https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/lapis-vitae

I'd appreciate it if you gave Mad Zomber the final push it needs to qualify. It's a third-person Hack 'n Slash game where you fight zombies until you become literally too angry to die.

I'm thinking of doing a post-jam version. Here are the features I'd add:

• Perks system to customize your playstyle
• A dodge move (that is more powerful in a calm state, to add more consequences to filling up the Rage meter)
• More weapons with different attacks for each type (currently, you always use the same 3 animations whether you're unarmed or using a plank or pipe)
• More varied environments
• A proper final boss (instead of just some normal zombies with more HP)

| score | user | | ----- | ---- | | 684 | Anonymous | | 250 | annie-owl | | 231 | ivysly | | 213 | m1nus | | 200 | kepcukhusamettin | | -300 | varundevs |

My best is around 800, but I don't count! Try your skill at:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/klop-un-stabled
Leave a comment and I'll put you on the board!

We can get to 20 ratings!

We've put together a video showcasing the original soundtrack for our game A Gift in Good Faith! We hope you enjoy it. NES colour palette psychedelic backgrounds are surprisingly time-consuming to make and sync with music. Make sure to play and rate the game if you haven't already! You can also download the soundtrack on Bandcamp.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SIWC3-tN4k

Bandcamp: https://samgorman272.bandcamp.com/album/a-gift-in-good-faith-official-ost

Rate the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith

Thanks for listening! :)

Not wasting any time, you know what a post mortem is :D

Older Posts: * Day 1 Progress * Day 2 Progress * Day 3 Progress * 6 ways to beat Karawan * Camerons Music Post Mortem

What went well

Discarding unfit Game Ideas

Originally, i wanted to make a tile laying game with hex tiles, maybe themed with an animal ecosystem or medieval society. The tiles you'd place would interact with tiles around it, adding or taking resources from them. I knew this could be interesting, but would very much depend on if i could find fun interactions between the tiles, and proper chain reactions. I went about designing this on paper for 2 hours, after which i hadn't come up with anything good. The interactions were simplistic and chain reactions always carry the risk of not being predictable for a player, and thus frustrating. It was great to reach that point without having to implement anything, saving time and allowing to move on early to the next idea. a few early ideas - none of them made it

Try something new

For game jams i like to have something new and fresh, which poses an interesting challenge for us, without making it impossible to deliver a good game. You'll see that in our game jam history, as we wildly jump genres. These are among them: - life/body simulation - pacifist thief stealth game - strategy chess like board game - god simulation - restaurant tycoon - sokoban-like animal puzzle game - bird flying action game - taxi driver game - resource mining action game some of our games

We also wildly switch the 2D perspectives and whether it's tile based or not. This time we tried something very new which i was always interested in: hex tile maps. This was a challenge and i spent way more time implementing this, than i'd have spent if i'd just went a path already travelled by us. But it is fun and facilitates improving as gamedevs. I think this can still work out great, if not too many aspects of the game are "unkown territory".

It was also our first time working with @cameron-paxton as a composer, and it was a great experience. We was very hard working and created a soundtrack that adds so much to the game :)

No Sprite Animations

The only reason Karawan could have nice and varied sprites is, that none of them have any animations. Animations simply take a ton of time. We actually have only a single sprite animation, and that took what felt like ages. Bigger teams have other options, but we only have @idinakloppstock (Anne) to create all graphics for the game, so we have to plan accordingly. the whirl is the only sprite animation ingame

Initially i wanted to have a really living caravan, with small people roaming the areas around it, and the player seeing them getting to work. Anne opposed this, explaining that this was not feasible. I reluctantly agreed to postpone this stuff to the end, if we had time left - which of course we didn't.

In other words: Know your team and listen to it.

Discipline

I remember how we took the evenings off in our first game jam, playing some games or just relaxing during the day for some time. Over the jams and maybe with getting older, we developed a good discipline - now we really work all 3 days for the maximum time, probably around 14h a day. This helps a ton in getting things done.

Content and Polish

Development was so fast that i had a lot of time to polish and playtest. I added a ton of small effects, tweens, delays and animations, also to make up for the lack of sprite animations. I think that shows, it is surely our most complete jam entry in that regard. The tutorialization also worked well, with context sensitive explanations popping in and explaining the mechanics wherever needed. I think that little can do a lot, if it hits right. For example, i made the star-like background in 5 minutes - it's just a basic, slow moving particle effect. a lot of little things - the harvested resources scale in and out, the wagons shake while moving, the popup moves in nicely

We had our first real playtest on the second half of day 2. It quickly was clear to me, that the game had a ton of problems and was no fun yet. But i understood well what wasn't working, and what i needed to change to improve it. These changes were playtested again, slowly showing we were going in the right direction. For example, we had a fully implemented mechanic to plant wheat fields and harvest them, which i completely scrapped because it was too complex to teach easily. If there would have been little time to playtest, i wouldn't have understood the problems well enough, and the game would be worse. wheat fields got cut completely

But even after these changes, i wasn't totally sure if the game would was interesting, understandable and fun. This leads to one of the bad points: the idea might have been too big.

