Ludum Dare 55 was so much fun again, thank you all for making cool games, letting your creativity run wild and being so constructive!

It was our 17th ludum dare, and i can say for sure that these were crucial learning experiences, teaching us how to make games and moving us from hobbyists to full time devs. Our LD48 game "Dome Romantic" later became "Dome Keeper", and i hope we can develop more of our LD games into full versions in the future.

I also hope we'll see many other games from the past LD's and this LD end up on steam!

See you in LD56!

(also, last chance to rate tristram:D!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/isekai-hussle

seems i can't look through all mine comments all in one place (like in the profile)... am i missing something

As it's coming to the end of the Jam I want to say thank you to everyone who has played, rated and left feedback on bergs.

This was mine and my teams first Ludum Dare and it's been such a positive experience for all of us. We plan to work on the game a bit after the jam and polish it up based on everyone's feedback.

If you haven't played it yet, there's still a little bit of time, you can check it out here
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/bergs

Also we'll be playing some more games tonight, so if you want us to play your game, please leave it in the comments! :)

See you in October!

In this game, your goal is to train a neural net to copy your gameplay behaviour. The game is a simple pick up the coins and avoid the enemies game, to keep things simple. The neural net determines which move to do by looking at a 9x9 area around the player. Its output is what move to make: up, down, left, or right. Every time you make a move, a datapoint is added to the training set. Once you think you have enough data, you can summon a replica and see how well it plays.

I wasn't sure this was going to work at all, so I concentrated on making the neural net work. With a few major bugfixes and tweaks, it ran reasonably well. It isn't too difficult to create a replica that completes most levels. The biggest problem is when it keep running around in circles. Usually this can be remedied with more data, sometimes it's best to clear the dataset and start again. You can also try making the replica misbehave, for example by deliberately ramming enemies.

Context area around the player is shown in red.

This is definitely an experimental game. It's rather simple and could use some polish. Sometimes it generates levels where you have to ram enemies to get all the coins. Movement can be a little odd, because you always move from one tile to another. The neural net is limited, because it has to be simple enough train in the browser without long wait times. Nevertheless, I definitely consider this a success, because the replica works well with so little data. The result could be used to create all sorts of interesting variations. For example (and this includes suggestions made by raters, thank you so much for the feedback):

• Make it easy to run the replica multiple times, so you get proper stats
• Load/Save replicas
• A coop game where you cooperate with your replica
• A pvp style game where the replicas are enemies
• incremental training during the game to avoid wait times
• Give access to dataset and neural net hyperparameters, so the game becomes something of a neural net tutorial. You could even have upgrades allowing more neurons.
• A more complex game that makes training the replica more challenging

>>> Play the game here! <<<

My favorite game was https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/would-you-still-love-me-if-i-was-a-worm

2nd: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/demon-days

3rd: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/s-h-e-e-p-sheep-hell-emissaries-eradicate-purity

4th: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/blood-rite

5th: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/duro

Also check out my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/the-seven-crystals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBG_4yz1Ru8

As an older dude with family and commitments, I didn't get to dedicate the usual time I would have done back when I was a single dude, and the time I did have, I wasted on a lot of inconsequential stuff like making the sprite left/right handed or over-thinking the block-placing mechanics :smile_cat:

Anyway -

Play Manifest ( HTML 5 / Mobile )

Jam version screenshots

Use mana to summon blocks , I did add water / fire but ran out of time building levels :sob:

Totems give you infinte mana if in range. Make it to the gate to do some magic stuff etc.

Post-Jam stuff

Added in Water and Fire elemental cats also.

And by accident once lunchtime stumbled on how to make somewhat realistic flames using circle masks.

I think - inspired by aarimous and Brackeys return to YouTube - I might use this as an exercise in learning Godot finally.

It was a pleasure to take part again this year, we're glad you enjoyed our game (for the most part at least) :) we've tested some great games this year, I have graded 73 games, my top 5 - Tristram - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/tristram - Blood Rite - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/blood-rite - Dark Roast Cafe - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/dark-roast-cafe - Devotion A Fairytale - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/devotion-a-fairytale - The Demon Ate My Homework - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/the-demon-ate-my-homework

Not to late to evaluate our game too :p - Fiesta De Las Quimeras - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/fiesta-de-las-quimeras

Good job everyone!

Whew, played 77 whole games this Jam, more than ever before, I think! There were sooo many good ones, too! It's really hard to pick an overall favourite now, and with 5 hours left for voting I hope everyone plays & rates games in Danger category!

However, I would like to shout-out some of my favourites!

• Maybe at the top there is a game by a fantastic team (@norah & the others!) that created 3 games for LD already, all of which I adored. This one even tops previous entries, I think:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/haunted-cartomancy

It's an atmospheric story game, beautiful and polished.

• Another story game that has a cool approach to a mystery and some horror vibes; I played @ava-skoog 's horror game last jam and this one is even better ^^

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

• There were a few games that had drawing as a mechanic, and I found that really cool:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/blakulla Drawing shapes to summon elemental creatures, tower-defense like, pretty art!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/pictomancer Drawing shapes as fast and accurate as you can to score points, it's really cool how the game remembers the way you drew a shape and repeats it exactly. And it also looks super pretty!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/witch-courtier You connect stars in constellations, which is such a magical idea +_+ And it was fun to play!

• One gorgeous game that was recommended to me by my friend, @fupi

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/daemonis-algebra Cute and soooo fun! I loved it!

And of course, my friends' games:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/ordinary-wizards-doing-ordinary-things - Funny game by @fupi in his gorgeous doodle style ~

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/idea-catcher-summoning-tools - Cute puzzle made by a whole team, and @drgcandle as their spokesperson: he was such a pleasure to talk to, and a sweet supporter of my own game!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/emperors-gems - A chill idle game with pretty graphics, by @togis and @burchyn - they played 100(!) games this Ludum Dare and their streams were so fun to watch! ^-^

*That's all for now, thanks to everyone for their great games, I am sure I forgot to mention some of the gems out there, really enjoyed playing so many fantastic entries this month!!

I can't believe our game tallied 95 ratings in this period! Absolutely insane.

One final stretch would be to gain 5 more ratings in this 5 hour period.

That'd be wicked. It'd bring us to a HUNDRED ratings total. Which is beyond our wildest expectations.

Regardless, thank you all so much for all the support!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/bean-and-brew

all good things come to an end eventually, even the jam rating time.

we’ve seen a lot of games, played a lot as well, we’ve found our favorites and receive a lot of feedback. we’d like to say thank you to those who considered our game their favorite – after all that time we’ve been participating in LD it means a lot to us!

i hope LD55 brought you a lot of positive emotions and you have learned new things!

if you’d like to catch up on our game one last time and rate it – go for it!

whoever leaves the 80th review will receive an exclusive picture with our beloved dwarf – do not forget to leave a comment!

PLAY HERE BEFORE THE END

Would appreciate if you'll rate my humble entry: Spectral Fingers

Also sharing my personal top 5 games from this jam

1. Best meditative game, a delightful time-killer: Pictomancer

2. Best narrative-driven game: Voir Dire

3. Best game showcasing a variety of mechanics: Burn with me

4. Best game in terms of animations, graphics, and overall game feel: The Royal Writ

5. Best among games with extremely simple mechanics: Summoning

If you liked my game, you might also like a game with a very similar concept: Spirit, are you there?

The rating time for Ludum Dare 55 is almost up and I finally got the 20 ratings I need, so thank you to everyone who gave my project a chance!

I almost didn't participate this time due to some personal problems, but I'm really happy to have had the opportunity to participate in this jam again!

If you haven't played, there's still time!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/shadow-wizard

Give it a go while we're all waiting for the results!

Please help get them to 20 in time with less than 2 hours left :)

https://www.twitch.tv/xpmonsterx

This is our 2nd time participating in Ludum Dare and this experience taught us a lot. While I wish we would have gotten a lot more done in the jam version, we managed to improve a lot compered to first time. We had a far more complete and polished game this time and we had a ton of fun along the way.

I am very proud of the team and they were able to do, I am glad that I had the occasion to work with both new and old members I wouldn't otherwise have the occasion to, they are all very talented

I am also incredibly happy that people are really liking the art direction. I have made an effort to make something more fun looking and stylized this time so it's amazing seeing that it has paid off

the feedback we received on the game has overwhelmingly positive. we tried to incorporate each of your suggestions in our post jam game. We are always interested in improving and perfecting our craft We are very thankful for each kind comment you left! We appreciate all of it and we hope you had as much fun playing the game as we had making it.

We also got to play so many games from talented devs, it has been an absolute joy getting to experience some of these amazing entries that managed to be very creative even if the theme this time may have been a bit lacking

We hope to participate in the next Ludum Dare, hopefully with a even better game! See you then!

