[Cross-posted from Tech Valley Game Space]

Hey, everyone! We’re just preparing for our live stream tonight on Twitch.tv and playing through some Ludum Dare games, but in the meantime, we wanted to share all the games created at the Tech Valley Game Space. They are:

Moon Witch

A side Scrolling Shooter starring a witch.

Fly On The Wall

2-Player Puzzle Game. One player is the Scientist, the other player is the Fly. Entering different teleporters at the same time will combine DNA and give special abilities. The objective is to enter the same teleporter together to become normal again.

Huntingman Championship

A sport about killing the highest weight of animals!

This game is a top down, single screen arena, where the player moves around the environment looking for animals to kill. The animals will have AI that makes them run away from contact and the direction of damage. Animals will not always die from one hit, and there will be gore and real sounds to make the experience horrifying. The player must drag the bodies back to the house by hand, and will move slower depending on the weight of the bodies. Some weapons will cause the animal to lose weight from overkill. Better weapons can be found in the Shoppee. Are you a monster?

Lardum

A quick 5 minute or less game. Even quicker if you don’t like it.

“You are the monster”! All you need to do is hit space and watch it unfold.

There is a secret revealed when you complete the game, so spend those 10 minutes unlocking everything because frankly, it’s worth it.
(There’s been a lot of people stating they can’t figure out the secret… Think of konami, and if you still can’t get it googling “Konami” and “secret codes” should get you there 😉 )

Can I Haz Monsters?

As a traveller in a foreign land, you must learn the language of these strange creatures to let them help you make your way through. Find all the alien words and talk to everyone you meet, and you could unlock the power of the monsters!

So, this Ludum Dare was an interesting one, at first I was at odds with theme, “We’ve had this one before I thought, with You are the Villain, this one’s just the same”

But then, after the first few hours of my first coding livestream, consisting of me re-acclimatising with Unity, writing up a generic bunch of menu screens for transitions, re-definable controls, etc, etc. I noticed something.

The theme… it IS different!

Villains are, well, they’re just Villains, usually with some wacky plot and likable fallability about them. Monsters, are an entirely different breed, hideous and with their minds set on horrible, horrible things.

My next thought was along the lines of “Ohh Rampage, there’s a game I could try and emulate but no, everyone will probably do that and it’s too obvious an interpretation of the theme. What I need is something REALLY monsterous. But What?”

Okay, let’s make the player take part in something disgusting, I mean murdering characters is one thing, but that’s in almost all the video games, we need something worse, kidnapping the innocent, now there’s something monsterous.

To say making this game was unsettling to make would be pretty accurate, whilst it was fun making the voices of the various characters during the live stream it made me feel pretty odd about coding the thing up. Clearly Unity was also feeling odd and deleted my prefabs directory 2wice during the event, I could almost swear someone was remoting into my PC to prevent me from submitting with an hour to go all 30 prefabs went bye bye and any final polish turned into a race to get everything set back up and working again before time was up.

You play the role of a monsterous character driving around in your Van with the aim of capturing as many innocent kids within the time limit and can drop off lollipops to tempt the kids further, but, watch out for those pesky parents out to stop your plans, speaking of which. What are your plans? You’ll only find that out by watching the terrible ending unfortunately.

There were plans to make it so different areas would spawn more or fewer kids at different periods of the day, with the school buildings being particularly useful / troublesome depending on when you visited but the bug in unity prevented that from happening sadly. I might update this game later on, although I have many other games to finish off currently!

So yes, please play The Catcher Van, feel disgusted with yourself and enjoy the ending, you monsters!

PLAY ME DO. Playyy me dooooooooooo, cough cough cough cough.

During Ludum Dare weekend over £150 for the gamers charity Special Effect during my game jam and 10k run challenge which is awesome, thanks again to everyone who donated and shared, you rock!

This is some post-mortem thoughts on my game The Zombifier.
First of all I’d like to thank all the people who have played the game. Your feedback has been very generous and it’s been a real pleasure to read.

This has been my first Ludum Dare so frankly speaking I didn’t know what to expect. Make a game in just 48H!? Are you joking?!
Therefore, my objective was to make a playable, complete game which would respect the theme. That meant spending time on gameplay and adding some indispensable art and music, but nothing too fancy, just the essentials.

