https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORICIOenuWA

I discuss it in the above video. Super excited for the next LDJam with how fun this one was!

This is my submission ! It’s about robots, their fruits, and the rodents that steal them. Now with even eviler rats !

I hope you will enjoy it.

PLAY HERE : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/technologis

Hey everyone ! Our first Post-Ludum version is almost ready thanks to your feedback !

We are dealing with some few last security issues on our server and you'll be able to try it.

In this Post-Ludum version ennemies will tends to pop in your escape direction, so you won't be able to flee anymore ;).

Some features are also still in work : - Bosses - New musics/SFXs - A freaking lot of balancing

If you havn't tried our game yet, you are welcome to leave feedback and help us improve our game !

Link : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/didgeribug

Hey! The game is now running smoothly on Google Chrome! :smile:

You can play it here using WebGL or download an executable: https://sir-syko.itch.io/loot-grabber

Please help me =)

No? :3

Feed it here: http://ld.flask-software.com/

Rate it there: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/published-feed-them

Thank you :)

It's Friday minus one, and you know what you need, a depressed cat reaper!

Real fast, no downloads, easy to play

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/kittie-reaper-a-depressed-cat-tale

Hi all! With half of the play+rate period over, I thought i'd share the games I've enjoyed most here (in no order). I plan to play many more, so please send recommendations!

Permanence http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/permanence

Bits http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/bits

Hungry Kraken http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/hungry-kraken

Foundation http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/foundation

Ominos http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/ominos

Money is Everything http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/money-is-everything

BLOK'D http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/blokd

Coins http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/coins

Escape Key http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/escape-key

Cardhoard http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/cardhoard

The More You Make http://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/the-more-you-make

Ludum Dare is upon us once more with its fair share of games and the post mortems that come with them. And in this time of holiday traditions it is with great pride that we wish to share with you our very own contribution to LD40. But what would a good post mortem be without a link to our game?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/space-dominator

Space Dominator is a game about colonizing a Solar System and managing its resources before the population growth gets out of hand. It’s a strategy game and a clicker and here are our impressions on what went right and what went wrong!

First the good stuff. Our team included developers Quentin Chevalier, Fabien Kalinowski, Loïc Siquet and Nicolas Aubinet. Nicolas Lorent was our own dedicated game designer while I worked on the art in the little time I had to offer with some help by Vincent Schneider who also managed to do his own game, solo. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/tentagraba

Let’s get organized:

This wasn’t the first game jam for most of us and one thing where we feel we’re learning, each time, is organization. We were working from different locations over France, Belgium, and Germany with Vincent living in Canada, so it was crucial, not only for communication to go smoothly, but, most of all, to be able to efficiently assign all the different problem-solving tasks that making a game implies. Especially when we’re working over different time zones, the slightest miscommunication can lead to the loss of precious time. Any tool that helps in that department is probably a good tool. In our case we communicated using Slack and we shared documents and spreadsheets using Google Docs to help us stay organized, listing tasks and their different priorities.

Hit the ground running:

Knowing what everyone’s role is and being able to set a clear goal really helped us to hit the ground running and we quickly settled on an idea that got everyone excited. Our most recent additions to our team in the coding department have also been instrumental in reaching the ambitions that we were aiming for in accordance to the type of games that we like. It’s not just that adding one or two coders will raise by that many measures the amount of code that we can expect to achieve. Having a healthy workflow where feature ideas can be discussed, tested, tweaked and then talked about again until it fits our vision has had a multiplying effect of several magnitudes. It changed a lot from the issues that we had where a lonely coder could easily get lost in the sheer quantity of features that were tossed around in our earlier attempts.

It's about time:

As we all know time management is one of the biggest issues in a sprinting run like this, but I’ll get back to that later. Being lucid enough of what can and can’t be achieved in any given timeframe is difficult whatever the conditions may be regardless of the type of project. In our case, everyone, in preparation to the game jam, took the time to reflect on how deeply we were going to able to get involved. Some of us also had to manage work (even on a weekend) and family (especially on a weekend). Having that foresight, we carefully chose the features that we were ready to work on and their different priorities. For example, we decided it would be best not to allow the player to manually assign workers to the mines on the colonized planets. It allowed us to limit the amount of work necessary for the UI. It meant less management needed by the player and brought the gameplay to a higher level. More generally, reducing the amount of parameters made balancing easier and it kept the player from getting too lost.

Balance is key:

We managed to get a working prototype relatively quickly, which was essential for playtesting, as it’s the most crucial part when balancing the game by finding out what’s working or not and whether population growth or resource generation, for example aren’t moving too fast or too slowly. What’s gratifying is that, from the feedback that we are starting to get, it turns out our work in that respect is showing. The first players seem to be enjoying the pace at which the game runs and no-one seems to find it unfair, yet. Nothing ruins a good game idea more than poor balance. We know that from experience.

