Kmembert

PLAY KMEMBERT

Game description

Kmembert (Camembert: A delicious french cheese) is a puzzle/infiltration/action game . The gameplay is quite simple: You are a cheese and you have to kill all nazi mice in one shoot. Get the cannon bullet and trick the mice in order to kill them all in a single shoot. 9 levels are playable. HAVE FUN ^^!

Post mortem

It was my first Ludum Dare compo. I just be informed of the event 4 days ago. My weekend was busy but I was motivated to create a simple game saturday morning with the theme “You only get one”. I already participed to the “Global Game Jam” twice, but the Ludum Dare is a different challenge.
I cumulate 17 hours of work for this game.

Gameplay
I found the idea in the first minutes: Get the only one bullet, trick the enemies to manage to kill them all in a single shoot.
The controls are simple and the top view allows to create less graphic assets and less code. I’m a big fan of “Metal gear solid” and I recently played “Hotline Miami”. So I unconsciously designed game mechanics with this game in my mind. I always wanted to design a game like Metal Gear Solid :). Therefore mice can run after you if they see you and you can play with the doors.

Level Design
I modified the mouse behaviours 2 hours before the deadline. So I redesigned the levels accoring the modifications.
I tried to design 9 levels with interesting challenge. I think the levels are fun and you also can understand all puzzles quickly. But I had no time to playtest the levels to another players. That’s why the game needs different mice with different behaviours and more balance.

Graphics
I didn’t want to use human characters, zombies, aliens or monsters. So I decided to imagine a coherent situation with uncomon characters according to the game mechanics. A humanoid cheese against nazi mice ? Why not  :). I’m not a 2d artist but I tried to design simple characters and animations quickly. A pen tablet is a good tool :).

Sounds
Unfortunatly I didn’t have the time to play on my guitar some cool riffs for the background music. The sound fx are just simple homemade sounds of my mouth :).

Tools
I’m a Flash game developer since 2004 so I create all assets, animations and code with Flash. I used the World Construction Kit library. It’s the Box2D physic engine with a WYSIWYG layout, very usefull to design levels. I also used simple libs : TweenMax, Flint. I used “Flash Develop” and I created some assets with Photoshop and Audition.

Conslusion

It was a great experience! Sometimes I watched streams of few developers around the world. I also earn some skills in code with box2d and in graphic design. I found my game interesting but it needs improvements :).

Now I’m gonna play some LD games :).

See you!

Follow me on my blog: http://www.benoitfreslon.com

Tags: action, as3, box2d, flash, infiltration, postmortem, puzzle, screenshot

I found LD28 incredibly fun, not just because it was the first time I submitted my own game to the compo, but also because I made myself play at least 100 games to get a feel of the kind of stuff the community is making. The stuff you guys come out with is properly amazing. So for this blog post, I’d like to mention my top 6 favourite games out of the 100 that I played (both from the Compo and the Jam).

I’m a stickler for polish and “completeness”, as you can probably tell from my choices.

So in no particular order…

1. Underbyte

Shows what happens when you fall down a bottomless pit in Mario! Amazing platformer, and beautiful pixel art

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=20697

2. The Pilot Jameson

This guy pretty much recreated Elite/X/space trading RPG. So much depth for a jam game!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=21594

3.  GRAIL

Beautiful art and gameplay that reminds me of Another World. Very addictive!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=29748

4. 1111 pt 1

You only get one took ultra literally. My favourite bit about this game is the player ship, comprised of every growing 1.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=5448

5. Jump Chip

Unique game mechanics and really really polished art, sound and music. Level design feels like its been playtested for months not days!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=4155

6. TITAN SOULS

4 extremely difficult bosses set in an open world reminiscent of Zelda and the Shadow of Colossus. What’s not to like?

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=7984

For those of you who don’t have a game pad, dont want to play or want a quick skip through, this is a quikc playthrough of “Our final chance” with the “Good ending”.

Enjoy!