The theme “You are the moster” was chosen at 3a.m. local time.. so I woke up to see what it was, thought about it a bit and went to sleep again, hoping thant great ideas will come to me in the morning. They didn’t… I mean I had several nice ideas for a point&click or interactive fiction.. But it seemed too risky, I didn’t think it would be possible to create an interactive fiction in just 48H.. Since then I had lot’s of occasions to discover some great Ludum Dare games and find out that it really was possible, but in the meantime I decided to stick with the objective of making a complete game, without much fuss. I chose therefore a simple mechanic and went with a slow zombie chasing around chaoticaly running humans, with some soldiers shooting at it. Not the most innovative subject..

Gameplay was the most important so I actually spend some time prototyping the mechanics with circles and squares instead of real art. When it seemed ok, I added some rudimental graphics (not the ones seen in final version) and happily it turned out better that I had accounted for. I’ve chosen small pixel sprites because I find it easy this way to make something presentable fast (not that good pixel art is fast and easy…). Then I implemented the traps and the soldiers. I improved the graphics and made the sounds. I used speech generator which I transformed slightly in Audicity and then added some music with LMMS. This was really fun to make and even came out not so terrible in the end and unexpectandly resulted with a nice retro arcade look & fill of the game 😉

And then on sunday while playtesting I found that it would be a good idea to add some medkits… This had a huge impact on gameplay and I think is what makes it “playable” (together with traps).

The game is basically a one level, where you try to survive as long as you can, and earn maximum of points. So leaderboard seemed essential and I’m glad I managed to implemented that (on kongregate). I hoped to add some more medals and animations at the “game over” screen but I’ve run out of time, and somewhere around midnight local time, decided I would skip all that. It’s a pity… Because it would have been nice to have something more than just a silly song “You are Ex-ce-llent” to congratulate the player that he performed well.

But overall, I am really happy with my game, I have acheived my objectives and the game is quite fun to play. I haven’t touched the game since the compo, as I don’t really think that there is a point.

Since then I’ve been enjoying all these other fantastic Ludum Dare games. I’m amazed at what others achived on such a short notice. And I must say that I have learned a lot, especially while playing 😉 although I suppose it was necessary to first confront myself with the challenge, to be able to see how others have dealt with the scarce time ressource.

Does it mean that nothing went bad? Sure no, I just prefer to concentrate on the good stuff. I’ve already pointed out a few of the bad things, the hackneyed subject, the banged out ending. Also one could always complain that the art and the sound are too simplistic but I don’t really mind as that’s what I aimed for. Something seems sometimes wonky with the controls, when the zombie stops to feast, I’ve seen it in playtests already, but decided I’ll leave it be, that it might actually add something to the mood as a zombie can sometimes be non predictible. But it may annoy some people. And I spent time figuring out how to make LMMS work, I spent time on things I didn’t include in the end: designing the menu, writing code and drawing the medals…
Most important, I think that the in-game explanation is not sufficiently clear regarding traps. You need to set traps to win the game, and it seems from some feedback I received that these weren’t used much or even at all.

So this was my first Ludum Dare and I’ve enjoyed every single bit of it. It won’t certainly be the last.

And if youd like to play the game, it’s available here. Don’t forget to set traps. Often 😉

Hey again,

like a few other games from Ludum Dare 33 The Mammoth: A Cave Painting recently got featured on Offworld!

The article also has some background on what led to us participating in the jam and why the game might be a tiny bit on the sad side.

SPOILERS AHOI: Developers mourn a canceled project in this short ‘cave painting’ about grief

Of course you can also just play the game and tell us what you think!

Cheers,
David
inbetweengames

There’s an interesting guy on YouTube named Thin_Matrix. Over the past three years, he has been creating an indie MMO. Well, the day is finally here, and the game is on KickStarter.

For a pledge of just 25 euros, you get access to all his source code, which includes features like animations, particles, visual effects, shadows, and an entire 3D rendering pipeline. It’s a great learning opportunity. Moreover, for 30 euros you will get a Beta version of the game in addition to the code.

I thought both these deals were quite reasonable and might interest some of you guys.

Some gifs of the game below:

I assembled (almost) all the graphics I’ve made …in one day… for Almost Heroic!

…first time I rushed like that! What an experience! <3

Everything from scratch.

Thanks a lot for playing, commented and noted our game! You ARE SO GREAT! <3

We always return the favor!

Have you tested it?

