Hey everyone,

I just started streaming and rating Ludum Dare games, so if you want to send me yours you can join here:

http://twitch.tv/thesemo

I’ve fixed most bugs, come and have a try 😀   Click me

I just hit my 2oth review and just checked my desktop which is now filled with 2.3 gig of LD games 😀

Great effort all of you, I will be reviewing more games for the next 2 weeks!

72 hours condensed into 5 minutes!

Play the game right here:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=50665

Tags: #animatedgif, GameJam, gameplay, Ludumdare, luvShape

Being the complete Ludum Dare noob that I am, I didn’t realize minor bugfixes were allowed until this morning! As such, I fixed a bug that prevented the player from changing states while boosting. Now combos are easier! I also updated the game description with some pro tips:

-Use a controller
-Blinking is reckless
-You can change states while blinking
-Killing an enemy knocks back enemies of the opposite state
-Combos end if you lose your blink chain or if you take damage
-Use a controller

Play Blink!

Go and play it now if you haven’t! Be sure to leave a rating with your score/combo

 Play it here

### The Game ###

GeoShift is a 2D platformer basically. But there is a shift To the rhythm of the background music, the world performs shapeshifts. And there is more. You can control the speed of the music to change the rhythm of the world to solve platformer puzzles.

Want me to play and rate your game? Leave a comment!

Stream!

Hey!

We’ve been working on some improvements around our game.
I hope you like it. Here is a link to our entry http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=44628
Come and leave your feedback about it.

gl hf,
Team BSOD

Hi all,

I’m one of the programmers of Team Fumiko and would like to speak about our game.

What it is:

When we heard about the theme, at least me wasn’t that happy, but we soon came up with two concepts matching the theme. The first one was about a wizzard who shifts the faces of others on requests by others and it would have been your duty to choose between different shapes of heads, ears and so on … the other one was Aeons Rest.

Aeons Rest is an action game with 3D isometric camera. You play as a hero who has to fight through multiple trials to proove he is worthy this title. You are placed on a magic shrine on a floating isle and the first thing you see are other floating landmasses that drift towards you until they crush into your start. Then the trial begins and fearsome enemies change into existance ready to fight you.

The game is designed around the theme of a shapeshifting level, which we focussed on primarly to get right.

What went right:

We had two modellers and one animator who were producing some really highquality low poly meshes and animated them, therefore we had a multitude of really goodlooking assets for worldgeneration.

The world generation and transitions between each trial came out very nice in the end, which took me some time to accomplish, although.

We hadn’t found any really gamebreaking bug right now, which for the timepressure is a really good outcome, i think.

We finished the game in time and had a lot of fun.

We got some really awesome feedback from the comments.

What needs improvement:

We used most of our time on the world generation and forgot about the gameplay a little bit, so the generation looks awesome, but the fighting and jumping could need some improvement.

For next time we will try to get an additional programmer, so we can get more polish and features in our next game.

Some of the assets didnt made it into the game because we hadnt enough time adding them to the game.

Next time I would like to start with a bigger codebase, so i dont need to programm basic systems like a thirdperson character controller again.

We used Unity Cloth simulation on our enemies which lead to big lags on the webGL version, so it had to be disabled on it.

In the end I’m very happy about what we achieved together and am looking forward to the next Ludum Dare we can enter together.

I am from the learn as you go school of game design. Unity Tutorials, Forums and Stack Exchange make up a significant chunk of my base knowledge about code but I don’t like to copy and paste, I make sure that anything I put into my game I know how it works. What I love about LD is that it forces me to try new things and in the process learn new things. Unfortunately the time restraint means the understanding new things becomes more optional especially when a lot of the new things you learn come with some complicated maths. Game Jams are not a good time to come to terms with new maths, but it brings me to another thing I love about LD, having to think your way around a problem. In a lot of ways Game design is the best and most abstract puzzle game I have ever played.

In LD35 I ended up in this spot a number of times and enjoyed my solutions to my problems. Sometimes it effected games mechanics. As an example when I was programming my Ship’s shooting mechanic. Because my ship had a variable speed the trouble I kept facing was the ship could out run the shot. It looked terrible, made the cannon look weak and also was problematic when it came to being chased by enemies. So I came up with an elegant solution

The cannon fires backwards. 3 Birds with 1 stone.

Another problem my shooting mechanic faced was aim. The ship in my game can rotate 360 degrees try as I might I couldn’t get the projectile to leave the ship in a line that looked correct. It would go in a straight line or come of at the wrong angle and it looked and played awfully. It was a maths problem and there was probably an elegant solution I was missing but I was already behind and I didn’t have the time to experiment until I found it. So here is how i solved my aim problem.I cheated!

A. I created am invisible game object that was the child of my Ships core and placed it about 20(unity distance) behind it. we shall call this game object Margret.

B. As a result it would follow the same rotation as my ship like it was on a spoke

C. at the point of firing 2 things happened

1. a projectile was fired from the ship
2. a new game object was spawned at the exact spot Margret was

D. The script on the projectile that made it move would take the game object dropped by Margret as a target and move in a straight line towards it while at the same time rotating itself to face it. It also meant I could have them destroy each other if  they hit Meaning the game didn’t become littered with bullets.

There might be hundreds of simpler solutions to this, some using more obvious code I didn’t think of or elegant solutions I don’t know how to do. I have described the way I code to people as hanging up pictures by nailing string to the ceiling and right now it works for me.

But this LD I found a creative way to cheat my way around something I couldn’t work out how to do the right way and if i hadn’t been doing LD probably wouldn’t of needed to but that time constraint really makes you think.

So if you read this thank you for indulging me and please play my game

Shift Commander

And if you have already played it please check out the Post Jam Version on Itch.Io as I have taken on a lot of the feedback in the comments on board.

https://cynicalmonkey.itch.io/shift-commander

Tags: #LD35 #gamedev #indiedev, itchio, postjam

This is my first LD, I didn’t even thought that I can make a game in 48 hours, but I made it and now you can play it also on android!!! 😀

The Game

View post on imgur.com

–STAR BUDDY–

A space traveler crashes on an alien planet and finds a shape-shifting friend named Buddy. With your new found companion, you must make your way trough a strange land to find your lost ship parts, while avoiding the local wildlife.

Be nice to Buddy, he’s all you got.

Thank you for checking out our game. We hope you love it!

Become a demon and challenge your friends in this fighting game.

Not only can you brawl like crazy, but shapeshifting your enemy to exploit his weaknesses is key to the victory.

Find your partner and follow the way to the battle :

Hellhound Battle Master Tournament – Rise of the Morpho Ray

Requires two players on local.

Feedbacks and comments are welcome.

Every Ludum dare I typically pick some new game genre to make and I’m slowly working my way in to genres I like to play myself. I would say that Fylgjur turned out to be the best one I’ve made so far, even if the votes don’t say so in the end. I learned a lot from the project and will be doing some more updates to it soon. Anyways here is how the compo went for me.

Time Breakdown 

0-1 Thinking of an idea and then planning it out

1-2 Making sprites and getting the base project setup

2-3 Getting basic player movement finished with a static sprite

3-9 Sleeping

9-15 Making animations, tweaking health code

15-19 Made weapon animations and code + first enemy

19-20 Fixing movement & attack bugs

20-24 More weapon code & animations, mostly spear and scrapping bow

24-28 Adding score and spawning of enemies

28-34 Sleeping

34-40 Making enemy bird fly in a pattern and not just straight to player, made sound effects

40-44 Tutorial level, music, UI

44-47 Added skeleton enemy with animation and code

47-48 Playtest, build, fix, rebuild, fix, rebuild, fix, rebuild, fix, rebuild

I think I managed my team pretty well and I only had to cut small sections off of what I had planned. I didn’t waste a lot of time on assets that did not get used but there were a few. I have a shield with blocking made but no reason to block since it was designed to stop arrows, but bows never got added. I had a few ideas to make damage popups and fruit hanging in the trees that you can hit to collect as health, but no time. I ran into a few bugs that nearly made me pull my hair out because they made no sense but they were resolved thankfully. The timeline is probably 80% accurate but it’s all a blur at this point.