Concepts -> Placeholders -> Final

We established a workflow over time, where we'd first sit down to establish a general look and palette for the game. If we have this ready, Anne creates placeholder sprites quickly, which i can use to implement the game. The final, polished sprites only come in after all placeholders are ready. Of course during development, new things come up which start their lives as placeholders too. This works great for us, as we don't need to discard as much work as before, because it doesn't fit. It's also efficient because the sprites later just need to be replaced, with no impact on the code. different palettes for our tile sketches

Improve next time

Clearer, more complete Vision

We started "production" with a good idea what the gameplay will end up being. What moved a lot and only got clear after 50% of the time was up, was the mood the game. I had a rough idea where i wanted to go, but i didn't think it through and didn't communicate it clearly enough, wasting time and work from @cameron-paxton who made great music that ended up not fitting the game. We got a good process for finding the game design and art style, but it's clear that we have to find something similar for music and mood. We mostly made our games without a composer, so that's something we are still learning.

Find someone for Sounds

We had no one who could make sounds from scratch (as usual). I tried finding someone on the ludum dare discord, but had no success. So we used a soundpack - which is fine in general, but we had to opt-out from audio as a consequence, despite cameron making an original soundtrack with a ton of effort.

Unsure: Too big?

I'm not sure about this, but Karawan seems like a big game for a game jam, design wise. Content wise it is fine, but the concept feels like it needs a week of playtests to balance it right and make it really fun. I described that even during submission, i wasn't sure whether it was any good and would resonate with players. I'm not sure if that's a huge problem, but the uncertainty did really not feel good.

Thank you!

For reading this, and for all the feedback! I'm looking forward to see you on LD50. I love ludum dare, and it's a huge part of us growing as gamedevs. We are glad we could participate again :)

She won't read this, but i need to thank my mother here! @idinakloppstock and i have a 2 year old daughter, which means we can only take part in Ludum Dare if we get some help. Since LD47 my mother always visits us over the weekend and spends some quality time with her granddaughter, which our offspring loves a lot and which enables us to really commit to making a game with some ambition. All this is only possible thanks to her support, and i'm very grateful for that. This time they did some autumn handicrafts :D

Hello! It has been two weeks since the our first Ludum Dare jam. Thanks to everyone who played, streamed, rated or commented our game. We still only have 17 votes, so please help us reach at least 20!

It was honestly a surprise how constructive and nice the feedback was. I think it was because we are all creators and can know the intricacies of making a video games. It was thrilling to watch people play our game on stream or read comments, what people received most positively was: - audio & songs - humour in visuals, audio and setting - unique take on the Unstable theme - seagulls

There was also one thing that people universally disliked and that was surprisingly 500MB download 😄

We have identified couple bugs; auto item drop, chance of being locked behind walls, seagull jumps (that could be a feature though). All can be fixed without overhauling the game, and we hope to deliver that once the voting ends and have two separate builds; jam build & revised build.

Play now here

Don't leave your game in the comments, if you want to submit it, please do so here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LmBdCpd8v8K-64Dt-GiZtaAbaeIOXpUEPvSOAktf2q8/edit#responses

Come on down and enjoy! https://www.twitch.tv/buzzybee26 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1GSreh6TP4

Keep playing those Danger games!

Don't know how?

• Click on Games
• Click on "Smart"
• Change to "Danger is my middle name"

Play all those games :smile: Everyone wins!!

Hello everyone. I hope that all is fine for you and yours. I have a request about a post which I read just a few days before the 49th LudumDare session started. Someone had posted here a message, explaining what it planned to do for the GameJam. In this message, he posted a link to a video - a Dust Sci-Fi movie. I remember a woman in a white room popping colored balloons with a nail or a needle. I said to myself that I have to take a look at this short movie which seemed very interesting. And I forgot... I searched for this movie on Dust YouTube channel, but they share hundreds of movies and I cannot find it according what I remember. Also I tried to find the previous message here, but LudumDare receives several dozen messages each day, and mine is forgotten somewhere. So I ask you today - maybe someone knows this reference or the guy who had written the previous message remembers it? Thank you for your help. Have a nice day ++

Well, that's basically 30 ratings.

This game's basically on track to being the biggest LD submission I've ever had a hand in. More than that, we plan on bringing the game to Itch, Android, and possibly Steam over the next year. It's been a wild ride, this jam... and despite the many snags we hit along the way, it's all been worth it.

