For our third LD jam, we put all we can in our game ! All our knowledge of game programming. We hope we made a fun game you will enjoy !

We come from this prototype

to this game

Where to play

You can find our entry here: - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/$385389 - https://cybierrekoffeestudio.itch.io/boiled-hell

We also publish our game OST on youtube, you can listen to it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnScD-Jtqo8&list=PLIgM9vo1vDq1DpbpuDnUTmTjv8e1WoX8j&index=1

See you in a few month for the next jam ! have fun with everyone's games !

CKS, out !

Thank you all who partook in the compo, and good luck to all of you who are finishing up your jam entry! It has been a blast developing this weekend and I'd like to extend a heartfelt thanks to all of you participating. The reason Ludum Dare is such fun to get back into every time is because all of you. Getting inspired by all your updates and following along is a really fun time.

To cap of the weekend, I'd like to give you a small list of a couple of games that you all need to try out. Here's some of my favorites so far:

Cosmic Misadventures by @vidarn

pent8cle by @sahm

HEXX by @andrewkennedy

(If you want to play my game, you know where to find it. I didn't want to add a link to it here to distract from the other games)

After restarting two times, I managed to complete a game for the Jam! It would have been a compo entry but I decided to modify some public domain music from Kevin Macleod a little bit, so I could focus on the rest of the game.

The game is about being summoned to work in South City, and you need to take an exam to determine where you will be placed.

So technically the Jam hasn't ended yet, and I have gotten a couple of comments that mentioned the writing speed of the answer explanation text is too slow. Am I allowed to fix this? Or would this be overstepping the rules, and the idea of a gold copy of a game being published?

You can play the game here. Itch.io embed because Godot 4 HTML doesn't work on the main site for some reason. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/south-city-worker-exam

Thank you for your feedback! I really appreciate your time, and I wish you all luck :heart:

still slowly

I love roguelike games..I love puzzles..but for some reason i decided to make a chat-fighter..

Here you are, Lexicat :cat:

The game is written on pure pygame (which i learnt while writing the game)

If you've been thinking for a long time: "how to gamify the blind-typing process", that's the answer :100:

I really want some feedback, so check this game on LudumDare55: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/lexicat-the-word-wizzard

I created a simple music track for my game using MilkyTracker.

The result is a ~2 min track that has a size of ~36kb!

Since I'm not good at making music, it doesn't sound that good, but I guess it's good enough for me (at least for the compo prototype).

My game uses an XM player that can play such music directly. It's quite neat for web and mobile exports where size kinda matters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se7sNm6sieM

https://leiggarfeed.itch.io/gamejam55

honestly ive never spent THAT much time on balancing any type of mechanics in any game but this is the best part of jams to discover something new imma right guys... starts crying

The creators of the critically acclaimed "A Living Space in Limited Space" of last year's LDD are back to deliver a new interactive experience!

Footlong Flight

Our wizard is back - less woolly, but a new, more sinister, less animal-friendly version.

So, what does an evil wizard do when his favorite sandwich chain is closed, but hunger strikes? He makes a sandwich, of course. The only way he knows how - through a demonic summoning ritual!

You will be unfortunate enough to be caught in the middle of this dark and twisted rite, so it's only natural you'll want a piece of the cake (or rather, sandwich) after surviving this mess.

A wicked bullet-hell adventure, soon for you to enjoy at your nearest Ludum Dare.

Make sure you respect the law folks !

Hey all!

I've finalized my submission for the jam and would appreciate you checking it out! Any feedback is truly appreciated.

• Is it difficult enough? :fist:
• Should the shop be expanded with more upgrades that I wouldn't have the patience to balance? :coffin:
• Maybe a nudging mechanic should be added? :scales:

The creators of the critically acclaimed "A Living Space in Limited Space" of last year's LDD are back to deliver a new interactive experience!

Footlong Flight

Our wizard is back - less woolly, but a new, more sinister, less animal-friendly version.

So, what does an evil wizard do when his favorite sandwich chain is closed, but hunger strikes? He makes a sandwich, of course. The only way he knows how - through a demonic summoning ritual!

You will be unfortunate enough to be caught in the middle of this dark and twisted rite, so it's only natural you'll want a piece of the cake (or rather, sandwich) after surviving this mess.

A wicked bullet-hell adventure awaits, soon for you to enjoy at your nearest Ludum Dare. Tune in and don't miss it!

