Hi everyone,

This was my second Ludum Dare. Once again I had a fantastic time participating, and playing the other entries is a great source of pleasure and inspiration. I wrote a post mortem for my game A Mazeshift Title, which you can play here (Unity WebGL version available).

A Mazeshift Title

A Mazeshift Title is a 2D puzzle game where the player must construct a route between two endpoints using a collection of shapes organised in a grid. These shapes are manipulated by shifting entire rows horizontally, or columns vertically. It could easily be compared with a 2D version of a Rubik’s cube, with a pattern that must be completed. The game contains 7 individual levels, and each one is procedurally generated to provide a degree of replayability.

The idea for the game was originally conceived from thinking about shifting bits in computer registers, but using shapes instead. A good three hours on the Saturday morning were spent settling on a design. I felt it was important to take the extra time at this stage to ensure the concept was both interesting and achievable. By the time I had stopped on the Saturday night, the game consisted of a single feature-complete level.

The focus of Sunday was polish: after creating some menus and finishing the transitions between different levels, I moved onto audio. I ended up spending many hours fighting with multiple software packages, and eventually only managed to produce three sound effects. I had initially anticipated having enough time to produce a simple ambient background music track, but this no longer seemed feasible. Some visual polish feature had also been planned, such as sliding the grid tiles when they are shifted, but sadly these also had to be cut.

The Good

• Procedurally generated puzzles.
• The mechanics are explained non-verbally using a trivial first level.
• I followed my plan: the core mechanics were implemented by Saturday night, Sunday was spent polishing the game.

The Bad

• No music.
• Tiles don’t slide when shifted.

Thanks for reading, see you all next time!

Tags: LD35, post-mortem, postmortem, screenshot, unity, webgl, Windows

Hey everyone!

Since it’s coming to the end of the judging period of yet another great LD, I just thought I’d quickly share my favourite entry of the ones that I got around to rating: Triangles Say Yip by sorceress.

Triangles Say Yip by sorceress

To briefly reiterate what I said in my review, TSY is a touching and uncomfortable (in a good way) story about preconceptions, conformity and intolerance. It’s a great little title that I would recommend anyone who is interested in narrative told through exploration and interaction should find some time to play.

I hope that this game gets the score that it deserves by the end of judging (it’s a real shame that there’s no narrative category) and I hope that you guys find it as interesting as I did!

(Also, here’s a shameless plug for my own game “Sparrow & Flitt“. It’s a game about communicating with your shapeshifting bird by whistling tunes to it. If you haven’t played it yet, please feel free to take a look!)

Sparrow & Flitt by Skruffye

Thanks everyone, and best of luck in the judging!

-Skruffye

Tags: DevSocYork

Working with Inkscape for the first time and I am really enjoying it !
Once you get the hang of it, how to do shadows and differently colored parts, it is really fun!

Hey, everyone. As mentioned earlier, our last livestream tonight at 7:00 PM EDT, on twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace will be a super-special stream: rescue Ludum Dare with low ratings! We hope you all look forward to it!

In the meantime, here’s an update to our always-up-to-date Ludum Dare Let’s Play playlist:

Our latest videos are:

• Exhuman: Video, Game
• ShapeGrid: Video, Game
• Meepies: Video, Game
• The Morphing Manor: Video, Game
• Morph Space: Video, Game
• Shape Shuffle: Video, Game
• Theseus: Video, Game
• Swedish Stretchy Fish: Video, Game
• jelliskul: Video, Game
• Star: Video, Game
• Flames and Shifting: Video, Game
• John Wizard: Video, Game
• Wall Buster: Video, Game
• Who: Video, Game
• Pixel Pets: Video, Game
• SHAPE.SHIFT(): Video, Game
• Shicken: Video, Game
• CatKoonBut: Video, Game
• Booba Loomba: Video, Game
• Perception: Video, Game
• Paranormal Investigator: Video, Game
• Quad Vector vs the Quantum Cats: Video, Game
• Trial 21: Video, Game
• We Made Rock Paper Scissors: Video, Game
• Altered Beard: Video, Game
• Devil’s Hand: Video, Game
• SHOOTING GAME THING: Video, Game
• Shapezoid: Video, Game
• Evilkitten: Video, Game
• The Fable of Gina: Video, Game
• Photagogue: Video, Game
• The Mining of Life: Video, Game
• Goons: Video, Game
• Shift Commander: Video, Game

We’re on the home stretch, and LD35 voting will be over soon. It’s been a great event, and a lot fantastic and unique games were created. I plan to play and rate a bunch of games this weekend, so if you’d like me to check out your game (or have any great recommendations) please leave them in the comments. If you could also let me know what you think about my game MODE_SHIFT I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks again everyone for a fantastic Ludum Dare once again! I hope to play all your new creations in a few months.