Okay, so I’ll do a classic The good/bad/ugly postmortem about my entry: Farm Fortress, a fast-paced (kinda) strategy and economy management game. You can play it by clicking on the image below:

PLAY NOW! (Click here)

The goal of the game is simply profit, and for that you need the income that having planted farms provides, but invaders will try to destroy your farm as it gets bigger.
You start by building a house, to be able to plow land and plant on that. You get gold every five seconds from interest over each plant you have planted (plowed ground doesn’t count), and a bit more when the plant is harvested.
The main mechanic here is to combo the timer with the most plants, so you get more money. Plants cost more to be planted than what they give when harvested. You also increase the income from your farms when you build additional houses.
You can also build towers and fences to protect your farm, because when you get to 6 farmlands, invaders will begin to attack your farm. Towers shoot arrows at them, and fences aggro them the most. When a building is destroyed, you need to clear the debris before being able to build on that spot again. If you lose all your houses, you lose, after all, you get only one farm!

I will probably continue developing this in the upcoming weeks, maybe add different types of plants and even a multiplayer mode! But mainly, a tutorial and/or menu screen.

The good:

• Used a familiar engine (Unity, with C#)
• Learned new things (namely LINQ and reflection)
• Using the new things above, made a really nice layer of abstraction for the game
• Thought about the theme a lot when the top themes were revealed
• Cleaned up schedule for the weekend

The bad:

• Used a commercial tool (SimplePath, for AI), and couldn’t follow my open-source ideal (Though if you want the source, contact me @kroltan)
• Didn’t have any experience with the aforementioned tool, using 12 hours to integrate it
• I’m terrible at graphics, even worse at sounds (that’s why the game is mute, BTW)

The ugly:

• Having this concept from before the LD started, wneh I saw the theme I couldn’t think of a way to fit this idea, so i wasted 6 hours on another game prototype, then came back to the defense strategy idea
• Wasting all this time, had to publish my compo-targeted idea as a Jam entry.

After waking up to read the topic I went back to bed and thought about a few ideas in the small hours. “You only get one” – for some reason made me think of “24” or these cop shows where they have to get their man (or woman) in a certain time frame. There was an old ST game called “The Killing Cloud” by Konami that had a cool interrogation scene and I wanted to do something similar. So I borrowed another idea from an old (1988!!) ST game called Captain Blood which had a crude language interpreter.

What Went Right

It’s no secret that I particularly love doing silly sound FX and writing Music most of all for LD… which gets me thinking that maybe next time I’ll join a JAM group simply to do the music and FX. I’d decided to go for a Monty Python-esque graphic style and I’m actually quite pleased with how it turned out. I think I work faster this way than with pixel art, which I’m not very good at. (some of you people are mind-bogglingly good!)

I wanted a Python-meets-70s-UK-cop-show-The-Sweeney with plenty of silly phrases, (aka SHUT IT YOU SLAAAAG).

What Went Wrong

1. Don’t bite off more than you can chew

Implementing a language interpreter like Captain Blood turned out to be much more work than I anticipated! By the time I’d actually got it functional, I still needed to write the actual dialogs and knowledge for the suspects. There were originally meant to be 3 suspects and towards the deadline I was lucky to get the 2 finished! Sadly, the hints system conflicted with the actual results being said back to you which confused things rather than helping. I took out several words to make the game easier. There’s a ton of words that never got used! ;____; Also, I should’ve used 2 rows of icons like Captain Blood rather than the huge scroll-fest.

Captain Blood 1988 Language Interpreter

LD 28 Language Interpreter

 2. Beware of Global Variables

Horrible errors started appearing and the laguage interpreter wouldn’t appear properly… but only when restarting or loading a new level. D: I hunted for hours to find the problem… turns out it was in a Global Static class where data was being loaded into a Dictionary that was constantly held in game memory… but wasn’t being wiped between levels. Don’t be led to believe that Application.LoadLevel(…) will magically reset everything! These classes persist… and there was no good reason to make it global in the first place!

3. Use the Right Tool for the Right Job

You’d think for a 2D game I would’ve used Unity’s new Sprite system? Nope, I couldn’t be bothered reading up on it, so the character is actually implemented as a skeleton with textures attached to quads in the skeleton heirarchy!

