I come up with and vote positively on themes that I think will have multiple different interpretations. Why? Purely selfish reasons. I want to play other peoples game, and I don't want to play 30 games that are all the same. With that out of the way, here are my themes:

Snowman -> Because it is rather open ended, I see this being turned into a number of different types of games. I can see snowball fights, snowman building games, card games about snowballing. In addition to mechanics, winter is a very nostalgic season for a lot of folks and I could see there being a variety of cultural traditions being showcased in more story driven games. Plus there is the meme right?

Sideways -> This is a mechanical powerhouse of a theme. It immediately brings to mind rotation; a powerful mechanic in a variety of genres. Puzzle games (the game-jam darlings that they are) can do a lot with such a direct yet evocative theme. For story focused games, "things going sideways" is a term for things getting very difficult (The shit hits the fan). For platformer games it brings conjures up gravity switching and camera manipulation. For FPS games it could easily be the simple act of shooting "gangsta" style which could come with different modifiers. There is a lot of ways this could go and thus many different styles of games I would get to play.

Echoes -> Whooo boy. Echoes could mean a lot of different things, but it feels very powerful as a word. Sound based games where you have to shout and listen. Interesting mechanics regarding players having a microphone. Mechanical games where every ability repeats to a lesser effect. Earthquakes, Water, and Time all can be said to have echoes.

Anyways, those are my picks. Away I go, woooooo

Hi everyone!! I'm super excited for this Ludum Dare, and I hope y'all are too. This'll be my 13th time entering (only my twelfth time finishing, though; curse you LD52 for lining up with a flight!) and I'm planning to return to the compo this time.

I'm finally out of college, I moved in with my boyfriend, and I work from home, so the conditions are perfect! ...at least compared to that time I entered a compo on the literal floor of an empty apartment. That's a story for another day.

This time I just want to make something fun, accessible, and appealing. That might seem like an obvious goal, but many of my recent entries have been rather narrative, experimental, or otherwise "artsy." Making something with the player's enjoyment as a priority is something I've severely been lacking, and I'm more than happy to mix things up this time around.

I usually don't share these, but why the hell not:

Good luck, daredevils!

Excited to once again deal in reckless overambition with my partner in crime.

Here are my LD 55 Suggestions...

Here we go with the mandatory "These are my suggestions" post :-)

Hard to believe April's almost here already; looking forward to 55 and maybe actually finishing a game :)

The A.I.-generated images weren't exactly what I was looking for but hey, free is free.

Download PNG wallpaper here: https://imgur.com/4gFAE1b

My suggestions for this one:

• Making
• Faking
• Slice of life

Will my itch to make and finish games be stronger than my desire to spend less time on the computer and have a healthy weekend? We will see!

It's time for my usual refresher on Theme Suggestion & voting tips! People often complain about LD themes being bad, so this post is a drop in the bucket to help you choose better themes, especially if you are less experienced!

3 guidelines to come up with a good theme:

• Keep it simple: The more descriptive or specific your theme is, the more restrictive it will be (in a bad way) and the more difficult to scope. You can do more things with "Season" than "4 Seasons"!
• It's a theme, not an idea/restriction: Don't rob the creative genius away from your fellow jammers. Instead, send them in a direction with a genre-agnostic spark that can fuel both game design and aesthetics/fantasy! "Only 2 Buttons" does not help you know what kind of game you want to make, while "Mist" gives you a cool mental image and still has potential for fun mechanics! While it's not always possible, try to avoid pigeonholing people into certain genres (I'm looking at you, puzzle platformers! :smile:).
• Don't try to be subversive: A gimmick theme for the sake of being a gimmick often falls flat and gets slaughtered. Generally "You are XYZ" (ie: You are the Villain) and "XYZ is key" don't work well. Memes and partisan/political themes are also the quickest to get buried.

An easy "gorilla" way to come up with a decent theme, is to focus on an action, and object, or a "thing that does a thing", and to try and abuse the many synonyms/homonyms in the English language. Mirror, Fall, Glass, Land, Horn, Spray, Hair, Superposition, Treat... Try it yourself it's pretty fun!

As for the jam itself, preparation is key! Make sure your tools are all ready, get the machine oiled up with some practice and, if you're gunning for Compo, prepare some boilerplate code to speed things up on the architecture & non-game side such as UI! A game with a nice title screen and working basic settings (volume!) feels already super polished!

I may be participating this time hehe. Good luck to you all and don't neglect your sleep!

Well, shit

For anyone who needs some more inspiration for good theme ideas, here are the recent Ludum Dares sorted by how many people submitted a project compared to how many signed up.

I've been fiddling in Godot for a while now and made some headway on a larger hobby project, but I'm hoping to complete a smaller scope game for Ludum Dare. It's my first time, so I'm not expecting much. I might not even finish! But I am very excited to see what this feels like.

Happy to hear any suggestions people have. I've done the rounds on YouTube, which led me to say "screw it, I'm gonna give it a shot."

• Redemption
• Penitence
• Social battery

And yes, I will participate, because I plan to finish one game I'm making for NaNoRenO 2024, and the finale will depend on the chosen theme for LD 55.