Updates to game will be in next post!

I decided to make a racing game and program physics for a mariokart-esque racing game.
I’m thinking about pursuing development too!, play it here

Who doesn’t love job interviews?

Wait… no. Damn. That’s an awful way to market my Ludum Dare game.

Welcome to my job interview simulator.

No, that’s still awful. Think Jordan… think.

Want to spent several minutes talking to a pixelated green blob, in an attempt to get your dream job as a professional shapeshifter? Of course you do!

Of course they do. I bet the readers of this will click the link below, play The Professional Shapeshifter, and then give it a 5 star rating in every category. Yes. My marketing is perfect. Infallible.

Play The Professional Shapeshifter.

Then give it those sweet sweet stars. Lots of them. Muaha.

Tags: funny, interview, job interview, Perfect Game Marketing, Professional Shapeshifter, shapeshift, shapeshifter

Wow, we’ve done it! Don’t Look at Me still needs to be polished, but it’s here, and that’s great! Ludum Dare was a wonderful and exciting experience – I will never forget that feeling I had when we submitted in almost the last minute

As for the game, it’s a bit pshychedelic, but that’s the point, and I hope it communicates the mood it was intended to communicate. Give it a try – see what it means to live in an insane, constantly shapeshifting world. Any feedback would be GREATLY appreciated.

Well, this was my first game jam.
And I want to share a bit of this experience with you.

I meant this IS my first game jam. Playing other people’s game and seeing people’s reaction to mine happens to be the best part of it.

Creating

I always feel uncomfortable sharing something I do. Because there is infinite possibilities of doing things better. And I love creating but I’m not a specialist in anything, I just love the entierty of it.

Having a deadline and a theme is great for me. It allows me to work more efficiently. Well, I could have easily done my game in time for Compo submission if I didn’t sleep a lot and do other stuff… but anyway I kinda like the urgence and the intense focus.

The Jam

So, ShapeShift! At first, I thought of squares, triangles and circles (and maybe a cross…) But then I thought too many people would think of that. I guessed a lot of people would do a hero with transforming powers, so I looked for interesting angles for the theme. After looking at ancient stories of Mythology and all the uses of metamorphosis in art through the ages on wikipedia, I told myself: Maybe the story of a dog who has been transformed into a man? Or a character that could switch between male and female?

I liked those weird ideas, but it was ambitious. I knew I had to keep it simple. Especially since I’m doing this on my own. And I never really finished a game…

After a looong family dinner on saturday night, 20 hours had passed. I had to make a decision. I set up for squares, triangles and circles. But what’s the gameplay? I thought first of a rythm game. The shapes would shrink and you would click on them when they reach the center of the screen. But for my placeholder geometric assets I choose black, white and red as colors. That made me think of Seven Nation Army’s video clip from The White Stripes(although ther is no square). So I had to make the shapes grow from the center instead of shrinking from outside. I just liked the mood it made.

Ok, but then what’s the gameplay again? It could still be a rythm game, you would look at shape  on top of screen and see the incoming shapes. And click the good shape at the right moment . But… Putting stuff above the screen was really annoying since the visual effects were making you look at the center. So, I had to put the information to the center. And again, it had to be simple. So the gameplay changed from being a rythm game to a reflex game. And I felt it matched to the arcade style of the game. You have an instant visual reward when you do a good input, you die instantly with a bad one. You restart instanly with another input.

That was working, so I made new shapes to be a bit more pretty. Then I implemented the scoring system and started a health bar. diminishing increasingly through time, that you can refill with your good answers. This would make the gameplay or else there would be no challenge… But the first real bugs occurred. Bad shapes started popping where they shouldn’t. And then an atrocious visual bug that was destroying the mood… The gameplay wasn’t there, the visual was corrupted. And there where only 24h hours left, if I inteded to submit in time for the Jam. After multiple breaks and code rewriting I decided to sleep on it.

It wasn’t looking good the next day and I started thinking: well, maybe next ludum dare I’ll try again… But I finally managed to make the game work. And guess what… the visual bug had dissapeared too! There are some small pleasures in life! After this quite overwhelming moment, I focused on adjusting the gameplay and trying to add stuff to make it cooler. I was loosing myself and then a voice in my head said: Only 4 hours man! I spent half of it repeating square, circle and triangle in my mic to get the good sound… And did a quick beat using premade tools in one hour. Then render the game, setting the page making some screenshots. And we’re set!

In the end, I’m really happy I made something. It’s not perfect. A lot of things could have been done better. But it’s done and people can play it!

The After Jam

I could have got to sleep at 3Am but I stayed up and went to bed at 6. I had to see what other people had done.

I find the rating system really cool, encouraging people to play game and play the one that are least rated. I look up at other people’s game in a humble way, trying to look at the positive. And I find the people’s reaction to my game awesome. It’s encouragement to sharing and that’s why I write this.

Thanks everyone!

My submission to ludum dare: Trisquircle  (yeah the title is quite original, I know!)
I didn’t put it anywhere so here are the tools I used:

Gamemaker

Krita/Aseprite

Audacity/Garageband

Tags: arcade, post-mortem, psychedelic, reflex

*drumroll* …

That’s right, there’ll be a remake / full version of Nightshift coming to Steam soon. Stay tuned!

not this time, thiefs!

Hello! The last time I was in a Ludum Dare my game was a little bit stolen by one of those browser games websites and to this day it’s still there, without my permission. This time I took some precautions! I want to share a very simple way to do it, in case it’s of interest to anyone.

The idea is to check the URL of the page the game is running on and then, if it’s not something you know and approve of, disable the game in some way. Here’s a bit of C# code that does exactly that. Don’t forget to check for ludumdare.com if you embed your game here. If you need me to explain the code with more details or have suggestions on how to improve it, let me know!

Oh, by the way, if the host turns out to be unknown, I wouldn’t just disable the game right away, but instead put a message after the title screen or the first level directing the user to your website or something like that. This way if the pesky thief doesn’t go far enough to see it, they will just generate free traffic for you! The tables have turned ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Tags: unity, web

Have you punched any Dinos today? If not then you should check out my entry, Photagogue. Nobody has beaten the (only) level yet, can you? Maybe make a YouTube video? Also be sure to read the backstory. Best part is, is that you can play it on the Web. c:

I forgot to log out, and some pretty stupid friends of mine screwed up with my account. Please, HELP ME D:

Have a look at the concept art for our entry, Element Smash! First thing we got done and we went on from there. It was going to be a rock paper scissors themed game but we decided to make it elemental instead. That’s why we have a magma golem and a guy with strange things on its back. Plant was a paper bag, at first.

View post on imgur.com

Version Update – LD1.1 4/20/2016

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=27000
* Balance Pass
* Fixed Enemy AI not targeting Friendly AI when player isn’t around
* Fixed Carrier Shield. Shows up now and properly stops damage till all fighters are dealt with
* Adjusted Player Life from testing levels to normal levels
* Reduced the size of the hit graphic
* Increased planet regeneration for player life
* Reduced number of Friendly Warriors per Warband
* Fixed full screen – Game should be in full screen mode now
* Fixed carriers not giving spirit to player when they destroyed
* Fixed Kill Counts overall

I’ve also decided to build the game up a bit to a game with more to it than an endless war in space.  I don’t want to put too much time into it as I have some other projects I’m working on, but I think a few new extra features and a reward system for successes would be nice.

