Matt, Gingy, Jeff and Amanda here to comment and play your games on Twitch.

Watch it here http://www.twitch.tv/onlyslightly

 

Feel free to send us your games on the twitch chat or tweet us at @jetpackfandango

 

Thanks!

 

Third Ludum Dare for me. You learn something every time. My first LD went surprisingly well, the second one was not so great. This third one went pretty well. Play and Rate it here.

The Theme

The theme didn’t really give me ton of ideas like the last two. I was thinking of a Godzilla-like game where you had to destroy houses, but it didn’t seem like a very interesting mechanic, or at least I couldn’t envision much around it. So I started thinking, what do monsters do or where are they anyway. So the in-the-closet and the under-the-bed idea was born. It was pretty clear form the start that Godzilla or under the bed games would be plenty. Oh well.

Learn from the Past

It’s clear I’ve learned a lot from previous LDs. I’ve been ok with time management usually, although last time I got hung up on physics bugs and coding menus to no end. This time, I went back to basics and decided the menus should be last, and as simple as possible. Apart from the mouse sensitivity option I didn’t actually code much into UI, although the buttons at the top of the game are technically Unity UI buttons. The main menu is just mouse raycast detection against the 3D scene.

The other thing I learned in last LD, is that creating a quick bitmap for a UI element can be a really easy way to clean up the UI. So the buttons at the top became pictures of the cubes, with icons on them. It just looks so much more polished.

Goals

Do more art work. Use Blender more instead of basic 3D shapes in Unity – those are also easier to texture. And so I did. The toys are all made in Blender with my limited skills, and then textured using Paint and Gimp. I wouldn’t say the game has top of the line graphics, but it’s an improvement over last time. And even with the limited amount of 3D models, the game looks a lot more polished from a graphics point of view then my previous LD entries. Ok, the baby is still made up of Unity primitives… but I had it in as a prototype and it just worked somehow, I didn’t want to replace it.

            

Another goal was to not repeat last LD’s mistake of getting hung up on a specific issue. I think I was just lucky I didn’t really run into anything. I didn’t find any major bugs that I couldn’t solve in a minute or two.

Anything bad? … anything?

Not really, actually. I was kind of ahead of where I was in last LDs already on Saturday by noon. I did music early (usually a last-minute effort here), already had some levels. So I actually spent some more time making a few more models and texturing them. A power outage cost me a few hours, but it wasn’t a big deal. You could argue that could have been another level or two. Which brings me to the usual bad thing, I could have had more levels.

So overall, from a personal standpoint I consider this my best LD entry to date. But that’s kind of the point maybe, each LD should be a bit better…

Play and rate Monsters Under the Bed

 

 

Well… I just rated fifty games! So… I decided to write little summary of most memorable entries.

 

Path of a Psychopath

What i liked?

Well… Story was pretty neat. I really loved how main “hero” sees humans. Like bunch of stupid sheeps. That idea itself was pretty brilliant. If you liked strong stories, try this one!

 

The Most Boring Game Ever

What i liked?

…. Everything 😀 This game is just perfect!

Monster Discrimination Simulator

What i liked?

Well… Pretty much everything. Lots of people complained about difficulty. But i, as a oldschool gamer think, difficulty of this game is pretty entertaining! If you liked VVVV(?V) .. You know what i mean…   You wil probably like this game too

Grave

What i liked?

Well… Pretty much everything. Gameplay was smooth, animations beautiful and overall pretty high! One of my candidates for top 10!

 

You Have Been Found Guilty

What i liked?

Well.. This game has amazing art. And… Werewolves. I love werewolves.

B(L)OB

 

What i liked?

Art was pretty amazing and slime is really sexy in this game 😀 . Also, almost fully destrictible enviroment :3 Sweet!

 

 

And…

 

What next?

Now is time for another 50 games 😀 If you have some tips, just past them in comments. Also, if you not played my game yet, try it

HERE

 

Thank you @ButtonMasherBro! I’m glad you played and reviewed our game. It’s my pleasure watching all of you guys play our game (also died a lot due to the insane difficulty level LOL)!

 

 

Besides, if you still haven’t played our game, please check it below:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=55414

Cheers!

Tags: game, jam, LD33, unity3d

Guys, thank you very much for all the kind comments on our entry (Excremonsters!).

Thank you very much!

Hi, My name is Bruce Guo and I will share some findings in today’s rating.