On the Saturday I got round to watching a video tutorial on the new Unity Sprite system… and WOW… it would have solved so many issues from the start. As usual, the Unity documentation is a little bit sparse, but the power in there is incredible. The “intro” to the game is done using the sprite system once I’d figured out how it worked.

You can play the game here: WHO ATE ALL THE PIES ???

Hi everyone,

I would like to share the experience of creating this game but before I’ll point the good and bad points.

The good

» Unity2D: I had a few experience with Unity3D and moments before this Ludum Dare starts I opted to use the new Unity 2D framework, even without ever using it before. In just a few hours I could understood the basic of the new physics and sprite handlers.

» 2D animation: Before this LD I never had used keyframes 2d animation before. I just watched some videos of how it worked on Unity and after messing with the first animations, I finally got it right and could develop some good ones.

» 2D sprites: I always been really bad at drawing but after some online tutorials of character developing I could create a style and use it to create all the sprites

» Polish : I could develop a full game in details, with proper introduction and conclusion and even some alternative endings.

The bad

» Music: Trying to create the music was where I wasted most of time, because I was used to all the functions of FL Studio but I used a software I wasn’t familiar with(GarageBand), so I spend time looking on how to use it in the middle of competition. After trying hard, I staid only with 2 songs (basically the same, just changing instruments) and I didn’t like the final result.

» Levels I was hoping to create more levels and use it to make a mini game collection but the timing was bad (here in South Korea the competition ends at 11AM on monday and I had test on monday).

» The game factor: I spent so much time doing the graphics that I didn’t even stop to think of how the game was going to be, the interaction, the difficulty and the challenge and, at the end, I had a movie, with none interaction. So I created some ways for the user to interact but that wasn’t enough to make a challenging game that the user can spend time.

In this game I had as inspirations Braid, Wario Ware and some horror movies 😛

You can play the game and leave your opinion here

I added OS X and Android version, but I had problems with Windows version (is playable through Web also)

I started off my game using an orthographic camera to follow a spaceship traversing some 3D geometry. It was disorienting but it looked cool! I think the core problem was having the camera rotate and follow a moving target as the same time. It started to get difficult to make sense of what you’re seeing!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1937558/LudumDare/28/webplayer/webplayer.html

Lesson learned:

If you want to use an orthographic camera in your 3D game be careful with camera rotations. You’d do well to ensure that any camera rotations are around a point of interest and that the point of interest is not moving whilst the camera is rotating.

Eventually  I decided  I didn’t need an orthographic camera to look cool…

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1937558/LudumDare/28/jam/Build.html

So this LD was a little disappointing since I was ill, I didn’t get much done on my game.

Oh well let the second bout of crazy fun start, playing LD games!

If you want your game rated, post a link to it in the chat.

Streaming here: www.twitch.tv/jellycakes1

Also my game: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=13474

VIDEO JAMES

What is Tetris Jump:
Tetris Jump is a crossover between Tetris and any platformer game.
Basically your task is to get from the Red block to the Yellow block. By placing Tetris blocks. But “You Only Get One” each turn. After each placing phase there will be a platforming phase. to switch between the phases press: enter/return.

How to play

In the placing phase you can move the Tetris block with W & S, and rotate the field by A &  D
one you like the position you just press enter/return and the block will start moving while you are in platformer perspective.

once the block stopped moving or got destroyed because it didn’t hit anything you can press enter/return to position a new Tetris block. so on till you made it till the end.

My Experience:
Tetris Jump was my first successful Ludum Dare.
Previously I wanted to do to much in too little time, but this time we took a doable concept that was realizable within the 72 hours of the Jam. I worked together with Peter Vrieling and Cristian Calin. Peter provided me with the models and textures and Cristian with the Music.
And me would be Roy Schroder doing the programming. I do have to say that  it feels good to have a team that is willing to help and make something awesome. I would like to keep this team together for later jams.

What went well:

• Doable Project
• Time Available
• Good team Members
• Created something new
• Was able to give my own twist to theme
• Satisfied
• reused models a lot so modeler doesn’t have to create a ton of assets
• Product almost portfolio ready

What went wrong:

• Didn’t fix all bugs
• Wanted to program the game in a nice manner making things overly complex
• Did not manage to add in score system and HUD, even though  the game provided all need variables for it.
• Worked separated with the team members.