Everyone says I love UI:

Another important aspect of our game that we had to get right is the UI. We’re not saying ours is perfect. But given the time that we had, we’re actually quite happy of how it turned out. Playtesting, again, was essential in getting there. I’d say most of the work in getting to the state that our UI is in, right now, has been done in the last three hours before the end of the jam. The first versions that we built had a lot of issues and Quentin spent almost all his remaining time in reworking it until we felt we had a layout that efficiently displayed all the information the player needed without submerging them in an avalanche of useless data. Needless to say, if we ever push on development on the game, the UI is probably the part where we would continue to work on hardest, as we would try to make it as perfect as possible. Especially knowing what good examples can be found out there. https://www.endless-space.com/

So what does a game designer actually do ?

Having access to a game designer was also something awesome. The input, even in small touches at different stages of production, of someone solely focused on game mechanics is something that I’ve grown to heavily rely on over the last few game jams I’ve participated in. Nyckos kept us focused on what the game should be instead of getting lost in feature creep.

You call that art?!

For my part, I knew I wouldn’t be able to spare much time, that weekend, so having the focus of the game being in space and mostly about interfaces allowed me to be smart in the choice of visual assets that were to be produced. A few ships in the low poly style that resonate with my lego-playing inner child and that could all share the same texture, and some generic planet textures were all that we needed. We were joking about old-school EGA graphics while getting ready to jam and we thought it would be fun (and also super-fast) to do all the textures in that raw, dithered style. Had I had more time I would have followed through a lot more on that front, refining the look of the UI, for example, but this is not the part where I talk about our shortcomings, yet. In any case, one thing I’ve learned over time is that being minimalistic is often a smart choice on these occasions as it’s much harder to ruin a fun game with some bad graphics than to ruin a good-looking game with bad gameplay. Not that I would ever set out to do bad graphics!

Where’s the beef?

So, what went wrong? We actually compiled a list of good and bad points that I’m using to write this bit and the first element that the coders wrote down is their disorganization. Everyone started working on different tasks depending on what they felt like doing without too much concertation. From what I’ve observed, that was mostly the case in the first part of the jam, before the structure of the game crystallized into what it would later become. Quickly the structure of the team became clearer and having a spreadsheet of our different goals helped us get back on track. Even though we had a document that laid out all the different tasks and who would work on them, we didn’t always spend the time to fill it out step by step. Still, although respecting procedure can be vital on a long-haul production, it didn’t have too many ill-effects, in our case.

Yolo code:

Obviously in a format like that there are going to be shortcuts and quick and dirty fixes to solutions that might lead to a less than optimal code (they call it yolo code). But, in my opinion that’s part of the game. Not working together in the same room or even continent made organizing work the hardest part. Quentin, our veteran coder wasn’t always available to supervise and help out the newer members of our team, which in some cases led to some confusion and consequently loss of time. Also, the difference in time zones excluded Vincent of some of our brainstorming sessions. With myself being extremely busy over that weekend. It resulted in very little input from the part of the artists in the first stages of development. That being said, I’m still very happy in how things turned out in the end and the resulting moderated ambition in the visuals allowed me to participate at my own pace.

Stick around till the very end:

Myself and the rest of our team are mostly in Europe, so the end of the jam becomes something quite special when it’s 3AM. In the final hour, as we were struggling to push the game onto the servers, the moral support from everyone on the team, even though most of us had nothing more left to do, is something very dear to me. At every Ludum Dare that I’ve participated in, these last moments of a 72 hours marathon have always been a heartwarming experience and that is the main reason that brings me back here every time…

The end?

In a game jam, when you know you’ve only got 72 hours to get to a working game, you will necessarily have to cut some stuff and having to make such cornelian choices can often leave you with a fair share of frustration. But you know you’ve made the right choices after the game is published and (hopefully) playable, and more importantly enjoyable. In these cases, the frustration from cutting features and ideas can turn into something much more motivating and productive. In fact, (and I know it’s not the first time I say this) I have a very good feeling about what we started here. And I know I don’t only speak for myself when I say that I’d like to see this seedling of a finished game grow into something more. To be honest there must be at least five or six games that we’ve made where we said we’ll keep on developing this and make it into a commercial product, and I still believe that in time, at least for one of these games we will.

After all, aren’t that what game jams are all about?

The inspiration

The main idea for the game about the immune system was inspired by a DOS game I used to play a lot, called "PC-Bakterien!". It was developed by the same guys who made A Game of ROBOT - also pretty obscure but a bit more well known, especially in Germany.

The basic premise of the game is that each level is infected by different types of bacteria. You have to mark them using helper cells so the phagocytes can identify and eat them. This is pretty close to how our immune system actually works.

The whole thing played a bit like Lemmings in top-down with a ton of time pressure.

In the original game you also controlled a main character to navigate around the level. I wanted to simplify that and see how the game would feel if you removed that and instead make it more Lemming like, where you indirectly control everything "from above".