As a special thank you to the community for once again making this event something to cherish, here's a curated list of my highlights from the competition!

Note that this list is only comprised of games I've played myself. There's a number of interesting titles I saw on various streams that I unfortunately don't have the link to.

Please give these incredible submissions a look!

(also please make sure to play our game at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/balancing-act-2/ we really tried to make something cool and also it's coming out on ItchIO and Android next year so your support is appreciated k thanks)

OVERALL:

JAM:

Rocky Rhodes and the Cracked Case by @holbinski, @crelish, @loveboxf, and @brainloaf-studio

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

I thought this was going to be a clever and witty noir-themed game. I was so wrong. I was so wrong.

A short linear experience that will leave EVERYTHING to the imagination. Originally my Best Humor pick, I sent it up here.

The more I say, the less impact the game will have... so go play it. Go experience it.

JAM:

HONK III by @justcreative, @sava-tsurkanu, @krik-iddqd, @astramorae, @onlymorozov, and @tricky-fat-cat

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/honk-iii/

This one was VERY close to being my Best Overall, so much so that I broke my rules and made an honorable mention when I said I wouldn't. As a complete package, it feels like a love letter to Quake II with its own odd little movement scheme and a dedicated honk button. In short, this game NEEDS a postjam commercial release. When's HONK, Civvie?

GRAPHICS:

JAM:

Apollo's Lab by @clonze and @graylure

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/apollos-lab

A simple puzzle-platformer that finds a tricky balance between adorable artwork and body horror with a unique revival mechanic, among other weird gadgets. Tightly designed and presentation first, with bonus points for a raccoon protagonist. Gimme the gawubage.

INNOVATION

Innovation is going to be a two way tie... I just couldn't make up my mind!

JAM:

Fellowship Manager by @elysiagriffin, @brainoid, and @honest-dan

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/fellowship-manager

You did this in a weekend?! Everything okay over there?

To summarize the game in one word: Depth. It's a fully fledged Civilization/For the King meets Darkest Dungeon where you have to dismantle the unstable throne before your party naturally dismantles itself. From customizable battle tactics, to micromanaging units with weapons and stats, to a dynamic reputation system that forces you to keep on fighting so the enemies don't forget to fear you, Fellowship Manager can be quite unwieldy at first glance but has incredible potential.

JAM:

Mech Mapper by @curdlegames and @thestoff

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/mech-mapper

A physics-based building game about building your own solution-car with quality presentation of a fun concept. This almost went under Audio, but I would have felt terrible leaving this out of Innovation for how hard it tried to make this concept work, and how it succeeded in doing so.

MOOD:

COMPO

The Salatroitsk Incident by @drunkardwolf

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-salatroitsk-incident

A slow-burn PSX survival horror game where you collect radioactive materials for research and evade a formless monster. Once again, DrunkardWolf has nailed PSX aesthetics for an easy win in this category.

AUDIO:

Eek, another tie!

JAM:

2001 Unstable Space Oddyssey by @emurga, @dephon, @rujum, and @nopogo

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/2001-unstable-oddyssey

The space theme of this title is complete with an inspiring soundscape and some impressive visuals for the jam. I do love me some space.

JAM:

U-49 MELTDOWN by @ashley-gb , @matias-correa, @likenjay, and Viktor from @blue-pin-studio

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/u-49-meltdown/

A main beat that rocks, audio logs, and an adorable little isotope. This almost went under Theme as it gets the Unstable point across quite well, but I had to give credit for that main track and the voiceover.

HUMOR:

Just pretend Rocky Rhodes is on this section too, okay? JAM

Oh, Hello? by @joah-reason and @itsboats

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/oh-hello

A goofy physics based puzzle platformer about being a Verizon customer. Fling your way to finish the call through the most absurd yet effective means you can think of, and try not to get too far away from the signal point once you're there!

FUN:

JAM:

Unstable Explosives by @spoky

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

A chaotic top-down arcade game where you chuck live bombs towards your enemies while avoiding the same fate yourself. This game ended up being the kind of quick fun I'd love to see scoped out into a small-scale party game.

THEME:

JAM:

Manicat by @rextgun

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

Next time just give me a virus.

What exactly am I looking at? I've been asking myself that same question, every night, for two weeks, all night because I can't sleep anymore. It's cruelty squad all over again. send help. I think Unstable is a fitting word.

I can crack jokes all I want, but this isn't here just because of the theme. This gameplay is incredibly tight, and it EMBODIES PURE CHAOS. It's one worth fighting over the best scores with. @rextgun, excellent work. You monster. I'm gonna go take a depression nap.

And with that, this concludes my list of personal picks from LD49! There's plenty of amazing games I played that didn't quite make this list, so share them in the comments!