After great demand from the players of our game, we have finally finished a version of our game with checkpoints! Yay!

Play the official LD version and rate it!

OR if the official version is too hard…

Play the unofficial update with checkpoints!

Thanks and we hope you enjoy our game!

Tags: Dynamic Panic, Memento Mori

In this game you can play as a demon capable of shifting into corpses of humans he killed. It features deep combat system, complex AI, nice pixel art, retro sound effects and diverse environment. I’ve also fixed bug that was causing crashesin HTML5, so now you can play web version without worries

Enjoy!

After a bit more tinkering, I’ve uploaded another accessibility bugfix version of my game Shifty’s Shape Escape which allows for switching between a set of different keyboard control layouts. This should hopefully put to rest all the issues people have been having with keyboard ghosting preventing more than three keys being pressed simultaneously, as it includes three different layouts for each of QWERTY, QWERTZ and AZERTY keyboards, a numpad layout, and a “universal” layout which uses Tab, Shift, Backspace and Enter. If you had issues with ghosting before, give one of the alternative layouts a try and let me know how you get on.

This is my entry for the 35th LudumDare session – an abstract puzzle game. As a tutorial, the five first levels explain all about the elementary mechanics in order to progress in the game. I hope that you enjoy. I used some interesting material shaders in order to dissolve/recompose some colored artifacts. I focused on the aesthetic and mood. A computer voice assists the player during the game. However, if you don’t like puzzle games, you can just take a look on a video which shows us all levels – some walkthrough. Please, give me a feed back. Also I visit always the page of those who have rated my game. I wish you the best. See you later friends ++

Brain Required is here.

Hey all, me and SuperDisk are going to be doing a good old fashioned stream-and-play of some Ludum 35 games. Submit yours on the Pirate Pad: http://piratepad.net/00P1QlykRv !

Stream will be at https://www.twitch.tv/duran_coleman and will probably start some time around 6:30 PM, stay tuned.

I was looking at my profile and i’ve only missed 2 ludum dares in the last 9.

Curious to see how many others have completed? Post your consistency.

Please play and rate here.

I added a Linux version to my game Shape Shifter Match Maker. I tested briefly, so if there are any problems you encounter, I would appreciate knowing.

Our submission is a side scrolling puzzle platformers meets old school point and click adventure game. Plus, it’s got a talking demon head!

There was alot more environmental story telling stuff in here but due to some trouble merging versions it’s pretty much just the puzzles themselves. We believe they are tough but fair. If you think you’re clever enough to embark on this adventure CLICK HERE! If your eye and mind are sharp enough you can finish this thing in under 10 minutes easy.

Also, I wish we had metrics on how many people are beating our little prototype here, so if you manage beat it please brag about it in a comment!

-Team Heartlamp-

Tags: adventure, dungeon, fantasy, puzzle

In my entry ANISHIFTS.

also, please vote and comment.

Play here

I added an OS X and Web Version to my entry and fixed a bug where the ball could fall down without being clicked.

If you wanna try the game you can do it here.

Tags: #gamedev #ludumdare #gamejam #ld35

Wizard Fight is a turn based strategy game (though I never planned on making one) so if you’ve got a friend, grab them and try it out!

If the game goes down well enough, I plan on making a post-LD version to add sound, stick in more animation and maybe even try and squeeze in some network multiplayer.

Play it here

Run Rainbow Run

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=51393

This time we fixed it! This was the first jam in our game came out with everything we planned, when it was announced the theme, we were no good ideas, many ideas passed through our heads, but we did not just wanted a game that was according to the theme, we seek a game that was fun and that holds the player to spend a lot of time playing it, several ideas have been mentioned, but only decided the definitive idea 12 hours after the subject of the announcement.

After the issue of announcement, two hours after the prototype was ready and 20 hours later, the game was already “ready” to be posted on the Ludum Dare site, but we find it very boring, because the first version was only jump platform to platform and make points slowly for a long time, from then dedicated the rest Jam of time to add elements that would make the game fun, we were so decided that the score should increase rapidly, and had coins all the time on the screen , so that the player feel constantly rewarded, and scenery that changes the background prevents the player feel exhausted by doing the same thing all the time, because the visual effect of “shift” holds the player in our game, so Rainbow not only shape shift, as the background scenery changes depending on how long the player remains alive.

Soon we have a character according to the theme, as different than some people who have tested the game think the Rainbow (game character) changes when jumps form (he turns into a helicopter to try to go higher than he could without turn), then the game is within the theme! In addition to the very ground that the character steps, shape shift all the time.

Run Rainbow Run is a Tap game where the player only needs to survive rainbow bouncing rainbow with a Rainbow and collect coins to improve the score.

Run Rainbow Run was developed by Dat Op Games components:

Djosef Wytemalhos (Design, Programming)

Eric Dantas (Art, Animation)

Sabrina Lacerda (Art, Audio).

Aesthetics:

The art of the game was made in Adobe Photoshop, the appearance of the characters Rainbow are an exercise that Sabrina Lacerda for game development college, the character is inspired by the Kirby (Kirby games of series) and Poring (the Ragnarök Online) game. To attract people for our game, we decided to do it with many colors, as this helps the player to feel excited and happy.

Mechanics:

This was the most difficult part of deciding during the development of the game, because a lot of ideas came into our heads, but none was fun enough, it was then that we had the idea of ​​making a similar mechanic to the Google Chrome Dinosaur Game (game that appears when the internet is disconnected). The idea was brilliant because it was a simple mechanics, but that makes the player to hold the game without even realizing it.

The good side:

It was very pleasant and fun to this game, our team did a great job, and our first goal has been achieved, now comes the second goal (a positive assessment of the people who will vote).

The bad side:

We spent too much time planning how the game should be, hopefully next Jam have better ideas in less time.

We hope you have fun with our game!

See Ya!           *(^-^)*

Play now !

Congratulations to all those who participated in the compo and jam, and especially to those who finished games. I’m going to keep trying and participate in other game jams as well.

Wow I underestimated how difficult it was to produce a 10 minute video from 33+ hours and 150GB of video files! Can you believe most video editing software doesn’t allow you to speed things up by 20000%?! What a bunch of BS. Anyway… after many difficulties, I have compressed my entire weekend into a nice little video!

Check out the game’s submission page and give it go here:  http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=22132

Hello, my entry is called “Shape Shooters” (I’m really bad at naming) It’s a fairly simple game where you can either play as a square or a circle. Changing back and forth at will, you can do specific things depending on which one you are.

View post on imgur.com

Squares can get taller, and change their color. This is important for getting passed gates, and crossing color coded blocks.

Circles grow bigger, and become slower the bigger they are. However circles also shoot bullets, and a big circle will shoot a powerful bullet.

Using these powers you have to navigate through various levels, and defeat specific enemies. The game is pretty short, but still exciting. The game has a lot to do by collecting coins, shooting down turrets, and defeating enemies. Everything is geometry based, and has a nice style. Using the powerful enchant.js I was able to make some pretty neat animations for the game. And thanks to the nice soundation.com music creator, the game was some pretty rocking tunes.

This is my third Ludum Dare, and I’m really proud of how it turned out, and I hope you enjoy it.

You can check out the games page here.

while trying out some different shader things i came across a cool way to make water move ‘semi-realistic’.

its a little harder to see in this ‘.gif ‘ . When actually in ‘Game’ it is certainly noticeably moving water.

pretty convincing don’t you think??