Also! If you wanna play our game you can try it here!

Our game Summonpalooza was such a fun thing to create. Of course as always there were so many things we planned for and we couldn't include due to the timeline... and don't forget about the bugs. Haha it wouldn't be fun without some unexpected behavior!

Amazing Game Jam!

We got to try so many awesome games!

Game jam best thing

The best thing about game jams is the people who participate, that you get to interact we so many awesome people and the work they do... which they are passionate about making games, just like ourselves. It is just amazing!

Things to do better next time

During this game jam my colleague and I decided to add some "jokes" to our game. They were meant to appear randomly so not everyone found them. One of such jokes was that a warrior "Mega Santa" would appear as a boss, and we thought that was hilarious. The problem was that not everyone got those jokes, so we have a considerable amount less votes in the humor category. Now we learnt that we need to make the jokes less random if we want to get votes in all categories!

So! Ludum Dare 55 is almost over meaning that it’s time for me to wrap it all up in a text form and tell you my experiences with both event and my game, theGRIMOIRE_, also paving a path into its future at the end of the article.

Before the jam

My Ludum Dare began with the last round of voting. After failing to finish my 7DRL 2024 game after eight years of being in a gamedev hiatus, I thought that I should give Ludum Dare a chance, after all a lot of my jam games were made during LDs. With that said, themes that I saw in the last round were… not very inspiring to put it lightly. But after “fuck it, we ball” moment, I’ve waited until the theme reveal and…

…“summoning”.

The one that I voted against. Welp.

Brainstorm

I woke up the next morning and started brainstorming the ideas. Summoning, summoning… what can I summon… I could imagine that a lot of people will end up making some sort of rituals, pentagrams, mages and dungeons (and I was oh so right), so I wanted to summon something else. But what?

My first idea was to make something weather-related along the lines of summoning some kind of weather conditions to proceed through the game. With no better idea in mind, I started thinking about the ways I could do the, well, summoning process. Choice fell onto DDR-like sequences of arrows or maybe buttons.

And then it kinda clicked. What if I made what I always do: a puzzle game. I decided to shelf the weather summon idea and thought of the way I can integrate summoning into a puzzle game…

…and that’s how theGRIMOIRE_ was born.

How it started...

...how it ended

What went right / What went wrong

First of all, what I did right is I took one extra day (Monday) to polish my game to a solid condition. A lot of people commented positively on the main menu, some noticed that I implemented key rebinding and I even saw someone using it. Everyone loved the music I’ve found, so it’s also a bonus.

What went wrong, however, is the difficulty curve. As I described it during streams, it was basically 1+1, 2+2, 238 squared, log(x) = y^2, 3+4, solve the world hunger. My game was designed to be “learned by experimenting”, however it lacked certain amount of levels to first force player through the mechanics to show them that they can do this or that.

My biggest issue was, of course, lack of undo feature. Many many times people had to restart the whole level and those groans of disappointment ringed in my ears for a very long time.

I personally think that a lot of frustration people experienced during puzzle solving in my game was due to lack of the ability to undo what they just did. I thought it will ruin the puzzle aspect and without the undo players will be sort of forced to think twice. What it actually did was punishing players for the experimentation. You know, the thing that I was actively encouraging people to do with the game design. I added undo feature in the post-jam version and, well, lesson learned, oh so learned…

Despite all of stuff that went wrong and frustrations along the way, one thing was interesting to see: people wanted to go on. Some had to force themselves to stop because puzzles were taking too much time to solve, but a lot of people was interested enough to spend time experimenting and solving puzzles which was very warming to see.

After all, I enjoy it when people play my games. Isn’t that what we are making them for?

The End?

And that’s it! Ludum Dare 55 is only hours away from closing its doors, the community will go into hibernation mode until the next one. It’s sad, but inevitable. And it’s sort of the vibe I love jams for.

What does it mean for theGRIMOIRE_ though?

To be honest, when I finished working on the entry I already had a thought at the back of my head that I really, really love the concept that I ended up with. After seeing people playing it and genuinely enjoying the puzzles, I decided that that’s what I want to do.

I want to make theGRIMOIRE_ into a full game.

I want to add more depth to it, more levels, more mechanics, polish its graphics, its engine, add story, playtest it to the right amount of difficulty.

And I want to release it on Steam.

That’s my goal. I don’t know how much time it will take me and I can’t imagine the struggles I’ll have to go through building a community, interacting with it, working on the game, marketing it.

For now I know only one thing.

I want to see theGRIMOIRE_ on Steam. I think it’s the project that deserves it.

And I already started working on it from scratch, building it properly this time without cutting corners and hacking features on top of each other. This might not be my magnum opus, but it’s the game that I want to make and that I want to finish and release.

In case you are interested in seeing how the project will evolve, I welcome you to follow me on social media, like Mastodon (I’m here more often), Twitter (less often, but still poking my head in here), itch.io, read my blog and also maybe join my very very very young and small Discord server that I plan to use both for news, images, videos and for the playtesting/bug reporting purposes in the future when I’ll have a game in a proper state.

Thank you so much for reading it and playing my game! See you on the flip side!

Filter games by "Danger" and try to play and rate some. There is still time!

We're super duper grateful for all the support on our entry 'Bean and Brew' the support has been unbelievable!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/bean-and-brew

Thanks to everyone who played my entry * Labyrinth of Fiends! *

If you haven't played it yet, in short its a proceudrally generated dungeon crawler where you kill and summon your own fiends, find the key, and make your way to the exit to the next floor.

I've released a post jam update to the game including some improvements that couldn't make it in before the deadline, as well as some of the feedback that was left on the game!

Some of the most common feedback was that the summoned fiends should follow the player. Instead of just changing the default behavior, I've added a few new variations of the summoned fiend that cost more souls:

The Silver Fiend follows you for a cost of 2 souls, they will try to stay within a few tiles of the player:

The Gold Fiend is more aggressive, and will hunt down enemy Fiends on their own will!

Another common piece of feedback I got was the lack of difficulty. In general, the normal enemy fiends will now slowy inch their way to the player. In the addition to that, I've also added an enemy variation that is as aggressive as the Gold fiends, but will target the player instead. These will start to appear in the higher floor numbers.

They are just Green:

And just the balance out the increased difficulty a bit, when entering a new floor the players heal some health based on the number of active summons that were out when reaching the exit, but this effect is diminished as the floor number increases. Hopefully making the game more difficult, but also providing some healing will make the game feel a little more engaging.

Also, the game finally has sound effects! (still no music yet...)

Play the updated version here!

Play original Jam Submission here!

Ludum Dare voting is almost over! What a competition it has been

If you still need to rate games, please rate our game Beansters. We need a couple more, if you don't mind

Peeps, the rating is over but I can still rate games, is this intended or did I miss something 😂 sorry first timer here 🙏

I started writing a post-jam update this morning... and then realized it was too late. Oh well.

Also, it turns out the LD website doesn't have a feature that automatically collapses long posts. To prevent my post from taking up too much space, I've moved the content outside of the post-jam update to the comments section.

In brief, here are the updates:

• Added mouse control. Now you can play using either the WASD+IJKL control scheme or the mouse's left and right buttons! Additionally, there's a small icon in the top left of the screen indicating which direction is W. Plus, you can now move the window by sliding the mouse or using the arrow keys to achieve the same effect. (Regarding the camera controls: I tried several flat perspectives, but the occlusion problem was just as severe... and some textures looked really odd... so after much consideration, I decided to stick with the 2.5D isometric view.)

• Optimized several level designs. The overall difficulty is higher now (doge)

• Added two challenge levels C1, C2 and a hidden level E1, as well as a mysterious hidden boss. These levels don't introduce many new mechanisms, and the difficulty isn't as high as levels 8 or 9. (Although there's a lot of potential in the gameplay, the current plot framework can only accommodate so much content... I might create a more complete story if I update it in the future)(And Argave still hasn't become a boss, wasting my character design...)

• Some texture optimizations. (Regarding BGM: I'm learning to make music... but... let's leave it for the next game jam...)

• Improved compatibility. Now it ensures a better gaming experience for most browser players. Please feel free to feedback if there are still issues. (The browser save still fails. If you need to load a game, it is recommended to download it to your local device. I will try my best to provide versions for various platforms.)

I would like to draw a new cover. But there's no time now.

There will likely be a few more small updates, followed by a brand new version. It might be released on Steam afterward, but updates might be slow. I hope so. Sigh.

This was my first game jam. Thank you to everyone who played and scored my game. Thank you all for your encouragement and constructive feedback!

Due to the reasons mentioned at the beginning, the reflection and retrospective can be found in the comments section :D

READ MORE...