Once again, it's been a pleasure jamming with you all again. I look forward to seeing you all again in LD50, and hope to see some of you around when BALANCING ACT gets its full release in 2022.

Took me a while, but I finally managed to have some time to play and rate some amazing games! Sorry for not being doing this before (busy work weeks). So if you want to play mine, feel free to (and I'll try my best to play and rate yours as well!) :smile:

Play my Game here!

It would be awesome if you could play our game. We put a lot of effort on it and we think that you could enjoy it.

1000 shells

Hello everyone. I hope that all is fine for you and yours. I have a request about a post which I read just a few days before the 49th LudumDare session started. Someone had posted here a message, explaining what it planned to do for the GameJam. In this message, he posted a link to a video - a Dust Sci-Fi movie. I remember a woman in a white room popping colored balloons with a nail or a needle. I said to myself that I have to take a look at this short movie which seemed very interesting. And I forgot... I searched for this movie on Dust YouTube channel, but they share hundreds of movies and I cannot find it according what I remember. Also I tried to find the previous message here, but LudumDare receives several dozen messages each day, and mine is forgotten somewhere. So I ask you today - maybe someone knows this reference or the guy who had written the previous message remembers it? Thank you for your help. Have a nice day ++

https://www.twitch.tv/thesoulselector

I am looking forward to being confused and impressed.

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

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. I hope to see you there!

If you submitted to me last week 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 doing a stream tomorrow night from 10 PM - 1 AM EDT to make up for the failed stream from Friday. I know it's a less accessible time for many of you, but it's the only time of day I have available before the rating deadline. I imagine I'll be getting through some of my backlog during that stream.

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

8 8 *slas.T DAYS

Las////t days to plaY Rate + Rate()

[PLAY]

[PL =_AY]](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/ex-it)

Hello dear readers, here I am today to shamelessly plug in our game Ghost in the Party so I lure you to play it with an interview from our wonderfully talented artist Dre and our coding slave, ehem, I mean lovely team leader Fer. And just to be clear, I'm absolutely doing this because they're very interesting people, not because I wanted to share our game and ask for more great feedback, or because I told them to flatter me. Not at all.

• qaeron: So people think this game is pretty hard. Was it unintended or I never got the memo?

Dre (@notaltright): It wasn't intended to be hard. The target was Manu's (qaeron) mom, so she could read his story without getting stuck in the runner levels and thus giving the real weight of the game to the narrative. But then I kept asking for it to be more difficult... sorry, not sorry.

Fer (@fer-gueler): I tried to make the game very easy except the last level, because I wanted the text-adventure part of the game to be the main focus. That's my best attempt at making an easy game, time to grind pals.

• q: When you approached me with the idea of making a game for the LD49, you were thinking about a more upbeat game. How did we end up in this beautiful and a little spooky game?

Dre: We were throwing in a lot of crazy ideas that would make the characters funny and really absurd. It would have ended up a mess and we knew it, so we were unsure and never wrote anything down. Then our savior writer came in and everything started to make sense.

Fer: I approached you on saturday morning after a few unfruitful hours of initial brainstorming with Dre and some sleep. And you saved our asses! We had the concept of the anxious ghost escaping the party already, but the game in our minds was a lot funnier and more lighthearted. In reality it was absurd and was going nowhere. After we explained you the concept you made your interpretation, spookier, more dramatic and sensible.

• q: Did you have fun in the short and stressful amount of time? What would you change from our process?

Dre: I enjoyed it a lot! And I think the time length partaked in that. Also, it was my second jam right after another, I was kind of sleep deprived and more loose thanks to that so I didn't overthink anything and just had fun.

Fer: It was so much fun with just the right amount of stress! I guess it would have been better to have you in the team from the start, although the mid-jam writer acquisition was good in terms of epicness.

• q: So we've played together a lot of games from LD49. Which was your favourite?

Dre: I liked a lot of games, but the ones that still linger in my mind are Yura Yura (play it here!) and Revolver (here for that goodness).

Fer: There were so many amazing games. If I had to choose one I'd say Burning Ravager (check it out here!)

• q: And for the last question, how much do you love me?

Dre: Marry me.

Fer: Thank you Qae, luv u.

This is all from us for the LD49! Hope you liked the game, had a lot of fun if you did one, and I'm eagerly awaiting to read all of your feedback!

PD: My favorite game was // OVERDRIVE, I had a lot of fun with that one. Go and try it!

Thanks to all who played our game and left feedback. In the Post-LD version we tried to fix some major noticeable issues and make the gameplay more enjoyable and the idea clearer. This includes:

• Relocated objects in scene, compact level structure ( hopefully to fix that some player get lost/confused), more hints
• Increased movement speed
• Some dialogs expanded and some new small dialogs added
• Villagers no longer throw away as much money as they used to( they still do it though)

Here is our entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-town-of-clarity