[EDIT: People explained to me that the reviews were the number, not the rating, makes soooo much more sense lol! Thanks guys!]

I'm not against people not liking my game, and honestly I don't think it's going to be for everybody, but if you all play the game and hate it, let me know what you didn't like please :)

Weather rainy rainy

123

Seven hours till the end of the jam. Come on.

And preferably, next time I will know about them BEFORE building an entire game without considering them.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

See you all in 6.5 hours haha.

Remember to not leave Unity for several months and simply come back to it when several updates have been made. Also, reminder to have weekend off to make game.

Gathering ideas on all 16 themes:

Brainstorming the selected theme:

The plan:

The result:

https://ldj.am/$386920

WE HAVE A MUSIC NOW! AND A SECRET SPETIAL ALLUSION (ITS A BOOT) YOU CAN FOUND OUT! (222)

Dont forget appreciate our game) https://leiggarfeed.itch.io/gamejam55

We went the more abstract interpretation of the theme and went with summoning memories from your mind. We hope you like our entry it's very cute and short and lovingly crafted!

Link to our page

The new Rebdile game, HELLSPAWN, is out NOW!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/hell-spawn

Double first for me, thanks for all the inspiration!

wow

and we also have a beautiful game! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/poizon-pets Play it!

I've finally published my game! I spent a long time thinking about the title, and here it is—Wrath of Elements.

Take on the role of a dark mage who summons elemental spirits! Your attentiveness, reaction speed, and quick thinking will determine how far you can get!

Be sure to leave your record in the comments!

PLAY WRATH OF ELEMENTS

Even though I deleted all of my code on Saturday evening only to start fresh Sunday morning I managed to get a game out. Unfortunately there was just not enough time to also make music for it so I had to use some royalty-free tracks. I’m gonna get some sleep now 💤

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/alakazam-ghosties

I havent touched Unity for at least 4 months so it was a little bit harder, but I managed somehow finished.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/sacrifice-acolyte! Rate and I will rate back.

I love dodging bullets so much aaaaahhhhh

Now time to, you know, actually make the main gimmick and actual level design and enemies and maybe even audio and oh goddammit I'm not going to get this done am I

The title and image speaks for itself!

Thank you all for the inspiration!

Were are our cultist going to gloriously give their lives ? Discover the Great Square Volcano and a part of the soundtrack here !

https://youtu.be/ZItm7lmiOB0

We are almost done with our game. Now it is the part where we need to stop playing what we have and actually do the rest of the polish and stuff rather then just waste the rest of the time playing our game. Hopefully it will be fun but I am not sure. it's a bit short but we wanted to do that for jam. we already have an endless mode planed for after jam so that it is like our alchemy game.

Anyway lets go! only a few more hours! Good luck everyone!

Don't understand well the countdown how many time left before the very end

We did it, we finished the jam!

Each jam, our team wants to try something new. This year, it was adding voice acting to the game. We are exited to hear what you think about it!

The game is about finding an old deck of cards. And we don't know the rules of the game - that's where you come in!

👉 PLAY THE GAME IN YOUR BROWSER

Play a skateboarder who has to make an appearance at court before noon and pay a fine for the crime of skateboarding. Except you don’t have any money and noon is only 2 minutes away! Skateboard around the city gathering as much loose change as you can find and make it to the courthouse in time. Just don’t get caught by the cops!

Call her out in our game! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/poizon-pets

Hey everybody!

It's me again, Kepsert, Giraffe fanatic, and developer of the compo game named Phasebound (markup links don't seem to work atm, will get back to it soon? Phasebound

I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts when it comes to level design. First some basics:

• Besides the main mechanic, I have a total of 4 actual gimmicks.
• These gimmicks are spread out over a total of 15 levels.

Now, the levels are pretty short, but it's still quite some content to go through (most of the time is taken from the fact that main mechanic is rather uncommon). Now, one of the things I struggled with the most was anti-cheesing these levels. Making players follow the intended route as much as possible. How am I, in a game that gives the player almost unlimited freedom to travel all over the screen as they choose, during a compo that only lasts 48 hours and with basically no playtesting, going to get rid of as much potential cheese?

Well, I sat on this for a long time, approximately 2 minutes, when I came to an answer which I will now share as a tip to y'all:

• I don't

Players are going to find cheese. Players are going to find skips. We use the data of those moments to either patch it out, or leave it in for speedrunner purposes (especially if it doesn't ruin the game from a casual perspective). Instead, for the jam, I made sure that potential places that would allow for cheese (mostly due to my own design flaws, 48 hours isn't a lot of time!) would not end in a softlock.