How to improve:

• Work with team members at one location.
• Make (some) UML Diagrams before making.
• Try to reward the player more.
• Make the game easier to play.

What I learned:

• Sleep is for the weak
• I can program while being drunk
• live streaming doesn’t really help you get other people involved with your project

How I spend my time:

• Programming: 30 h
• Sleep: 10 h
• Partying: 8 h
• Eating: 4 h
• Traveling: 3 h
• Buying secondhand Kinect: 3 h
• Brainstorming: 2 h
• Showering: 0h

What now?

Shower, Sleep and Rating Games. Maybe at the Same Time.
If you want me to rate yours let me know.

If you haven’t seen our project yet:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=24775

Shameless Self Plug

Roy Schroder Aka Therrato
 

Tags: Postmortem ld28

Well that was my first Ludum Dare and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I’ve tried making a few games in a weekend for myself before and it’s never really gone very well.

When I saw the theme for LD28, You Only Get One, I knew a lot of people would go for gameplay that relied on single bullets or single lives and I didn’t really want to go down that route. If you ever decide to peruse my source you may stumble across the dev folder in which I listed in a scatterbrained way, some ideas I came up with for the theme. The one I settled on, I think, was a rather innovative take on the theme. I thought it would be fun to make a game where you play as numbers, numbers that must run around levels solving puzzles to get to their equations.

Sticking to the theme I decided to lock the character selection to the character of One as a sort of tech demo proof of concept, knowing fully well that I would want to unlock and reveal more playable characters as I went along (outside of the competition). Now I have to admit I didn’t think I would get very far into the development of the game and I was right, I barely managed to get a whole level, most of which happened in the last hour of the competition. As such the game might feel a little sparse but I have to admit I quite enjoyed it and think it has potential for a full sized, if not miniature scale game. Because of this I thought I’d share with you some of the further developments I wanted to make and am considering adding to the game. Please let me know what you like, don’t like etc

The game is at: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=28854

Further Development

Multiple unlockable characters 1-9. I was considering making a base-12 system unlockable too just to make the game even more interesting.

Each number 1-9 has a different power for example 1 would be the only character that could jump, 8 could maybe fall over, becoming infinity and just blowing up a level, 2 or 3 would be the only number to be able to interact with button triggers and I haven’t really thought of other powers yet, suggestions would be welcome.

Equations that can solve themselves, letting the player complete them in non-standard ways. This would be implemented through a series of equation sections that can each check their own value against the values of the numbers intersecting with them – There may be some limitations on this, it would probably be hard to let players dynamically add squared numbers for example. Letting players change the equation completely would probably defeat the purpose of the game somewhat.

Levels will be designed through data (currently level 1 is hardcoded variables) making custom levels very quick and easy to make even without an editor. Therefore I am considering implementing a custom level loading function

NPC numbers that run around on their own. Puzzles in a level could be designed to get them where they need to be within the equation. I was thinking it would be fun if these were the enemies of the game and were all negative numbers where the player can only play as positives

Score based either on creativity of the solution or how few numbers you could use to get the solution

One thing I’m struggling with when it comes to the concept of solving an equation anyway you like is how to let players add their own operator symbols (+-/x etc) would they be other playable characters to be unlocked and moved about or would they be part of a sub-system that didn’t count as players and as such could be added from the UI whenever needed (this raises more questions like would they be mouse controlled or just appear next to the player)?

I don’t know how it would work but a co-op multiplayer version of the game might be quite fun to play.

I apologise for the slightly rambly nature of this post but between the competition and a self-inflicted work commitment I am still slightly wiped out. Anyways I hope you enjoyed reading it and that it provided a valuable or at least interesting insight into what I was trying to do with my game.

As an afterthought I said on my game’s entry page that if you wanted to get to the git repo and couldn’t to contact me through my site but I’ve realised I didn’t link to my site as in the last few minutes of the competition, Dropbox just seemed easier than uploading a zip to my site so here’s the link: http://www.drentsoft.com/contact.

How it went

The first thing to say is that it was great fun to make a game and be part of something like ludum dare. The community is excellent, and throughout the whole process I felt as though I was taking part in something huge.

