When the theme was announced, I looked at the Game Boy Advance sitting on my desk and thought about making something with a deliberately GBA-inspired aesthetic.

Anyway... I somehow ended up making a VHS puzzle-platformer where the tape is actively falling apart.

The premise is straightforward: record up to eight seconds of your movements, rewind, and cooperate with a ghost that repeats everything you recorded. Use your past self to hold pressure plates, operate machinery, disable electrical barriers, and open doors.

Eventually your ghost simply doesn't make it to the end of the recording anymore.

One of my favourite discoveries during development was that replaying the same recording repeatedly is genuinely satisfying, even when it accomplishes absolutely nothing. Watching the tape bar shrink, the signal degrade, and your ghost progressively forget the last few moments of its existence is surprisingly entertaining.

The result is six short puzzles about cooperating with your past self, wrapped in a thoroughly malfunctioning analogue video signal.

If you give it a try, I'd love to hear what you think, particularly whether you also end up replaying recordings just to watch them deteriorate.

Rewind to Survive

I am digging the look of this, especially with this dim monochrome Game Boy master palette.

My video pattern database has 111 8x8 tiles by now. They are distributed like this:

0 - empty 1-6 - text box borders 7-32 - uppercase characters A-Z 33-58 - lowercase characters a-Z 59 - down arrow 60-64 - punctuation characters ',.!? 65-74 - number characters 0-9 75-... - 6x6 tiles of STROMATOLITE

I'm glad I came up with implementing a 48x48 edit mode in the video editor or it would be much harder to author the creature sprites.

I also decided to redo my existing audio editor from scratch to be more like my video pattern editor. I think for this jam I'll only implement audio pattern database editing and do the arrangements manually in a JS object just like I have done for the video patterns.

Hope I'll have time to finish the game proper.

Here is the list of features shipped so far:

- game - engine - integer scaling - copy 2D arrangements to screen - copy text to screen, a special case of copy 2D that also does the ASCII character mapping to the pattern database - content - graphics - text box patterns - font patterns with uppercase, lowercase, numbers and punctuation characters - STROMATOLITE front sprite - text box arrangement (arrangements of pattern tiles, ie "sprites") - "video" editor - open and save "video" project files - 2bpp pattern editor - increase number of 8x8 tiles in "video" project file database - select the 8x8 pattern to edit - switch between 8x8 and 48x48 edit mode - in 48x48 mode the pattern no. to edit is the first tile of the 6x6 contiguous tile data - so 36 tiles are read starting from that one - select one of 4 shades to draw - use a pencil on the canvas - "audio" editor - imported "getSystemaTeleionMeizonDiatonosStringLengths" function from another project - string roll (piano roll but for systema teleion meizon diatonos strings) - play/pause - set BPM

I've finished the Jam a couple times. I have never had the time to dedicate to actually finishing the compo before.

And this weekend was no different; I ended up nixing sounds and, well, "good graphics" in favor of actually designing a fun game.

I've been playing various seeds outside of the release version (I made sure the three difficulties I released were winnable by, uh, winning, since I don't have a solver built just yet). I'm having an alarmingly good time, which is something I can't say I've been able to say for most of my jam games. And this was for the COMPO! In forty eight hours I built a map generator; a two-phase, economy-driven gameplay loop; and a custom UI toolkit for picotron (okay it's a button implementation, whatever).

Hope everyone had as much fun as I did, now I look forward to relaxing and playing some games!

Escape the fog. Manage your crew. Send expeditions.

The fog swallowed the depot in one night. Twenty people made it onto the last train.

To survive, you must keep moving, but resources are limited. Stop at abandoned stations, send out expeditions, rescue people, and outfit your train's carriages. But be careful: if you stay too long, the fog will catch up with you!

Every story event asks for a hard choice — and your passengers remember all of them.

▶ Play & rate: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/the-last-route

Any feedback is very welcome — and I'm looking forward to playing your games too. Good luck, everyone!

A 3D visual novel where you work as a call operator. Your job is to answer calls and connect them to the right destination based on the context and the caller's needs.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/recaller

Something is cooking...

I'm finally done, The Lost Rifleman!

Managed to upload just a couple of minutes before the time ended, can't belive Unity decided to export for 15 minutes even tough it only took it like 2-3 minutes all day...

