Hi! 😀

This is Drunkteam, the development team behind Drunkula, which is our first project for a LD ever.

If you are curious, you can play it here right now.

Although we had never worked together, development came about smoothly. In many ways, you could even say we were relaxed, the most difficult part of the process being to choose the kind of game to work on. We discussed for more than 3 hours, unable to reach an agreement until Antonio, one of our  artists, who had been pretty much silent during the debate, jumped into the ring with the idea of using a drunk vampire as the protagonist. From that point on, the idea of making a point-and-click adventure out of it came pretty much naturally and we all begun working on our parts and expanding the concept.

What went great:

• First, and most obviously, we all learned a lot from this experience: for our programmers it was the first time building a game from the ground up, working with the Love2d framework and Lua language; us artists learned a lot about photoshop and the basics of animation… In general, this was a very good experience to enhance teamwork.
• The aesthetics, music and sfx were spot-on and established very well the kind of dark, yet wacky and confusing atmosphere you would want in a game about a drunk vampire.

OST-Drunkula by Oliver Moya Bueno

• The difficulty curve was also well established with 3 levels, the first of which was to get people to realise the basic point-and-click mechanic of the game, and a more challenging final level.

What didn’t go so right:

• For us artists this was our first time animating. It was really fun and we learned a lot from it, but we would have liked a little more time to experiment with the basics.
• As prety much all of us were new to this, we prefered to keep the game short and simple but as many people acknowleged it ended up being way too short.
• As much as the music and sfx were great, some people reckon they get jarring the longer the game lasts.
• The ideal situation would have been having a playable demo on the first day, but due to the fact that all of us were learning our part on the spot, we couldn’t see how the game played until the last minute, which made for a bit of a buggy experience.

Anyway, this was a great experience and we are really glad of the result and the learning process and would me most thankful if you took 5 minutes of your time to try our game out and rate it, which you can do right here.

Thanks! 😉

Hello, all! We here at Tech Valley Game Space (TVGS) are at it again! We’re playing and rating your games right now! Also remember that our last stream will be on Saturday, from 7:00 PM EST to midnight! Check us out at Twitch.tv here (those on the chat will get priority):

http://www.twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace

Want to submit a game? Our submission form is available here:

http://goo.gl/forms/uqzjFQqK1p

If you haven’t already, check out our games, too:

• Moon Witch
• Fly On The Wall
• Huntingman Championship
• Lardum
• Can I Haz Monsters?

Tags: Tech Valley Game Space, TVGS, twitch

Is anyone else having problems making a new account? I’d assume it’s a result of us changing websites soon, but I want to make sure it’s not something on my end.

The theme this time was “You are the monster”. This is an interesting theme as it’s open to many interpretations. We decided to avoid a typical monster scenario and went with an idea about someone having a monstrous personality instead, a real jerk. This lead to an idea of a speed dating sim with the twist being the player character is cursed with this monstrous personality and has to somehow “Win” a date.

Before entering the Ludum Dare we both agreed that we would only take part if we could come up with an idea that could also be implemented into our real game (we’ll talk about that later). With the speed dating idea we knew we could do it with a simple dialogue tree system. Our real game needed a dialogue tree system. We could kill two birds with one code! We agreed to subject ourselves to a weekend of torture.

You know what? It was a pleasure! It couldn’t have gone any smoother. Our last LD entry was pretty stressful. We completed a playable game but we could have done so much more. We worked really hard but in hindsight I wish we had worked that hard on our real game instead. Creating a system for this LD that benefits our real game meant that if we didn’t finish the Jam or made something truly awful (verdict is still out) then at least we’ve made some serious progress on our dialogue system. Which we have!

We needed some simple characters first. We came up with cardboard box characters. I had literally just woken up and it was the first thing that popped into my head. We needed something simple and quick to draw, a box is easy to draw so we went with it not stopping to think if it was stupid.

Then we thought we could call the player character Carl Boardbox. We didn’t need to stop to think if it was stupid, we knew it was yet we kept going anyway. Why didn’t we stop…?

Then we needed the dialogue and the dialogue system. The dialogue system came together nicely with features such as camera and animation control within the UI so the idiot writer can help the programmer. We wrote the dialogue and slapped it in the game and for the most part the whole thing worked!

We added the Win/Lose conditions and a final cutscene and we were golden. Tweaks and polish later and we have a silly, simple game that’s left us with tools to continue making our real game. All in all a very rewarding Ludum Dare this time around. I look forward to #34!

Please give our game a try if you haven’t already!

