How far can you ascend before you fall?

Click on image to watch gameplay gif

Link to entry: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=51756

Few word about my Ludum Dare 35 experience

I participated in this LD edition mostly because i didn’t want to ruin my “LD combo” xD i didn’t have much time to make a game so whole game was made under 6 hours + some time spent on bug fixing. And i didn’t have much time to play other games, so far i only rated 32, usually i easly get to 150+ games rated and i comment about on 70% on them. Anyway im pretty happy with my LD 35 experience and Rambling Pillars. Hopefully i will have more time in next LD event.

Play the LD version of Hexshaper

Ludum Dare 35 is the fourth in the series for the ExcaliburJS team. We piled five to seven people into one room for four days to make another game.

What went well

Workflow and Toolset

We’ve continued to refine and improve the way we build games for jams. It’s important that everything “just works” as much as possible. We maintained the same continuous deployment process that we’ve used before to push to a live site, so it could be tested and played within a minute of being checked in. We also used a watch-and-compile task in Visual Studio Code to gain the same benefit while developing locally.

Art & Sound

We had four people putting together art assets on and off throughout the weekend, and it turned out great. We used bfxr to create the sound effects, and a set of littleBits components to compose the background music. Once we had settled on the theming for the game, everything fell into place.

Event Scripting

We initially had a grand plan for introducing elements of Hexshaper, and as usual we had to set that aside and come up with a more practical solution that could be completed in the time remaining. We ended up pausing the game and moving the camera over to each portal as it opened and as the player successfully closed it, which ended up providing most of what we wanted.

Bugs

We only encountered a few bugs in Excalibur this time around, and they were all relatively straightforward to test and fix. It feels better to use the engine each time we do a game jam.

What didn’t go so well

Minimum Viable Game

The game on Saturday

We didn’t have a very clear vision of what we wanted the game to be this time around. Uncertainty translated into not really having a playable game until Monday. This delay was a stark departure from the last couple of games we’ve made, where we made a point to have something relatively complete by Saturday evening so we could iterate on it through the rest of the weekend.

Animations

There were a number of things that made interacting with the Excalibur animations API painful. Luckily, we didn’t lose too much time to them, and we now have an opportunity to improve that experience for future users.

Conclusions

• Build a playable game as soon as possible
• Look for alternative solutions that create most of what you want for much less work

Special thanks to all of the people who worked hard to make this game possible!

View post on imgur.com

Tags: excaliburjs, html5, jam, LD35, postmortem

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=91285

24 hours left!  Still time to try out my compo entry, Symblyx:

The Good:

• MUSIC!  I think this is probably some of my best non-dynamic music I’ve written for LD.
• The sliding of the rows was something I wanted to get used to doing, since I may need it for future mobile games.  I’m pleased that I managed to get it to work (semi-)flawlessly.
• Graphics:  They were simple, but they worked.  I also managed to get the still-unnamed character on the side of the board animated pretty well, all things considered.  I also like how the bubbles in the background and the random shapes flashing in the corners looked.

The Bad:

• There’s a bug in the sliding code that causes some problems for people.  I think I know what’s causing it, but unfortunately I also know that I’d have to completely change the way I did the slide for it to work.  At least most people don’t seem to be having the problem (it’s triggered by low framerates).
• I wasn’t very clear in the instructions, but you can slide rows and columns by clicking and dragging.  I thought it was intuitive, but in retrospect, it would really only be intuitive on a mobile platform with a touchscreen.  On the computer, I guess there were better ways I could have implemented the sliding.
• If I had thought of a way I could have made the music dynamic, I would have done it.  I tend to write dynamic music a lot, so this was a change for me to write a simple loop instead.  As I mentioned above, I still really like it; I just felt it could have been even better if there were a dynamic element to it.
• I spent 27 hours in all on it, and even though there were bugs, I just kind of stopped after that.  There were plenty more things I could have done to spice it up a little bit, such as more animations for the character, more sound effects for clearing shapes, etc.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who played it!

We’re almost there! I’ve had some great feedback on my game and played some truly excellent ones – I’m going to do one more push of rating a few games tomorrow, and might write up a short highlighting a few for other folks looking for some more games to round out their Ludum Dare experience.

But in the meantime, I’m almost at 50 ratings for my game and that would be one heck of a good goal to reach, so if you’re looking for something to try, may I recommend Robot Escape?

When I posted up Hidden in Plain Sight in various places, many were quick to identify that another game on Steam with the same title exists. I’ve been mulling over a new title since, and figured I’d see how you, Ludum Dare challengers, think. Currently, I’m planning on renaming the game to, “Through Oneself.” Thoughts?

Looking to check out some interesting games for your last minute votes?

Try our first ever Ludum Dare entry: ALGEBRO

Take control of the The Little Dude and fight baddies off your graph paper in math class! As you progress, you’ll move from math class to the art room across 3 unique stages.