PLAY/RATE MODE_SHIFT

Get me to 100, Play here: An Abnormality

The reason i’ve been making these lists like mad, is because time is running out, and i’m still below 100 ratings. A quick play would be great.

Now back to the good part (and by that I mean some random games)

Honestly, I ran out of clever list themes, so here are some games. Just… games.

Sunday

It’s good. Nice mood, great build up. Pretty well done.
Oh yeah, there aren’t any jumpscares either.

Muoto the Geometry Wizard

This was a reasonably polished game that I liked, but couldn’t find the right category to put it in.
It has a solid mechanic, but lacks any further depth.

Galaxy Survivor

The game’s ok, but the description is very funny.

Soul Shifter

This game deserves to be expanded upon. It has a fantastic core mechanic of sword fighting, and I think it has great potential.

Unbecoming

A very witty game with very witty humor.

Get Yo’ Baby Swole

If I was the swearing type, I would do so to describe how Absolutely Hysterical this game is.
To give you a taste of their humor, JUST LOOK AT THE NAME.

 
No bonus game today, and sorry about the constant list making, but I really want 100 ratings. Go now, before it’s too late!

Thank you everyone for your feedback. You made ferret super happy! :3

If you haven’t already, please check out our entry The Skinmancer!

I also wanted to mention that I will play some more games this week end. Leave a comment with a link to your entry and I will check it out. 😀

I have played 329 and here are some games I liked that needs more ratings.

Time Balls

A beautiful and fun puzzle/platformer game. You can find it here.

Bichux

A shapeshifting endless runner that is pretty fun to play. You can find it here.

Shapeshift Serena

A simple clay animation game. It is short, but it is really fun to play.  You can find it here.

SuperShape Me

A fun little game dieting game. You can find it here.

Shift Shapes

A super simple idea and a great little game. You can find it here.

Terrain Shifter

A super great puzzle game, you must play.  You can find it here.

SO Yeah…  I did finally make some art for Formorph…

I used Inkscape for these Vector graphics (for the first time)

Here is the Formorph Entry. (Without art)
And here is the latest playable version

PS: If someone wants to use some of these Graphics just hit me up in the comments or on Twitter(@solocov01)

I will keep this post-mortem short because I don’t have much to say about my game…

Go on a Journey or something

What went right :

• Nothing major went wrong
• The bow and arrow mechanics turned out flawlessly
• The music was turn out really well.
• The gameplay was actually fun this time
• Art wasn’t as horrid as usual

Want went Wrong :

• For some reason, everybody didn’t quite understand the mechanics. Actually, the only person that said they didn’t was Jupiter Hadley, but she counts as everybody.
• When voice acting, I was going for a annoying but funny voice acting… But it turned out just to be annoying.
• The games difficulty curve was sorta sharp.
• I ran out of Mt. Dew in like my first 2 hours.
• And I just feel like the game was missing something.

Overview…

I don’t know what it was… But I just wasn’t feeling it this LD. I think it was the theme, I wasn’t particularly fond of it. Overall, it was a good LD. I got most of what I wanted done, done. Next Ludum Dare, I will crush it, I can just feel it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME!!! In celebration of my birthday, I released a new track on my soundcloud. You can listen to it here…

Have you been wanting to punch some dinosaurs lately? I’m pretty sure you have (I know I do). Then check out my entry, Photagogue! Less than 3 people have beaten the whole game, and killed all the dinos. Can you?! Go check it out!

Have you checked out my entry yet? It’s a shape-shifting platformer. Trying to get some last votes! This was my first LD and I had lots of fun!

A reminder to everyone that our last livestream is tonight at 7:00 PM EDT on our Twitch channel at:
twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace

This time, we will rescue Ludum Dare with low number of ratings.

