Play my game here

Spoiler Alert

I wrote part one of this post mortem without spoilers. I'd highly recommend taking a look at our game before reading this or checking out the OST.

Ok, spoilers out of the way - here's my overanalysis of what we did to have the music work with the theme and the game.

My goal here is to show some of what I did, but also give people ideas for how they might want to approach music in their future games. If you've come across any Ludum Dare entries that do interesting musical reinforcement link them below, I'd love to see what other people have done.

Music shift

Our peaceful little village gets invaded by aliens and dinosaurs as the game progresses and we wanted the music to reflect this turning point. I had a few goals for this - A) to synchronize the surprises in the music with the gameplay, B) to make it seem jarring while still being a smooth transition, C) to play with the idea of stability through rhythm, D) to make it sound metal without alienating people who don't enjoy the style.

A) Surprises

We knew fairly early on that the game was going to have a complete shift partway through. The storybook aesthetics felt a bit like a kid telling a story - he's happy with it, he thinks it's fun, but he gets bored and wants there to be dinosaurs and aliens instead of stupid villagers. There's something fun about arbitrary shifts in tone and I really wanted to use aggression to highlight the absurdity. We think the surprise is hilarious, and general consensus so far seems to agree with us. And if you get the chance, I highly recommend screaming about aliens and dinosaurs.

For a quick glance at the surprise happening to a couple different LD jammers on their streams:

Twitch clip thanks to @coleslaughter

Twitch clip thanks to @erikengineengineer

B) Jarring But Smooth Transition

The transition point needed to be surprising, but it also needed to flow. A jarring change in music is easy and I've thrown plenty of them into my Ludum Dare entries over there years. But a change that FEELS jarring but still allows people to smoothly adjust to the change is a completely different animal. (see the videos above)

This attack section begins by throwing a synchronized arpeggio over the last vocal line from the happy section. The introductory riff accomplishes a few things - it announces to the player that SOMETHING is happening, establishes new instruments, and provides a pivot to the parallel minor key. All while adding rhythmic spice and being a pain to play cleanly on guitar. By giving just a few seconds of this transition, people have a chance to acclimate to things shifting before I start screaming "aliens" at them. It's just a couple seconds, but without this transition, EVERYTHING would have felt worse. It feels abrupt, but it's still connected to what came before.

C) Rhythm

My goal for the rhythm was to have a few aspects of rhythmic instability that would reinforce the world getting crazy without making it too confusing. By using a couple rhythmic tricks and swapping them out in each section, nothing feels super crazy on its own, but makes the larger flow of things feel more unpredictable.

Aliens - After the transition arpeggio, we hit a section with a shifting time signature of 4+3+4/4 while I scream "aliens" over and over. This rhythm feels off-putting on its own, but by phrasing the vocals in a repeated pattern and giving clear movement in the chords you can make things feel fair more natural. If people can latch onto vocal rhythms, you can get away with a lot of other trickery elsewhere.

Verses - The verse sections use the same trick of letting the vocal melody guide things. The vocal melody mimics the happy section - same melodic movement (just in minor), same rhythms (still in 4/4). But underneath the vocals the rest of the instrumentation is accenting a 5-beat rhythmic pulse that resets every 4 bars. Polymeters are fun, but take a lot of care to make sound both clear and natural.

Lasers - The last interesting rhythm happens on the "lasers" bit. It's a bit more common of a trick - the same 12-beat phrase gets used in two different ways. Initially it shows up as 3 measure phrases of 4/4 before converting to 4 measure phrases of 6/8. This change to 6/8 marks the only place in the song that doesn't have a strong quarter note pulse. Neither of these feel particularly unstable on their own, but allow for the transition back to the verse feel differently unstable than it did the first few times.

D) Metal Enough

I'm a metal guy, that's my default, but I know not everyone enjoys harsh vocals. So my goal was to keep the harsh vocals as discernable as possible and limit them to just a few words - aliens, dinosaurs, and lasers (with a few linking phrases here and there). By keeping the harsh vocals in controlled contexts makes them feel adequately extreme without demanding the listener to power through vocals they don't like for the whole second half of the game.

Similarly, on the instrumentation side of things, I tried to keep things in the realm of "controlled chaos." You can get away with a lot of dissonance so long as you let it either be a) spice, b) enough of a focus that people get time to acclimate. I had a lot of ideas that I rejected throughout because they felt like the chaos overwhelmed the purpose. I love chaos, but usually a soundtrack benefits from the IMPRESSION of chaos instead of actual chaos.

