I haven't really started coding yet, about to, but real life is crazy right now.

The idea I've ultimate decided to go with was actually intended for another theme, but I'm tweaking it a little bit.

Some "Unstable" ideas I wound up not using:

1 - Unstable explosives. You either need to carry a fragile bomb, or you ARE the fragile bomb.

2 - Unstable emotions.

3 - A game about balancing objects, rocks maybe, or player has to climb a pile of balanced items

4- An unstable version of a game, the player has to exploit bugs before the developer fixes them

5 - (maybe my favorite) a game about riding a unicycle.

I ran into some weird issues with Haxeflixel so I started over with PICO-8.

I ran into some weird issues with Haxeflixel so I started over with PICO-8.

Accidentally double posted and I don't know how to delete this one @_@

Upon hearing the theme, I was reminded of a quote I once heard from some famous car racing person: "The perfect race car is one that finishes first and then immediately falls apart."

With that inspiration, I'm making a spaceship racing game in which all the ships are highly unstable and falling apart, so you have to repair yourself along the way to ensure you'll make it to the finish line at all, much less in first place! But if only it were that simple... along the way, you'll also be tempted by the ability to upgrade your ship with better thrusters, weapons, and more. A bold, aggressive move could launch you to the top... or plummet you to the bottom if you're unwise.

Each Ship consists of 5 Parts: the Hull (which cannot be upgraded), the Engine, the Weapons, the Defenses, and the Thrusters, which you can see here in this first screenshot of the project.

Follow my progress both this weekend and on my long term project (a survival game about building Civilizations) on my Twitter at https://twitter.com/wingman_gaming !

I'm getting tired from the initial push, and want to come in fresh for the first full day tomorrow. So far, I think I have a decent start.

The game concept I came up with uses the word "Unbalanced" as a synonym for the word "Unstable." It's a 2D platformer where the game is unbalanced to favor the enemies. The player levels up with each enemy kill, and wins when they shift the unbalanced game in their favor, becoming too powerful for the enemies. Here's a screenshot of the player and a prototype level layout:

I'm primarily a gameplay programmer, hence the basic rectangle art. I managed to get the movement and jumping working after a pretty nasty physics bug made itself known out of the gate (because of course it did). The time I spent fixing that is why I need to step away for tonight. Still, it was a critical bug to fix early. Overall, I'm satisfied with this as a start. I have a concept outlined, a checklist for the development steps, a prototype level, and the vital platformer mechanics of moving and jumping.

More updates to come!

jk it was mostly brainstorming and thinking bout what i really wanna do, now go to bed.

This idea may make some explosjdisgqoajakabaowjwk....

......（connection lost）

forgot to do an i'm in post earlier, i won't really have time to participate this weekend because i'm in the middle of moving, but i'm still gonna try to make something simple to keep up my streak :)

Ended up with a concept about an unstable AI whose mission is to settle the stars while fighting off deviant versions of itself. Just have the star field working at the moment. Baby steps...

We spent a lot more time than usual thinking through ideas today. After working through multiple different games, we've landed on one to attempt!

Think Pokémon Puzzle League + Galaga set inside a nuclear reactor :radioactive:

I'm honestly never sure if this even counts as Day 1, the October events always start at 5:00 PM (17:00 24-hour time).

Anyways....

Not much to see here. I was busy for the first almost-three-hours of Ludum Dare but at least that gave me time to check the theme (every Ludum Dare I've done a theme I upvote wins) and design my game. I've only managed to get about 1 1/2 hours of gamedev in so far, but at least there's all of tomorrow and most of Sunday. And apparently third time's the charm and I'm finally getting better at rapid designing, the ~1.5 hours of work took care of the fancy visual stuff that would have taken me hours last Ludum Dare! (Looking at you, unnecessary cutscene I spent four hours on)

What, wondering exactly what it is I'm making? That's a surprise for once I'm done with the Compo!

(Expect me to completely disregard what I just said tomorrow when I attempt to make a progress gif. Let's see how that goes.)

I wanted to show a gif of the water physics I'm developing for my city builder game. The idea is you're tasked with building a city in an perilous environment, and must find ways of averting (or at least mitigating) catastrophe.

Real slow on the brainstorming tonight. Had a hard time getting into the groove and getting ideas floating, but I think I found something. I'm calling it "Junta: Coup Simulator 1981"

The idea is you are driving around a Jeep in a city shortly after a military coup, and need to stop protesters from reaching the presidential palace by shooting them with a water cannon - and possibly throwing bags of money at them, I don't know exactly.

But I feel like there's fun there, so gonna call it a night and try to get up and running early tomorrow getting the code bashed together!

I'm done for the night, but I think I've made pretty good progress. You can really see the unstable part of the reactor now.

Damn, getting the ideas is definitely the hardest part of a game jam! More than 7 hours in and I couldn't come up with anything. How does everyone do it so quick?

Roughing these out is one thing - sizing correctly with button animation layers and some finesse - that's the other half of the UI battle...

here's my progress so far, with a somewhat liberal take on the "unstable" theme. the working idea is that you are using a "quantum hammerspace gun", which randomly pulls more unique projectiles as you progress through the game.

anyway i should probably eat now, i've been working on this since 4:00 pdt, lol.

Progress has REEEAALLLYYY slowed down after that previous post of mine; there's not really that much more that I've added, and that's stressing me out. I just don't know what else I could do with my entry! Though I DO have at least one potential idea I came up with. But I seem to have become rather exhausted, I feel burnt out right now, and so I feel that I should distance myself from this for the time being. (pretty annoying because I actually don't feel tired at all)

Either way, good night, everyone. And here's to a much better tomorrow!

Got up at 05:00, it's now around 07:15 here, and I already got a good idea of what I want to make :-)

Here's an impressions of my morning walk! ... I don't think my camear picked up the moon right :sweat_smile: And pictured right beside that: Do people still make pictures of what they eat during LDJam? It used to be a thing at least...

P.S. Still stuck on the theme? Read the post I made last time for some strategies & don't forget to read the comments with some extra suggestions!