All the art for our game was done on an iPad using a painting app called Procreate. Not only was this our team’s first game, but also our artists first time creating game art.

We had an incredibly fun time in our first Ludum Dare, and will definitely be back for more! We’ve also had a blast playing other entries. Rate our game, leave a comment, and we will definitely return the favor!

Thanks for reading,

Chummy Winds

Hey there Daredevils!

Wassup?! Speed Blox V2 issup!

Also, a Gameplay video for those of you without
an Android phone, or too tired from lazing around all day

In-game, you can now switch between
‘Regular’ and ‘VR’ modes from the main menu.

Don’t wait any longer… Jump in and Trip out!

Check out our LD entry here!

Watch the gameplay here!

Download it here!

Hi everyone!

My game’s votes are now stuck on 69 for about 2 weeks and I need your help to pass this number.

If you haven’t already, please vote my game:

Click here to vote

Thank you

MacDocBros

With our last live-stream finished, we’ve been busy exporting all the videos online. This latest update to our always-up-to-date Ludum Dare Let’s Play playlist now includes a couple of games being rescued (they were pretty good, too)!

Our latest videos are:

• Metamorphic: Video, Game
• Malformed: Video, Game
• Wolf → Man: Video, Game
• StickRun: Video, Game
• Figurophrenia: Video, Game
• Amyounition: Video, Game
• Jelly and Chrome: Video, Game
• PaperFlap: Video, Game
• mcfearless999: Video, Game

Ludum Dare 35

Don’t miss out on playing Blue Moon before voting ends!

Usually I’m not one for shameless self promotion, but with only 17 hours left I might as well compose a little overview. I’ll throw in some of my favorite titles as well.

Overview

Recommendations

Lot’s of fun this one.

A neat little simulation.

A solid puzzle.

Tough but fair.

Have fun and may the ratings reflect your efforts (for better or worse!)

Here is three games I really loves and they still need some playing and ratings.  I hope you can and will help them.

Shapeshift Serena

SuperShape Me

Time Balls

Since the creation part of the jam ended I’ve grown to like my game less and grown less hopeful of my score (I have a feeling a silly bug messed things up a bit). However thanks to all those that took the time to play my game and leave a comment, its a simple little thing but it means a lot.
Hopefully I’ll finish a mobile port soon when I have less on my plate as that is where I think the game would best fit.

Thank you to everyone that has voted on our game. We’ve already received over 70 votes and 39 comments but could always do with more!

As a team we’ve been blown away by what you’ve been saying and we’re thinking about taking the concept further. If you have any feedback then we’d love to hear you by heading on over to our game and rate it or, if you’ve already played it, why not reply to this post.

Play / Vote

Follow us on Twitter (@XMPTGames) if you want to know more about us and possible future Figment development!

Thanks from the XMPT Games Ludum Dare 35 team!

– Richard Pilot / Programmer

– Luke Staddon / Music, SFX and level design

– Ed Moffatt / Art and level design.

But, as long as “real life work” and my “really stressful and annoying dear clients” allow me to, I’m trying to play most games I can and write something on each play, as giving and receiving the feedback is the best part of LD (keeping in touch is always a great thing too! :D).

Will try to write some proper post-mortem for this last jam, had just a little time to build the project, but I’m happy with the outcome and the feedback I’ve received from players and jammers.

Thanks to everyone who played my game!

Thanks everyone for this LD! 😀

Now, time to ask the Rescue Chicken for some gems in here! There are some really good games in there, like OMFG Shapes! (http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=65932), go there and play, NOW! :3

Hey Everyone!

First off, playing all these little innovative games was amazing! It’s always inspirational to see so many different explorations of the same theme, some games used concepts or elements I would never have imagined, Under The Tree, Die Verwandlung, motion: a, Altered Beard, Mountain, Disarranged and Silver Bullet were some of my favorites. Sadly, many others stuck with morphing the player to fit through a specific location, but even a few of those were quite interesting (Block 1).

As it turned out, Shapeshifting as a theme was a rather challenging one. The question is always what to shapeshift, the player? the enemies? the world? an idea? perhaps a story? the game itself? or something else? I have seen stunning examples for all of these and I believe, now it’s time for some advertisement.

In our game, Goons shapeshifting is your weapon! Well…your primary weapon.

Here is a teaser about what the game can do, we would love to get a few more reviews and thoughts before the jam ends:
Have fun!

Finally managed to achieve just over 100 votes for my entry SHAPE.SHIFT(). Once again, huge thanks to everyone who took the time to play and rate over the past three weeks 😀 .

Anyway, it’s the last day of judging but there’s still time to play/rate my game so if you haven’t tried it yet (Were you living under a rock or something?), you can do so by clicking here (Let’s see if we can get 110 or even 150 votes by the end of the day ;D).

Tags: LD35, unity, unity3d

So if you haven’t ried Henkan Pachinko, please, come and leave us some feedback! Try here!

Tags: henkan pachinko, LD35, ldjam, Ludum Dare