El fin

Thanks for checking this out. This post is way longer than I intended, but figured some people might find it interesting. I'm really happy with our game and the response it's gotten so far. Looking forward to playing more games this week and seeing what gems I stumble across.

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

Am I Qualified?

This is a topic that I've felt the least authoritative about but also the most excited to talk about--perhaps that is why I left it to last. While I have always felt artistic, I don't know that I've always felt successful. Or maybe I should say I don't practice it very often. I haven't truly created a lot of art assets for my prior games, so I was equal parts excited and fearful to try this time around.

I knew that wanted a pixel art style, maybe because I thought that was the easiest path to something looking decent without looking odd. Or perhaps I was already sensing a nostalgic feel to the game. After deciding the style, I had to think about the toolset and workflow--something that I have not established for myself. The design of the game also demanded a lot of assets--too many for being a solo developer--so that worry was in the back of my mind as well.

The Tools

I had tried making pixel art in the past, but tools like Gimp just didn't lend themselves to efficient art creating (nor did they seem to like my little Wacom Bamboo tablet). Instead, I decided to give Aseprite a try. I had seen amazing artists like AdamCYounis create fantastic works fairly easy. After downloading the program and watching Adam's getting started video, I felt like I knew enough of the tricks to get started.

Character Animation

I had originally imagined a fairly simple main character, so I sketched out a rough shape and worked on a short walk animation.

In the end, I wasn't happy with the result. I could have spent more time refining my own, but I felt like I could have wasted a day on a character spritesheet. And since I wasn't doing the Compo, I knew I had the freedom to take shortcuts where I needed to. I went to OpenGameArt.org for a player asset from MoikMellah. This ended up saving me quite a lot of time and allowed me to focus on the more important pieces: the backdrops. So that's where I moved to next and really solidified the style.

Backdrops

I started with a larger, blank canvas in Aseprite (640 x 360), and much like I do when I'm creating physical art, started to block out the composition. Generally, I wanted a large central area framed by an expansive background but focused by a low-detail foreground. Exporting layers allowed me to enforce perspective into the gameplay, such as having the character disappear behind the grasses or putting clouds in the sky (more on that later).

I followed this process for two scenes (the Meadow and the Forest). Some reviews have noted the "rough" style of pixel art, which I attribute more to my lack of experience than any direct decision; but I do agree that the final result was somehow appropriate, even harkening back to an older style of game.

Sometimes it felt like I was spending too much time painting the backdrops, but it was also cathartic and a nice break from debugging code. Especially when I got to the forest, shading all the grasses got to be quite a lot of work, but I was really pleased with the result. While I had originally envisioned 4 different areas, I knew I would not have time to fill that many environments with interactable elements.

Clouds

At first I painted static clouds as a layer in the Meadow, but I knew that having motion in the sky would really set the scene, even if it was subtle. For this, I made a 1280 x 180 canvas that "looped".

To achieve the loop, rather than have two sprites end-on-end that swapped positions, I decided to import the one as "tiled". What I realized is that when I adjusted the width at the same time as locking the trailing edge, it created the illusion of motion. When the left edge of the sprite equaled the total width (i.e., we've reached the end of the sprite), I reset both the position and width. I had to play with the math to get it work out just right, but the end result is effectively seamless.

If you're at all interested in the source code, it is available on gitlab.

Scenery

This was ultimately one-half of the downfall: the number of individual assets to create. (The other half was the coding behind each new interaction, which I discussed in my Development devlog). While each individual piece didn't take that long, in aggregate it would have been quite a lot of work if I wanted to achieve my original vision. I also used two more animated assets from OpenGameArt.org here (the rabbit and the fox), as I knew that animation was not something I wanted to put my time into.

I did end up fighting a bit more than I would have liked to with Unity's animation system for interaction results like the boulder and tree, especially making use of the Animator Override Controller, which has the potential to save a lot of time (or waste it if you need to specialize one of them, but end up ruining all the others). In the final hours of the challenge, I definitely turned to "hack mode", even naming some functions "MakeStuffHappen" when I couldn't think of a better one.

What's Next?

That's it! These were all the subjects I really wanted to discuss, and doing so helped me think through a lot of what went well or what could have gone better. Thank you for reading, and if you missed previous entries and would like to read more, the links are at the top!

I do hope to make an update release for the game, once I've worked in some feedback. Stay tuned!