Play
Talkit Dialog Editor

Visit our Website: http://pointbleepstudios.xyz

Hello everyone!

I’d like to share with you a bit about the character design of my first compo entry “15”. Approaching the theme from a minimalist perspective was a design restriction that enabled me to focus heavily on the dynamics of what are the easily overlooked character identities.

(ooh fancy, my original “sketches” of the character design)

In keeping the scope of the game small, I was happy to be able to subtly and purposefully tune more detail-oriented aspects like the monster design. As you can my “scribbled” concept art, I went into it with plans for a large player to contrast against smaller objects– creating a player character that takes up larger-than-normal amount of screen real-estate was an idea I’d been wanting to explore for a while.

The way I wanted the square to express monstrosity was through inescapable aggression and destruction which creates impactful feedback. I weighed both the objective and termination condition in a feedback loop that and rewards and even requires destruction.

Having the feedback loop be so directly linked to user actions is how I hope a perceptive player can pick up on a more sinister presence; because the deaths of the neutral creatures are necessary only under pressure from only decreasing number. So really, the decreasing number “15” is what I intended to be actual monster in this game; the square was a false flag.

While identifying this hidden monster isn’t core to the gameplay experience, it’s just one of the few little things I was able to add in my game to reward a deeply invested player awareness. To see what other subtleties you can pick up on, check out out the convenient link right here!

Monster Academy

Almost Heroic

Underworld Siege

Monster Disco

The Monster Files

Don’t Crawl

(The last title is our game and it’s not in the list. But you still don’t want to miss it, right?)

(You can play and rate my entry HERE)

I’ve succesfully integrated rot.js map generation with my game… only to discover that those tiny (19*15 tiles) generated maps are not fun at all to play. So I’m sticking to premade maps. I’ll add some more later.

For my next attempt at programming a rogelike the map will be BIGGER than the viewport.

New features implemented to the post-jam version (will be updated shortly):

• Different tilesets based on depth. I have recolored the base tileset to act as a placeholder (for now).
• Each main character has a unique special ability that is automatically triggered on each turn.
• Three new potions.
• First and last floors are fixed now (The Lair & The Town).
• Floors won’t repeat anymore.
• Foes now have an alert radius. They won’t chase you unless they are aware of your presence. Each foe has a different alert radius: that means you won’t be chased by all foes at the same time when entering a floor!

Not that exciting.

No room to maneuver.

While our top of Best Games is in the making, we decided to show a couple of games that have some really innovative ideas, but somehow lack user votes. You should definitely check them.

Asshole Transit Bureaucrat 2015

Planet Licker

Devil’s Avocado

And don’t forget to check our own game, that is also (kind of) (maybe?) innovative (right?)! Just click here: Dude, Stop

I update my game You Must Not, you can play it here

-Proper final!!
-Checkpoints!!
-New assets
-One easter egg
-Windows version

This has been a hard week and I had almost no time to work on my entry. Anyway I’ve been able to add a couple of new features for the post-jam version. You can rate the original jam version HERE and the updated post-jam version HERE.

Who doesn’t love new features?

So far this is the complete changelog:

• First and last maps have a fixed layout now
• Levels won’t repeat anymore in a single game (bugfix)
• Different tilesets depending on depth (I recolored the base tileset as a placeholder for now)
• Music is streamed instead of preloaded
• Text appears when picking potions or leveling up. More informative
• Text is animated now
• More enemy types
• Some enemy types are tied to certain depths
• Touch controls
• Combat is speed based now. Foes faster than you will atack first
• Reduced amount of potions appearing
• Special abilities for players. Troll (regeneration) and Cacodemon (See enemies and ladder) are already implemented
• Diagonal movement enabled, both for players and enemies
• Added Field of View for players
• Foes have an alert radius. They won’t chase you unless they notice your presence
• Ability to skip turns
• Many more potion types. Some more useful than others. Also tweaked generation rate for the most powerful ones
• Ascending will heal you 10HP
• Changed starting stats for players. Troll is stronger but near-sighted, lizard is fast but weak. Try it yourself!

Still to-do:

• Finish drawing the tiles
• Add more songs
• Poison and burn states
• Ability for Demon, Imp and Lizard
• Fix bugs (player appearing over ladders or items on map generation)
• Adding super rare and difficult special maps

Tags: ldjam, roguelike, SSTP

Our Colossus powers may be faded. But we can still smash the faces of a few humans before we go! -> [The Old One] by Chris Olsen

Tags: Chris Olsen, Larry Chupacabra, Larry Does Ludum 33, LD33, The Old One, Youtube Video

I bought Mario maker today. Mario maker taught me that some people just want to make you suffer. Like impossibly exact level hard. Anyways, I made a level if any of you cool people want to check it out, here’s the id:

Also, if you haven’t had a chance, check out our point click adventure game in a dystopian sci-fi setting:

Abominable – Click Here to play it!