I hope this is allowed otherwise please just yeet the post :D I don't even have Twitter yet myself BUT will be creating an account in the next few days and I really would love to stay connected until next LD and follow everyone's endeavors no matter if code, music, art or something else entirely, so I was wondering if people would be so kind as to leave their Twitter handles in the comments~

:love_letter: :heart: :rose: :frog:

:flag_gb: Hello everyone. This event is now closed - and as usual I would like to post some words just to say Thank you. The theme really sucked - I did not like it this time, but it's the game. Finally I don't complain because I saw many interesting projects - and mine is not so bad. I plan to create a full game according to this first release - a solid puzzle game with more levels and more features. Stay tuned... I hope that this year I can finalise two projects - this one Virtual Church of the Digital Goddess - and StarDust. I wish you the best. Stay safe - and see you later alligator ++

:flag_ru: Всем привет. В конце концов, это мероприятие закрыто, и как обычно, я бы хотел написать короткое сообщение, чтобы сказать вам спасибо. Тема мне не понравилась, но я не могу обойти - это так. Наконец-то я не жалуюсь, потому что увидел много интересных проектов - и мой не так плох. Я планирую разработать полноценную игру по этому первому выпуску — головоломку с большим количеством уровней и большим количеством функций. Оставайтесь со мной... Надеюсь, что в этом году мне удастся завершить два проекта - Виртуальная Церковь Цифровой Богини - и СтарДуст - Звездная Пыль. Желаю вам всего наилучшего. Берегите себя. Пока пока ++

:flag_fr: Salut à tous. Finalement, l'événement a passé et comme à mon habitude, je voudrais poster ici quelques mots de remerciement à chacun. Objectivement, je n'ai pas aimé le thème, mais c'est comme ça, parfois, on ne peut pas l'éviter. Je ne m'en plains pas trop puisque j'ai vu ici beaucoup de projets intéressants et le mien n'est pas si mauvais. J'ai décidé d'en faire quelque chose de plus solide - un jeu de réflexion avec plus de niveaux et plus de fonctionnalités. Soyez à l'écoute... J'espère que cette année, je parviendrai à terminer deux projets - Virtual Church of the Digital Goddess et StarDust. Je vous souhaite le meilleur. Soyez prudents. À bientôt ++

As they say... :smileycat: как говорят... :smileycat: et comme on dit... :smiley_cat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KodNFsP6r88

So, now that the LudumDare rating period is over, here's the post-jam version of Salmoning: the Racing update.

• Making custom racing tracks (use the phone)
• Racing each other
• Doing a wheelie now makes you turn faster
• Spectating (+ to change spectated person, 0 to reset)
• Remap controls (use the phone)
• New camera angle

Hey all! Hope you had a great LD55. Now that voting is over, it's time to share the improved version of our mystery solving, ghost-summoning platform game.

Thanks to everyone who played and gave feedback during the jam, and Come play here if you want to give the improved version a shot!

can't wait to see the result

I made some little post-compo tweaks to my game, including a new title screen featuring everyone that's played the game so far!

Here's the game if you'd like to try it! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/echos-of-players-past

What's a Top Fifteen?... I wanted to make a fishing game.

Ratings don't matter friends, anyone or group who submitted anything, (in compo, jam or extra), is a winner in my eyes! It doesn't matter if your physics are janky or the game has no end, it doesn't matter if you have bad audio and a laggy WebGL build! Who cares?... You got in, tried some stuff, made a thing and then put it out unto the ether! Good Works Winners!

I had as much fun playing the games as I did making, and I played about 70 or 80 games. I mismanaged my time in this as much as the jam, too, as I have still a list of about 30 games I have as yet to get to. For that I am sorry.

Thank you to anyone who got to my game and to everyone who gave great feedback and comment! Much Love for that!

This Jam was great, because of you! Yes, You!

Maybe we'll meet again in October :)

my game

https://empyreans.itch.io/death-beckons

Toodaloo!

I accidentally made it framerate-dependant, what a rookie mistake! And I'm fixing that way after ratings are over lol. Anyway, Hentoad should now play much more consistently with mouse and keyboard or touchscreen!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/the-adventures-of-a-shaman

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/the-adventures-of-a-shaman

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/the-adventures-of-a-shaman

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/the-adventures-of-a-shaman

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/the-adventures-of-a-shaman

too bad results are on twitter X instead of being on a website made specifically to host the jam

Impromptu Ludum Dare result watching stream

Yea it comes out in like 30 minutes but lessgooooo

http://twitch.tv/squuuidly

that was crazy

As someone trying to become a more skilled writer, nowhere do I feel more inept than writing the first sentence in a postmortem. With every Ludum Dare postmortem I write, I take as many notes as possible so I have thoughts to reflect on for my next game. Thoughts such as: "Focus on a single unique game mechanic instead of story elements". So anyway, here's how made a game that is primarily cutscenes, completely disregarding my own advice.

My Ludum Dare 53 game, "Inbox Fool" had a lot of success through the comically foolish villain. I've been wanting to make another game with a good dynamic between two characters, though of course it's hard to do that without focusing on the story.

While brainstorming for ideas during the theme voting, I had Idea that I've been wanting to try, which is an escort mission from the perspective of someone trying to die. I haven't played many games with escort missions in a long long time, but I'll never forget the Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage escort mission where you guide an alchemist through the worst possible route to free some guy whose feet are trapped in stone. For those who haven't played the game, the route looks something like this:

Surely the alchemist is doing this on purpose.

That, in combination with the comical cutscene of his death, the camera fade out/in, and the movement of the camera before the failure dialogue... I was really itching to parody it. The funny thing about the failure cutscenes in Spyro 2 and 3, is just how long some of them can be. This sparked the idea of the hero shouting and complaining the whole time you bumble around with your buffoonery leading to what really feels like an intentional death, and a tragically long cutscene where a hero could intervene, while he just idles in the background witnessing it, because "cutscene".

Trouble with the trolley, eh?

The icing on the cake. The coup de grâce. Saying the stupidest possible line to begin the failure dialogue with the hero. For my game, I opted for a short and sweet, "Ooops! I exploded!". I think the "oops!" really sells it, as it implies it was an accident.

With that, the core idea for the game is all set. You are a demon who was summoned to fulfill some task, but in a twist on classic escort missions, you are the one trying to fail, while a hero tries to save you. After failure, you get to say the silly line, and the hero gets increasingly upset.

The Art

It's not the order of operations most Compo devs would choose, but I always begin Ludum Dare by drawing the characters, any necessary animations, and some basic ground textures/decorations. I have a habit of polishing as early as possible, which I think leads to better overall presentation of the final game. Why even make placeholder graphics (or test things with untextured characters/environments)?

The 4 main characters I needed to draw was The Hero, The Demon, An Enemy, and The Boss.

Recently, I've had an idea for a card game, so I've been staying up late drawing funny characters. As my art style devolves, I've had a lot of fun drawing exceptionally short characters, many of which have giant beards:

I decided this art style would be a good fit for the demon you play as:

The boss

I've recently done my first game jam in a team, with my friend ChillLemon. They're just getting into game development, so for Minijam 152, they did all the programming while I did the art and music. Our amazing game, Dwarf Game with Combat vs. a Necromancer and also there's a Gun and the Camera can move and the Dwarf is a Hero featured a powerful necromancer, and I really liked the design of him, so I gave him an upgrade for an epic reprise.

I was joking with a friend as I designed this guy, that all his belongings have horns because they were demonic summons. How funny would it be for a boss fight against this guy, and he's like "Nooo! My demonic hat! I summoned that one years ago!" "Nooo, my demonic 401(K)!"

The Hero

Keep in mind, my character art is usually within a 64 by 64 pixel grid, or even smaller, making animations on the scale of 512 by 512 pixel character is... so much more work!

I'm happy with how it turned out, though I don't foresee myself making characters of this scale in future game jams.

The level

While we're on the topic of the graphics, I also made a giant tree for decoration surrounding the stage. I wanted this to be a pine tree, though I unfortunately have spent the past 5 and a half years drawing specifically non-pine trees. In fact, the most recent pine tree I drew was for Ludum Dare 41:

It's pretty much the same style as the LD41 tree, but with my current art skills. I wanted to put a lot of emphasis on the shape of the tree, and making the lighting look good. I added a lot of solid black sections, which isn't something I usually do with my lighting. I like how it turned out!

I also decorated the level with a bunch of grass, which is mostly 1000 randomly placed large strips of "grass texture":

Anyway, with all that said, I mostly wanted to share the new stuff I was trying with my art. Let's actually talk about the goals I had for this game, and what went right/wrong.

Goals

• I have been struggling to make my games intuitive. This is something I thought I overcame around LD 43.
• I wanted to focus on humor and audio again. My previous LD game was a bit lacking there.
• I wanted the option to rebind controls.