I welcome you to try different routes, find speedrun strats, find skips, and share them! Found anything cool that seems off from the recommend path? GIF or record it and drop it in the comments at Phasebound

Anyway- if you haven't yet and you're looking for a platformer that people seem to enjoy (commenters would never lie, now, would they!?): give my game a try. It's called Phasebound and it's got a giraffe.

PS. Looking forward to the end of the jam deadline- will be playing through games on stream tomorrow after work and then most of Wednesday. Good luck to y'all on the final stretch!

This is some kind of development log for Diablillos (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/diablillos), my compo entry for Ludum Dare #55.

During the weekend, I took a few notes, recorded gameplay in GIFs and posted on social media, so I'll try to recreate what the development was like.

This has been my first jam after a 3-year hiatus, so I've been quite rusty. However, I'm happy I got to submit a finished game, and I even could squeeze an in-game tutorial.

I used PICO-8 for development, so that meant a 128x128 display size and a 16-color palette.

You can play and rate the game here:

Saturday

I usually like to do a mind map to brainstorm game ideas, but this time I kinda "saw" the game while I was having a walk outdoors. I got back home and drew the thing:

The main mechanic would be some kind of siege/linear "tower defense" in which you would summon an army of imps and had to defeat your rival's one. My vision was this game to be strategic, but it would end up being arcade-y instead. I'll elaborate on that later.

The first thing I did was to drew an imp (diablillo in Spanish) with a simple 2-frame animation and post it on Twitter to get feedback —I really want the imp to be really cute! People loved it so I didn't change the graphic.

Then I just changed the color to create enemy imps, and made them fight each other when they got close enough.

After that I drew some towers to serve as "goal points" for the imps to reach. And of course, some juicy screenshake 😎

I went to bed feeling that I didn't achieve much —which was true—, and set a short-term goal to try to have a complete gameplay loop (and possibly upload a playable build) before Sunday lunch.

Sunday

The towers felt kinda wrong for imp summoners, so I revamped them so they felt more… warlock-y. And drew the summoners too! I also coded a button (PICO-8 doesn't have built-in UI primitives) and a "purchase" system to summon imps at will… as long as you can afford it.

I didn't get my goal of having the full gameplay loop before lunch, but I carried on nevertheless. In the afternoon, I added some health bars, along with an icon to make them more intuitive. For the icons, I had to draw a smaller version of an already small 8x8 sprite, so that was a bit of a challenge.

And at last, in the evening, I finally achieved the final implementation of the core mechanic. I had to switch the style of games for a more high-pace, arcade feeling (strategic mechanics require more time to balance and playtest). Now instead of planning what to purchase (I originally wanted the player to summon different kinds of creatures), the gameplay revolved around collecting souls (the "coins" to purchase imps) and spawning minions as fast as possible.

It was a bit after 7pm (CEST), I wanted to go to sleep before midnight, and there was a lot of polish to add.

I started by adding a start screen, which was almost identical to the gameplay screen, but with a title, which I drew in gothic characters and added a palette roll effect to it.

Then I created the victory and game over screens (which are identical but with the text copy changed), and coded the win and lose conditions.

It was 11pm and I still had a lot of polish to do. However, I wanted to stick to my goal of not going over midnight, so I had to choose between adding a music track or a tutorial. I opted for the tutorial, since I already included some basic SFX and it wasn't too bad, and the tutorial could explain the mechanic to players.

To implement the tutorial I used different levels, and that code logic was re-usable to make different levels as well. So I put a cap of 5 levels (tutorial included), with increasing difficulty (basically the higher the level, the more imps the enemy can spawn).

And that was a wrap! If you got this far, thanks for reading! :) I hope this post was entertaining or inspiring.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/$384728

Finally finished my entry >> The Arrangement << Give it a shot here!

Alright, despite being confident yesterday I could get collision and pathfinding done with a hacky method that wouldn't take all day instead I've been stuck bugfixing it for hours and I'm ready to call this a failure. I think I'm 1-2 hours away from fixing the pathfinding and then I'd probably be up until 2am tonight before the game was ready to play. Instead I think I want to salvage the rest of my day before I'm back at work tomorrow.

