https://youtu.be/2RgawbdL4No

Thank you for your ratting and especially all those nicely feedback comments. But the more we have, that's not the worse it is.

By the way, I have something more important to tell with your guys.

The huge waves of Holy Kingdom Juden are coming. They aim for the gold when general @svr-audio and @louspirit are busy to push enemies back to Moonlight Forest and Rahasac Desert.

Meanwhile hundred combats each day is broken out on Mystic mountains. @lugdumdare-team are busy with them.

We need you whoever you are and wherever you come from. Stand up and fight for our descendants-GOLD. We just need few for days to hide those gold. Or at least leave some advice to improve the morale of our men.

COME! MAKE YOUR MOVE TO PHAERIA KINGDOM! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/phaerias-mine

The reception we’ve gotten for Jazzy Beats has been fantastic, and it’s been fun to reply to them and to check out your games as well. But there’s some things that are still yet to be said about the game, so we decided to make a list of some interesting tidbits about the game’s development, references and so on. Here we go!

1. Lava lamps saved the game

After 4 hours of brainstorming, we still had no idea of what to make for the Jam. For some reason, we got stuck with Idols as our theme. Eventually, @jorgegamedev suggested Lavachan, and it all started to take form after that. I made some sketches, and eventually, she became the first finished sprite, which then we ended up calling Lavasama instead. However, we opted from using her as a protagonist, and she was too cool to be an antagonist, so now she’s just a cameo on the background. Still, if it weren’t for her, who knows what we would have done instead.

We originally wanted a comic/noir feeling to the game. To contrast with a darker world, I made Jazzchan because she’d be yellow, and instruments like trumpets and saxophones are common in noir media. For her rival, we made Bluessom, since her colors would contrast, and Blues seemed like the perfect enemy of Jazz. While her name’s not as catchy, Bluessom is also a play on words on Blues and Blossom, because of her outstanding flower.

2. The World Ends With Skullgirls

We’ve been told that our game resembles TWEWY and Skullgirls. It’s not by accident, as both games were visual and mechanic inspirations for the game (and so was Dynasty Warriors). Because we had girl idols fighting, and we wanted to put it on a Shibuya-like street, we kinda merged them both. Since originally the gameplay wasn’t as spectacular, we eventually made it so there were a lot of enemies on the screen at once, like in Warriors games.

I already mentioned that I made Jazzchan yellow to contrast with the world (which, in my mind, was far more red and dark than the final product). The color came first, and then the theme, which was a result of playing too much Skullgirls. So, she is heavily inspired on that game’s Big Band.

3. Do you like anime?

We love anime, manga and japanese games, so we put some references here and there. Specifically, @jorgegamedev wanted to make a pun about that Dragon Maid one. The 140 is both a reference to the Shibuya 109 building and TWEWY’s 104 homage. It’s a 140 now because @jorgegamedev wanted to make it a reference to Ludum Dare 40. Boom! 3 references in one! And finally, because Steins;Gate is a recurring joke of us since I promised to watch it 2 years ago, I just put the satellite crashed into a building.

While not anime and not necessarily a reference, I made the lamp posts while thinking about The Beginner’s Guide. Just a nod, unless you want to give it a deeper meaning.

4. Whales and Games' references and inside jokes

I also drew a bunch of things to reference other projects from Whales and Games, including released and unreleased ones. Let's be honest: There's pretty much no way that anyone playing on the LD Jam would have gotten them. You should still go play the rest of our games though.

A quick round up of them:

• Dapper Sushi’s fish is a reference to an aquarium game we never actually made, but the character is just so funny to me I reference it on every opportunity.
• Gladiator balloon and Petty Puny Pizza signs are references of older LD games. Blatant pitch for you to check them out
• Shockwave Cereal, seagull, missing poster and everything on Empire's Springs are references to projects currently in development ~~or missing in action~~. You can find more of them by following us on twitter.

5. It's about artistic liberties

@jorgegamedev showcased some gameplay to friends who said that the street looked weird. I'm never been good at perspective or buildings, and it was too late to fix anything, as we were approaching the end of the game. So, pretty much just for kicks, I added a nod to the whole situation. It's about integrity, okay?

Wrapping up

I hope that you liked having a bit more of insight about how Jazzy Beats came to be. We're just some guys trying to make games while having stupid fun while we're at it. Here's a link to check it out again, in case you haven't tried it already. We've had a blast reading your comments and playing your games. It's been fantastic! If you also want to chat and hangout, you're more than invited to our Discord Server.

That's pretty much it for now. Have a whale of a weekend! :whale:

Other articles of interest, upgraded with clickbait titles: - Jazzy Beats' Music made by someone with a computer. Orchestra musicians HATE HIM - Is Jazzy Beats the latest Newgrounds megahit?! CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT - 6 ways Jazzy Beats drew his artist insane. You won't believe number 5!

I got some spare time over the weekend. Like last year I decide to use the time to take a look over some of your games. If you like to get some honest feedback for your games, feel free to leave a comment down here and I will look them up, Cheers!

Team Cocoa Moss made it out of Ludum Dare with not one, but TWO games! It was hectic, but we did it -- hooray!

First up, Goodnight Sheep, an interactive story about how having too many thoughts can prevent you from falling asleep!

And next, Samurai Shaver, a Rhythm Heaven-inspired music game where you slice hairs to the beat!

Let us know what you think of our games!

Sorted is a time management game about sorting crates! Features an online leaderboard!!!! Try it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/sorted

https://youtu.be/sXKapC7A3JA

Have you seen my game? Leaf Me Alone? HERE IT IS! Gimme some feedback and a rating! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/leaf-me-alone

I feel like rating a whole bunch of games. First 10 get rated

Ratings received: 25.25!!!

Thank you for voting!

Please come to our game if you haven't tried our fox :fox: and pigeons

Link Here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/the-hunger-maims

As mentioned before: some screenshot from blender with my 3D models :)

For starter, I have problems with model scales, forgot to set up units in meters in blender, made @subztep trouble to rescale everything I did, first model - pigeon was fine, simple shape with rigging, it just worked.

^^! Trouble started with fox, got really huge ambition and dare to create a fox! 1 > found a perfect image 2 > started from a cube, didn't know how to do feather.. half day passed already, okay.. just followed my gut ^^! 3 >applied rigging, OMG! Fox tail twisted, panicking.. still can't fix it.. right, this is how it is!

And 1st animation didn't work in Unity, tried like 10 times.. ok.. tested every time when imported to unity, finally it imported > not the best movement in our game, at least it works. ^^!

This one unsuccessfully failed in Unity import, but I really like the movement..

First off, the three of us wanted to extend a huge thank you for all of the kind support and feedback you've given us for our game, The Will of the Wisps. We have been inspired to keep working on it, thanks to the encouragement and constructive ideas we've heard from so many of you. It really means a lot to all of us!

We are very excited to share a new take on this game, which we've been working on since the jam ended! (Links to the Post-Jam are in their own section of the game's page!)

What's New:

The Post-Jam version adds back in many of the ideas that time and editing decisions kept us from adding during the Jam itself. This version features:

• An expanded map with new areas and new artwork
• New threats hiding in the shadows, and elsewhere
• A faster, more dangerous enemy
• A new game mechanic the main character can use to try to survive
• New animations and ending sequence
• A ton of small bug fixes, visual improvements, and tweaks to the layout and pacing

Importantly, many of the additions here were things we had originally imagined (and in some cases even started to build) during the Jam. But as the limitations of the 72 hours became clearer, we moved away from a few of them in order to make sure that what we had felt complete.

All of the new artwork here was actually completed before the Jam ended, so it was important to us to give it a chance to finally be seen and included in the game. The music is a slight revision to the jam version, and now better paired with some of the (new and improved) sound effects and ambient audio we'd developed during the jam to make the world feel more atmospheric. And the gameplay features were things we'd been brainstorming, hoping they will make the game a bit more tense and interactive.

But, most importantly, we hope the changes make wise use of your feedback and constructive comments and critiques! Several of these changes were things we definitely agreed with as we read through your comments. We hope this smooths some of the original rough edges, and also explores some of the suggested improvements to the overall gameplay and feel.

Most of all, we very much hope this feels like a natural extension of the Jam version. It's a slightly different take on the same idea, and we'd love to hear your thoughts in comparison -- from anyone who has tried the original before, or anyone who is curious to try a before and after version now!

Please try the new version (and the old version!) of The Will of the Wisps, and let us know what you think! Thank you all again!

As far as I can tell no one who has played my game has beaten the it! So the Key Master is still out there some where... Is it you? A big thanks to everyone who has played and rated my game. I might have made it a bit to hard, but hey that's half the fun! Please check it out, I only need 5 more ratings! And let me know in the comments if you are the one who will become the Key Master! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/key-master

I just wrote a post about my experience of the game jam.

An astonishing number of games don't mention the controls used anywhere within the game.

This might sound like a strange observation coming from someone whose entry was vague about controls, but part of the PURPOSE of my game was for the player to have to decipher what to do. And, even so, I still directed the player to "click" and told them to use "Space" with a piece of text that spanned half the vertical length of the screen. Aside from those, arrow keys are the only other controls used in my game. So, even for a game whose INTENT is for a player to FIGURE IT OUT, I still told players 66% of the controls. So many people didn't mention them at all - it's astonishing. And, if you tell me, "it's on the LD page," I'll respond by saying, "You gave me an entire folder of stuff to download and not once in that folder are any controls mentioned?"

Here's a fun fact: I had a power outage during the review process. Guess what I could play during that power outage - previously downloaded games that told me the controls. I couldn't go on some site and learn the controls, nor would I want to.

You have to convince me (or anyone) to play your game.