Making the game intuitive

Since my previous two games were "puzzle platformers" (generously using the word "puzzle" there) I was hesitant to over-explain things, as part of the fun is the "Ah-HA! moment" of solving the puzzle. This time around, the game was very much not a puzzle game, so with every level, I established the goals in a popup menu.

And even still, I dropped the ball by miscommunicating. In level 3, you need to collect 6 sticks of dynamite, then get smacked by the enemies. During the dialogue, your demon says "I'll need to craft an explosive!" which lead to me writing "Craft an explosive" as one of the goals for the level. There is no crafting mechanic, you just need to collect 6 sticks of dynamite.

Furthermore, while watching everyone play my game I was shocked to see how few people tried getting smacked before collecting 6 sticks! After all, this game is about failing missions! Wouldn't the first step be to at least see what happens? I made it so getting hit before collecting all the dynamite would result in a much-needed speed boost.

This is feedback that I would have absolutely seen if I had the chance to get people to play it before the deadline, but alas.

Thankfully, that seems to be the only point of confusion in the entire game.

Focus on humor and audio

My sense of humor is... dumb. I enjoy absurdism more than any other kind of humor, and I think it shows. If you were to ask me how to define humor, I would say it's all about setting an expectation and then subverting it.

Allow me to break this one down for you. The necromancer has summoned a choir to sing his boss fight music, and their vocal warmup involves (in descending order: Tenor 1, Tenor 2, Baritone, Bass) the group saying "laaaa" in their respective range. Except the baritone instead says "I'm a baritone!" in a very straightforward non-melodic way. (all the while, the remaining vocalists are still holding their extended laaa's) That was my favorite joke of the game.

I also think it's relatable for people stuck on an escort mission to eventually want to just shoot the escortee yourself out of rage, so I made a level specifically with the hero killing you as the punchline.

In my "foolish villain" style of comedy, The Necromancer leaves his power source just lying around, with a big sign saying "The source of my power. Do NOT steal! ♥~ Necromancer" with follow-up signs reading "If you steal that gemstone, you would gain all my powers, leaving me with none!" and "That would be bad!". I think it's funny for a guy to tell you how to defeat him. Like- imagine fighting a guy, and then he charges an attack saying "During this animation, I'm VULNERABLE!". It's both good game design and absolutely hilarious.

Then of course, the game ends with you scamming the hero out of his share of the experience points when you defeat The Necromancer. The hero rants as you fly away. Good stuff.

Acapella music

This was my fifth LD in a row where I added an acepella track. Though the music track isn't super funny, I think it's a great subversion from what people expect out of a Ludum Dare game. "Who the heck has time for an acapella track in a Compo submission, and why is that a recurring priority?" I have a lot of fun making the acapella music in my games, and this time I ended up making it in the final 2 hours. For the acapella music in my LD53 game I re-used the synth version for the title music. This time around, I already made title music for this game that I really liked, so this time around it was a new track made just for the acepella!

Looking at the music right now, I realize I forgot to do some cool stereo effect, with one set of vocals specifically in one ear, and another in another. Oh well- Next time! The actual goal with my acapella music this time around was the focus on chords, which I think I did a good job with.

On the topic of audio, I voice acted every cutscene in the game, which was by a wide margin the most voice lines I had recorded for a game jam! The bulk of this game's development was writing a cutscene engine, but I think it paid off. I know, during my LD46 game I also spent most of the time making a cutscene engine, which resulted in a buggy, unfinished mess. I'm very happy to say that this game not only has fully voice acted cutscenes, but a finished game as well!

Rebindable controls

You know, up until last ludum dare, I never considered how important this is. Sure, I'd watch twitch streams, and they would always comment on the WASD not fitting their keyboard, but they always found some way to work around that. It wasn't until my left handed friend played Ribbon 2, where the WASD + spacebar combo made it much harder for them.

I wanted to make sure people could rebind their controls, so the game opens up with a control rebinding menu.

Somehow I forgot the most important key rebinding feature: changing mouse sensitivity! I had 3 volume sliders; making another slider would have been so easy if I had only considered!

On the topic of minor shortcomings, why do I keep making games where letting go of spacebar results in a short hop? The amount of people who short-hopped the final jump of the game, thus falling short at the end of a platforming course (thus needing to scale it again) was well into the double digits. This same short-hop feature resulted in people not getting the final collectible in Ribbon 2 as well. I know making every jump the exact same height (regardless of how long you press the jump button) feels wrong, but why is that exactly what I need?

Though to be completely honest, this was a really sloppy character movement script for platforming purposes, and I probably should have polished that a bit more.

Reflection

When I created my LD53 game, Inbox Fool, I hadn't noticed at the time just how brilliantly I implemented the banter from the villain. In that game, stepping on a giant button in each level would play a cutscene on a TV in the background, where the villain taunts you, or drops some lore / bad jokes. The story was literally happening in the background while gameplay was never interrupted. Now take a look at Demon Well's cutscenes, which come in 2 flavors: Dialogue, and Unskippable.

In my opinion, the greatest shortcoming of the unskippable cutscenes isn't the lack of skip functionality, rather the lack of subtitles. That being said, there is a nearly minute long opening cutscene that cannot be skipped, which is really unfortunate (especially for people wanting to speedrun this game). Then again, one of the jokes with this game was a comically long unskippable cutscene of the demon dying, so perhaps the only cutscene that needs skipping is the opening.

And if we honestly talk about the quality of the gameplay outside of the cutscenes, it's not really anything to write home about. It's a route-optimizing walking simulator with some rough platforming in the final stage. If I were to expand on this concept, I would need to make the gameplay a lot more interesting.

I think I might have taken care of my itch to make a story driven game? I still have some really cool ideas for a few, that (if the theme comes close enough) I might consider making, though this was my third LD in a row where the theme was a stretch, so I might focus on theme next time.

Now, reflection isn't exclusively about being negative all the time. I want to talk about what I think worked well.

This is by far the funniest Ludum Dare game I have made. I set out to make a funny game, and I can gladly say that goal was met.

This is by far the most voice acting I have recorded for a Ludum Dare. I'm far from a professional, but I'm having a good time!

This is by far the most story I've had in a Ludum Dare. A lot of my games have you thrown in the middle of some plot (if one exists) though this game establishes the story, builds to a climax, and then resolves.

This is by far the prettiest level/environment I've made in a Ludum Dare. The tufts of grass, the pine trees, the well, and the skybox (Oh the SKYBOX!). I made a really cozy level!

Reflection part 2: Thoughts for next time

Okay, so what did I learn?

Allow me to compile a list of things I told myself to consider for future Ludum Dare's that I disregarded this time around.

"Focus on a single mechanic, and let the story come second".

You know, amazingly, despite my postmortem for both LD53 and LD54 commenting on how that advice made for a better game, I completely tossed that piece of advice aside here. I said it earlier, but the actual gameplay is lackluster. Seriously, focus on a single mechanic next time.

"Get feedback before the deadline"

Now, in my defense, my roommates were out all weekend (until briefly after submission hour), so I didn't really have anyone available to test it out quickly IRL. I probably could have hit up some friends on discord though.

So let's recap where my game had shortcomings, which this type of feedback would highlight. * Level 3's objective said to "craft an explosive", which isn't even a feature. (remove that line) * People dodged the speed boosts in level 3. (Replace that removed line with information about the speed boosts) * The camera didn't have a sensitivity slider. (Copy / paste existing volume slider code) * Short hops resulted in people failing to make the final jump of the game. (Remove short hops)

Every single one of these could have been easily fixed if I had known about it. Every single one.

"Make sure the camera isn't jank"

Ahhhhh! I cannot believe I forgot to add a sensitivity slider. Especially after the camera was jank in my previous LD game. I can say "In my defense, I have never made a game with a mouse-controlled camera before" but I've played a bunch, and I always change my sensitivity, so no- I dropped the ball. I spent a lot of time preventing the camera from clipping into objects though, so in some ways this camera wasn't as jank as it could have been!

So what advice do I offer to my future self, despite the high probability of it being ignored anyway?

The majority of this Ludum Dare was spent writing a cutscene engine. That was pretty far from the most fun I've had with a game jam. Honestly, designing bite-sized levels during LD53 was a lot of fun. I want to make another game with an interesting mechanic, broken into a series of small levels. 3D games can be a bit overwhelming to make in a weekend, and I think my game design skills are a bit more fine-tuned to 2D games anyway.

And with that, I brace myself for the results.

Results

21st overall. This is honestly the worst I have done in a long time, which- I understand. I've been commenting on how rough the non-cutscene parts were this entire postmortem.

3rd in audio.

2nd in humor.

Reflection part 3, and a big ol' conclusion

Well, I got trophies in the categories I was aiming for, so that's nice!