In the past I have promised to finish up the game post-jam but in reality I don't find the time/motivation for that so this time I'm just admitting failure and moving on.

Here's the last screenshot of hybrid "turn-based real-time" strategy game. I finally got some proper art in so at least looks a lot better today:

So I had a streak of successful Ludum Dare's making narrative driven adventure games, but I stretched myself these past two to make strategy games. Both have failed and both for the same reason. I think with a more mechanically driven game you need to have the core of it playable and fun quickly and then be building on it all weekend. Although both times I did focus on getting the core gameplay up and running first, it wasn't fun on its own, and so I spent the rest of the weekend building more to try and make it interesting. Hoping it would all come together in the end.

So for future jams I'm going to take one of two paths: - Return to narrative adventure and puzzling solving games. They're my comfortable zone and I know what I'm doing there and can get it done fast. - Build something mechanical around a fun central core and don't try to add depth and complexity if the core alone isn't interesting already.

A humbling weekend especially as I'm now on a 2 jam losing stream. However it's all good learning for what will hopefully be future wins!

Summon forest creatures to save your island from the evil villagers!!

Play here!!

Hi GameDevs,

I will stream on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/schw3de) and play some LudumDare games. Join the stream and I will play yours.

Greetz da schw3de

Come hang and we will play your game! https://www.twitch.tv/tavernratstudios

Hey everyone! We're finally done with our Jam entry! Please give it a try and let us know how you feel about it! The crafty masterchef Nuki needs your help to solve some puzzles on his way to escape! Summon the goblin Mr. Kobi using a magical cookbook to help you on your task! Our Game Page

Just uploaded my game 'The Summoner Stone' to itch.io

Here is a video of some of the game play

https://youtube.com/live/NngVV8c_BA8

Our musician can relax, he did everything to ensure that the game had a fun rhythm and many different sounds. We hope our game brings a lot of fun!

After a decent amount of work and lack of sleep, finally it is done and I can head to bed! Hopefully nothing critically wrong is found with the game, but knowing our luck, someone is gonna break something.

Anyways, it was a good jam with my friends, I hope everyone else had a good jam, and be sure to get some good well deserved rest!

I have managed to finish a game a for game jam! Next year I'll try to make something good :laughing:

Just kidding, I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out, but not for me to say!

Introducing Shape Defender!

Game Page

Good luck to everyone else still crunching those last hours!

I will return tomorrow to start rating.

hi its my birthday and iam gonna be lazy so my project gonna be in extra, also being in extra i can make it extra cool so that will be cool and its cool

right now i just got basic one of the mechanisms working and its getting going.. so thats cool it is also inspired by this other jam here : https://itch.io/jam/asset-jam-2024-by-pixigb the idea was to limit myself to just 1 simple asset for artwork this Kenney pack: https://kenney.nl/assets/1-bit-pack iam into 3d so i made it 3d and doing something with the ludum dare theme of Summoning.

i guess its kinda sorta like populous but not really lol idk what its gonna be iam just playing around, intend to be mostly done by April 23rd .. at least to a cool enough spot .. for that other jam's deadline.

Long weekend of ups, downs, and second-guessing, but I actually finished my game and submitted it. It's a very simple game called Me Want Donut!

Going to relax a bit and then work on a Post Mortem post later.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/me-want-donut

Finally our cat and his trusty eagle adventure is done! It's been a great expierence.

Our game is got its influence from DDR and Helldiver. Still need to work on more on the UI UX side.

It's Gnome Time everyone! You can try to summon gnomes here, https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/you-are-gnome-caller The web build is kind of slow as it loads, so try the Windows build for a smoother experience.

Belzosbub, tired of his role of torturing the poor human souls, decides to resign from his position as Great General and founded the newest delivery service in hell. After a long market research, it became evident that cultists all over the world were spending too much time and money trying to gather materials needed for their routine rituals. Now it’s up to our “hero”, Belzebius, to help his former commander general and now CEO. To profit as much as we can from humans and bring glory and wealth to hell (although it is still uncertain what use there is for money in hell).

Development team: @gilgadev, @holysparks, @andruid and @lindoten

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/saas-summoning-as-a-service

https://games-ever-made.itch.io/saas-summoning-as-a-service

Just finished polishing up our game, Where the Hell is my Lawyer!?! Ludum Dare Page

Get summoned to court (literally) and use your silver-tongue to win your client's case. Either win the case for client, or go back to the mines of hell!