BTW, mario maker is good.

This time we have decided to make a top with a best audio! Games are good on there own, but we also enjoyed how they sound, so here they are!

Delicious Cortex

Almost Heroic

Monstre de Coiffure

And just so you know, we have our own game! There is no music and only one sound, but you still can enjoy it right here: Dude, Stop

Hey guys! Its me again, Tanner Daniels. I’m a 16, and am a Dubstep producer. Enough about me. I want to share with you guys by newest project!

So Much Bass Growl

So Much Bass Growl is the most insane track I have ever worked on! It is non-stop boss growl through-out the chorus. This is also the most complex track I’ve ever made. The bass growls were not easy to make, and even harder to get them to sound well together. This is defiantly the most intense song I’ve ever made, and possibly the most intense I’ve ever heard. The name fits the theme.

I am really proud of this project, and I feel this is a major mile-stone, not only because I created bass growls few people know how to make… I created a totally new type of bass!!!!!!! I call it a Bass Bark… The Bass Bark originally started out as a bass growl created by vo-coding a audio sample of my voice, and I just kept messing with it, trying to get it growly, but I ended with something I didn’t expect, or even thought existed. The bass growl BARKS!!! Like a dog… The Bass Bark is sound in the second half of the chorus, in a beat-down section.

I really enjoyed making this song, and I really hope you enjoy listening to it.

MORE SHAMFUL ADVERTISING!

Check out my Game…

The Monster Inside

Play Here

And here…

Also here…

And don’t forget about here…

Oh, look at this, another link to the game!

And another

Oh, is this one special?

Another link!

PLAY!

Well, this LD went fantastic. Considering that it was my first Ludum Dare and my first Game Programming Competition all together I think it went pretty well for me. My game is basically a Hotline Miami-esque clone where your objective is to break out of prison. Play it here!

Due to time limitations I wasn’t able to add some fancy features, but this game definitely taught me some valuable lessons that I will apply to my bigger project which is similar to this entry.

Please enjoy and see you next LD! Play the game!

Hi there!
I participated in the Jam and created ‘Office Hours’ which is a fun, upbeat shoot’em-up style game!

I’ll be discussing the up’s and down’s throughout the weekend and how I felt about it all. I’ll also show some pictures i took throughout the weekend.

Day 1:

I had originally planned to make a moody, atmospheric game but once the theme was announced and i spent a few hours drawing up some things i decided to scrap it!
I wanted to create a game like hotline miami but still have its own charm. The theme was quite good for a pysological game, and so Office Hours was born!
The first night mostly consisted of some art and a creation of a small codebase.

Beta testing Level ( First Night )

I pushed out a very basic level design and added a player that could shoot some bullets! Not very much was done art-wise besides placeholder.

Day 2:

I knew I had to work fairly hard on the second day because i felt like i could have done more the first day, but it was okay! Having fun was key! The morning of the second day i worked on more art and came up with the player and some NPC’s!

Players spritesheet

I created an entire spritesheet but forgot that the players rotation changes so i only needed to use the down position and the up! The animation looked good and i was fine with it! Surprisingly i spent only 45 minutes on the entire character which felt great! I also went ahead and planned out some basic scenery to make the game feel a bit more alive!

Test of the props!

The second day was also where i went ahead and did a ton of Camera work! The camera shakes quite violently and pulses to the beat of the music ( day 3 ). The camera shake had to be a tricky one because i had simply coded it for a stationary Camera, which obviously , wouldnt work for this game! I ended up redoing the entire Camera and made the movement of the camera on the players position be ‘stabilized’ and then added in the shake as after effects. By stabilizing the camera, i was able to move it freely while shaking it and having no affect on the position of the camera in relation to the player! I also added basic prep work for the camera pulse to the beat and simply made it beat based off of a function i wrote in desmos..
That leads me into the growth of speed!

-13(log(-x+15))+16

The entire game speeds up the more kills you acquire in ‘rage’ mode! Its all based on this graph which is capped at different levels for different things. This has to be one of the coolest things i went ahead and implemented as it made the game feel so much more fast paced as it went on!