You can drop your entry in comments and I will review them, (though it may takes some time)

VOL-5 VOL-4  VOL-3  VOL-2  VOL-1

---

The Troll’s Toll

by baykush_figtree

The design is perfect! Please play again after the end, you will notice the suggestions:

Why you have a ability to throw bottles?

And what is the red thing around neck? A tie? Does a troll wears a tie?

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=32955

---

The Monster Inside

by Random Seed Games

Film Noir styled story. The art is so lovable!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=16933

---

I am Death and Fire

by derr

The best flying fire dragon game in LD33 that I rated, so far.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=55643

---

Greetings, Human

by boardtobits

All kinds of aliens coming to earth and you must choose the right way to great them.

You need to check the in-game reference (a lot), it is so humorous.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=57679

---

Hero Mate

by Lancelot Gao

You are a monster but who says that monster can’t help the hero? By being stepped?

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=3035

---

Loveless : a multiplayer story

by Mark Venturelli

Developer will design the next part of the game based on the massive players’ choices in the game.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=26269

---

Can I Haz Monsters?

by Omiya Games

Imagine you are baby learning new words. The more words you learn the more you can understand and express.

This game is about the collecting words and making a sentence.

This is experimental!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=20557

---

Space Invadees

by lanestp

Well, a reversed Space Invaders. You control the swarm above.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=49246

---

Mini Tar’s Chair Stompin’ Extravaganza!

by ILoveToJam

Who is the monster that broke the chairs in the office?

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=53515

---

The Supper

by jrhee

A reversed detective game! Kill everyone without being suspected!

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=55500

---

Shark

by camlang

Very nice shark game! It is always bloody with sharks in game?

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=34675

---

Grave

by uheartbeast

Very cool action game! Rare to see in a jam!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=54849

---

VOL-5 VOL-4  VOL-3  VOL-2  VOL-1

If you’ve played my game, I wanted to let you know that I’ve updated it with some new fancy stuff. If you haven’t, now is a good time!

What is new:

• 4 new levels at the start of the game, which serve the purpose of teaching how to play
• Better interface
• Score screen at the end of each level
• Rebalanced some levels

What I’m working on next:

• Slow motion. Not sure yet when to activate it? When the explosion is huge? semi-randomly? You can watch it in action below
• Do the game need a menu? Not sure but I’m thinking about it
• I’ll try and make a new level every day and add them in the weekend
• Remove boring levels

If you have an opinion of what’s missing to the game, please tell me in the comments (or in the game page), or on twitter at @allinlabs

Play & Rate BIG BAD WOLF

https://mtc.cdn.vine.co/r/videos_h264high/26CFBCE9FF1250238689750720512_SW_WEBM_144105429867391be28c4f7.mp4

Hey,

we uploaded an uncommented Let’s Play video of our game ‘The Mammoth: A Cave Painting‘.

First video upload of this kind for us so please let us know if you have any feedback!

Please also consider playing and rating our game here if you haven’t done so already:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=56968

Thanks a lot,
David
inbetweengames

Tags: LD33, ldjam, letsplay

Above is a HD Wallpaper of our game: Memory of a Psychopath. Click Here to download the wallpaper.

Play the game here and see what happens to Robert Garyson.

 

 

Milky Helps people is a logic puzzle game. (Timelapse here.)

You have to place devices in the grid, according to some rules:

• You need to place exactly one device in every group of tiles
• When two devices line up, they automatically connect to each other. Each device must be connected to exactly one other device in the same row, and exactly one other device in the same column.

The solution to the above puzzle is as follows:

But the puzzles quickly get more complex.

In later levels, the game adds barriers that prevent connections from going through, making the puzzles more complex.

The puzzles are motivated by a story told in the form of a picture book with audio narration. The story is that Milky always likes being helpful, but sometimes he finds that he could be more helpful if he was just a little bit bigger. So he has to operate the professor’s devices to collect some mangosteen juice, a powerful substance that will make him bigger. But every time he gets big enough to solve one problem, a new problem arises that requires him to be even bigger.

What went well: puzzle rules

I usually make a puzzle game. My Ludum Dare 32 entry, Wellbeing (game, postmortem), had rules that enabled me to design some satisfying puzzles (I think the most satisfying puzzles are “smooth” – you can chip away at them piece by piece). I was pleased with Wellbeing’s puzzles… except the rules were kind of complex and confusing. Some players were put off in the first three levels while the rules were being explained. So, for LD33 I worked hard to come up with puzzle rules with a balance between simple enough to be easily understood and complex enough to allow me to design satisfying puzzles. Even when I had rules I thought were completely clear, when I showed it to my friend Brian Corr (who has entered LD in the past but didn’t have the time this time) he pointed out and helped to clear up some ambiguities. I haven’t had complaints about confusing rules this time so the plan seems to have succeeded!