- Hawkin

Hey everyone! Looking for some HTML 5 games below 20 votes to play! Send them in the comments

Play and rate here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-bridge-is-out

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-bridge-is-out

Have you ever wondered, what if the ambulance driver was mentally unstable ? Well in this game you can be one !

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/doctor-psycho

Put your ship back together over 3 levels in Under the Weather:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/under-the-weather

Link your games below and we'll rate back :)

Hey, all! The Tech Valley Game Space community will be live-streaming ourselves playing Ludum Dare games, starting today, October 16th, from 7 - 9 PM EDT on twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace, youtube.com/c/techvalleygamespace, and picarto.tv/TechValleyGameSpace

To have your game in consideration for playing and judging, you can sign up on this form: forms.gle/kbUdacxVfnVaGrq17

As the form states, we do enforce a Code of Conduct in our live-streams. As such, we do reserve the right to cancel streaming and rating a game for any reason.

Note: we at Omiya Games did livestream yesterday, but this stream will be on a different channel.

So, I have hit 20 ratings on my game a few days ago, got some feedback on it, so I think it's a good time to reflect on it a bit. It's a long one, so, I'm really sorry if you needed to scroll somewhere, but I kinda needed to vent

TL;DR: Don't ever do what I did, that way lies madness.

Link to the game for reference

For those, who decided to not play the game (or at least look at the comments), here's a quick rundown. Horsey Computer is a game about an unstable game that you break and end up hopping from one game to the next. And those games can be completely different genres and have completely different art styles.

Oh dear.

That's why you work in teams, by the way. You really do need another person(s) to slap you across the face for thinking this is a good idea for a 72 hour game jam.

But what's really surprising is that this decision had some positive effects. Yeah, I was crunching like hell to get something playable and somewhat complete in time (more on that later), but at least I was never stuck on one thing. As soon as got bored and frustrated with some part, as soon as I felt that writer's block (well, a gamedev's block, I guess), I immediately switched to a different genre. Got tired of making pixeart for the point-and-click? Switched to 3D level design. Got stuck there? Opened sfxr and generated some blips for the OS.

That approach did not come free though. Apart from the obvious crunch exhaustion, the game did not come together until an hour on Jam timer. I was playtesting this game on my girlfriend 40 minutes before I was supposed to be done. That led to the discovery of some minor bugs, the 3D character's speed felt a bit slow (which I decided to leave as is, because dialogue timers kinda depended on this (fucking whoops), and a couple of reviewers complained about it), oh, and an entire fucking character was missing.

Not, like, a bug, where some character wouldn't render or whatever. No. A kinda vital character referenced by others and it was just not done. Not even started. No sprites made, no dialogue written. 40 minutes before the deadline. It's the device in the point-and-click bit, for those who are interested.

Yeah, no, seriously, this is not right.

And speaking of writing. I have outlined a completely different (and longer) story with even more genres and characters. There was supposed to be a fake out shooter bit, where you were given a gun and told that you'll be needing it soon (you absolutely wouldn't). That was taken out because I just forgot to reserve a place in 3D level for it. A joke that was written, recorded, had sounds of an empty gun clicking made specifically for it had to be cut because someone is a dumbass.

There was also planned a text adventure thing, that would've always had "horse" as a valid response. That's as far as that went

And a mock racing section, kinda like the shooting bit. That's as far as that went

And of course the existing sections were significantly cut down. More levels for a platformer, a proper folder structure for the OS, a second screen (with another recurring character from my past game), inventory and actual puzzle-solving for the point-and-click

Oh, and an actual gameplay mechanics

So, let's touch first on the recurring characters and an honest to god fan service. And I know what you'll say. Who are those fans that you wanted to service? I know, right. But that turned out to be another excellent time-saving technique. I need a bartender character? Why not a carrot from one of my games? I have the fitting sprite that wasn't drawn in a hurry and the dialogue writes itself. You served the food made from sentient (and angry) vegetables, now they serve the food out of you. Hilarious. I hope. Whatever, doesn't matter, at least it was quick to write. The three-legged alien referencing someone who stopped existing? Here you go, the fourth icon on the left on the screenshot. Was it funny before? Eh, kinda. Great, that would have to do. Better yet, It saves me time not drawing an entire new character and a part of the background on the second screen (that was cut, but whatever, at this point it's a part of the joke). Fucking perfect.