Hello guys!

This is my second Ludum Dare!! This time I show you The Incredible Tweene!

Play with Tweene and solve the situations with his transforms. You can do it into Groshj and Minky and each one can do different things!

I had some problems with bugs modeling and I loose a lot of time and.. animations But it was a nice experience! as always!!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=56826

Enjoy it!! Thanks!

My 10 year old daughter drew all the graphics for this game and we are just now recovering from an incredible weekend!!!!  We are so excited about playing as many of your games as we possibly can!!!  Tell me about your game and we will go play it right now and comment on it!  You all totally ROCK!!!!!

We have managed to solve some issues that didn’t let us make a WebGL build. But we did it!
So now, you don’t have to worry about which browser are you using.
However, WebGL is still experimental, and the graphics aren’t as fancy as on the other ports. So please, if you want to see it “prettier”, just play the Unity Web Player version or download a build.
Thanks for your attention!

PLAY AND RATE!

Tags: henkan pachinko, japanese, ludum dare 35, shapeshifting

Are you really good at space shooting games! Well here again my Project for this Ludum dare compo!

Star Shift Journey!!

Can you get Further than Level 5 or 6?? Lets see then, try it out now (and don’t forget to vote, Please!) =D

Tags: compo, game, LD35, Ludum Dare, unity

The game I made for LD 35 is called Relec Hunter! Something that I would like to improve on is sprite editing and animation. Does anyone have any suggestions for software I should use? For my game, I used Pyxel Edit and Piskel. I heard Aseprite is good to use, so I’ll be checking that out. If anyone has any other suggestions or links to tutorials please link them. Thanks!

Here is a link to my game if you want to check it out. Thanks!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=76055

Gems eaten for recreational use is strictly frowned upon.

You asked for it (well maybe not)  but the Sheep Shape Shift web port is now available!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=65977

Can you save the sheep of Woolopia?  I have made a few bug fixes, tweaked the difficulty and added an ending if you complete the game.  It has everything: action, excitement and sheep so fluffy you are going to die!  (I am not kidding, the red sheep will end you.)

The web version assets are optimized to improve frame rate and to insure a good gaming experience (or at least something you can play and rate it quickly without downloading and installing anything :)).

If you enjoy the web version, feel free to download the windows version for the full graphic experience!

tldr: probably my best LD so far, but I still have tons to learn, see you in August folks! oh and feel free to give up!

Almost 4 days after the end of the compo, I think it’s time for a (small) post-mortem on my week-end coming up with OBfu.

What went good

• The art style, it’s my first game where I actually feel like there is some kind of beauty in it. It’s still super minimalist, and the colors don’t feel right, but I am actually proud … I think?
• The game ended up with 11 levels, which is 6 more than what I originally planned Saturday morning.
• It’s my first puzzler, and I loved making it!

What went wrong

• Again, the lack of time. I was happy to finish the main mechanics super early Saturday. But then, the level creation process hit hard: coming up with ideas is simple, coding them, testing them, tweaking them, replaying them, …. is incredibly time consuming for a puzzler like this.
• Re-iterating some of the mistakes I made in previous LDs (not using a game engine, not even a rendering library, I directly played with the Web Canvas API which is still quite low-level). Next one, I will probably play with Pixi.js

The stoopid stats section

• Total time: 14:12:38
• Line of Code: 1365
• LoC / min: 1.6

If after reading this blurb you still want to test OBfu, you can go over here. You can also follow me on Twitter: @zowesiouff. I will publish a new version with more levels (and some subtle new mechanics) this week-end.

Tags: LD35, ld35 post mortem

Please play and rate my game guys!

Click Here To Play

DOWNLOAD AND PLAY THE GAME HERE !

Rate for it here : http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=22158

Thank you !

Hey @all

i’m not trying to promote my game but people told me
several times that my game need better controls.

It would be nice if you can give me some tips for making it better

To my game

I’ll use your tipps for making it better so i can uploaded the new version after the Jam has finished. Also if you find some bug i need to fix let me know.

Bugs I already know:

• You can collect several times the same coin
• In stage 4 you can walk through the wall on the right side.

Write in the commenty of my game or in this Post. I really appreciate any help and hints

Kind regards,

Rakowu

P.d.: Sorry for my english

Improving the UI

According to rules, I see we’re allowed to fix minor bugs. I decided to go ahead and do that, since tiredness had made me forget to reapply a check in the game that I disabled for playtesting purposes. This caused a couple of bugs that were annoying in my game. I also fixed a bug where I had forgot to change the internal color id of pegs after shapeshifting, which prevented you from playing the correct color cards on them.

I believe (and hope) this is all acceptable within the LD rules. Here’s the list of changes made:

* Fix: You should now be able to play correct color card on shapeshifted peg.
* Fix: You can no longer redraw if you have insufficient points.
* Fix: Redraw button was rendering on top of Game Over screen.
* Fix: Cards should properly change if you click a new card with another selected.

Try out the game, and let me know what you think!

Square Peg Round Hole

I’ve had such a good time reading other first-timers’ (and veterans’) experiences, I will put nervousness aside and share my own as well

Planning:

Ohhh…that is a thing we’re supposed to do, isn’t it?

Yeah, I didn’t actually plan to participate at all.

I’ve been an LD lurker for a little while. The plan for this past weekend was to settle in watching my two favorite GameMaker tutorial makers stream the creation of their games. Was really quite looking forward to it.

Then, while looking over pre-LD footage they had up during their pre-dev sleep breaks, I had an idea. A very small-scope idea that I thus thought I could reasonably do in time. Before I could let anxiety get the better of me, I created an LD account (the name accurately reflecting my feelings ;)) and started work…6 or 7 hours into the thing.

It was completely worth it.

What went right:

Since the idea was so simple, my minimum viable prototype came together very quickly.

I playtested extensively throughout the dev process and afterward as a final check-up. When I used testing shortcuts such as winning the game at level 1, I made sure to do later testing passes once the shortcuts were removed, just to be sure everything still worked. This extra pass caught a drawing bug on level 5’s win state.

I made sure to stand up and walk around and stretch occasionally. I also got up and cooked when I was hungry which, rather than being a distraction, helped me clear my head and re-focus.

It was so much fun making my craptacular explosion animation. I also rather enjoyed designing the stitched-together abomination of a ship which I have lovingly christened Frankenship.

I feel a ton more comfortable with GameMaker’s draw functions now, just, a ton.

What went wrong:

I didn’t sleep. While I’m new to game dev, I am not new to programming (though rusty) and this is something which happens a lot when I really get into programming. I avoid caffeine, but even if I go to bed, I just lay there programming/designing in my head, unable to let go of something until it’s solved. I was so amped that I didn’t sleep for a while after finishing, either – and I was exhausted. Should have gone to bed just a few hours after I started, instead I worked on the game for 16-18 hours.

It had working music at one point, made at Otomata. But the game is so short that even with it only starting over on game restart it still got seriously obnoxious during my own playtesting – there were good odds it was going to annoy others, and it seemed extraneous. So I removed it, a decision I am comfortable with for this particular game.

I originally planned to put a little more detail into the station, windows on the rings and simple shading and such. But my art tools were such a pain to use (more on this later) that I chose to leave them simple, only adding a little detail to the center ring to draw attention to the goal. At least they aren’t distracting? 😉

Not entirely happy with the first expansion level for the ship, even if it does form the basis for all the other levels. It just doesn’t seem like a big enough change from the first level, serving as more introduction to the idea that the ship changes than any real increase in challenge.