I think I'll be making more 2D stuff, unless it absolutely must be 3D (like Ribbon). I'm way more familiar with working in a 2D environment, and I think that would let me work at a faster pace, which lets me make larger/better/more-polished/more-innovative games. Plus, working with shaders in 2D land is way easier, and I could absolutely boost my graphics ratings with some neat shaders.

It's nice to see that my sense of humor is still doing well. In my postmortem for LD53, I mentioned how I wanted to do more foolish villains, and this time around the dynamic I had between the characters has absolutely inspired me to make more games with them. I want more cutscenes that don't take control away from the player. Whether it's a villain, or some wacky 4th wall break, those kind of cutscenes seem to be the place to inject my bad jokes, so I'd like to experiment more with cutscenes. That idea is definitely in conflict with the notes I took though, seeing how the process of making a cutscene engine isn't a lot of fun? I'll try and get creative with it.

I think that's all I have to say for this Ludum Dare. Until next time!

☃

It's always a pleasure being a part of this community and seeing how many talented people are out there.

I saw some really unique, fun, hilarious, and impressive games this LD, as usual! Congrats to all the winners!

Thanks to those people that played, rated, and left feedback on my game "Arcane Outlaw" -- it always means a lot! Have a great summer and we'll see y'all in October!!

Thank you everyone for your ratings ++

While waiting for ludum dare results I hacked together a little tool to see graphs of your past participations, it only works on this website (so since ld38 I think) https://nusan.fr/ldstats/ And if you want to take a look at my satanic programming game, that got 18th place in jam, check it out here: Path of Aratron

Here's a fancy chart representing the average ranks of my Ludum Dare games. Thanks to my team and the players for an awesome Ludum Dare!

Well, what can I say? Even though I've cut some corners, it seems people are warming up to my game more. Well, what else do you expect from the intended grand finale to a saga? And yes, I don't mind the rankings, since it's a natural consequence of having more entrants than before.

And as for how I've fared in the LDs I've participated so far...

(via https://nusan.fr/ldstats/)

I knew I would be getting better and better, and my skills definitely didn't rust at all, if the overall reception to my games is anything to go by.

So, you're most likely asking what will be the direction for Project Missionary. Now that LD55 is over, I can now feel free to make an enhanced edition, with all the stuff I've had to leave out, including Joseph Craig's sprites and extras such as author's notes and a music room, reintegrated. And in the near future, I will compile all five games in The Hizzokahpolis Chronicles (Bittersweet Harvest, Occhiolism, Project Missionary, Sunday at the Memories, and The Classiest Act) into one game, with additional plots, reworked sprites, and voice acting. I just have to pitch the idea to someone who can fund all of these, of course.

Until next time.

Results are in... We did.. surprisingly well?? Top 14.2% overall? Woah! Thanks for enjoying our game :D

It was tough but really fun and had a load of enjoyment participating alongside some friends. Play our game if you'd like: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/hells-on-hold

For now though... here's a totally real ritual

next time

WOW, I am so blown away. I never make it into the top 10% for anything, let alone within the top 20. I made The Summoned, a collection of 13 dice games, and I just... wow! I've loved LD for many years now; I used to make flash games but have made analog tabletop games for the last several. I always figured that put me in some weird space that was outside of most LD players, understandably at that: it's so much easier to just play a game in a browser or download and play than to print two pages, find 12 dice, and read a bunch of instructions and stuff.

I cannot tell you how much this means to me, I'm so freaking ecstatic and just OMG OMG OMG.

I'll be celebrating later tonight and tomorrow after I get some stuff done, I just can't believe it!

The post-jam edition is still free on Itch through the weekend too 🥳

Ooof. Almost got to top 15. Next time... Next time...

Pretty satisfied with how well I did this time in the compo. I first joined in LD52 where I got 66th overall and 15th in innovation, and my scores have never been that good since. I was hoping to beat my previous innovation score but I'm happy I at least tied it and got a pretty good score for theme as well. Getting a better overall score will by my goal for future LD's.

I think I'll probably stick with 2d for future jams, unless I have a really good idea that needs to be 3d. I had just learned vulkan a couples weeks before the jam and set up a 3d framework using it, so I wanted to try it out. I don't think I lost too much time to doing things in 3d or with vulkan, but it could have looked a lot nicer in 2d for the same effort.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/name-is-the-game

Game design teacher here! I was pretty pleased with my Wannabe Warlock's overall performance here in this competition - a very nice 34th place in Humor, and a serviceable 244th in Fun and 204th Overall. Not bad for just my second LD, eh?

And then I saw the results for GLORBLE BRAWL... https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/$385075 ...which was, in fact, made by a current (soon to be graduated) high school student of mine.

Seeing it get 30th in Humor admittedly stung a bit. Young man out-funnied the emcee. It happens. But what's this? 11th in Fun?! 35th Overall?! :skull: :skull: :skull: It seems the student has become the master. I think we might all be playing this kid's games in a few years.

Thank you so much to everyone who played my game! I couldn't be happier with the results of my first ludum dare.

a trophy for my silly little game, what an honor 😭

Thanks again to

Funklord_Earl for the music (https://www.youtube.com/@FunklordEarl/),

Kenney for being them

And everyone at RVA game jams for all the help B)

Thank you to everyone who played our game!

Given that my previous games I didn't bother getting rated as I wasn't too happy with how they turned out myself, I'm pretty happy with the results this time. I think there were a few misses in terms of not leaving myself enough time to implement AI or sound effects, but I also spent like... 8 hours on stuff that can basically be classified as "learning Godot", so that bodes well for the next jam I participate in.

Here's our results for seance. We got 3 golds (nice to get the Mood gold since I never targeted it before and may never again)

Post mortem:

Overall my feelings are - I'm generally disappointed in my performance. Getting the best spread of any entry in the jam but still losing in 'Overall', seems like my fault - fun was the deciding category and we were only 24th. There were design choices that I could've made to improve our fun - better onboarding - but I didn't have enough time to tutorialise.

Jam was to the wire, I spent almost 2 days just writing the dialogue and making it connect, directing the voice actors, animating everything and coding the core mechanic. Then on day 3 I had to write my first visual novel system from scratch, which left very little room for onboarding, unfortunately. I realised the major problems we made from watching streams later but no one playtested it pre release so by then it was too late.

Either way it gives a reason to keep trying I guess. My congratulations of course to the jam (and compo) winners though - good job gang, keep on jamming.

To be quite honest I had low expectations for this one! I felt like every aspect of the game had something kinda off about it. Every feature was a bit undercooked, and every gameplay mechanic a bit underthought. Though honestly, I'm really happy that people managed to find charm in my messy lil game!! ^D^ Ninth in humor is a pleasant surprise as well since I pushed harder for that this time! Thank you very much to all who played and gave me valuable feedback!! You are all my new best friends in the world now. :love_letter:

Honestly, it's a bit disappointing. The feedback was pretty good and the overall result is solid - definitely not The Best Game, but still. Well, next time will be better :-)

Lets start with the fan art! I drew a doodle of a character from every game I played this event:

Featuring: - Midnight Cheese Quest by @archaeognathus - Demon Delivery Center by @yanakill-lullanita, @rocio-michi-ojeda, @emiliano-martel, @alexasl, @malcontento, @nicol3, @rodrijsolar, @briansuhit, @sofisofix, @franco-farallo - Void Beast by @azure-drake - Ancistroides Folus by @othervoyceowl, @retcongreg, @soundgnome - To do magic, please dance by @syudzius, @owly, @shishandr, @yngvarr - Throes of the Javelin by @idan9000, @justin-ma-wav, @skransow, @matterlinx - Raising the Bread by @exteegi, @kevin-joseph, @fengfuru, @olsonexi, @zuhairghias - Demon Well by @100th-coin - Druid Island by @bwalter - Summoning Song by @paul-nadan - Protect the Realm by @nnnnneeeedddd - Stars Align by @cassowary - Tiny Summons by me

Congrats to everybody here! Lots of great entries this time around, and as always, I wish I had the time to play more (but it certainly goes slower when you're drawing everybody).

Onto the post-mortem!

Choosing an idea

The theme always sucks

The night of the theme reveal for "Summoning," I was not finding a lot of inspiration. After some brewing, I didn't have a lot of ideas, but I did have a goal:

• The core gameplay should be the summoning. I didn't want to tack summoning as a mechanic onto a game where you're primarily shooting, or racing, or platforming. The core gameplay should be around choosing what to summon, or how.

Ultimately, I went to sleep on Friday without a firm direction.

When I woke up, I decided to make a multiplayer Twitch-plays auto-battler.

Multiplayer isn't that bad, right?

So normally, it would be.