Hey, all. As promised, we’ve exported all the videos we’ve recorded in our Twitch.tv livestream yesterday to Youtube. Here’s the always-up-to-date playlist below.

The new games are:

1. Soup
2. A Fox’s Journey
3. Tenebrous Expanse
4. Pluto’s Heart
5. Terror Bird Feeding Frenzy
6. We Missed You!
7. R-ADIUS
8. Enigma
9. Beast Of The Woods
10. Child’s Play
11. Jungle Blitz
12. Perspective
13. Mr. Legs
14. Shadow Nightmare

Man these kids are evil. Trying to catch innocent pokemon and force them to go on epic adventures. -> [PokEscape by Tuism]

Tags: Larry Chupacabra, Larry Does Ludum 33, LD33, Part 7, PokEscape, tuism

I am on my tablet wanting to play some LD games. Since no easdy way to filter entries by platform. Suggestion??? How about replying here with some too try ??? Thanks.

Hey everyone, I hope the judging phase has been going well for you! Thanks to anyone who’s rated/commented my game! Here’s the Post Mortem for my entry, Hymn of the Sages, a game focused on regaining demonic power and breaking out of containment. If you haven’t played it, try it first before reading. I made a Time lapse video too, watch it here.

What I wanted to do…

After going over many possible game ideas relating to monsters, I stuck to my “demon entity” idea. Possessing enemies sounded like a great puzzle solving mechanic and it fit with the demonic mood.

The initial visions I had for my characters were heavily inspired by Shadow of the Colossus, one of my all time favorite games. The purple outlines were added to give more obvious indication between light and dark. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I wanted the demon character (dubbed Nimrod when I started, comment if you get the reference :3) to develop throughout the game. As it developed, it would gain more power and it’s abilities would change slightly. The main story was to have this character defeat the sages that were sealing it’s power. I also wanted to expand on what I learned with noded AI in my last jam.

What I did…

So, looking at the overall product I entered, it ended up being close to what I envisioned. I spent a lot of time creating the base game structure, programming how it would handle cut scenes, doors opening, etc.

The AI was programmed early on, so I began by testing gameplay. Much time was spent on the intro cut scene, and making it run smoothly. I had to really squeeze in final levels due to the time left.

The Biggest Problem

How it worked out…

The most obvious flaw in the game is possessing sages. I made a mistake by not realizing the ridiculousness of using a single ray-cast in front of the player to check for any sage (combined with the top down controls, it was frustrating for most players). However, I’m keeping the game like this until I release a post-jam version in the next week or two.

Other than frustrating ray-casting and short windows to possess certain sages, I felt the game turned out solid and complete. The AI was much better and simpler than my first attempt at AI and I’m proud of the game’s puzzles. ☺

What I learned…

First, I must try to have time left over for someone to play test the game. Also, I’ll try to keep less on my plate until I get a better feeling of how long things will take. This has been my best jam experience from the looks of it. It was nice to participate in this Ludum Dare, since my last one was a whole year ago. Since then, I’ve been making a big project (that’s been going great) and developing it prepared me for any theme that was thrown at me.

If you would like to play and rate the game, here’s the link!

Don’t forget to comment or leave feedback.

Time lapse on YouTube; Profile on Facebook

THANKS FOR READING

Hey everybody! We decided to take our game (Eye In The Sky) and push forward with a Kickstarter. We also put it up on Steam for Greenlight!

• You have help us by voting yes on Greenlight by clicking here.
• You can help us by viewing/sharing/donating your coffee money to our kickstarter here.
• You can view our Ludum Dare entry by clicking here.

A little post to say our game, The Monster Way, is now on itch.io

Of course you still can play to our jam entry.

I wanted to try some games with it and have been getting errors.

So I went to do the “Enable NPAPI flag” thing: chrome://flags/#enable-npapi

And it’s not there…!!!

Google… YOU MONSTER.

LD33 Comment Checker v0.1

Get It Here

After seeing Literal Games Comment Checker i became intrigued !

I am not a python fan, and i love to create so i did!

(This is a windows version of the Comment Checker ONLY at the moment, its for testing purposes.)

 Follow the same instructions in This Post to get it up and working.

Comment with any bugs your find. I will release this on the google play store for android once i see what people want and such from it!

I have already set up checking past ld’s as well i just haven’t implemented it yet.