I struggled with getting some characters such as apostrophes to work in my text, even after making sure I had included them in my font and font ranges. I couldn’t seem to get concatenation to work, and that annoyed me.

OMFG did I really put a grey moon behind my grey station that my mostly grey ship navigates?

What I hope to do better:

Uh, planning, mostly. If I’d known I was going to participate, my artwork probably wouldn’t have all been done in Microsoft Paint and GameMaker’s own Sprite and BG editors. Making the rings was far more obnoxious than it had any right to be. Definitely need to pick up some tools.

Sleep more, hopefully? If I do a larger game which will take more time, this may end up a moot point.

Hopefully next time I’ll make something which isn’t so dependent on Precise Collision detection in GameMaker. Although it was appropriate here, and the game is small, it seriously felt WEIRD for my first game to use that.

I had so much fun guys! Both developing my own game and playing others’. And I’ve been floored by the comments. My thought on making it was “Yes, this is technically a game, I am learning” but so many of you have said you had fun with it and that means a lot.

To any timid or nervous fellow lurkers out there, next time this comes around, dive in! It’s worth it

Space Dock can be found here.

Tags: GameMaker Studio, LD35, postmortem

Hey you! Do not forget to vote in my game Run Rainbow Run and have fun! (^ – ^) v

Hello everyone!

We’ve reached more than 400 registered users on our Game Development group, thanks for the support!

If you haven’t joined yet, here is an invite for you.

Come talk about gamedev, and feel free to share your Ludum Dare entries!

Join Game Development on Discord

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Ludum Dare 35

please rate this game and play and leave a comment please

Another gif of our LD 35 game. Play it now! Just click on the gif!

Send me your Game(or just a game which you thin deserves more votes) and I try to play it.

I am not a YouTuber or something like that, I just want to play LD games.

Here is the submission form: http://goo.gl/forms/zh4qqqqhxF

And If you haven’t already, here is my Compo Game to play: Click

It’s there, it’s there!

Tags: game, jam, LD35

Here is my personal all time highscore in our LDJAM Entry DR. LEPUS – The last rabbit on earth.

Personal Highscore in DR.LEPUS

SCORE: 116255
Playtime: 3 min 18 sec

Can you beat it?

Play the Game here

Our personal goal for this jam was to focus on polish more than anything else because that is something we had the most trouble with in earlier jams. By the way, this was our third Ludum Dare of the past four, which also made it our first Ludum Dareversary. This post mortem is mostly focused on the design and production aspects of development, we might talk about programming, visuals and music in another one.

How it looked on Day 1…

… and the result!

The idea for the game came rather quickly, and due to the amount of resources about the genre it did not take longer than a few hours to come up with a playable prototype. Creating a match-three-game was something we discussed before, as part of some “make all the genres but start with the casual stuff”-masterplan. After we had come up with our initial idea and set up a first gameplay prototype we ran into some motivational problems. It might have been the different way we approached the jam this time but after the basics were done work pretty much stopped for the rest of day one. Luckily George came over to help us out with sounds and music on the second day, which forced us to continue working and ultimately lead to us becoming motivated enough to keep working through the rest of Day 2 and 3.

We did not see the full potential of our shapeshifting idea until Day 2, which might have also played a role in us losing motivation at first but then regaining it. The shapeshifting had to be incorporated into the game in a understandable way. That is why we came up with the idea to let people play a match-three-game as usual and then shift a creature with the data we get out of that. It took us a full day to see that what was initially planned as nothing but a visual gimmick would have an effect on the gameplay as well. When we put the monster in and added the mechanic to change shapes when crushing potions the playtesting opened our eyes and we saw that our gimmick was actually a mechanic. We unintentionally ended up with a meta-game to be played while playing the core game If you have not played the game: Certain amounts of certain potions will change the shape of a body part of the monster, and to achieve a full shapeshift it is neccessary to crush a lot of one color while avoiding all the others as much as possible. That is one of the two tactics we found so far, the other being very good at creating large chain reactions and having a bunch of luck that enough of the right potions are destroyed. It was nice to see that we don’t have to try and build up a complex idea beforehand and can just go for it and come up with something interesting.

The Collection

Because we wanted to get as much as possible out of the mechanic we had, we added the collection to the main menu. I usually like collectibles in games, if they don’t feel arbitrary and fit the gameplay as well as the theme and/or story. The collection also seemed like a good way to communicate the target of the game to players without having to write a long text most people won’t read. It was particularly hard to refrain from trying to add more content and/or features, as it usually is when the basic idea works well. But we managed to focus on our initial goal of making a more polished game instead of an overly ambitious one. Even though we spent way more time than before on making everything seem finished the game still has some issues. Most of them came up in the comments we received so far (thank you to everybody who commented!) and we want to tackle those next before either building around the jam version or try to port it for mobile devices.

Play and rate our game here

Tags: casual, ld35 post mortem, match three, shapeshifting

We finally solved some issues in Algebro that were causing the html5 version of the game to crash, so you can now play it in your browser!

PLAY NOW

Remember how much your imagination would run wild when you were just a bored kid at school?

Let our team, Chummy Winds, take you back to a time of daydreaming and doodling in our first Ludum Dare jam game, Algebro.
Take control of the little dude and fight your way through 3 beautifully designed stages, dashing between 2D and 3D to fend off the blood thirsty shapes who are trying to suck you into their world.

I’m pleased to announce that the Mac and Linux builds of Robot Escape are now available.

I admit these are only somewhat cursorily tested, so please reach out to me if there’s any problems with them.

Play Robot Escape Here

Tags: crossplatform, linux, mac, port, unity

I just found my game in the mosaic!

If you haven’t yet, go play ShapeGrid and post your highscore! Mine is 223 😀

Thanks everyone for your SO possitive feedback. I did not expect those great reviews!

Cheers!

Now that I’ve grabbed your attention, why not give my entry SHAPE.SHIFT() a try?

Played a good few games so far, and there are a handful that stick out in terms of innovation and polish. If you are looking for good games to play or to learn a few new innovative design tricks, these are definitely for you. Hopefully some of them get developed further:

PERMUTATE by TravisChen

PERMUTATE is an interesting look into movement design and how it can shape a game. I would really like to see a game like this developed further. There are a lot of directions and combinations you can take puzzle creation with such a unique movement system!

Play

55 Days by V4lesti

55 Days is a neat little tycoon-like puzzle game. The game feels like it is built for mobile, and it runs on ActionScript I believe, but it is by no means a cheap game. This game is a very polished and soothing experience. If you are looking for a way to kill some time, this is your answer. I could definitely see a game like this selling well on the mobile/HTML5 market.

Play

Soothsayer Simulator 2016 by iceburg7

I know the name and look of the screenshot would suggest that it isn’t an amazing design test, but it is. A very creative venture on the part of iceburg7. I won’t say more about this in fear of spoiling it!

Play

think about it?

Why is everyone focusing so much on graphics. Its not the core of a game.

Its just the cream…..

Now you can play ShiftyBalls in your browser via WebGL! Click here for the new web version, and then please go here to rate it. If the web version gives you trouble, then please try the Windows one.

So, I finished a game for LD for the fourth time. I have to say that this just becomes more and more fun each time!

Click on the gif to play the game

When I woke up and saw the theme, I was pretty terrified (we get the theme here at 3am on Saturday) 😀 All that came to mind was werewolves, damn you Shadows of Innistrad! But then I started thinking, what if you didn’t control the characters directly, but instead guided them with/in shapeshifting. Once I had the idea, everything started to become very clear. The game mechanics and all.