Early prototype

I made a crude prototype with ugly graphics first, so get the mechanics down and see if it would be any fun. Here's a comparison of how the prototype looked versus the final game:

Prototype

Final result

The prototype was fun enough for me to decide to go ahead. Also I didn't have a lot of better ideas for the theme anyways. ;P

What went wrong

My big goal for the jam was to make the game completely by myself, including the soundtrack. Music production is a new hobby of mine and I wanted to write my own music for it so badly. Alas, I underestimated how much time it would take to make the puzzles for the game. In the end I fell back on using free music provided by my friend Ben Burnes. People commented how much they liked the music in the game. Check out his stuff ( http://www.abstractionmusic.com/ )! :)

Game design wise, the biggest feedback I got was that while the tutorial levels were helpful, the first "real" level was too challenging. That's where most people quit. I played the game so much while developing that it was really hard to gauge difficulty. Next time I want to sign up some playtesters more early in the process. I'm always hesitant to approach people with my early games and ask for playtesters. I need to work on that!

What went good

This was my first real project using GameMaker. I was pleasantly surprised by the workflow and how easily I could transfer my knowledge to it. Handling data structures is a bit clumsy at first, but I got my start in C/Assembler on DOS so the clunkyness became somewhat enjoyable and made me feel nostalgic (memcpy, printf, ... x3).

To build the levels I didn't use the room editor but the image editor. Actually the whole game is created using one room only.

I created all the levels with the image editor. The whole level pack is one sprite, and each level is one frame inside the sprite.

This allowed me to make a bunch of levels, sandboxes and tests and just shuffle around the frames to change the order.

Also making the instruction pages before the start of the game was a really good idea. A lot of people said how it helped them understand the game faster.

Last but not least, this time I went to bed early and took actual breaks to go for walks outside. Woooh. :P

In conclusion

Game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/midori-has-a-cold

I had a ton of fun again this Ludum Dare. I wish I could do it more often. Now I'm going to play and rate some more games!

Let's talk gamedev! :D

• Twitter ( https://twitter.com/rendelmann )
• Discord ( ollie_r#6548 )

Silence is golden
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/dungeon-space

Hi there!

We uploaded an online version of our game, so if you haven't tried it, please do ;)

It is a dark thematically interesting game, where you have to survive by gathering, building, and killing.

The game ended up being a nice proof-of-concept rather than being a full-fledged game, as we focused on the scenery, features, and music.

Play it here!

More accessibility, less problems

After getting some feedback on my game, I published a HTML5 web build today which makes the game more accessible for eveyone!

Thanks a ton for all the feedback so far!

Play my LD40 compo game!

Visit the Ludum Dare project page!

I don't like to beg, but I have to admit that my game doesn't gather a big community around. I need more ratings. I did an intuitive-puzzle game in which you have to fit red synapses with a white pattern. If you can understand how mecanics work, I guess that you could receive a good rating. There is seven little puzzles - and more you do movements, worse rating will be. Use arrows to rotate synapses. Start game pressing spacebar. I wish you the best. Thank you for your help. Vote for my project, leave a comment and I will vote yours ++

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/synapse

We need 3 more ratings for our game, so if you like, you can return that favor: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/prince-pixel-our-very-first-game

Hi, I wonder how the rating system works? I know you have to have 30 ratings at least to get a score. But what about votes amount if I have more than 30 ratings? Does it matter how many votes I have to final score?

You can also check my game 'Drunken Soviet' :D https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/drunken-soviet

Hey, you! Yeah you! We need you. We just need a couple more ratings to get our score on our superhot like puzzel game were the longer you stay in a level the slower time goes, use boosts and see if you can beat the juggernaught! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/too-much-time

Prinsen Gulden's ratings haven't seen much action this week. I've beaten my record from LD 38 already but want to give my future self more of a challenge! Please play and rate my game Prinsen Gulden: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/prinsen-gulden

It's my first time in Ludum Dare, my objective is to hit at least 20 ratings, in order to get a score. Right now I got 11 ratings.

If you'd like to help me, you can find my game here :

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/island-businessman

We've uploaded a postjam version of Desert Express, which contains some things that didn't make it into the original Jam version.

You'll find it on our game's itch.io page (look for a build with postjam-1 in the name). Just like our original Jam version (which you can still play and rate, by the way), we have builds for Windows, Linux and macOS (see prerequisites on the game's page).

Here's the list of changes in the postjam-1 version: - Mouse cursor is now constrained to the game window, so you will no longer accidentally click outside of it and lose cargo to those pesky bandits. (Thanks to @lancejz, who suggested this feature in their feedback for the original version.) - Crates your train carries now have a monetary value ($10 per crate) and so your score for the run is now measured in dollars, in addition to just the number of crates delivered. - Accordingly, the run report screen now shows how much money you've made on the run. - Number of crates for every run is no longer random, instead there is now a starting screen (see the GIF) before each run, where you can select exactly how much cargo you're willing to take for the run, keeping in mind the possible reward and the risks involved (i.e. your train getting slower and more bandits pursuing it). - Brief explanatory text now appears when the level is about to end, indicating if you've reached your destination or if you have no more cargo left. - Enemies spawned in the same wave are no longer animated synchronously, as though they're all artistic swimmers or something.

So, if this seems interesting, do check out the postjam build on itch.io!

If you haven't rated Desert Express yet, but you wish to do so, make sure you base your rating on the original Jam version, which is still available on the same itch.io page.

Have fun!