On game jam timelines, networked multiplayer is really tough. For a relatively simple game, you usually need: - A dedicated server to run the game logic on - The client code that shows your graphics to the player, which you somehow need to keep in sync with the other clients - A way to get the information from each client to the server, and then out to the other clients - If you don't want the game to be super laggy and unresponsive, some kind of literal time travel so the client can anticipate what it thinks the game will be like before running it past the server

Fortunately, I had a strategy that would require much less work for me. And that is to let the fine programmers at Twitch.tv write my networking stack for me.

By making my game a Twitch plays, I can get a lot for free.

• The game can play an arbitrary number of players
• Players can play on a variety of devices
• There is one authoritative game state (the video stream) so multiple clients don't need to stay in sync
• Best of all, I only need to program one "direction" of information flow (reading chat messages). The streaming platform handles getting the game to the players!

Even better, I had some base code from my Github Game Off entry a few years ago to jumpstart the process.

It does have some limitations:

• Players can only use text commands
• There's a several-second delay, so nothing can be realtime
• Players can see everyone's chat messages, so no secret roles/information

What went well

Lots of things!

• The visuals: I'm happy with how the game looks this time, with the bouncy animations, clean UI, and cute character designs. For better or for worse, I tend to experiment with art and make games that look very different from one another, but this one "worked."
• The Twitch integration: Everything went smoothly with integrating the Twitch chat. I hosted the game in a Microsoft Azure VM (with some free sign-up computing credit) so it could run 24/7 despite my spotty internet.

What could have gone better

• The hosting: I spent about five hours Saturday night setting up hosting with Digital Ocean, only to run into performance problems that I couldn't seem to fix. Only after wasting that time did I try to set up Azure, which took under an hour.
• The scope: Partially due to wasting half of Saturday, and the extra programming overhead for the Twitch integration, I didn't get as much content into the game as I'd hoped. A few cut feature ideas include:
  • Round modifiers that present more challenge or diversity
  • Better feedback for chat commands, including showing who is on what team
  • A more equitable way to split team funds, rather than first-come-first serve
• The enemy AI: Due to an unfortunate radians-to-degrees math mixup, ranged units don't try to circle foes from a distance; they always try to go directly to their right (awkwardly giving the team that starts on the right an advantage).

Takeaways

I'm very happy with my results this time around, including 3rd place in Graphics and 3rd place in Innovation. Thanks so much everybody who played my game, and to the additional support I've gotten from the streaming community in the form of random raids (almost always when I'm not actively in the stream!).

Some takeaways from this event:

Try new things, but prepare to scope down

I don't regret trying something different for this jam, and I liked the game I made. But particularly in the Compo, being ambitious in one area means making sacrifices in others.

For networking and integrations, do your setup before the jam

I came partially prepared with some base code, but I probably should have been confident with a cloud hosting platform if I wanted to do this for a 48-hour jam. Even an hour of extra setup you could have done beforehand is painful when it's 2% of your jam window.

Study frog anatomy

Eh, close enough.

If you still want to play Tiny Summons, do it soon! The 24/7 stream will go down next Saturday before Microsoft decides to start charging me real money.

Here's to a great LD55, and an even better LD56 this October! ☃︎

a post mortem:

what we did right: we made a game about worms 🪱

what we did wrong: nothing because we won

what we learned: make games about worms

We‘re very thankful for all of you peeps voting and pushing us to get even a better game out. Even though it’s the end to ludumdare 55 it’s the beginning of polishing and finishing BloodRite. Wanna follow our path to a full release? Join us here:

https://dekisenpaitm.itch.io/bloodrite

Wanna see all the little details happening:

https://instagram.com/dekisenpaitm

See you on the 4th of October!

Thank you for rating - even if the most categories are not so good, i got some good points in humor which is pretty nice. As this was my first godot game i am really satisfied with it. Also its one of my best "April LDJAM" games from rating lol.

See on the next jam :)

I'd like to thank you all for your kind words in the comments and for your great ratings! I'm happy you liked my little game :black_heart:

If you haven't played it yet, you can still catch it up!

Super happy with the results for Eldritch Vessel Academy:

Overall: Top 4% (Still super happy about this one)

Fun: Top 2% (Level balancing and a whole day for polish paid off!)

Innovation: Top 32% (Well... fair enough lmao)

Theme: Top 8% (Not sure how we got here, but I'll take it)

Graphics: Top 25% (// TODO: Learn how to draw better pixel art so we have all scores below 10% next time!)

Audio: Top 3% (PLAY YOUR GUITAR BABY)

Humor: Top 1% (First page in humor? Let's gooooo)

Mood: Top 10% (We could be under 10% if graphics were better, I'm sure)

Better than expected

9th in mood and 57th overall is crazy! Honestly a lot better than I was expecting especially for such a spontaneous entry (I was completely unaware LD55 was commencing until almost half way through the first day, so only spent about 14 hours on the whole thing!)

That makes it my best LD entry to date! I'm chuffed ;u;

Wish folks would dust off their VR headsets a bit more...

There's no way only 15 of you folks have a Quest 2, they're like 200 bucks now!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/summoney-vr-only

Ludum Dare 55 was a pretty fun jam with a lot of unique games and lovely people to meet and interact with, I had about as much fun as I did last time testing people's games replying to comments having fun with it, my favorite part is still the reviewing phase, where the community comes together to check awesome games!

As for the fate of John's Visage I'm uncertain I do wanna upgrade it heavily but I may become too ambitious again like I did with Narrowlabs slowly chipping away at my will to work on it, I have my hopes but for now I will put it on a shelf of projects I need to revisit and work on one day for now it's time for me to rest until my next gamejam!

I'm looking forward to LD 56. Hopefully I will smarter, faster, and more in line with what the players want.

Going to try my hand at making lots and lots of... https://itch.io/jam/bullet-hell-v

See you next time!!!

Well, grading time has come to an end. I realized that evaluating games is much more difficult than making them ahahaha Because you need not only to run, but also to delve into, understand, play, and then try to structure and give feedback, which seems to me much more difficult than making a few pixels to do on the screen wzhuh.

So I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has played and appreciated my game, I really appreciate it! I didn't have any particular expectations about the scores, but ranking 9th in innovation really got me thinking and excited!

I seem to want to really want to develop this idea into something finished, so expect updates! I'm finalizing some new features and plan to update the graphics a bit and add sound, stay tuned!

Hello fellow jammers and statistic-enthusiasts! If like me you compile stats for your rankings, it looks like there was a small issue with some game that is ranked in the jam category but counts as compo. The queries to the LD API to know the number of entries are off.

These are the actual numbers: Overall: 357 Fun: 357 Innovation: 356 Theme: 351 Graphics: 351 Audio: 287 Humor: 302 Mood: 342

I already let Mike know about the issue!

I hope all of you are happy with your ranking! See you in 152 days!

Better games at every jams!

We're not professionals in the gaming industry at all, we make games for fun and we're very happy with the result :)

I'm super pleased with the results of my first compo submission, especially getting 79th place for fun (the category I'm always most worried about).

To celebrate, I've just released the post-jam version on itch. It features custom matches, a new smarter AI, and enhanced visuals (along with much more!).

• 📰 For more info, check out the latest devlog
• 🤖 To play a custom match against the new AI, head to itch!

Here are my results!

Wrath of Elements: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/wrath-of-elements

I'm glad I managed to bring my idea to final implementation within the deadline and create a fairly polished, high-quality game!

This time I took on an idea that I was sure I could pull off. Next time I'll try to go beyond the comfortable limits.

https://youtu.be/HhpwcJ98h4I

I consider everyone who published their game a winner in their own right.

Thanks to everyone who played my game, and thanks to everyone for your games! Playing them was a great pleasure! I'll definitely see you at the next LUDUM DARE!

Managed to get Ritual of Ribbit :frog: to Top 100 in all categories except innovation (fair enough; platforming is done before!)

Something I started thinking: my game scored less in all categories than my LD54 entry, even though I spent five times more time on it this time. I guess this confirms the Pareto principle: 80% of the impact comes from 20% of the work. I probably won't be doing 16-hour days in game jams anymore.

Also, I noticed that many of the games I was 100% certain would make the Top 10 are... nowhere to be seen. :slight_frown:

(Oh? 69th in graphics? Nice.)

This LD, @togis and I had a blast, as always. Thanks to every one of you who supported us on our streams, who played/rated/commented on our game. Sorry that we haven't responded to comments this time. But we highly appreciated each one of them.

Last a couple of weeks was a crazy journey, played 100 awesome games live and met awesome people. Will we do this challenge again, live? Nope!! :laughing: We loved your games and your company but with our lengthy feedbacks it took a lot of effort and time. (about 41 hours of streaming - good thing we were in holiday)

Theme sucked, it generally does. But we never complain about the theme because for us it's a part of the challenge. But let me tell you, this one really sucked lol . Nevertheless, people came up with creative ideas and made amazing games. That's what it's all about. That's a game jam. That ooze of creativity that leaks from the tiniest cracks and blossoms. Well done everyone!