I programmed in JavaScript (Phaser) and used a template I had created for Ludum Dare. Feel free to use it, if you like, and make suggestions if you think something could be improved. You can find it on github 

I started out with placeholder graphics (just colored boxes) to see if the idea would be any fun. I added P2 physics for “funnier” physics (than just non-rotating box collisions). I had lots of trouble getting the physics to work with the tiling engine (phaser tiled plugin). Afterwards I noticed that it was a matter of a simple typo in my map data. I had already changed to a simpler, less efficient tiling engine (phaser’s own), so it was too late to change back. I had to live with my choices, but luckily the maps were not scrollable anyway, so there wouldn’t be performance problems (which I had plenty in “Oddest Jobs”, my LD32 game). That’s the problem you have when you’re working alone, you can’t tap on someone elses brain power to find a silly bug.

After the game started to take form, day 1 was already in the evening side. I decided to stop working on the code and started to draw graphics. Since I basically already knew what the sprites needed to be and what size, I could work pretty fast. I got most of the graphics into a raw state at the end of day one. I did most of the graphics on the iPad in an app called Pixaki, and the sprite animations in an iPad application as well called Sprite Something. At the end of the day I made a checklist on the features that still need to be done.

At the start of day 2, I knew what was still to be done and felt I had plenty of time. Well, naturally things don’t really work like that 😀 I’m not a musician, so making a song that was tolerable took me some time. I used a music creation plaything called NodeBeat on the iPad. The sounds took quite a while too, since this time I tried to make them extra-not-annoying. I used ChipTone for the sounds. I did finish the game at an early time, but I noticed the game could use a coat of polish, so in come the particles. I was starting to get really tired, so I didn’t get the particles quite as well done as I had hoped, but they look alright! They add enough distraction to the transformations so you don’t notice that they’re an immediate frame change.

The end result is Posthistoric Ooze that takes a page from the lemmings book. I hope you’ll give it a go and maybe rate it too (if you can)! Any improvement-commentary is welcome! I’m working on a post-compo build, so improving on it still

My tips (might apply to you or not):

– Use placeholder graphics until the rudimentary game mechanics are done. Basically when a game level can be completed.
– Make an “empty” template that compiles and runs before the compo starts. This will allow you to start coding right away, instead of fighting with webpack or a similar tool.
– Don’t drink too much energy drinks, they kill your focus (and they’re a diuretic, too much time away from the computer :D)
– Make checklists on things that still need to be done, so you’ll remember and can prioritize, and this can actually increase your focus.
– Immediately write down things you think might be good for the game. They can be ignored if they turn out to be too much work.
– Get into a peaceful space to work on the project. For me, it’s the office, there’s nobody else there

Hello guys!

We are proud to inform that the Windows version of WolfBit has just reduced from 51Mb to 19Mb.

BUT… HOW?

Well, according to Microsoft Developer Network:

“A program database (PDB) file holds debugging and project state information that allows incremental linking of a Debug configuration of your program. A PDB file is created when you compile a C/C++ program with /ZI or /Zi or a Visual Basic/C#/JScript .NET program with /debug.”

That means they are not necessary AT ALL for release builds (AKA running perfectly your game).

And I find that a pretty good advise, as I have seen more than one game at LD35 that has been given the suggestion to remove these huge useless Megabytes of it.

(Including us!)

So thanks Ludum Dare community for pointing this out! It’s really good to be a part of it.

By the way, if you haven’t played our game, WolfBit, go on and check it here.

We are really proud of it, I mean, look at our title screen

Edit: Next step is learn how to post GIFs here (we’ll work on that!).

Another gif of our LD 35 game. Play it now! Just click on the gif!

If you have played The Wewelsburg Experiment, maybe you didn’t know that there is an EXIT you have to find and that the castle is brand new, generated every time you play.

We didn’t have time to watch people outside the team play to get feedback, and we’ve been getting feedback now that make us think that.  And so, we wanted you to know :).  Open the map and try to get out of the castle!

Tags: castle, experiment, feedback, map, wewelsburg

If so, please check out Conjurer’s Quest! I spent a bit of time on the music and the graphics and managed to include multiple endings.

I also made the whole thing in under 24 hours, so I guess that’s always good.

Please play it here!

I am , my dear friend , who they call The Yellow Wizard [1].

[2]

You see, I were one day in my cave watching NetPhoenix and enjoying my favorite show Game of The Staffs when …

BAAMM !

POOF  !

RAAGH!

TAASH !

That really bothered me [3]!

So I went out of my cave only to see two armies fighting in my backyard !!

I decided to show them who is The Yellow Wizard 

As I set afoot to use my shape-shifting spell to finish this battle quickly .

Well you might ask how would I do that ?

I tell you I will kill one of the commanders of the two armies and then

well, they will probably fight somewhere else.

brilliant eeh ?

Will what are you waiting for then , move you “curser” and curse this link bellow.

                                                  Play The game here 

                                                             Curse Me

Notes:

[1]

Not because I always wear yellow but because I am actually a wizard who happens to love wearing yellowish robes since no one would call someone “The Yellow” alone unless they have a trait that precedes that and therefore I justified my naming.

[2]

The Developer usually draws well but The Yellow Wizard happens to be less than good looking 😛

[3]

As I don’t have headphones you see.

[4]

This footnote will soon be garbage-collected!

Tags: LD 35

Shape Shifter – Play Here

Here is a small gif about this shifter. I used only circle shapes in graphics. I honestly did not have time for anything else.

Do people still do these?

Here’s mine anyway, I like seeing these because progress is fascinating.

Go play & vote on Spinstar HERE!

Tags: chronolapse, LD35, Spinstar, timelapse

hi there, if u made a Web game please send me you link!!!

today started my weekend! 😀

ps.: im asking for web games cuz dont want to download, just play it and have fun

see ya

Altered Beard is a game made to honor an icon, and a friend of mine.
Here you control Beardanu, a peaceful citizen who decided now distribute the blow to see how it is. and precisely at the time he decided to do this, the city is invaded by aliens. Thanks to the power of the majority vote, Beardanu can become president to kick the ass of aliens.
Entry link!

Tags: altered beard, alteredbeard, Beard Anu, Beard Game, beardanu, gillenew, Supreme Beard, SupremeBeard

Hello again! I’ve uploaded the souce code of my game. Feel free to download if you want to do it

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=62494

And thank you for feedback and playing my game!

Tags: ldjam, ldjam35, Ludumdare

Here is the post mortem to my game Shape Escape.

You can watch the timelapse here.

THE BEGINNING
I stayed awake until 3 a.m. when the theme got announced (I’m living in Germany). Then went to bed and thought about different ideas. When I woke up I got myself a nice breakfast with my family and talked about my idea where the player can shapeshift the main character and each charactar has an own AI/Behaviour. So the player won’t be able to control the character directly. A little bit like lemmings but with only one character.

My tools were Monkey-X, Photoshop, Tiled and Logic Pro. I had a very bad start: First thing I needed was to load in and render a Tiled-Map. Something I did a hundred times before. But as I decided to not use my own “framework” I got into some trouble. I just thought I could extract the tiled-loader out of it, but it has so many OOP-Crap-Dependencies I had two choices. Write a new tiled loader from scratch or switch to my old framework. I decided to write a new tile loader from scratch and lost around 4 hours.

But after that it went quite smoothly. I decided to try the core mechanic with very simple art (I just used various colored Rectangles for everything) and when I put the first shapeshift into my demo-map I decided that the game mechanic ist quite good so I would go on with the idea.