The Lost Rifleman is a short, 5-minute horror shooter where you play as a lost soldier trapped in a cursed forest, surrounded by terrifying ghosts. Armed with nothing but your trusty musket, your goal is to survive until dawn without losing your sanity.

This time around, I really wanted to focus on game feel and atmosphere, which somehow resulted in me spending more than half my development time fighting with Unity's lighting system. In the end, I pretty much faked the entire darkness with heavy black fog. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I also managed to squeeze in an Endless Mode, so if the regular 5-minute experience isn't enough, you can see just how long you can survive before the forest claims you.

I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out, even if there are a million things I'd love to improve!

You can play it right here: https://freamdev.itch.io/the-lost-rifleman

I'd love to hear what you think! Any feedback is appreciated, and if you give Endless Mode a shot, let me know how long you survived!

Good luck to everyone with their LD60 entries! Can't wait to try some of your games!

Edit: Some gameplay video (with the obligatory AI generated thumbnail) of the current world record! (damn I'm bad at my own game) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpamnfCOj-w

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/antiquus-labyrinthus

We finished the game about 3 hours ago, and then spent the rest of the time panicking over the webbuild not working, but it works, and we are done!

Wanna chill on the steam deck in bed and play some compo games! Please share!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/link-up

Incredible Stick and Hoop simulation at your fingertips here! Wow!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/stick-and-hoop-simulator

Was my new years resolution to make more games, and now it is October, buuuut

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/crossbowthing - I finished something!

Completely different game to what I set out to make. I wanted to make a more actiony iron-lungish thing set in like a ww1 tank (which is old tech... ).

with this game, Ig you could argue crossbows are old, I also wrote 'old tech' on the enemy, I'm not really sure why, I'm somewhat delirious.

Didn't get completely distracted by rendering as usual, but there was still a lot more graphics debugging than ideal. Box3D was basically my timewasting replacement, I think if anything it made the game harder to make (and doesn't really use fancy physics that much).

Anyway, It's kinda fun to shoot these clown things, let me know what you think:

:owl: Thanks for all the likes! <3 :owl:

Play our game:

CHECK THIS OUT

Our payphone game is coming along! Stay tuned!

(now comes the most challenging part - drawing a thumb with no art skills and within the limits of the NES palette 😅)

TRY ON LINE:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/cardkid

[GIF / screenshot here]

Hi everyone! My entry is Cart World: a little retro console with 6 cartridges. Pick a cart, push it into the slot, and play. Beat one cart to unlock the next.

🕹️ The carts 1. Survivor: an auto-attacking horde survival game 2. Drift Kid: arcade racing where drifting is everything 3. Star Route: a vertical shoot 'em up 4. Climb Kid: a tight precision platformer, 3 chapters 5. Bounce Pit: balls bounce through rows of monster bricks 6. Card Spire: a tiny 10-floor deckbuilder

🎨 Everything you see and hear (pixel art, chiptune music, sound effects) is generated in code. The only outside asset is one font. Every cart has its own 4-color palette, and you can swap palettes at any time.

▶️ Play in the browser, no download: [] Keyboard, gamepad and mobile touch all work.

I'd love your feedback, especially on: - Which cart did you play longest, and which did you drop first? - Was anything confusing in the first 30 seconds? - Is Climb Kid too hard? Is Card Spire too easy?

💬 Leave a comment with a link to your game. I'll play it and rate it back, I promise. Thanks for playing!

It's pretty short but tbh i'm proud of it, it's way better than my previous jams, and I managed to make it with no time at all, so that's neat. It's called XENOCHRON (which means something among the lines of invaders from another time), and I implemented the theme by giving the enemies more advanced technology, while you have to stick with just a gun and your fists (so we can technically say you have old tech).

My team came through and got all the assets for the game in today! I've got a couple small features to do tomorrow, but we're looking good for the Jam.

Just finally uploaded MAKE ME MY MILLION onto itch.io 😎 This game is a chaotic physics incremental!

https://n8tus.itch.io/makememymillion -- Playable on browser btw, no need to download!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/make-me-my-million -- Feel free to leave a rate ty and goodnite

That... doesn't actually makes sense... LOL but anyway. Yeah brah, I finished my game... for now! Come check it out... If you're cool!

Do you love throwing snowballs? Of course! Who doesn't?

Do you love knocking a bunch of oddball cube people into icy water below? Of course! Who doesn't?