It’s been fun to play other people’s games and see what they created. I think making any game in 48 hours is an achievement, but some games are really incredible, given the time span.

One of the best things for me so far has been the help and feedback I’ve received from the community. It’s nice to see people enjoying the game, and it’s useful to get criticism and think about what I can improve.

On that note, here’s a run down of what went well, and what could have been improved. If you want to play the game further before you read further, my page is here – http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=30043

What went well

I was mostly happy just to finish on time. It looked doubtful for a while, and some simple things took longer than I wanted, probably because I’m still very new to programming.

Looking at comments though people mostly got what the game was about, and thought that it fit the theme. This was a relief as I wasn’t sure it’d be obvious how the game fit with the theme.

What didn’t go well

The main problem is that ‘Listen’ isn’t much of a game. I’d always wanted it to be a tad boring, but I had hoped to add in more interaction.

Another problem is the sound. That dull thud/pop is supposed to be a clock ticking, and my inexperience with sound really shows here.

Conclusion

Overall the process was great fun and I’d love to do it again. I’ve learned a lot,and had a great time. Thanks to everyone who’s given he help and feedback, it’s greatly appreciated. If you’d like to play my game, you can find it here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=30043

I made a game called The Samurai’s Lonesome Heart, and the relevance to the theme is that You Only Get One Heart aka everything kills you in one hit. I also implemented a new combat system where you have to aim your sword to block and attack enemies.

This game was the first game I have ever “completed”, and it is also my first Ludum dare game.

My worries

When I submitted my game I was  disappointed. Due to Construct 2’s free edition limiting me in the number of events I could use, I had to scrap a tutorial enemy, and the final boss(es) couldn’t even hurt you. I was also really tired because I had stayed up the whole night to finish it, so level design was really rushed. I was very worried that my game was too complicated for players to understand, and I was also worried that the combat was flat out not fun.

You Reap What You Sow

When I woke up from my long nap and checked the comments, I was very pleasantly surprised. I somehow convinced myself that my game was a failure, but it seemed like quite a few people enjoyed it! It was then that I felt that all the work I had put in was worth it. This was such and eye-opening experience, because I had always viewed all my games as not fun, mainly because I had playtested it hundreds of times. But just a few kind words from some lovely people and I felt completely liberated from the self-inflicted stress. Only now then I feel proud of my creation, and I still can’t believe people find it fun.

I thank everyone who played my game, and please comment what can be done to improve it. This experience has made it possible for me to showcase my games to an audience other than myself.

shameless self promotion—> play it here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=31488

I found out an hour ago that I had posted an old version of  my game which crashed on the last level.
So people who played my game but never saw this level:

played the bugged version.

Which is too bad because it was the last level with the ending animation.

It also may be a bit difficult so I have made a blog post where you can get hints. It has the complete solution, but you can just click until you have read all you neeed to know to finish the game.

http://blog.goerp.nl/?p=300

If you decide to play it, I hope wou will enjoy.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=14225

Our game is finally complete!

It’s been a rough 72h… now that I’ve finally had enough sleep, I’m ready to announce that our game, “THE HOTDOG PARABLE”, is complete!

What is it all about, you ask? Well, a few days ago you made a bet with a friend of yours: can you build a fast-food empire with just a dollar and an old hot dog stand? Time to show him what you’re made of!

Play the Game

The Hotdog Parable is here!

Click on the screenshot to play the game!

Follow us on Twitter:

@SunShiranui (Designer, Programmer)

@danipiscitello (Artist)

@whitesora92 (Programmer)

@tulblut (Music)

Screenshot from original compo-entry

After having finished Thrust Issues just in time for the compo, I went back to it and added the sound effects and music back in. (I couldn’t use those because the compo is a one-man show).

I also made it easier to get into by adding a few more levels in the beginning where the difficulty ramps up slowly. Additionally I added extra art-assets to the levels for decoration and implemented an alternate control scheme: Left/Right arrow to thrust!

PS: Rates and comments on the compo entry are very much appreciated. Thanks!

Check it out.

I did it ! I participated to a Ludum Dare, after several years of hesitation, and more than that I created my first game!