Wellbeing had a storyline that branches depending on how you solve one of the puzzles. That went down well with players, so I decided to take it a step further: this game has two endings; once you’ve decided which ending you want, the solution of the final puzzle is determined uniquely. Well, I’m pleased with myself, even if you don’t like it.

What went badly: stylistic incongruity

Some players enjoyed both the story and the gameplay but felt that they seemed unrelated. I think that a big factor in this is the visual style. The puzzles are displayed in a clean, abstract way, and the story is told with some sketchy picture book drawings. If the puzzles were displayed in the same sketchy style, with a few mangosteen fruits here and there, players would have swallowed the connection more easily. But making sketchily-drawn tiles line up properly would have taken a lot of work, so there’s a trade-off to be made here.

Notes on how long tasks took

Going over my timelapse, I made some notes on how long certain tasks took. Naturally YMMV but perhaps these numbers give an idea of how much content it’s possible to create in a given time frame.

• Recording and editing the 5 minutes of narrative took about 1h20m, while drawing the corresponding art took nearly 5h. (Not counting the in-puzzle art)
• The 5 minutes of music took about 2h to make, all up.
• I didn’t write a line of code for the first 4h30m…. I was thinking up puzzle rules and puzzles, and planning everything out on paper. Is that weird?
• I planned the game out giving myself 10h of contingency time, i.e. planned to be done by 1am Melbourne time, and actually finished at 7am. So… good decision.

I’m still working on improving my entry, Someone stole the Princess!

Looks like tileset usage based on depth is working. Of course, now I need to actually draw (or look for some CC) new tiles. These are the planned tilesets:

1. Depth 10 & 9- The Lair
2. Depth 8 & 7 – The Crystal Caves
3. Depth 6 & 5 – The Sunken Ship (don’t ask)
4. Depth 4 & 3 – The Underground Forest
5. Depth 2 & 1 – The Basement
6. Depth 0 – The Town

The excellent DawnLike tileset. Just need drawing wall intersections.

Once I finish preparing the tiles (I might alternate drawing tiles with programming some of the planned features) I’ll add all these changes to the post-jam version.

Tags: ldjam, roguelike, SSTP

Enjoy an exclusive SPOILER-FREE screenshot from our jam entry Clinical Trial.

Unfortunately this is all we can show you without altering your experience.

If you have a 5 min. check it out and play it. We promise you won’t forget it.

Play the game here

Initial Design

Our discussion began with ‘Monsters, inc.’. We liked the idea of scaring being the daily grind and removing any horror aspects of the game going down a more ‘Theme Hospital’ route. We then continued the discussion along this path and decided that in place of a hospital we had to start with the classic haunted house. You would collect screams to sell and use the money to buy more scare props to set up in the rooms.

This was all sounding great to us but we started to think it may be a bit out of scope for 72 hours, so we tweaked it to have static props and map, but the player had to manually set off traps while avoiding being seen (he was too adorable to scare and nervous as it was his first job). This would also make the gameplay a little less ‘tower defence’ and make the game feel more dynamic. What could go wrong?

Final Outcome

Due to poor planning we ended up having to remove the stealth aspect of the game, which meant the player in the world was slightly redundant so we also removed him.

What we were left with is a game where victims (teens) look around the house, where you need to scare them to earn points. Using the correct theme to match a victim’s fears will gain extra points and increase their fear level. The points you get are relative to the players fear level (which increase the more you scare them, till they run away) and whether or not you match their fear. When victims have seen all the rooms they will leave, the aim is to have as many points as possible before they all leave.

The Good

• Visuals – The game makes good use of post processing effects to create a distinctive art style and make the game stand out. An effect we’re very happy with is our funky (scaling) walls, while primarily there to benefit the players’ view of the game, they give the house an organic feel which really brings it to life.
• Playable Game – Ignoring any quality issues we still produced a playable game that suffered from very few bugs and none that were game breaking. While it’s a small accomplishment we’re always pleased that we were able to produce something that works (compiles, is playable etc.).
• Social Media – This isn’t quite related to the game we made, but as a fledgling company we are always trying to improve our social media presence. We managed to get a decent number of impressions as well as some new followers (we love you guys, are you reading this? Hello?). In addition to this it’s also more data for us to use to identify the best way to communicate using social media (in this case twitter).
• New Tools – In this Jam we used two tools for the first time: Mixamo Fuse and ProCore’s Prototype. Both of these ended up providing results we were happy with as neither of us are 3d modellers. While it take a little time to get accustomed to the software it’s always nice to use a jam to experiment with a new set of tools.