The second I can't play your game in a browser or without downloading something, you've given yourself an extra job of needing to convince me to proceed. When I began the jam review, I only played in-browser games. After all, with thousands of game options, why would I download some random game that might be junk? That being said, I remember the very first game I downloaded from this jam. And, you know why I downloaded it? I was intrigued. By the title. And by a picture. By a post. That game was "Unicorn Fart Jam."

You're intrigued too, aren't you? I also remember the second game I downloaded; I think I was convinced by all the glowing comments. Maybe some pictures too. That game was Nabi. Both of those games were worth downloading, for very different reasons. By the way, when the power went out, I played Nabi again. Ironically, to my first point, this game doesn't explicitly tell you the directions, but they are intuitive, and, by that point, I was probably already hooked by the look and feel (and the comments), anyway.

Both those games convinced me (in different ways) to download them. And they set a high bar for future downloads. If your game page says, "this is something I threw together in 6 hours" and you're asking me to download something - I'm not doing it. I'm not wasting my time, if you can't put the effort in.

That being said, I can be convinced in different ways. One game, I was convinced to download because they received a lot of harsh comments in their game feed. In my own game feed, I had someone tell me "its something that I could pull off in way lesser time" so I could sympathize with receiving harsh comments, and I checked out their game.

Some people are d!ck5

That's all I have to say about that.

The Theme should be used WELL (or just don't use it, idc)

I got no problem with the LD40 theme, in spite of my game and its title. But, a ton of people were not very innovative about it, in my opinion. I think this can be factually proven - just look around at all the games that used the theme in the same way. The ones that stood apart were innovative about it. In other words, if your game merely did one of the following:

• the more enemies you have, the harder it gets
• the longer you live, the harder it gets
• the more you collect, the harder it gets

Then, thematically, it wasn't innovative. Also, if your game merely did the above, thematically, then your game probably became difficult quickly, which brings me to my next point:

There were a lot of difficult games

I think a lot of people fell into the theme trap implicit to the theme, "The more you have, the worse it is" and their games became difficult to unplayably difficult, which often became not fun, or worse. In my estimation, the games that elevated themselves in their use of theme did one of these things:

While they may have included an element that made things get worse (more coins, more food, etc) they also provided a way of getting rid of (dumping) said element.

The simple game, "Brick Racer" comes to mind. I played this game early on, and remember the comments claiming it was too easy. The objective of the game is simple - get from point A to point B. And, yeah, that is simple, if you're going as slow as humanly possible. But, this game has a timed online leader-board. So, the goal is to go fast. The "gas pedal" is essentially a pressure relief valve, or a choice, as it were - you choose your speed, and, therefore, your difficulty level (which brings me to my next point).

AND/OR

"Factory Panic" comes to mind. You can play it one way and have the game progress to a certain difficulty, but, then, because of the various choices available, no matter how difficult it gets, you can always think to yourself, "well, what if I played it this way instead." It might not actually ever become easy, but it can encourage the player to play again, because they're trying something new - a new strategy, approach.

AND/OR

Early on was easy, so that anyone and everyone could at least play their game for awhile. On the flip side, for the skilled players, the game eventually became rather difficult.

Ludum Dare was fun.

And I plan to participate again.

That's all for now, though there's probably other things I learned. If you have any take-aways that we can all utilize in LD41 (I plan to participate), feel free to post them in the comments. :)

"You are a Knight, under her Majesty Service, defeating Dungeons for your king. Only problem : you are too famous. Protect your groupies in the dungeons, defeat the 3 differents bosses, customize your character and enjoy playing"

Check our game :

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/famous-knight

My Ludum Dare 40 entry Shape Invasion has now received 20 ratings! Thanks to everyone who rated and/or commented on the game!

Ludum Dare 40 has been a MUCH better experience than I thought (The event was not AS bad as I might have made it seem in the description on the entry page).

Now I'm REALLY wondering what my game's score will be in the end... Oh! And good luck to everyone else, too! :D

Thanks for Rating our Game!

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

Escape Infection! is a strategy game played with your mouse only.

It is simple yet addictive and you can always improve your score.

My best score so far is 293!

You can also play it in your browser

--Click this to get to the game page--

Here is a quick peek into the gameplay:

My favourite game so far is battle rap vr. You are playing a captain of a small ship which is attacked by small hooligan robots. And you have to destroy them, before they destroy your ship. And trying to repair your ship before it falls apart. All this in VR. It is real fun and after you noticed you will not collide with anything in real life, you burn some calories, running around to repair your ship and destroy this little pests. It is a bit sad it received only 17 ratings. It is not my game, but I think it deserves at least the 20 ratings needed to part of the jam compo. So please have a look :).

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/rattletrap-vr

So this is the evolution of my LDJAM entry for now. I've added melee weapon, polished movements, finish shooting mechanics with all visual effects. Next todo: throwing objects in enemies, AI. After that work done I would be able to provide new demo : )

https://youtu.be/Xlsw2a62wMs