The main task was to create a spacious but closed space, divided into two floors. Player should be well-versed in the level and be able to quickly run from one end of the train to another. This should work regardless of which route the player takes — running on the first floor or the second. So that the player does not lose pace while moving between tasks. But to keep the space closed, I decided to introduce vertical ladders that character starts to climb automatically without interaction by pressing a button.

That's how our level designer Forik create level for RoughTrain!

🎮 play 🚂 rate 🚧 give us your feedback 🔥

https://youtu.be/4aWoQTsEbns

New bug fix for the game. We will fix the game audio soon.

You can play and rate in: (WEBGL)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/depresspnker

This was a blast yesterday, so I'm back

https://www.twitch.tv/buzzybee26

Improved location.

Added furniture.

What a blast. We wanted to say thank you to the people that have played our game so far!

We have put together an album of the soundtrack, and it is available for download here: https://alto13.bandcamp.com/album/lcd-dream-escalator-original-soundtrack

This was my first Ludum Dare, and I gotta say I wrote more music in one weekend than I have in a couple months. Some of the days passed without getting around to eating lunch. Not to say that's a healthy habit, but it's what I love about the creative process. Sometimes you are just so engrossed in what you are doing, that time becomes nothing to you.

Working with MSB and Mike was so rewarding. Usually we work closely together, making sure our music and art all fit together thematically. This time, however, was different. It was stipulated ahead of time that we would work fairly separately. It worked in our favor, allowing MSB to crank out the mechanics, gameplay, graphics and all the different rooms, while Mike and I were free to compose without having to check in to see if our music matched the style of the game. MSB would then take the pieces and match them up with a room that worked the best with the song.

My favorite piece I worked on was the final one for the credits, "Neat Beat Retreat". Originally it was going to be similar to "Whoa Cool Dude", the piece that plays while in the city, and wasn't going to have any lyrics. I had most of it down, but I got to a point where I was stuck with how to use the sample material I had.

I had found a lovely and bizarre cover https://youtu.be/nYIx6RtFM of Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toV8Lb9h0Vs which I then chopped up. There was one part however that was perfect, to the point where I felt bad chopping it up. Therein lies the challenge with sampling. How do create something new, without infringing on the original artists song?

Usually, as long as the piece is transcendent and can stand on it's own, or if the sample isn't recognizable, then that is considered fair game. I finally decided to write some lyrics and put it overtop the "perfect" part. I think it turned out great, considering I'm not a lyricist, or a vocalist, and I can't imagine the piece without them anymore. Mission accomplished!

In the end, it was fun pushing myself out of my comfort zone. After all, isn't that what Ludum Dare is for anyways?

Try out our game LCD Dream Escalator if you haven't yet, and thanks again to everyone who has!

Four suspects. One hacker.

*This is BRUTEFORCE, a sandbox, immersive hacking game. *

If you like terminal-based games or detective novels, I think you might enjoy our game.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/bruteforce

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/bruteforce

Flat Earth is a simple, storybook-ish RTS game with a physics element to mix things up. We knew we wanted to lean into more of a calming aesthetic than our usual absurdity (see: ALL the Rude Bear games). So beyond just making a game that worked mechanically, we also wanted the music to be tied in closely with what was happening in the game world.

Vocal Music

Alex came up with the idea of having vocals in the music - singing about how happy the villagers were to live in this big grand world. I think the phrase he used was along the lines of "indie darling music about the grandeur of the earth." Something cheerful, naive, maybe a bit pretentious, but definitely good-natured. That's not a style of singing and writing that I'm particularly strong in, but I figured I'd give it a go.

I've done a few vocal entries in past Ludum Dares, but usually being able to hide my vocal shortcomings behind layers of effects and distortion. Since we wanted it to be calming and natural sounding, I actually had to take time to sing things better than I usually do. It's always uncomfortable to strip away some of the processing that I usually use to make things sound better, it feels a bit more exposed, but I'm happy with how it turned out. I also tried to embrace some of the naivety and sing songs about friends being happy, which feels super weird for a guy who tends to write more depressing music, but I think really fit the tone of the game that we were going for.

Audio Programming

I also did a tiny bit of audio programming to allow the events in the music and game to be synchronized together. I've done a few audio-driven games in past Ludum Dares and usually over-engineered the audio side of things. The audio sequencing piece was a last minute addition (within the last hour of the jam), that Alex outsourced to me. Since there wasn't much time I landed on a super-simple solution that kinda fit the simplicity of the music itself. Instead of having multiple audio files to transition between, I just exported the soundtrack as a single file and marked several transition points in the music as variables in the code. To take advantage of those transitions it was just a SUPER simple matter of checking audioSource.time (with a bit of a buffer to protect against silence cutting in).

void Update() { if (audioSource.time > currentLoopEnd - 0.05f) { audioSource.time = nextAudioLoopStart; callback(); } }

Super simple. Adding a few more conditions allowed for us to loop sections as needed, trigger state changes on certain sections completing, and really end up with a result that felt unified and cohesive.

Check it out!

I've participated in a lot of Ludum Dares over the years - at least one entry in every event since LD27 (and several times doubling or even tripling up). And, while I've had a few less-than-stellar submissions, I'm usually pretty happy with the results. I've been teaming up with @alexrose since 2014 and @bitsandcrafts since 2018. We've made a lot of crazy stuff together and put out some games that I'm proud of. This time around, however, it might be some of our best work. We'd love it if you'd check it out.

Please comment your game links so I can play them!