The Bad

• Priorities – We started off well and quickly agreed on the core concept for our game, however from there we didn’t prioritize the task required well to meet an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) or in a manner that would allow us to easily cut content that wasn’t core to our concept. This ended up with us not having a playable game until the final day, at this point we then had to cut other gameplay content leaving the game a little bare and with very little time for testing and tweaking. As we have suspected this has been mentioned in early feedback that both gameplay elements are light and user feedback needs improving.
• Gameplay – This is pretty a simple one to evaluate, as mentioned above it is too light on gameplay elements and what the game does contain is not well communicated to the player. The initial design felt like it had a lot more substance and potentially we ended up removing the wrong elements from the game in order to get the game done in time.

 

And The Conclusion

Having looked at what we made and all the feedback we have gotten (thanks guys), we’re actually quite disappointed with the result of this jam. We have have discussed internally what we feel we need to change and it seems the consensus is that we need to prioritise gameplay over everything and really double down on it. We’ve seen a few comments along the lines of “looks cool, but I have no idea what I’m doing.”.It’s great that people like the visuals, but we’d rather be seeing “super fun, but looks a bit dodgy.”.

With that in mind we plan to implement some hard rules in our next jam and identify an MVP and then the stretch goals beyond that. The MVP will only have white boxing or primitive/representative art so that we can focus on gameplay. As a studio we’re currently looking for an artist, so potentially resolving that problem may help us better divide and organize the tasks out in jams.

That was a little bit doom and gloom, while we’re disappointed with outcome we still loved the process, and it’s been really awesome to see all the games everyone else has made and special thanks to everyone who played and rated the game (especially all that gave feedback).

 

So many votes, so many comments! I’m suppa happy right now guys! You are all great! Yesterday I decided that if I would have got at least 100 comments (in that moment I were at 83 votes, now I’m at 96!!!) and I had reached one of the Top 100  lists based on the categories , I would have developed a better and greater version of my game, B(L)OB, starting from zero!!!
Now I feel so close to this goal.. I hope you guys really enjoyed my game! Now the future of B(L)OB is only in your hands! RATE B(L)OB TODAY, FOR A BETTER TOMORROW! 😀

PLAY HERE!

 

And please, tell me your opinion ;D

Hey guys, this is quite honestly my time participating in a Ludum Dare game jam and boy is this so much fun. Not only did I manage to accomplish something great, but I also get to play so many unique and beautiful games! Seriously,  it’s awesome to see so many creative minds expressing themselves and I just wanted to take the time to express just a few games that I’ve enjoyed thus far.

 

Super Snake Time

This is simply a fun little game, in this you play as a bunch of piranha plants

who are attempting to eat a bunch of Marios. It’s a fun game and gave me some good laughs.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=49637

Morally Upright Siren

In this game you play a siren who must guide boats to safety with your voice. And I actually do mean your voice, prior that this game requires you need a mic in order to sing to the boats. You will have to play around with a few settings in the game to get it functioning, but trust me it’s worth the price of entry.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=34309

Monster Pizza

Oh my gosh Monster Pizza… This game is a blast! You play as a giant dinosaur (Who looks like Raptar, imo) who must deliver pizzas all over town without causing as much collateral damage as possible. Playing this game made me laugh extremely hard as I hit building after building by pure accident.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=13960

That’s just a few games that I’ve enjoyed thus far, I definitely want to cover more games in future post.

Anyway, I’ll catch you all later. Happy LD33 😀

Play it here

The first Post-Jam version is now out! Had some technical difficulties with the web builds (HTML5 build has terrible audio support and itch.io didn’t like the Unity web build for some reason) so now there aren’t any! Desktop builds all the way, eh.

Do try and rate the jam build as well will ya?

Tags: audio, LD33, mech, mecha, post-jam, sounds, tactical superiority, update

We didn't managed it to draw and code a fancy health-bar in time.
 After some complaints about that, we decided to make one "Post-Mortem".

here you go:

 

If you haven't played our game yet, your can do it here.
 We had a lot of fun this Ludum Dare and we hope you also have fun playing our little game.
 Feel free to rate and comment, we appreciate your feedback.