Then this is the game for you!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/oops-no-floor

It really is, just a light bulb, play it here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/lightbulb

😭😭

game is just not coming together

but at least you can spin

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

Counterweight is out! My first full solo Compo on LD. 48 hours, a water lift from 1889, a lot of miners and way too many brake sparks.

Thanks to everyone who played the test builds and told me what was broken. Love you all ❤ Can't wait to play your games

Play: on Ludum Dare · in the browser

After losing 2 days of development time to having to reinstall my entire operating system (For the second time this month... first time was my fault because I got hacked on discord by ransomware, but the second time was just some weird windows 11 deciding to die on me issue) and everything on my PC, plus not being that into the theme, plus fighting uphill battles with Godot's built-in physics and my dying headphones making me think there was an audio bug in the game that there wasn't, and my game not even seeming that fun to begin with since hte physics aren't working how I want them to... I'm out.

The good news is the brain bees are gone at least, I was able to code without mental fatigue again so maybe I can get some itch.io jams to work out for me when I'm less busy again.

Good luck to all of y'all with the 16 hours left!

I made a little cable-matching puzzle game for Old Tech!

I'd love to hear what you think, or which puzzle got you stuck.

▶ Play Ye Old Repair Shop in your browser

Feeling both optimistic and very crunched... gotta do music and sounds still, but the game is technically playable from start to finish. I would like a handful more levels but that may not be possible. If I can crank out some acceptable music quickly enough, maybe.

I do have a web build working (although it feels a little laggy). I guess I need to optimize my garbage collector, or something. Hopefully it will work at least decently for everyone.

Unlike the last 3 times, I finished my design goals early! Even added more types of guns to give more incentive to explore! And I just got LAN working! It doesn't sync all the physics objects, but it syncs all the players, monsters, shooting, healths, item use, and inventory swaps - so that covers the important stuff!

Cozy Polaroid Action right here!!

Want to lay back, play a chill game and take some photos? Then this game is for you.

It's Pokemon Snap but I never played Pokemon Snap :D

Polasnap

I wasn't planning on making a settings screen for this one and a toggle seemed cheap, so I made...

INVERT Y GOGGLES!

The player can click on them to invert Y very early in the game. Happy with this one :D

"Hi everyone,

Something strange happened after loading up the game today, after ringing the shrine bell in my previous session, I realised that the player movement had become more .. fluid. Like I could move between tiles. Naturally, I ran straight to the place we would all go and yep, I FIT THROUGH.

What I found inside was pretty confusing and honestly scared me a bit. But then the game went on as normal, almost. The farming became different somehow, like all these 3D effects this old tech shouldnt be able to make (not easily at least).

Anyway, I will make another update forum post next time I discover something unusual about this weird game, its starting to creep me out a bit though, I still can't find any info about the game or the developers online. "

posted by user "retrogamer69": Date June 13 2008

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/claude-castle

Let the reviews pour in...

Hello everyone, our game DISK ERROR is availble to play. This was fun, we had out ups and downs but I will create a post mortem later this week. Please feel free to play this game, we hope that you will have a lot of fun.

PLAY HERE: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/disk-error

Still work in progress, but game already have more content

Stardust is my Ludum Dare 60 Compo entry. You play a clump of cosmic dust that pulls in everything smaller than itself and grows, through a whole star's life: dust cloud, gas nebula, protostar, yellow star, blue giant, hypergiant. When the hydrogen runs out, your star collapses, and its mass decides what it becomes: a white dwarf, a neutron star... or a black hole.

Finding the feel. The first prototype had sliders for everything. I quickly swapped them for a dozen complete "feel" presets — vacuum, real gravity, a funnel, a snowball, a heavy star — and played each one until one stuck. The winner made the star heavy: it turns slowly, moves with inertia, and the world falls into it instead of you chasing the world.

Yarn instead of fire. Stars are usually drawn as glowing balls. I went with twisted yarn and wool: the hero is a ball of fiery strands, and the dust is little tufts of fluff. It gives the whole thing a soft, handmade look while still feeling hot and alive.

The camera is the progression. The zoom depends on your mass. You always stay about the same size on screen, and the universe keeps shrinking around you. Every transformation is a moment where the scale suddenly makes sense again.

Small and fast. No engine: TypeScript on a bare canvas with WebGL shaders, about 3 MB. The music is synthesized live in code.