So yeah, the big one. The gameplay

So, the game is "unstable", right? So how do you make it unstable? By messing with the properties of some objects, of course, through some sort of cheat menu. And that was supposed to be the main mechanic of the game. Puzzle solving through some meta means. Opening a console, screwing with some objects and solve puzzles in a wacky way. That's a solid pitch for a small puzzle-game right here. Simple, yet deep mechanic, level-based, so can be as big as the timer allows it to be. A prefect little jam game, that could, potentially, be expanded to the full game. So why the fuck didn't I do this

What a knob I really am sometimes

So yeah, at the middle of the second day, the game became a walking simulator, basically. Just do what you're told and look at all the jokes. Which seems to be fine, people are liking the jokes, but I just wish they were attached to the actual game. The narrative also suffered because of this. The developer is blaming you for breaking the game, because, well, it was you who actively breaking it, because screwing around in this kind of sandbox is fun. But just listen to this nonsense. A narrative fucking design in a game that has to be made in 72 hours. But then again, people like the madness that happened because of the ambition, so I don't even know anymore. There is a neat game in there somewhere, right at the point, where I should've reigned in the ambition and started making a coherent experience that is focused on some point.

So yeah, as you might've guessed already, I was on the brink of giving up for one and a half days. Well, I guess, that's not strictly speaking true, because I was ending it all out of spite, sunken cost fallacy and some little glimmer positivity that was me genuinely liking the damn thing and wanting it to be made. And you know what, I'm really glad it got made, even though it's not exactly what I wanted and it sucked all the energy from me to the point that I'm still couldn't be bothered to properly set up an itch.io page.

After all that negativity towards the game and myself, let's end on a little bit of positivity. The game's not shit and I don't hate it, I'm just (as always) very critical towards myself and the game, because I genuinely like it and want the final result to be better, because it can.

I also like the jokes and I like what I wrote for the game in general. Picking a theme and just rolling with it really helped to make a coherent-feeling game (even though, I know how much of mess it really is). It was really heartwarming to see people laughing at my silly horse puns and jokes and the general madness of it all. Because, after all, isn't that why we're doing this? Just, don't do it like I did, it is absolutely not worth it

influenced by Slay the Spire, Griftlands and many other great games.​​

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/spellblade-legacy-2d-deckbuilding-lite-dungeon-crawler

Spellblade is a world where several unstable events have happened across the biomes. The hero can help shape the world into a more stable for by collecting the crystal gems and cleansing the void realm!

Thanks for everyone who has commented and left feedback to get me to closer to 20 ratings, I really appreciate it!

I added instructions and increased clarity of the game as many suggested!

• Zone system is more robust and each zone scales independently and have had their balance updated.
• More augments have been added to the game for purchase from the forge.
• Shop is now unlockable and available across all zones.
• Boss Gems can now be obtained one per zone.

I would love if whoever is interested could checkout the game and give some feedback!

Feel free to drop a link and I can check out your game too!

Hey! I'm having misbrains with this LD session.

I mean, I was hoping for so many weeping sims. But hell, I suppose most cried out loud at LD48.

Still, when the phase comes, the LD page becomes a real mess (or massacre) of ideas and reflections at the world or personalities, or whatever psych-a is there in your life.

I know we're coming naked here. I mean, I try. Some - prototype, some do for the portfolio, some just need to be here (even if there is no game at all).

Maybe at some point we have to realize, that we don't have to get here every time the jam is, get away, have a boozy somewhat near the sea-waves. Without a computer. Or even a phone.

Anyway, I still don't get this many games on stables, horses - this LD. Hey! Is there a secret Squid Game metaphor? Don't be mad, the show is not that unique, just had to check the fuss about.

And I'm not the one pretending that our game (a dare from Ardskape) is some kind of freaking masterpiece, no way.

Have we pre-prepared? No time, sorry, but we polished some skills. Learned new stuff. Had no time (again) to use it.

Have we tried to make an illusion of a game? Nope. It's a thin line what the game is called, of course. If there's fun, and you can play – yep, can be game. But many of us are quite aged to get that nowadays games need narrative, and it's better if we introduce at least some hint of it throughout the gameplay.

And there's narrative in art and sounds, of course, not only text and voices, we know that. Well, one of my previous collegues couldn't understand at all me saying that the narrative can be created by only the usage and placement of the sfx.

Still, there's no much of that dribble in our game. But we come from those parts of mind where we don't use assets, and create whatever we can on our own. Art, sound, voices, anything... it may change, though, maybe in 3D. But for now it works fine, and we really like to get it done on our own, even if it's fucking deadline.