Sickness and not vibing with the theme made us want to quit this LD but it felt wrong to throw the towel. After all, we do not care about the ratings or winning and just want to learn and improve our skills with every game jam. So we decided to make the miniest mini game with only 2 days we had. Wanted to learn Blender animation and make a better UI but with the time we had, sacrifices had to be made. At the end, it worked great. At the end we almost got 69th ( will get 'em next time! XD ) Maybe mini scope games are indeed better, even though we continue over scoping every game jam and tell ourselves this time, it will be different :smile:

Thank you! Keep making games and having fun! See you around and/or see you next time! :heart:

I received 24 votes but only a few comments, so I was not expecting a great score. Much better than I expected.

Well this went way better than I ever expected...

I decided to continue the development for a full release - more drawing tools, upgrades, bosses and... pain-t.
Now with a new name!

Join Discord for development updates, playtests and suggestions :)

Can't thank you enough for everyone who played it!

Finally finished making a timelapse of my Compo entry. Proud of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-C3Gellg6I

Thanks for 3rd place!

I guess we'll have to make it into a full game.

If you haven't played Throes of the Javelin yet check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/throes-of-the-javelin

If you're interested in getting updates on the development of the full release or joining the speedrunning community hop on in the discord: https://discord.gg/hDDHudamTt

Made it to the 75th place in the fun category. thank you all so much!

Being in top 1-2% in main categories is nice! And even more so doing it consistently over the last couple of LDs. And especially because it was my first time creating a deckbuilder and balancing complex systems.

The podium will need to wait a little bit longer, but this time, I got something even more precious: nice basis for full Steam release!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2954010/BurnWithMe

What we are currently cooking:

• A secret companion to guide you through the mysteries (and to introduce new ones)
• Polished graphics, animations and sounds
• New cards for new strategies
• Branching paths and mini-bosses
• New game modes
• Ways to bend fate in your favor (at a cost)
• A dark story to reveal

Hope some of you will be waiting for the full release, because I can promise you, it will be much wilder and cooler than current version 😉

Results

Wowza, what a jam!!

If you haven't played INVERSIO NEGOTIUM yet, go ahead and check it out :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/inversio-negotium

I'm proud to say that not only we've managed to finish the game, we got our best results so far!

Here's how INVERSIO NEGOTIUM compares to our previous jams:

Quite an improvement, eh? We're received a lot of positive reactions from you guys, and tons of constructive feedback, and the whole team is pumped to keep working on the game. So what's next for INVERSIO NEGOTIUM?

Post-jam update

Right now we're working on a post-jam update for the game. This will include: - :crossedswords: An unspecified amount of new bosses (one codenamed "Swordsman". Yes. He uses swords.) - :videogame: Gamepad support - :scales: Balance improvements - :keyboard: Better input configuration - :floppydisk: Remembering user settings (in the Jam build, they weren't persistent across game restarts) - :pausebutton: Pause menu - :1234: Chapter selection screen - :trophy: Better win screen - :book: Small text intros for bosses - :v: ...and more!

What's next?

After releasing the post-jam update, we're planning to experiment with roguelike-like mechanics - unlocking sigils, choosing a set of sigils before each run, modifying candles to e.g. enhance specific sigils, receiving new abilities after beating bosses, as well as introducing "active items".

Will it be fun? Well, we'll see. A lot of playtesting ahead of us!

We'd love to release the final game on Steam - and after seeing the Jam results I think this dream may very well become a reality! :smile_cat:

Thanks so much everyone, and see you in Ludum Dare 56!

It’s time! A postmortem ^ ^ This is a personal note dump, not on behalf of our entire team.

Recap

We, in a team of four, crafted a puzzle game about bees in porcelain gardens spreading pollen. It’s titled Nectar Nexus.

It ranked at ~10% in Graphics, Innovation, and Mood, ~1/3 in Fun, and ~1/4 overall. It’s nothing shining impressive, but I crunched them together with everything I’ve run into during the past two weeks, and I think I now have turned nectar into honey — and here’s my food for thought.

Key Takeaway, or TL;DR

It’s understanding. Look through the eyes of players, of a specific person since even before they play the game, and most importantly, look into one’s own vision. What kind of game do you intend to offer? “Qualem ludum vis dare?” That may not be as apparent as it sounds in LD.

If you’re interested, the string of thought continues. To avoid occupying excessive space, it continues in the comments section.

Table of contents - Tutorial, or How to Have Others Understand - Feedback, or How Others Understand - Intent, or How You Understand - Murmurs, or How I Understand

And we forced flames out of more than 50 random heads around the world, what’s not to like! ^ ^

Well, here we are, the end of the Ludum Dare Jam! I appreciate everyone who had played my game and gave it a rating. I skipped a couple of jams, and I had some fun with this jam. After receiving my scores, here were the results:

Looking at the results, it seems like I did a lot better in some categories, while others were a little weaker than before. My strongest was the "Mood" category, and I nearly ranked in the top 20! This is the highest I've ranked so far in any category. Graphics and audio ranked much higher than the previous jams I did. And the overall section ranked much higher than the other previous two games. Fun, Innovation, and Theme did rank pretty poorly though, but I'm sure my next game will be stronger in these categories.

Thank you everyone, and I'll see you in the next jam!

These past three weeks I've been working on the postjam version of my game, The Great Witch, and now that the final results are in, it's out now! Summon familiars and fight against hordes of robots in this short survivors-like!

Since the jam, I've added new enemies, new upgrades, an ever-escalating endless mode, and a tie-in to my next game... :eyes:

I had such a great time working on this game, check it out if you're so inclined! :smile:

https://lectvs.itch.io/the-great-witch

Results for my Ludum Dare Compo entry Bone Train.

Not the worst considering I made this in a total of about 8 hours on the first real "day" of the jam in my timezone and an hour after submitting it I was waiting outside with my father for the ambulance crew to show up after he fell.

He's been recovering decently considering the circumstances but has been resting up a lot, which is not a surprise considering the head injury plus age to have an accident like that. 😔

Link to the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/bone-train-for-ludum-dare-55

It took me until the compo was over to figure out how to export all the entries.

For anyone out the loop and not terminally online, this has been something of a meme this past month or so with AI generated images

https://www.twitch.tv/xpmonsterx

Submit your or someone else's game :)

Improved general quality, Tweaked mic, organized OBS better. Slowly improving ^_^

Please stop by and say hello :heart:

Don't know if there's any plans to make the data available as excel/csv/xml etc. but I've exported for LD55

https://johnnysix.net/Ludum55stats_all.xlsx

What's quite interesting is the skewness of the data, particularly for graphics and mood, where mood tends to have more negative impact vs graphics.

I guess where a game may not have a 'mood' element, and people forgot to opt-out of mood ratings, a lower-vote may impact the overall disproportionately?

Ratings frequency vs overall

Ratings frequency proportionally

EDIT: FIXED LINK FORMATING

EDIT2: Fixed discrepancies! Thank to people pointing it out. Ex: HUMOR and MOOD categories were swapped, and a few games recieved high marks for AUDIO/GRAPHICS/MOOD but not enough to score.

I put together a list of games that have a specific category that stands out amongst their peers based on overall average.

Using @johnnysix's XML spreadsheet I made a linear regression trendline for the categories.

I did this for HUMOR, MOOD, INNOVATION, FUN, GRAPHICS, and AUDIO compared to their OVERALL rankings. I then separated out the games that stand out in each of those categories compared to their OVERALL ranking and therefore deserve a second look.

I am interested in seeing what is special about the few dots that are high above the curve. Even if the overall game was rated so-so, they did a specific aspect very well.

This is the tip of this sharp S curve

I further broke up each category into strata sorted by highest standout first. Again, these aren't the best in their category, we have the results page for that, but the best at a specific thing amongst their rankings peers.

If you don't care too much about a certain category only play the top group for example. Let me know if you find anything interesting here! I will be playing these myself now :)

MOOD

1. Escape from zoo

2. Morth Obscurum

3. Trace of guilt

4. Amareica
5. SUMMON THE COLOSSUS

6. Bendirat

7. Bergmål

8. WALLS THAT TALK
9. The Ghost of Leo
10. Witches Brew
11. Horrors from Beyond - The Bayou
12. A Long Hello
13. Summoning Instructions
14. South City Worker Exam
15. Ultimate Mage Fighting
16. Paralax, Cats and 22 snacks
17. Cast
18. Midsummer Maiden Massacre
19. Fausto
20. Vlesu
21. Triumvirosis
22. Infernal Covenant

HUMOR

1. SUMOning - Power through Angel
2. Ramen: Beyond Two Balls

3. I found my brother's old cartridge!

4. Slumlock the NEET Summoner

5. Billy's Band
6. Real Time Demoning
7. Magical Michael's Summoning Salon
8. Summon The Waiter
9. Salmoning Time
10. Who's My Boo?
11. I got lost in Finland and a local man invited me into his home to teach me how..
12. Sumo-Moaning
13. Some Munnings
14. What The Duck?

INNOVATION

1. Replicate-You

2. Voiceborne

3. Helloons

4. Contracts of Hell
5. Circle cloner
6. Spectral Fingers
7. I Call Upon the BEES!
8. Cat Good, God Bad

9. Summon & Summoff

10. Code Summonary

11. The Quacking Hour
12. Succubi Slayer
13. Summoning Detective
14. Songbird Symphony

FUN

1. Succubi Slayer

2. Big Fire Restaurant

3. Billy's Band

4. Necro Riot

5. HOUSE MAN

6. SacriSquare
7. Amazing Gamble Life
8. Dark Lord's Revenge
9. DESTROY THE WIZARD
10. SUMMOLIO
11. Birb World Tour: Royale
12. Sumo nin': Demolition Experts
13. Trash Panda Mafia
14. Some Munnings
15. Sumo-Moaning
16. Ramen: Beyond Two Balls
17. Corrupt Cult: Underground
18. Crimes Against Carrots

GRAPHICS

1. Escape from zoo

2. Morth Obscurum

3. Duel of the Summoners
4. Elemental Island
5. Infernal Contract
6. Path Of The Nature
7. DegeNerative Dungeon

8. SPELLBINDER

9. Summoner's Clash

10. POLLY
11. Cat Good, God Bad
12. Obscure Proxy

AUDIO

1. Duel of the Summoners
2. Star to Dust
3. Salmoning Time

4. Fury Duty

5. SUMMOGON

6. Phoenix Delay
7. Datema
8. Monster Legion
9. Summoning Arena
10. Ramen: Beyond Two Balls
11. i can be ur angle or yuor devil

If anything, I am happy with the amount of magical numbers the game got

We got 31st place overall! and 3rd place in Graphics!! Very happy with our first ludum dare entry. Thank you guys for playing our game! Here's the link in case you want to catch more rabbits :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/manku-the-magician and also, devlog! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqzMsl7P4ek

Hey, just wanted to share something I've been thinking about lately. It's easy to take results from a single Ludum Dare (or ANY point-in-time measurement of your skill) and view that as something that reflects your value. But growth is hard to see and even harder to measure, it's slow, and it's not linear. My team has just had our most successful LD entry ever with our game Seance. But, while I'm proud of our results, I'm more proud of how this reflects my long-term growth.

Don't measure by your peaks

I've been doing Ludum Dare since 2013 and have participated in 34 entries (I've doubled-up a handful of times, doing both Compo and Jam). I had some early success, getting an audio medal in my second-ever game, but quickly realizing that it was a right-place-right-time scenario. I would get frustrated each jam at how WILDLY my audio ratings would fluctuate. It was really hard to accept for a while that, while my best was excellent, my average wasn't as good as I convinced myself it was. It took 5 years for me to get another Gold (which I had originally convinced myself would come easily).

It's easy to view circumstantial victories as indicative of your quality. But the truth is that ALL of us spend more time at our average than at our best. So I've made it my goal over the last decade or so to raise the floor of my work, not necessarily try to boost the wild peaks. And, if the floor gets higher, your capacity for those bigger jumps increases as well.

Don't measure by your valleys

On the flip-side, some days even your average skill will feel out of reach. I'm coming off a pretty long stretch of this. It's really easy to feel like current lows won't let up and it's really easy to let a less-than-successful endeavor ruin something that you otherwise enjoy. Take the lessons you can from the lows and work your way back up to normal.

Put the work in

It's REALLY easy to view an individual victories as success, but the point for LD (and life in general) should be about the process, not just one-off validations of your skill. Consistent effort in a targeted direction gives you momentum and gives you experience. Not every time out is going to be your best, but if you can learn something from it, it can be valuable.

Get objective feedback

Surround yourself with people that make you better. I've been collaborating with @alexrose for most of my LD career, and he's never one to mince words. If something isn't good he'll let me know. If something IS good, he'll also let me know. I have a handful of other trusted collaborators that I know will point out the things I tend to gloss over. Get some of those people in your world as well.

Final thoughts

I'm including a graph below of my year-over-year rating improvements. I have some peaks in there. I have some valleys in there. But the progress is clear. Find a way to measure your own progress and give yourself enough time for the fluctuations to even themselves out before viewing the peaks OR valleys as a complete reflection of your skill.

Thank you all again for amazing results and feedback. I have been working on a post jam update of my game, as during the jam I was not able to really create what I wanted, which was idle-clicker game. Now I have a core of the gameplay ready for anyone whou would like to try it. Now I just need to regroup and fill it with music and a lot of art. Anyone who would like to try it, you can download it here itch.io link Thank you all and see you around

Stay a while and listen...

Fate hangs in the balance, teetering on the edge of darkness. That's why we made some shiny updates to the post-jam version of our game, that will help you stand against the encroaching evil that threatens to engulf our beloved Tristram.

Leap into the fight with new effects & animations

We've recently made a lot of lovely new animations and effects for: - Giving and receiving heals - Hitting and being hit in melee - Casting a spell and getting hit by one - Gold drop and pickup animations - Gore and splatter effects for that real dungeon feeling

Keep an eye on your heroes with the new Group UI

We also added a new Group Interface to keep track of the exact health and morale pools of your heroes whilst standing in the face of evil. Now it's easier to get excited when the fight is on a knife’s edge, and it's unclear whether or not your heroes will be victorious.

Unwind in style

Relax and rejuvenate from fighting in the all-new spa, adorned with splashy water animations and soothing sounds (also the armor no longer gets wet either.) All under the watchful eye of the mayor, who has received the most important update yet - the “shining” staff. ;)

Revamped Expedition Summary

To celebrate the adventures of our heroes, we felt that it's also important to give some love to the Expedition summary. It shows up after every run and summarizes what has been gained. It even shows that the mighty C-tier wizard “Deimeph”, first of his name, was annihilated by the horrid Skeleton King. How cheeky!

“You will be avenged Deimeph” :)

So the doors of the cathedral stand open, beckoning you to venture forth and confront the sinister triumvirate that lurks within.

Your adventure starts here

May the light guide you.

The Mayor of Tristram

Wow!! I have been away from the computer recently, but I was absolutely blown away when I saw 3rd place for my little rat game! This was a very pleasant surprise for my first Ludum Dare game. I played and saw many fantastic games in this jam, so I am super happy to see my game among them. Thank you guys so much for playing the game and for all the kind words and comments. I especially appreciate the criticism I got in reviews and from streamers :) I'd love to make this a full game, but I think in terms of gameplay and my artistic vision, the game is already mostly a complete experience. I plan on pushing a small postjam update addressing some of the issues and bugs when I get access to my PC. Check the game out here if you haven't already: https://pokerdf.itch.io/pied-piper

Version 1.4.1 is out! Worked up some balancing issues with the gameplay loop along with fixing some bugs found with gameplays of the game.

Here are the Patch Notes:]

• BUG FIX! Early Hours - Fixed a bug that allowed players to get Upgrade Zones during easy difficulty.
• BALANCED! Reinforce - Minions damage fot reduced from 25% of base damage to 20%. -BALANCED! SMG - Initial cooldown between shots changed from 30 frames to 45 frames. Furthermore, Attack Speed upgrades got nerfed from decreasing 10% of the current cooldown to 5%.
• BALANCED! Power! - All upgrades now got a value to not completely overpower the player. The values are DMG: 3 - ATKSPD: 30 Frames - MAXREINF: 12 units.
• NEW! Pause Screen - Now during gameplay you can press ESC to give the action a halt, and the come back to it without repercutions.

I hope these changes don't change too much how people play my game. These were just some minor fixes I thought they were needed to keep the game stable and fun!

If you wanna play the game here's the link for the updated version on Itch! https://crootr.itch.io/danger-zone-by-crootr

Stay safe!

A month on and my little Ludum Dare game has expanded to include level select and dialogue features, as well as a short narrative - not to mention a shiny new name.

Thanks to all the folks who played and rated my game during the jam.

Check out the updated version here:

Littleberry Fires by patchware

I've been busy with other game jams but now that those are over, I could come back to this game and upload post jam version to itch.io page. It should have more stuffs and better than jam version.

Here's a shot from updated version:

Come on in

https://twitch.tv/squuuidly