Haven’t seen our stuff yet? Here’s an update to our always-up-to-date Ludum Dare Let’s Play playlist:

My friend Matt and I will be streaming Ludum Dare 35 games tomorrow (Saturday, May 6) around 12pm Eastern at twitch.tv/ryannielson. We’ll be rating and providing feedback live on stream so be sure to drop by. We’ll try to prioritize viewers who are in the chat. Below is a form that you can use to submit your games for us to play and rate. Make sure to leave your contact information so we can message you when we’re going to stream your game.

Submit or Recommend a Game

 
We hope to see you there tomorrow. Also don’t forget to check out our game MODE_SHIFT, we’d really appreciate it.

Hey, everyone! Our last livestream is broadcasting now (from 7:00 PM EDT to midnight) on our Twitch channel at:
twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace

This time, we will rescue Ludum Dare with low number of ratings.

Haven’t seen our stuff yet? Here’s an update to our always-up-to-date Ludum Dare Let’s Play playlist:

Sorry for that, but I have something else to do. Finishing this game will cost me too much time.

Maybe you will see my game somewhere else.

Here is my game( with a post-jam version )

…but sadly I got no time. Maybe next week.

ICYMI, you can play my entry here. It’s a little Puzzlescript game. And from what I can tell, it’s the only one this year. But correct me, if I’m wrong – I’d love to see how other people used the theme utilizing this language.

Tags: compo, game, html5, LD35, Ludum Dare, puzzlescript

I have added many new features. If you would like to follow the progress, you can join me here.

Okay, in reality I’ll never reach 100.

But at least I can get close, Right?

An Abnormality

I’m Tired. Games. Here. Go.

Nyamo’s Whatever

Have I listed this one before?
who cares. it’s good.

Rontangle

Clever. Go play it.
i’m too tired to be doing this.

Reform

The platforming in it is frustrating, but the ending is really good.
I swear I’ve listed this one before.

Makeshift

It’s pretty fun.
JUST PLAY MY GAME ALREADY!

Brain blahblah

One of the best. like portal, if portal didn’t have portals and was made in a weekend.

Bonus Game: Chameleon I-AM-NOT-STATING-MY-POLITICAL-PREFERENCES-I-JUST-THiNK-IT’S-KIND-OF-FUNNY-THAT’S-ALL

I’m so tired.

Many of you have taken the time to try out and give feedback on my first ever Ludum Dare entry, the mostly-for-kids game Scooter Magrew. For those that have…big thanks! Your feedback has been extremely helpful to me as I have been advancing onward to make this a full-fledged mobile game, rather than 5 levels of short gameplay made over a weekend. Here’s a quick update on the current status of Scooter, as well as a little story about lucky user testing.

Here’s a shot of the game as it stands now:

One of the first things I went to working on were the graphical glitches. One of the first things people who played the game commented on was the “hard-to-see” tile difference with certain characters & colors, especially Portia. In response, the purple is now far, far darker…and most other characters have received slight color adjustments too. In addition, that bug where everyone turned red immediately after shapeshifting…GONE!

Another thing people commented on was the lack of things to do. In the LD Jam version, there is currently only the character collection and color coordination mechanics, which really is not a ton of things for people to do. I have gone ahead and added a small new setup with 2 items and one obstacle per character. The idea is each character can get one item per level for extra points, which you can see up top. The other idea I’m playing with is an item/obstacle system where there are minor obstacles for each character to take care of, but only if they have the right item to do so. For instance, one character can take care of locks when they find the key in each level. Oh, and there are 3-4 new characters as well.

All in all, the game feels more complete…but you don’t just have to take my word for it.

With that segue…the other day, a friend asked me to help out with her daughter’s school cultures night. We all had things to set up, but she wanted me to bring up some of the gamedev geek culture items for part of the US culture area. So I brought in an iPad with Minecraft, a set of cards from a card game I’m making…and the latest copy of Scooter Magrew, just to see what real kindergartners thought of it. The response was actually quite good, with kids fully understanding and playing the game, and one kid even telling me he loved it. Tis an awesome feeling to hear such things about something I made from someone like that!

So…woot! Things are on the right path, largely thanks to the awesome people playing it here…hoping to get more out for the game this month, but we’ll see. Either way, my work with Scooter will continue until I have something I’m far happier to release to the world as a whole