Day 3:

Day three had to be a music day! I wanted to really make a heavy beat that had a 4×4 kick which could simulate a heartbeat. I also wanted the pulsing to give off the feeling of a heartbeat with the song. Not only that, but I wanted the other office song to really contrast the heavy electro beat! I sampled a song titled ‘Willow Weep For Me’ and it came out great! Of course its a little repetitive, but what office isn’t? The music is always an afterthought in terms of my programming implementation so i didn’t actually put the music in until monday morning! I spent hte majority of day three on music but I also implemented the different maps within the game so that was a day well spent if you ask me!

Second Floor

Day 4:

I spent a majority of monday working on audio and some enemy AI placement and things of the sorts. I had to turn in school related things which took about an hour or two out of my work time! Curse you High School! Other than that, Monday was a day full of scrambling and trying to piece together the game I had!

What I enjoyed:

I enjoy my game greatly! This is probably one of the best things ive made in terms of gameplay but boy is the code ugly . I think the camera effects were awesome and so was the gameplay. Of course there are bugs throughout but I’m not very worried becuase its a jam game and I don’t intend to take it any farther than it is. I am proud of what was created and will can’t wait for the next one!

What I learned:

I learned that webGL in Unity has quite a few problems with the sound engine and the game ran quite poorly in webGL so i opted out of the web build . I had quite a few issues with Unity’s inspector simply because I am still not 100% comfortable with the engine, but it gets better day by day. The game was tons of fun to play but i recognize that the balance is trash. Next time around, i will definitely have to work on balance of the game that still makes it fun!

Want to play?

Click me to play! Please click me!

Tags: jam, unity

Sneak into houses, find the right bed, roar near pillow and scare the sleeping resident!

The game was created entirely (music, sound effects, graphics) in the jam days, no prework were done.

As game engine we used godot.

You like to create games more visually (like me) than you need to try it out perhaps it fits your workflow.

When you like to play and rate our game you can find it here Scream Hunter

or listen to the game music https://soundcloud.com/andydnet/sets/ludum-dare-33-game-compo-music .

Thanks from the whole team for voting and commenting.

Tags: game, godot, self promotion

Once again the Ludum Dare season is coming to a stop. This time around I had a lot of fun competing and loved almost every game that I played. I was surprised to see the sheer number of quality games that came out of this Ludum Dare. It was hard to narrow them down to just a couple favorites of mine, and even harder when I took into consideration that I shouldn’t be mentioning the bigger games that surely everyone has played by now. Without further ado, my top 3 favorite games this time around!

No Credit, No Problem!

No Credit, No Problem! is an atmospheric Papers Please esque game where you play a Title Loan agent and must either sign off on peoples loans, or deny them. This game won atmosphere by far in my opinion. It features an interesting dynamic that’ll have you questioning your own actions. Oh, and a naked guy.

Goomba Simulator 2015

Goomba Simulator 2015 was exactly what I expected to come out of this theme. The idea can tip you off a bit at first, but this is one of the best games to come out of the entire competition this time around. Great gameplay and mechanics, and a grasping narrative. What more could you ask for?

Around The Waterfall

I don’t even know what to say about this game. It’s about a slime village in a JRPG like game facing an undefeatable enemy together. That’s all that can really be said about it. There was a few bugs, and a bit of confusion along the way on what I was supposed to do, but the fact that I was able to look past these and still can say that this is my favorite game I’ve played out of all so far really is a testament to how good it is.

Not Enough Souls (My Game)

Of course I have to include a shameless plug to my own entry! Not Enough Souls is a wave based survival game with a quirky combat system. It was made with ??? (the artist I worked with last time) for the jam. I think it could use a lot of improvement in a more expanded game, but overall for the Ludum Dare version I was very happy with the final result.

Thanks to everyone for making this Ludum Dare one of the best ever! I’ll be eagerly waiting for results alongside all of you.

Don’t waste your chance to play & enjoy Murderers, my mini action game. Feedback is appreciated!!

Thanks for your time!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=57016

Hello, all! We here at Tech Valley Game Space (TVGS) are at it one last time! We’re playing and rating your games in 10 minutes! We’ll be streaming from 7:00 PM EST to midnight! Check us out at Twitch.tv here (those on the chat will get priority):

http://www.twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace

Want to submit a game? Our submission form is available here:

http://goo.gl/forms/uqzjFQqK1p

If you haven’t already, check out our games, too:

• Moon Witch
• Fly On The Wall
• Huntingman Championship
• Lardum
• Can I Haz Monsters?

We export our videos on Youtube, too: