!

Almost all of the games I've made I've created together with my partner @profundity (including our entry for Ludum Dare 51) - but this time we're challenging ourselves to go it alone and do compo!! Wish us luck!

Less than a day in, and we're already realizing how much we prefer working together as a team :sweat_smile:

Day 1 Progress

So far, I'm building a simple game where you harvest crops from a field. I've got all my sprites loaded, and some basic character movement.

The Plan

I'm hoping to have time to make it an enchanted b&b inn-keeping simulator, where you harvest from a garden to keep your guests fed and happy.

Tools Used

• Phaser
• JavaScript/HTML/CSS
• VSCode
• Krita
• coolors.co for palette selection

I'm also planning to use bfxr for sounds, and GarageBand for music (time permitting!)

Source Code

I'm sharing my source code here: https://github.com/paloobi/harvest-game

I'm 1000% certain it will be a mess by end of the jam :grin: But feel free to check it out if you're interested to see an example of how to set things up in phaser.

Please don't ask me how I did it, it's more embarrassing than I'd like to admit...

Late start but I'm in! :D

Since the title screen is going to use pretty much the same graphics as the main game, I'd say background graphics are going good! I'll start drawing some enemies after an overdue lunch and a coffee :)

I'm starting 11 hours late, but I have a good idea and I think I've got enough time left to make it work.

* Tools: * - Godot 3 (C#) - Aseprite - Lots and lots of caffeine

Now it counts your carrots, and how many rabbits you killed! And there are some pretty mountains.

Time to add some sounds, and game state, I guess.

You can play it here: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=123868#p

I'm in, working since about 8 hours now. It was a challenge to find a good gameplay for the theme. I love harvest games and played so much of them but I didn't feel like making a crop planting game today.

This time I'm having a different methodology:

I spend most of my first work session setting a good work environment, testing new plugins and tech I wanted to test since a while.

Overall, I still don't have a gameplay implemented, but I'm super happy with what I have. Tomorrow, I will start streaming the rest of the development on https://www.twitch.tv/tobugis

I have a clear view of what I need to do next and I should, as always, run out of time and rush at the last minutes :smirk:

I'm super exited for this Jam! I can't wait to play all your games ^^ But first, time to sleep. Don't let the alien abduct you!

got me a nice custom beepbox bop going to help motivate me through the gameplay implementation

YouTube videos planted, let's harvest subscribers!

I'm planning to make a typical snake game, get subscribers and followers instead.

So far I only spent 3 hours and didn't go that far, but I will invest more time and hope I can finish during the weekend!

design drew in PPT...

If you are interested in, find me in my YouTube https://youtube.com/@MonohBehavior or Twitter https://twitter.com/MonohBehavior

I wish all of you luck for the Ludum Dare 52!

armed with slightly outdated brackeys tutorials and a nice friend I believe I have it in me to make a game in time which will likely twist harvest as much as humanly possible.

the members of the team were totally convinced that no one could vote for this theme in their right mind, but it is already a rule that the best games come from the worst themes for us ;)

Either way, we managed to make a lot of headway around ideas of multiplayer and horror (with the obligatory mentions of scarecrow, don't starve, and stardew valley).

I'm genuinely intrigued to find out how other people's brainstorms went, but ours even in the ramblings seemed predictable at times. Harvest is the dark souls of jam themes

A little of our progress (sketches made by sanguche)

Going super slow, I need to keep reminding myself that this time my objective is just have some finished playable game since I'm mainly shaking off the dust (last developed game was Ludum Dare 43).

Started with scoping out my idea, and drawing some assets. This is what it looks like so far:

Hopefully tomorrow will go faster. Good luck everyone!

I have some basic mechanics working with my cards now. This might be enough for one day, may be time to sleep.

I came by just to see when the next jam was scheduled for.. maybe a month or two? Maybe a week... I DIDN'T EXPECT THIS! Good luck everyone!!!

Ok, I'm in! "Harvest" was not my favorite theme, but I had an interesting idea.

At the end of the 1st day i got the almost all the mechanics in.

I really like the art style. Its a first time i use my graphics tablet for making a game. Now i need rest tomorrow will have a lot a debugging to do.

Made okay progress today. Some rough art and mechanics.