This game, which is entitled “The last day of mr Kane”, is inspired by the famous movie “Citizen Kane”. You are a selfish old man who feels that his life come to an end. So you have 1 minute to become happy by different ways (you only get a single phone call, a single flower, a single piece of paper etc…) in order to rest in peace.

If you want to reach the best score, you have to redo the game and to try the different possibilities that are offered to you.

I will probably write a postmorten soon, and I do apologise for the potential english mistakes (I’m french).

Good Luck for your games and I hope that you will have fun with my game (as I have fun with yours) in spite of the potential glitches

Hello all,

tl;dr at the bottom

Brief Background: I REALLY wanted this to be the compo/jam that made me complete my first game.  In August, I attempted LD27 (10 Seconds) with very little success.  Very little preparation, bad timing, and the time I had during the jam I used it to learn SDL 2.0 along with dividing the C++ into classes/files instead of 1 giant file. I had gone through SDL 1.2 tutorials shortly before and all I made was an unfinished glorified pong game that had flaws with detecting collision when the ball was coming at a perfect 45 degree angle at the paddle and the paddle could never detect it (still not sure how it would accomplish this… maybe a “look ahead” of some sort?  I wish I spent more time from that jam until this like I had wanted, but I think I was let down among other things.  I have also been upset at myself for not getting back into gamedev sooner.

This past week prior to the jam, I knew I had to prepare and get back into it if I wanted any chance this LD.  I started a beginner RPG tutorial and learned some good things. Some of the Object Oriented stuff I tried on my own last August was the same but better so I thought that was cool.  I  hadn’t really done C++ since ~2007 in school.  I didn’t finish the tutorial until 7 hours after the compo started, which I was OK with but preferred to be done with it prior. First mistake.

Saturday comes, and I wanted to wake up around 10 or 11am (6-7 hours of sleep), but instead it was 2:30PM! I should have set an alarm.  Long work weeks with little sleep caught up to me like usual: Mistake #2. 18.5 hours had gone by since LD started and I’ve yet to start on the actual game. I had a few ideas when the theme started but I was focusing on finishing the tutorial/engine.  I started with my OK base code and started to add my own code into it.  I added a FPS cap of 60 and it fluctuated between 35-55, terrible.  Then I tried to add a cap of 30 and it was around 24-27.  I toyed with a few things and it wasn’t working well and I figured I didn’t want to make a hack&slash because almost 24 hours passed and it wouldn’t be enough time and b, I’ve mucked with the code enough I wanted to start from a clean base.

Hours 24-41: I backed up a little bit and due to time remaining and lack of knowledge, I just wanted to get a nice simplistic game and jotted down a design. I added to existing engine from RPG tutorial without worrying about framerate issues, deleted and backtracked the camera engine portion to get back to static with moving characters, drew some new assets and displayed them on the screen. I then fell asleep for 11 hours yet again! Sometime the night prior, and the time from hours 41-48 I was then able to draw my player, him on a paddle/platform, a bullet in his mouth where he shoots from, and an enemy on a paddle with a bullet on the opposite side. But collision detection was failing miserably and there goes the compo. I was also able to get my first main menu going so that the user has to press SPACEBAR to start the game. I was pretty stoked about that (little victories and firsts).

Due to collision issues and mess of engine and game code, I decided it was time to revert back to my original code from August of SDL 2.0 mixed with SDL 1.2 and retrofit/combine the good from that with the good from my current RPG engine turned into static background, basically starting from the ground up.  Took Monday off of work and worked on the game all day to try to get it working until about 750pm (jam ends at 8pm) where I got so close but barely ran out of time. I got some of it working including collision and could possibly finish it in a few hours without music or sound effects and I will definitely continue working on it until I complete it. I didn’t want to submit a game where a couple sprites just bounce around the screen.

Lessons learned and tl:dr

What went right:

1. I prepared a little earlier than before which helped me actually work on the game during the compo
2. Hours 0-2 of the compo, I actually went to the gym to do my brainstorming of the theme while working out, which helped me.
3. Saved versions of the project during critical times.
4. Taking a step back at the right time to regroup/replan and refocus.
5. I did 1 status in the middle when I got my menu to work, what needed to be worked on next and potential add-ons, which helped prioritize.
6. Clean workspace and good retro MIDI tunes playlist picked out prior to the jam helped.