The second day some annoying collision bugs popped up and it required quite some time to fix them. The rest of the day I spent building some levels (wished I could have added more) and created a simple chiptune in Logic. I used a “Instrument-Layout” I’ve created originally for my platformer Tiny Thor, because I knew when I start to select/search for the right sounds that could take myself hours and hours. After improvising on my synth for some time I found a nice melody I liked and from there I’ve arranged the song around it and I’m so glad that people seems to like it because time was slowly running out and I was in a really hurry.

In the end I’ve submitted my game around 6 hours before submission deadline which was very relaxed. I could have added more levels probably but I was out of energy and decided to submit the game and see what people might think.

I already have TONS AND TONS of idea how to develop the game further, but haven’t decided if I’ll do a post-compo version. 😉

Hello everyone! I am here to announce that the MONSTER CHALLENGE is on! But what is it? Well, it is simple: SLAY MORE MONSTERS THAN ANYONE TO WIN!

Then you ask me: What do I win if I slay more monsters than anyone?

YOU WILL APPEAR IN OUR GAME! YOUR NAME IN THE CREDITS AND A VERSION OF YOU AS A CHARACTER!

Incredible right? How can you win?

1- Take a print screen of your Game Over Screen, showing how many monsters you killed in a play.

2- Send the image and your Ludum Dare user name to the following email: riftpointstudios@gmail.com

3 – Rate our game and submit a comment!

4 – That is it! In a few days we will announce the big winner.

This is the screen that you have to send us. The number after the skull icon is how many monsters you slayed.

So what are you waiting for? IT IS YOUR CHANCE TO BE IN THE GAME!

GO SLAY SOME MONSTERS!

PLAY IT HERE! – FORGE RAMPAGE

PLAY NIGHTSHIFT NOW

(this is a mirror of this blog post on thenet.sk)

As is tradition, I participated in another Ludum Dare, with the theme ‘Shapeshifting’. Though the game is rather simple and certainly not revolutionary, it might be one of my best LD entries to date.

For a change, the important life-changing exam week was not right after the LD, but just before. So I didn’t really have time to make sure all my libraries are ready, nor to make a wallpaper for this LD (I used the one from last LD, terrible, I know!) … But it felt like a relaxing weekend after the weeks of studying. For the second time, I was at my girlfriend’s, not at home. So, once again:

And so on with the yumm.

The theme

I didn’t really go through the themes the day before, didn’t try to calculate the most likely one. Mostly because I wasn’t truly happy with any of the themes. So on Saturday morning, seeing the theme was ‘Shapeshifting’, and inspired by Elvie:

And also this derp that goes by the name of Ninja:

I thought, shapeshifting into a cat could work as the basic plotline. My initial idea was that the player was a werecat, turning into a cat every full moon. The intro could be somewhat fun, making the player think he was going to turn into a classic werewolf, and in the very end revealing the truth with a dramatic meow.

A roguelike approach

As far as the game itself goes, I first thought I’d make a simple topdown roguelike – the player / cat would go through ‘dungeons’ that would turn out to just be the rooms of the player’s house looking extremely exciting and dangerous to a cat. There could be some basic RPG levelling, gaining experience, etc. To go with the theme a bit more than just the intro, I wanted the player to learn new ‘shapes’ along the way, by scratching scratchposts.

Each shape would have slightly different abilities, advantages and disadvantages. For example, most basic cat shapes would be ‘jumpy’ – automatically jumping / teleporting to nearby sources of noise, with a QTE overlay to scratch up whatever the source was, otherwise continuing in regular combat. The catloaf shape would reduce this radius of jumpiness, or completely eliminating it. The player would not be able to move as a catloaf, however, so it would be a purely defensive shape.

Another idea was the idea of some meta-game progression. Every night, the player would turn into a cat, but during the days, they would wonder what happened, clean up the mess, etc. Or maybe they have just moved in to a new place, so everything is packed in boxes, and every day the player can unbox the furniture of another room, thereby allowing the player to add elements into the nightly ‘dungeons’ one by one.

Shmup time

I was somewhat committed to this idea already, and yet, it didn’t feel extremely exciting. I realised that I was not really using the theme, that a roguelike game is quite a lot of work to make, that I wasn’t exactly sure how the game would play, I just knew the intro was okay. Luckily, it was still morning, and I changed my mind while talking about my ideas with my girlfriend. I thought a shmup, while not an uncommon or new genre, would be interesting to try out – I could focus more on proper polish of the game, instead of getting overwhelmed by implementing difficult game mechanics.

And the introductory shapeshift would just be slightly more goofy – as a werecat, you decide to put on your space helmet and fight the evil space mice (for no real reason).

I have decided to keep the idea of different cat ‘shapes’, however, as an analogue to weapon selection in classical shmups. Destroying scratchposts stations would produce a power-up for one of the player’s shapes.

Then it was quite easy to make progress. With the idea being a bit silly, I didn’t have to worry about consistency, or a horror mood like I did with my previous point ‘n click entries. So – space mice, guard dog, flies and bees, scratch stations, yarnball magnets. The graphics were old schoolesque and, as usual, I limited myself to a small palette – 11 colours in this case.

Music

At some point, I thought about a boss fight. A guard dog seemed appropriate, it could attack by barking, jumping, scratching, et cetera – a lot of room to make various boss attacks. Before I got to making any of that, I thought of the music for this boss fight. Surf rock seemed fitting at the time. Misirlou (covered by Dick Dale) is a good example of this genre:

So I attempted to make some music. Using my own music library, coding the notes like this:

While the library certainly has some errors, it works. But writing down notes like this is most definitely not a good method of making music. I need to get around to making a GUI for it one day, enable MIDI input maybe – then release it for fellow Ludum Darians. So, the end result was that the music I made was not exactly stellar. It fills the silence, but it’s by no means good.

Accepting my defeat after about two hours or so of messing around with it, I just left it as it was and moved on.

Level design

Then it was high time to make actual content. I had some cat shapes, some enemies, some power-ups, but nothing to hold it all together. I thought no levels could be complete without walls! They worked somewhat … But as someone pointed out in the comments, they were mostly frustrating, with the hitbox being too large and the walls dealing too much damage.

I made my job somewhat easier by typing up the levels as text, then using a PHP script to convert it into a Haxe array and paste the result directly into my source code.

My time was running out, however, and I decided that three levels + a boss should be the bare minimum. The result is that the levels I had were somewhat rushed and, unfortunately, they introduced a lot of artificial difficulty by swarming the player with lots of enemies or difficult mazes. Nonetheless, I was extremely happy to submit something resembling a finished game at 3 in the morning.

Post-jam

The reception was very positive, mostly complaining about the difficulty, which motivated me to make the casual easier version so that people may get to the boss and enjoy the full game.
In fact, this is the very first LD game I will remake and try to get greenlit on Steam, with the help of my friend for the music. Here’s a trailer:

The Deluxe version will include different areas, many more levels and bosses, additional shapes, good music, and so on. Here’s to hoping.

Tags: cats, post-mortem, progress

Hello!

We created a playthrough of the first level of VÜRK!

Click here to play and rate.

Your feedback is highly appreciated!
Love//JOK Games

Hi everybody, we introduce you the rage of the Shapeshifting-Demon from our game Fast Dungeon, kill it here:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=29122

😀

Our fourth Ludum Dare entry is rhythm-based, side-scrolling (and up-down-scrolling), obstacle-dodge-y, and occasionally bullet-hellish.  And quite hard.  Prepare to be frustrated.

Big thanks to Kevin MacLeod for his huge library of free music, including “Harmful or Fatal”, which is the focus of our game.

There’s a post-jam version up – it’s not quite as impossible now (but it’s still really hard!)

breaking things feels good

Play it here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=52817

Hey all!

If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out our game!  It’s about a shapeshifting blob that has to make its way through an obstacle course at the request of its teacher!