Click To Play

I’m in the UK, so I waited for the theme to be announced and then promptly went to bed. By morning I had my idea – the theme didn’t say “The Player Is The Monster”. It addressed me directly, “You, Wooltech, Are The Monster.”

So how would I make a game where the developer is the bad guy?

My main problem is always artwork. As in I can’t do it, so my first Ludum Dare used pixel-sized characters, the next was text only. This time, my workaround could be photos. Of me.

One thing led to another, and soon I was at work making the old school style RPG you see in the screenshots.

There are four main elements to the game itself:

MOVEMENT

Movement was going to be actual movement through a 3-D maze, but I ditched that pretty early on. Again, it took quite a while before I settled on the unlockable, clickable buttons that replaced it. Not ideal, but I hope it retained the sense of exploration.

HEROES

Orginally the three buttons under the Heros were ‘Attack’, ‘Skill’, ‘Item’. There were going to be player levels, unlockable skills and spells, collectable items to loot, buy and sell, equipable weapons and armour, consumable food and potions. The works. Oh, there were going to be multiple classes to pick from too.

Obviously – too ambitious. Especially as real-life took away more of the 48 hours than I expected.

Late Sunday I finally cut all that and came up with a more streamlined version of three skills per hero, and each encounter directly increasing stats rather than using XP. I think it works.

ENEMIES

The enemies worked out pretty much as intended. They have almost the same stats behind the scenes as the heros have. At the last minute I decided to gave them unique abilities too – a simple hardcoded check for which enemy type was attacking, and a percentage chance for it to do something interesting instead of just roll to hit the Hero. Eg. Ratkin may flee, White Mage may heal a random enemy, and so on.

And, yes, they are all me in various LARP costumes. As one commenter put it “you’re not very shy are you? ha”

DIALOGUE

I put together a fairly simple but robust system for branching dialogue, with me as the evil developer talking directly to the player. Another last minute addition was an option to reward stats after each dialogue choice.

It was disappointing to realise I’d spent too long on other parts of the game and didn’t have time to develop the full story I had in mind.

Originally it was going to be a lot more fourth-wall breaking and really play with the idea of the developed-as-enemy. Things like healing bad guys, switching buttons around, popping up a debug menu to fully heal the enemies mid-fight (with a heal-player button that you could hit if you were fast enough), fake logging into the player’s facebook account to post stuff, and more.

I’m happy with what I ended up with, but it could have been better. Isn’t that always the way?

TOOLS

I made this using C# in Unity 5 as I wanted a reason to figure out the new UI stuff. I also intended to use 3D for the maze exploration element, and to suddenly twist away the flat UI and reveal a matrix-like thing behind it and…well, other stuff that was again way too ambitious for the time limit.

It was literally uploaded with 5 mins to spare, so there are not even any beeps and clicks as you use the buttons. Next time I’ll remember to get audio together early on as the game feels pretty empty without it.

It was fun to make, and one day I’ll polish it up and add all the crazy ideas I had to cut out.

For now, I’m spending my time playing other people’s entries – as always it’s amazing what everyone has achieved over a single weekend.

You can play “I May Have Misunderstood: RPG” by clicking here.

Looking for something fun to play this weekend? Become a true monster! Test your stealthiness, audacity, and pure power in Troopers’ Starship! This was Steph and I’s first game jam! We had a blast and look forward to many more. Let us know what areas we can improve on for the future! Thank you!

-Team Round Fork

They’re always up to no good.
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=53870

Yes, I’m a Gimp master

I started the Ludum Dare when I was just Fifteen. I knew, however, that, along with it being awesomely fun and a great learning experience, that it would also look nice on paper.

Taking a quote or two, along with some statistics from my first entry back in LD 27 is one of the key points in my Personal Statement, which I am writing now, at Seventeen.

There are so many skills you have to show and develop during the LD that makes it so great for people to hear about, when you think about it.

So just another reason to thank all you guys for existing, sorry if this is a waste of space on the site!
Taha

If you want me to play your game fill out this form:

TAKE ME THERE

and I will play and rate your game this weekend.

=)

Tags: LD33, rating

The comunity feed back and support have been amazing!
So we finaly had the time to work on some new updates and improve your gaming experience. Hope you like it!

Updates:
– Minor graphic changes to the beggining and end of the game
– New menu
– Camera shakes
– More polished combat
– Bug fixes
– More to come

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=56160

Hope you have a nice experience playing it