 

 

Tags: art update, jam, LD33, Post, post-mortem, update

 

 

 

 

Hey Everybody! I’ve had to skip the last couple of Ludum Dares to work on more long term projects. I am, however, happy to announce that a completed version of my first LD game is available on Google Play! Way back in April 2014 I made this prototype for LD29. It wasn’t great, and it was really sloppy, but it was my first “game”, and I was happy to have finished it.

I have since completed a much better version of it for android devices, called Doug: The Endless Digger. It combines elements of Mr. Driller with the controls of Canabalt. There is a free version here, and a $1 ad free version here. Give it a play, and let me know what you think with a review, or in the comments here!

 

Let’s start this post off with a video showing me constantly hitting myself in the face while trying to create something (music for the video by the amazing Dan Terminus):

I had always wanted to write a postmortem after a LD, but never got around to actually doing it, so instead of writing nothing again I decided to just write a tiny postmortem this time.
So, this was my 7th Ludum Dare. It was, as always, a whole lot of fun, I learned a lot and it was pretty exhausting. Business as usual.
What was different for me this time, is that it was also kind of frustrating. I had a lot of problems that took too much time solving. The main cause for this is probably that I went 3D this time and that I had not really prepared for that.
I had huge problems with the workflow between Blender and Unity. An example for that: 5 hours before the end of the compo I decided to rework the model for my turrets, just a tiny little bit so it looks better. Unity did not overwrite the model on the turret prefab, so I thought: Okay, I’ll just place it on the prefab and see if it works and after that I can still revert this. Well, there was some kind of warning that I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was a little unclear stating what would happen, so I continued. The end result was that all of my turrets (and I have quite a lot of them) didn’t work anymore and I had to place them all anew, which took quite a bit of time that was then missing for polishing and balancing.
Due to my unpreparedness I had to watch tutorials on how to animate a model in Blender while the competition was running, which is something that should really be done in advance. Had I already known how everything worked I would’ve saved a couple of hours.
Well, thanks to all these time consuming things, I feel like I have not put enough effort into what really matters and am thus not completely satisfied with how the game turned out. The narrative could’ve used some more work, the balancing is suboptimal to say the least, the game does not look good and the music is just one chord progression and one melody, which I am most sad about since I love working on the music, but there was just not enough time.
All in all though, the game is not that bad and I guess I learned even more than in previous LDs due to trying something new. So as a result I am already looking forward to the next one and I hope I’ll remember to be better prepared than this time around.

 
Here, have a screenshot and a link to the game and thanks for your attention!
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=24534

I’ve got to say working tireless hours for a game is good experience for anyone, didn’t really expect to learn this much in one weekend. Boblar’s Ascension is my first Ludum Dare game (and also first game I have tried to make others play).

First day:

I was going to participate in local game creating club for the ludum dare event. My first thought was something along: “I’ll just tag along with some team and see how it goes”. After chatting with couple of the other devs, I decided that “I have my own game idea and I’ll roll it on my own, thanks for the support guys”. Afterwards I just went home with the idea of game where you try to pollute the planet while making as much profits as you can. I also wanted to have annoying rich guy with voice on the game so Boblar came alive. During the first game design moments I had created grid with different tile types, pollution counter & the basic gameplay. The pollution was very hard to control in the beginning and the tileart was…well over 9000 hours spent on photoshop! (1 minute per tile~)

How the game looked after the first day:

 

Second day:

During the second day I got helpful volunteers (fiancee) to draw boblar’s figure. After baiting some time I also managed to get some ending pictures for the game from her. I also discussed with other person (panda) about the tileset and she wanted to give it a try. Afterwards I added some better looking tiles to game, boblar’s face, camera moving & road pathing check (activating factories with towns).

 

Third day:

On monday I realized that the game must be finished soon. So I did the voice over for Boblar and tweaked the pollution and income system a little bit. I also upgraded the last of tiles to match the other tiles (had mixed original bad ones and some good ones made by panda). After submitting the game I was really done from all the work. After resting for a good deal I realized I also had to vote for games! (which I did for sometime)

 

Afterthought:

First thought about the whole jam is: “cut all the features you have in mind to finish the game”. In the beginning I planned on doing something like treehuggers wanting to destroy the factories while you were activating em and you had to protect em with tanks or something. I also wished to make some mines for mountains but that also had to be cut out. Forests could have also reduced pollution and…well the list goes on. I am definetly going to participate on december when next jam is being held!

PS. I also realized my game doesn’t run in good deal of computers…Great point to think about when creating next game.

 

And lastly the shameless self promoting

If you wish to try boblar’s ascension then click Boblar’s Ascension