Be sure to rate!  

Thanks for checking it out!

Send your links in the comments!

(Just web games please)

We’re back for another swanky Ludum Dare party! Starting us off are three highly unique games. With Eye Guy the Endless Runner, CyGlide a Transforming Flying Sim, and Andari Prime which takes you on a Handi-man’s Shapeshifting Adventure!

Eye Guy by Zacerhy & Crew

CyGlide by Ocarson

Andari Prime by Fabraz Games

If you Enjoy the Video and want more be sure to subscribe! I’ll be taking more submissions throughout the LD35 voting period so don’t be shy! [Use this Handy Form]

Tags: Andari Prime, CyGlide, Eye Guy, Larry Does Ludum, ludum dare 35, Video Showcase

Ok… not musical, just music… made for the game.  Ok, this is just an excuse to post my music, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.  The music that is, the game… well… it’s got some issues, but we got-er-dun so thumbs up!

The Game!  –>   HERE! CLICK ME!

The Music! –> Right there! Below!

Tags: LD35, video game music

I’ll be honest, this is my first time writing such a thing. Nonetheless, I’ll give it a shot…

So, what went wrong:

1. Scope Creep. -I planned a lot more than I probably could have implemented, especially with my poor time management skills.
2. Incomplete (and somewhat buggy) Game Library -This one ultimately ties back to me not managing the weeks, and even months of time I had to get my game library to a useful state.
3. Level Data -Overall, I wouldn’t say my usage of level data in itself was a mistake, but rather the methods by which were implemented to edit it. It takes way to long to manually edit a 38 x 25 tile map!
4. Time Management , Late Start, Interruptions – I got started late because of dinner with my family. Several other interruptions occurred after I had started. Lastly, my time management could have been better, I often found myself getting distracted with either the irc chat, or with private chats with my online friends. I also may have taken a few breaks that were longer than necessary.
5. Bugs – The last feature I implemented, the first mobile type of enemy, has some major collision bugs. I suspect this was related to the copy-and-paste coding I did. By the time I just through in the towel with coding and decided to finalize some graphics, I had an enemy with only 1/3 of its collision active, and that part still was horribly wrong.
6. Loading Issues – the .json files for the “web” version weren’t being re-downloaded, causing errors in some cases.

And what went right:

1. Well, I did actually get a game made. Not a very complete game, but I got more done that I was expecting to, after the numerous problems and delays that occurred during development.
2. I would say that this was a great learning experience.

Overall, while I do consider this game a catastrophic failure, I am proud of what I did manage to accomplish, and I look forward to what the future may bring, including LD36, if my schedule permits. I shall take into consideration the lessons learned from this experience in all of my future game or software design endeavors. Also, I’m not done with this game just yet. I really want to see this game completed as I originally had originally envisioned it, so I might set some time aside to complete it, hopefully with help on the graphics.

Play/rate/review my game here (feedback is welcome and encouraged): http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=91339

My library: https://github.com/Brian151/UnNamed-html5-Game-Library

My Game (github) : https://github.com/Brian151/LD35-UnNamedShapeshiftingGame-

my library declaration and “I’m in!” post: http://ludumdare.com/compo/2016/04/14/declaring-stuff-first-ld-for-me/

Hey all! I did some small bug fixes (audio sync issues and unfair deaths as the fish and bird form) as well as greatly increased usability by adding various control schemes based on user feedback. You can now use numeric input to switch forms, arrow keys, and several new options for the primary action button. There is also a small animal wheel that shows the currently active form and visualizes which form you’ll shapeshift into by pressing left vs right!

If you want the true vanilla experience that reflects the source code and compo entry, the original link is still there. But most of these changes were incredibly small and just make the game more accessible because much of the game’s difficulty was caused by awkward controls instead of genuine challenge!

View the entry page and play Lux Anima!

Cheers,
Broxxar

It’s called Shapescape.

And yes there’s a web version!

Turns out I left out the data directory in the Windows upload of my game, have just reuploaded the complete version.

Play it here!

We will be streaming for a bit, playing and rating some of your games. Join in and send us a link of your game if you’d like: HERE

Cheers!

Hello ! So my game uses a lot of buttons and other UI features. However I’m not such a good artist when I try using a editor the Images sometimes come out too small or to outlined or the words aren’t aligned correctly.  So I’m searching for a program which you can download and create button, banners, icons, logos etc.  All these can be created simply by filping the switches. The closest thing I found to what I was looking for is Kenney Studio. Kenney says he plans to add in the feature but I don’t know how long it will take (https://itch.io/t/17078/a-button-creator).  Of course their are a few online programs but I have no clue where these people are getting their resources and are  they legal or not. So I continue my search, any suggestion ?

Tags: gui, Random Game Development Question, UI

Ludum Dare 35 was the second one for me, as a ludum and as a game jam. The last time I joined forces as a part of DarkLight Team, but this time half of the team had a real-life problem and we were only two coders on the team. Then we decide to join the compo and try what can we do all alone. Neon Level Switcher was child.

What went well

The game is finished

From the first hour I decided to go to a simpler project that I could potentially finish in time. And it was a good idea, because I needed to switch to the jam competition to have 24 hours more to have a nicer game. But in the end, the game was completed, maybe not the best gameplay (see more later), but is playable, graphics and sound complete. I had a lot of ideas, lets take a look:

• Rhythm game with shape change mechanic
• Local Multiplayer game with shape change mechanic (rock, paper scissors maybe?)
• Plattformer with a “shape” protagonist that needs to change to beat situations
• Pong like game where you can change your shape to change the ball direction
• Turn based game, every turn you can change your shape to define speed, like Formula D, the more sides, the more speed
• The enemies change shape every time you shoot them
• The side count matters
• Physics based mechanics, playing with the shape you “shoot”
• You can change your shape to hide from enemies
• Worms like game where the player can “paint” their bullet to adapt to the terrain
• Wall of death game, you need to change your shape to fit in the wall that’s coming
• The shape of the scenario changes, move wisely to not die
• Finding the most relaxing “shape” in the sofa

I wrote down every idea I had, no matter how hard or crazy it seemed to me, because some times an impossible idea leads to another one and luckily, it could be THE IDEA. I would love to do a rhythm game (I was very involved in the machine dance scene in Spain), but it will be very hard to do when you don’t have any idea of sound programming. Others involved too many mechanics to code them all alone and in the end, the winner was due to the fact the last game in the ludum dare used Tiled levels and it would be easier to me to develop something. I loved to see some of the ideas appeared as submissions :D.

I did the graphics

I love to draw, but loving something does not means that you will be able to do it correctly. The major fear I had when we decided to go solo were the graphics. They may seem simple, but it was a nightmare for me to generate such a simple tileset. In the end, going simple was the best option, sacrificing a “theme” behind the game and hoping you will not need to know why you are a rotating rhombus that moves through blue levels.

My main inspiration was Hexagon, I think it’s a great title graphic wise. But something I learned is that making something look simple implies a lot of work.

It was relaxing

Too many people tie a game jam to an stressful situation. I think is a great error. You are here to learn, to have fun, to go creating with boundaries. But you don’t really need to crunch in a game jam. I want to highlight the “need” verb I’ve used, it’s OK to stress yourself if you want, maybe you want to test how much you can do in 48/72h. In my case, I wanted to finish without wasting resting time, and it was a success. Saturday night I decided to go to play the Doom beta and leaving the Compo even when I had 3 more hours to finish the game. As a result, it was very fun to me, even when the engine failed to deploy the game with 1 hour left to do it.

Tags: ld35 Postmortem, post-mortem, postmortem