Let us know what you think, and we hope you enjoy :heart:

The archmage is hungry. There's only one thing you can do...

Summoning a pizza :pizza:

Another jam in the books and I feel like we are getting better at this.

The scope for the game was just right for two days and we are quite happy with the results.

But now it's your turn. Can you summon the pizza?

Our entry, We Blessed Few, is complete! http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/$386953

Aspire for vocational greatness by summoning your angelic underlings to answer prayers... while also minding the imminence of the Quarterly Review. Will you make or break it within the toil of middle management?

Just adding final touches to our beauty "Spellbinder"

It's not finished or polished but it's playable and we're happy with the result (which is what counts the most). There were a few more tasks on our to-do list (animation, more levels, a final boss) but it's late already, we're exhausted and there were some unlucky internet issues that made things worse.

BUT we learned a few new things/skills along the way which will hopefully be of good use in future Jams. Sooo yeah, feel free to play Demon's Call and tell us what you think. All assets, features, sounds and voices are selfmade.

And now go find that magical frog, I dare you!

Link

Managed to finish my entry lol

https://badpiggy.itch.io/spirit-edge

https://twitter.com/spectrum_cafe/status/1779731484670124155

Streaming gamedev now! Final hours of Ludum Dare, let's go go go!!!!!

https://twitch.tv/squuuidly

It is crazy how fast time flies during a jam! We're feeling a little bit like these SUMOgiris which we just had for dinner:

I just hope they look much nicer in our game!

Although we'll probably won't be able to implement everything initially planned within the remaining 4 hours, we had a fun time working on our idea while seeing other ideas come to life as well. Excited to check out all the games developed during LD55! Until then: Good luck with your submissions everyone!🍀

Let this be a lesson to all of you. You may start out with grand ideas about penguins, and ambitious features like taking penguins off of things and putting them on all sorts of other things, but unless you scope your game properly, you'll quickly find that your game only supports the taking of penguins off very specific things and putting them onto similarly specific other things. And then you realize you haven't even implemented a save system so the player can keep track of where he's placed his penguins over the course of your 1 minute game.

Keep this in mind if you play the resulting prototype of my efforts over the past weekend, and take note of your disappointment as you take a penguin off a thing and discover the limited array of options for the placement of said penguin.

I am truly sorry. I will aim to do better in the future in matters of penguin.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/penguinology

(Note: mouse wheel adjusts sensitivity)

Our team planned to approach this game jam a little bit calmer and slower, since all of us were at a party at friday and had to help a friend move on saturday. We planed to just participate for 1,5 Days and set a really low scope.

And surprisingly it seemed to work out pretty well! We had a neat concept of the player summoning bodyparts of a monster that then goes into combat. Before 1/4 of the time passed we already had pretty much all of our mechanics and game logic done. We had designed Bodyparts of 3 different Types and 3 different Rarities, so we even have a cool progression in our game!

It was until the last 1/3 of the time that most of us realised that we planned a crazy amount of assets! We needed at least 2 Assets per Bodypart, per Rarity, per Type! 6 Bodytypes x 3 Rarities x 2 Variations x 3 Types = 108 Assets + 6 Default Bodyparts the Player starts with for a total 114 Assets! I started to realise that we might overscoped this part while i typed all our Stats into Scriptable Objects. Nevertheless our 2 Artists did an amazing job and actually nailed to create this hellish amount!

At least our programmers didnt got bored in the meantime, since we suddenly had a lot of bugs and problems at the end :D

But everything worked out well at the end! Check out our Game Chimera Combat

The last time we participated was two years ago, we did not finish anything and had to cancel pretty early. This time we had very little time due to other obligations and still managed to scope down to something that looks mostly finished at first glance. If you play it you'll notice a lot of missing polish but the microgame works so neatly in small working packages that we might actually continue working on it here and there.

Anyways, here is Jimmy's Wish

We are glad to showcase our original game soundtrack

Stay tuned for more updates!

https://youtu.be/TNnhiQz4SZk

Although we had to cut some systems, that would have made our game complete, we are pleased to present to you "Unstable" You are one of the leading scientists in the world. The portals to the underworld have been opened. Try to summon and evolve a stable monster as first in the world and conquer all of it!

You can play and rate our game at:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/unstable

Little teaser:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2owEpOIX95w

My first game jam completed! Try out Chessummon on itch!

https://def-mane.itch.io/wizard-chess