Things to improve:

1. Preperation. Although I prepared better than before, it wasn’t enough.  The 5 hours spent finishing learning at the beginning of the compo should have been spent working on the game.
2. Also, axiom keyboard not working and should have gotten that resolved prior
3. Work on pixel art prior.
4. Do a warmup of a game with just squares even to make sure basic engine is working.
5. Either learn Unity2D to not deal with engine aspects during the jam or have a solid engine done already.
6. Manage sleep better the week leading into it, which would have earned another ~10 hours total of compo/jam time.
7. Overall, complete some small games first to get out of the way and get a better feel of everything.
8. If above is improved, I can actually get people to playtest the game prior to submission time to work on bugs.
9. If above is improved, I can also have time to add next phases into the game (noted in my 1 status post) which would have been fun.
10. If above is improved, more status posts.

This has been a pretty good learning experience, fairly better than the last compo and can’t wait for the next one.  I only get TWO failed Ludum Dare attempts and I foresee nothing but completed Ludum Dare attempts in the future.

My menu prior to starting from the ground up.

Tags: LD28, post-mortem, postmortem

Hello friends,we are bunch of game designers,programmers and artists from a game design college in India.This was the first time we managed to submit a complete game, of course it’s a bit buggy and might not be the greatest concept but hey we had fun 😀
That is what gamejams are supposed to be I guess, so yes I will continue with the postmortem now.

First of all “The chipper” is a stealth action game, where you play as an robot who is trying to escape this lab full of robots patrolling here and there, if you get detected you die in one shot. Your only friend is your gun which can release one single EMP, you can pick this emp from after deploying it.So find your way to the exit to escape !
First some screenshots

Here is the entry

What went right :
1. Fun to play, single mechanic. This is what we thought, the idea of one bullet might be cliche but we had a interesting take on it, you have to pick the ammo from the robot before the robot gets activated again. And it seemed fun enough to develop the idea and the game furthermore.

2.Stealth element: Adding stealth was a good decision, we did not “Add” it but it just developed from our universe

3.Unity engine: Yes, the engine was a right choice, we might have some bugs here and there but hey its working ! Also Unity Asset Store-I love you

4.We learned a lot of new stuff in terms of design,programming etc

5. Other Features done :

a.Robots patrolling to and forth or looping
b.Door puzzle added
c.Checkpoints working
d.Robots LOS system
e.Laser mechanic
f.Situations made in Levels
g.Loads of other stuff too

5.Finished and submitted and satisfied too !

What went wrong :

1.3d game but our artist was more comfortable with 2d

2.Bugs ! We ignored some bugs, as fixing them would take too long and we would miss the deadline

3.The idea might have been simple but the game was still big and ambitious,the mechanics needed to support the main mechanic and the game might be a bit too much we managed to finish it but I would like to make a game with even lesser other mechanics

So that’s it !
Next time it should be even more fun

If you read all this, please play the game and rate us and gives us feedback.

I will update the game and probably make a video too…but later I guess
Also here is an picture I clicked 6 am Saturday morning, right behind my college

Thank you

Avichal Singh

I like the idea behind ludum dare but this site needs work. The competition is more then 10 years old, it is the most recognized by media. Game designers are usually thoughtful people. This site needs to be designed from the ground up with aim for innovation and indie movement.

I feel strange when I have to rate at least 20 games(goal suggested by the system). It means that I have to skim through a lot of content and make a shallow comment. System is not designed to make you think and provide valid criticism of the game.

The site needs to be open platform with transparent rules and design goals. I even do not want to talk about it’s rating system. Right now it’s painful to use. I think it needs to go away.

When you make a comment, game creator should be able to mark your comment as useful. Sort of like stackoverflow. Then we can view games of people who provide the most valid criticism of games. If game creator thinks that criticism is fair then it must be good, person must be thoughtful and deserves recognition.

What do you guys think about the future of ludum dare?

Tags: Ludum Dare

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=23237