Language, aye.

So, what's the deal with horses anyway?

If there's another game on a mosquito here, please do share! In the meantime, get a grip on our bites.

Here's Pharaoh Mosquito!

As promised, I played today as many games from Danger Zone as I could. Next round tomorrow.

I'm really happy with all the unique games I was able to see today. I had a great time! If you want to join the fun and help other LD participants as well as play some crazy and interesting games, go to the Danger Zone:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/games/danger/all

If your game is in Danger Zone, leave a comment here. I will play it tomorrow! I'm done for today :)

Stream is over for now. Next one is Wednesday @ 5 PM pt (Removed image to save space for others :)

Hello all. Come join me and I'll play your game. I haven't had too much activity so chances are if you come I could play your game right away. I give feedback and thoughts live. https://www.twitch.tv/crefossus

Play Game : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/hothead

Video rendered quicker than I thought - here's an almost released version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT0qF3zpOBg

Current version here

GAME https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/hothead

Hey all! I would just like to thank all those who rated my game, it's finally got 20 votes!

It was a lot of fun making it, especially since this was my first ever game jam, and it was super fun playing all your games too. Again I would like to thank all of the people who've given us such wonderful feedback, and I would definitely like to do more of this next time.

Anyway, see you later!

We're finally back after a small hiatus - and we're ready to play your games!

Leave your games in the comments below, and be sure to play our entry too! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-ship

I tested a lot of games during the last 2 weeks and played my fair share of awesome entries. Among them, some fly a bit under the radar which I find pretty sad and undeserved. So there's my list of the best games I played that (imo) didn't received enough attention.

50 Crowns for 50 Kings

This guy, ALONE, made a functionnal and addicting grand strategy game in 3 days. Six months ago, Paradox published the worst rated game in Steam history, an extremely unbalanced and bug-crippled piece of junk they sold 20 euros/dollars. Do what you want with these informations but please PLAY THIS GAME!! It can't miss the 20 ratings.

Deepwell Safety Inc.

For your game to appear in the Ludum Dare filter, you need a good Karma. Then, a good thumbnail should attract people to test your game. So why on earth this game, which has both karma and thumbnail, has only 42 ratings?!? This is without a doubt one of the most polished, well-thought and complete experience you'll play during this LD, so you have to put this right.

Kaboom Box

Another one-man effort. Defuse each bomb just by turning it, using the power of your brain and a few clicks, all wrapped by a really smooth execution. Simple but really efficient.

Council of Emotions

Killing hundreds of alien in a heavy metal atmosphere is cool. Micro-managing your space empire is fun. Building infinite tower by piling geometric blocks is fine (though, you did it too much during the last two weeks). But you want something else. Take control of Caleb'childs emotions and let yours be touched.

Tick Away

Let's continue in the "feeling" vibe. Though here, we're not in the wholesome nostalgia but in the thoughness of life's unexpected misfortune. Once again, gameplay try to emphasize emotion convey by the experience. Once again, we get a nice game to enjoy.

Orbital Turbulence

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said "Less is more". So once you removed the unnecessary, only remained the very best of your experience. Clic, drag and admire the soothing ballet into your stellar system.

Formula Dare

Once theme was revealed, these guys read "Unstable" and thought "Mazespin!" (or probably something like that). Oh yeah, I'm talking about Formula One. Here, you'll have to prepare your car for the next race, hoping it'll be fast enough but still under control. Warning : it's really difficult.

Project Earth

So, you play as our good old planet, trying to espace the dying sun. It has a huge reactor coming directly(?) from it's core. You racing across space, going near other planets to scavenge them and keep your reactor at full speed. In the meantime, you manage the planet, in a simplified Sim-City like, to get even more fuel. Honestly, at this point, you should have already clicked.

The Swirl

Gorgeous. The art alone make this one shines among the hundreds of games they're here. Enjoy.

We have made an autochess where rules in the shop change slightly each turn!

The four families of monsters are mushrooms :mushroom:, merchants :money_mouth:, spiders :spider: and robots :robot: :)

You can check the list of cards here!

Play Unbalanced Brawl, please leave a comment so we can try and rate your game too :heart:

Want to defeat wave after wave of zombified scientists? Jump right in with simple controls and a Web Version!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-apocalypse

I need some more feedback for Unstable Apocalypse!