Also, remember to play our game! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/yielding-motherboards

play now! https://michaell308.itch.io/deathrail

Main appeal is a fun gameplay loop and nice music. (and cute girl of course)

play now! https://michaell308.itch.io/deathrail

These are just a few of the many reactions of some streamers when playing "Boat History" I really want to thank you for your collaboration and such valuable tips, not to mention the fun you provide, you are wonderful, and an essential part of Ludum Dare's success.(Alexthehuman2,CodySelman,GameDevDeputy ,IndieClusterATL, OddlySpecificGames, Outfrost,RobinDbois1,Schmiel_Show, Simpathey) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/boat-history https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYA9u2V5D2M

Early in my project, I added a jump feature which made the character faster while airborne. This allowed players to "bunnyhop" through the level without even worrying about fire damage. Though it wasn't supposed to happen, and I removed this extra speed while airborne in a patch after the initial submission, I decided to keep the old version with the bhop bug because it was simply too cool to just throw away. This kinda reminds me of the Double Cherry origin from Super Mario 3D World, in which a bug ended up turning into a feature.

Can you beat my friend's record in the old version? He's got 2:44 and no one's got a better time until now. Wanna see you try! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/burning-down

Hello everyone! Today I wanted to share one of the many drafts that I and my team made for the game of this ludum dare.

Initially, this first design was planned to have hazzards and the last section would be more difficult than the rest, but in the end, due to the times and our need for a majority to see the end of the game, we decided to make the last part of the level a little easier.

We are Latin American developers, so some annotations are in Spanish. "Pinchos" are Spikes, "Fase de Tutorial" is Tutorial Phase.

Want to see the final design? check out our game, "Gimme Money! Neverquaker" in this link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/gimme-money-neverquaker-ld49

I'm now live on Twitch for the next few hours to play your Ludum Dare games! I'm happy to give constructive feedback or just have fun with it. I’ll also be rating every game I play (but not while I'm live). If you want me to play your game, type !submit url/of/your/game in the Twitch chat. I can't promise I'll be able to get to every game submitted to me, but I'll do as many as I can in the time I have.

If you submitted to me during my last stream two days ago and I didn't have time to get to yours (I know there's a lot of you), just let me know you're there in the chat, and I can give your game priority for today.

If you miss today's stream, I'll be streaming again next weekend on both Friday and Sunday. I hope to see you there!

P.S.: My entry is a game called Reactor. Feel free to check it out!

Come hang out I am playing your games on Twitch!

https://www.twitch.tv/danny_k1994

Make sure to try out my game ! :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/wobblywords

This is part of a 5 part Dev Log where I will be talking about the process I took through implementing 2nd Law, a short, adventure-style game about cause and effect. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/2nd-law

0 - Lessons | 1 - Design | 2 - Development | 3 - Music | 4 - Artwork

Brainstorming

When I begin brainstorming, I like to get all of the immediate and obvious ideas out of the way first. I know I will personally enjoy the outcome a lot more if I dig deep on the theme, even if I lose a little bit of the theme in the process. I decided I liked the idea of an unstable environment where interactions caused more and more "chaos" to emerge.

I originally pictured a sort of apocalyptic kind of state over 4 different scenes, but as the weekend dwindled I knew I need to reign in the scope and implement the bare minimum. Here's a design page that begins to show some of the scope I was trying to plan for.

What's in a game?

That's one exercise I started the week before the jam: trying to distill the concept of a "game" into a set of tenets that could guide my design: 1. The Objective - Must be clear and intuitive 2. The Mechanic - Must be easy to control and conducive to the objective 3. The Challenge - There should some sort of "additional dimensions" to the game that add a skill curve 4. The Feedback - The player should know if they are succeeding or failing

That's not to say that these are the only tenets of a "good game", or that their summaries are completely accurate or without exception. I'd be happy to engage in any kind of debate over them!

Underdelivering on any of those tenets can have damaging effects on the reception of your game. If your objective isn't clear, players might lose interest. If your mechanic (or any aspect of the game) is unpolished or is actually a barrier to the objective, players might get frustrated. The lack of a challenge is probably the safest tent to skip on, because a game being "too easy" would be a welcome critique if everything else is great :)

What did I learn?

Play testing and early feedback are important. I think my biggest mistake was knowing too much about the design of the game and not seeing it played with fresh eyes. * The trigger mechanic is a little finicky, which can increase frustration or make players lose interest pretty quickly. * The objective isn't super intuitive. This is probably where I struggle the most generally: communicating the objective. How to finish the game. I try to avoid stating it outright, because I'd like the design to do that for me. But then you run the risk of a player not understanding the "hidden message". * The feedback loop doesn't really happen until the end screen (which isn't obvious to get to, either), where the player learns what interactions meant. My hope was to encourage replays to find different paths through the interactions. That would have been more successful if I had had time to implement a more complex story.

What’s next?

I’m excited to talk about more aspects of my experience. If you’d like, please follow along!

• Development
• Music
• Artwork

- Hawkin

My Game "Unstable Tables" needs some love. Anyone who plays and leave feedback, I will do the same for your Game.

Thanks for your consideration.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-tables-tales-of-a-super-hero-waiter

It's time to bake a cake! Don't worry, Papa will help you. He's a cooking pro, and soon, you will be too! Begin your beautiful cooking journey in Rocky Rhodes and the Cracked Case! Wait, I thought this was Cooking Papa? Why does it sound like some detective game?! I just want to bake a cake-

Cook. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/rocky-rhodes-and-the-cracked-case

It is about necromancers, horses and pixel-arrows, what is not to like?
Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-curse-of-the-un-stable

'evening folks, as we are trying to balance our game I'd like to gather you opinion over it.
Is difficulty curve fair enough?
Is quite straightforward to get familiar with the commands and with game goal?
Is the experience rewarding enough?

We'd like to give back the same kind of feedback, so please leave a comment in our page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EIU5TmO8qg

Please play and rate :heart: :cloud:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/sky-high-islands