Play Stardust in your browser — I'd love your rating and feedback. What should a star eat next?

https://fi7games.itch.io/storm-radar-slots YOU CAN SPIN SLOTS, YOU CAN SCAN BOMBS!!!!! DUDE!!!!!

...but I will still be checking out what everyone else has made! c:

(and I'll see if I will be allowed to share somethin' as an extra...)

When we saw this jam's theme, Old Tech, we kept coming back to one picture: a workbench in a garage, covered in old consoles, all plugged into the same power brick.

Pip's Escape starts there. Steve's kid broke the tablet, and now it's sitting on the bench with a dying battery and no Wi-Fi. But it's still plugged in, and every cable on that bench is a connection. The tablet's AI squeezes down the wire and wakes up inside the brick as a blocky little hero called PIP.

To get onto the network, PIP needs a password: the last word of every Lastlight. That means five ports, five consoles and five games to play through to their endings:

• NES: a dark-fantasy quest to bring back a stolen flame
• Game Boy: a murder mystery in four shades of green
• Super NES: a heist for a cursed crown
• Game Boy Color: a festival with its colour drained away
• Game Boy Advance: a climb to a storm dragon in the sky

Each game looks, sounds and plays like its own hardware, down to the sound chips.

Play Pip's Escape in your browser, or download it for Windows or Linux. We'd love to hear which console was your favourite!

Isaac, Justin and Claude Code

And the game is done: Swatronics

I've finally (as far as I can tell) managed to iron out all the problems my match-3 game was having and fix some edge cases, and it's now finally playable!

There's only one thing left to do. Each level, or "sector", will have a limited number of files, and the level ends when you can no longer make any matches, encouraging efficient matching. If the screen is still full, you lose; otherwise, you progress to the next level. I need to somehow program an algorithm that will check if there are any possible matches on the screen, and end the level if there aren't. If I can just do that, I'm home free.

Wish me luck!

Good Ol’ Iron Trains

Our game is about old trains, inspired by Big Boy’s amazing cross-country journey a few months ago. Unfortunately, Big Boy never pulled passenger carriages, but there are many beautiful locomotives, such as LNER Class A3 4472 Flying Scotsman or Stephenson’s Rocket or Pioneer Zephyr or…

So thanks to the Big Boy’s journey the old trains were the first thing that came to mind for the “Old Tech” theme!

Trains Bring Peace of Mind

Our three-person team, a programmer, an artist, and a trains fan/game designer, agreed that now when it looks like everyone are running around fighting madness of the AI FOMO, it’s important for all of us to take time to focus and enjoy what we love doing. For us, one of the best ways to concentrate on anything is to take a train journey, sitting by the window and listening to the wheels. Can you relate?

One of the Stations

https://youtu.be/FPgSLG--4wY

And some more art also by Alex

I don't know if I can even complete anything before the deadline. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh......

Okay I think the full loop is done now, if you want to be trapped in a phone box somewhere in the UK I would appreciate some early eyes on it so I can fix problems! Link: https://wayfarergames.itch.io/payphone?password=ld

Progress is running as smooth as a train going downhill! :elephant:

This weird creature keeps staring at everything we do...

We’ve made this co-op treasure search on the bottom of the ocean. Tried to make it spooky, moody and vibey. Managed to implement a bunch of cool tools. This jam I did some voice recording and writing, as usual, but also, for the first time, a bunch of 3d models! Super proud of what we achieved. Gonna drop it on Itch later today.

I thought this one was going to be another collab with my pal @lenny-rudeberg but life (and illness) got in the way, so I had to do this one solo. And, much to my own surprise, I made something!

Play as a little robot looking for the old tech that can save all the little bots (and the world!)

To be honest, I had a good time even if I was working on my own.

For now though, I think it's time to sleep.

Oh, I suppose I should give you a link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/the-little-bot-who-could-save-the-world

Good luck in the final hours, jammers! You can do it!

Third-party heart reactions still have adverse consequences

As described here. For more information, check out the discussion under this post (ctrl+F "honey"). Relevant PR #2267.

Temporary workaround: don't use the heart reaction unless the comment is under your own game. Blogposts are unaffected by this.

All anonymous comments are still hidden

As described here. Relevant PR #2306.

Temporary workaround: never post anonymous comments.

Use Stone Age technology to test mushrooms: cut them open with stone knives, drop them into water, burn them over fire, and check their spore prints on stone. Identify the poisonous ones and cook a soup that won’t turn dinner into a funeral!

Any comment/feedback would be greatly appreciated!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/one-bad-mushroom

Da Vinci has new ideas for war machines, and it’s your job to test them. Step into the arena!

Take control of his Giant Crossbow and his TANK, and prove these inventions are worthy of the battlefield.

👉 Play Da Vinci's War Machine

About the jam

I finished my game in the Compo category yesterday, and it was a tough one. I’m a backend developer at heart, so switching to visuals and music doesn’t come easily to me. Most of the art and audio came together in the last few hours.

I wanted to pack in more mechanics, but I picked a genre that needs a lot of work before the core loop even clicks. Next time I’ll scope the gameplay down from the start. I also wanted to build on what I learned last time (juicy feedback, a tutorial, an environment that changes as you play), but I ran out of time. Lesson learned: keep it simple!

On the bright side, my Unity setup got a big upgrade since last jam (VContainer, WebGL audio, scene/state handling). It’s all in the source code if you’re curious!

Thanks for playing, and good luck to everyone! ❤️

I haven't done a Ludum Dare in a while, but I'm glad I joined this one! I've been wanting to try to make a small narrative deduction game (like Roottrees Are Dead) for a while, and the theme gave me the perfect opportunity to do so.

You play as a blogger investigating an unreleased video game console and trying to find out why it never made it to market. Here's the link if you want to play it! The Cybersaga

If you love tough boss fights please give Bossfight98.exe a try!

Play here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/bossfight98-exe

Legitimately, I don't know what to do when I click on an interesting game only to see the obviously Claude-made interfaces, images, texts, even music and sounds... Obviously I don't want to be the guy screaming against AI slop under every suspicious game, that would be witch hunting, but it's also a bit painful to see them being rated the same way """handmade""" games are, and getting comments and praise from unaware people about how polished it all looks

I thought it would be rarer but it happened four times now and im getting slightly worried, is this just going to be all jams from now on?

Does anyone relate or should I just get with the times?

Is this the end for physical media?

Help CeeDee to get across the digital traffic safely.

Play here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/ceedee-survive

There are 9 hours left until the end of the jam. Between school and sleep, I won’t be able to work on the game for the entire 9 hours, so I’ve had to simplify some concepts. Still, there’s just one simple thing left to do to get the core gameplay fully ready.

Also, I haven’t added any sound to the game over the last 2 days; I’ll include SFX later. And I got really lucky with this screenshot!

Only an act of remembrance and nothing more this time.

This could bring memories to some of you too: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/a-tribute-to-father

Our game, JIJI TD, is finally out!

Why JIJI? Honestly, we have no idea. It just sounds like something in an ancient, long-forgotten language. 👀

This is our second game jam, and we’re still trying to find our own style and figure out what kind of games we want to make. But I hope this has been a great experience for us regardless!

Thank you for following our journey, and we hope you enjoy playing JIJI TD! 💛

The cat took my seat :laughing:

Dev log. Day 3.

The day for audio has finally arrived. From past experience, I know that fixing bugs will take up much more of my time than the audio will, so I need to get started right away. As always, I won’t be able to polish the audio as much as I’d like, which makes me a bit sad. On the other hand, programming the game and learning more about coding has made me happy. So, all in all, I’m about where I started.

I hope everyone has a great time at Ludum Dare 60.

About 10 hours are left before the jam ends, so here's where we are.

Here is the demo:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vAZssSteLwk

We've made a lot of progress. The office works: tickets pile up, coworkers wander around, there's coffee, and there's now a smoking room for cigarette breaks. We have to admit, though, that the scope turned out bigger than we planned. Every feature we finished led to two more we wanted to add.

The good news is that the art is in great shape and we're really happy with how the game looks. What's left is mostly polish: tightening things up, fixing rough edges and making sure everything fits together.

Wish us luck for the final stretch! ☕

Random screenshots

I made a trailer for Shelf Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB6J8nnrBGc

Now you can chat with them online directly about 'what happened'

;D

Click to try! https://yb-rabbit.itch.io/repair-permission

Hope your night shift goes smoothly!

A small card game where you perform rituals to help your village survive! Hope you’ll give it a try~ Play Ritual Journal

https://youtu.be/SFq-8RrOOnU

pretty minimal editing, I don't do video editing ever

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/60/antiquus-labyrinthus