Build your game for web and upload it if you can. I've noticed a big increase in people playing mine since I did.

Do you feel a distinct lack of Cave Story in your life?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htg7CvEOYb8

Try my Ludum Dare entry: THE LOST SON https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/the-lost-son

Then you should play my game!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/the-weissman-challenge

:star: I just need to shout this out.

Earlier in the LD40, @LarryChupacabra actually came here and asked people to feature games from the Ludum Dare, and he's been doing it since LD29. I pinned it on my browser immediately cause of how heavy his feedback can get and submit as soon as I finish. He needs some attention, cause he does take time making these and I need I feel he needs more of it.

He actually goes almost really thorough with his playthroughs. I really suggest checking out and/or giving it a try cause looking how people react with some Ludum Dare games gives you insight to do some more in the future. These gives also a way to give better feedback, cause you can explain everything you need to point out as you go.

Okay, I admit. I did promote this because my game is in it, but I did look further and this is really interesting for all the game developers. You can learn a lot from this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYoYvCeQ9XE

:star: Selection of Games

• Life's A Glitch by @gamepopper :thumbsup:
• Dense Revolve by @fiaKaiera
• too much asteroid! by @digitalfudge

If you can, you should sign up for yours to be reviewed using his google form here! You won't be disappointed.

Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/overheist

For most of my games I try to establish a very nice mood, but It seems I opted out of mood by accident xd

Oops

Feel free to play and rate my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/split

Collect the gems that fall from the sky while avoiding hordes of enemies! Make a comment so I can rate your game too!

If you're in the mood for spinning in circles, shooting things, and playing something slightly more fun than Asteroids, give this a try:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/open-the-moon-gate

Web version is now available!

There's still time left to come and check our game Virus Detected

See if you can beat the high score of 10,000 Points and leave a comment below!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/virus-detected

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/virus-detected

It's a short game so if you have some time please give Cracks a try: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/cracks

This community is so nice! This is the first time I've gotten an LD game scored. Also my second LD game. So to celebrate, I'm going to do something pretty cool tomorrow. Unfortunately I have something to take care of tonight.

Also, save these games. They need help. https://ldjam.com/games/danger/all

It's also my first time working in PICO-8. I loved what I was able to create in only a few hours! Let me know what you think, and if this game changes your outlook on life for the better. I know it did mine.

Play it: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/super-wall-paint

Thank you everyone for taking us to 100 ratings! If you haven't tried it yet feel free to do so, Sunburn runs directly in your browser!

This is our first ludum dare and it's been a great experience reading all your comments and feedback! Here's our favorite :laughing:

"My gf is a ginger and burns easily and this is basically what she did when we went on vacation 10/10" --@tywiggs

If you haven't played and rated this game, come and get some fun!

I want more ratings and comments to let me know my game better! If you help me, I will also help you by rating and commenting your game :) Let's play some games, shall we?

My LD40 jam entry: Trial of the Reaper

Harvest as many souls as possible, and don’t let your love and mercy hold your back!

Here’s the game page: Trial of the Reaper

QUICKLY! com help us fill the world with adorable mythological creatures! Take over the nursery and HATCH THEM EGGS! but be careful! the more you hatch, THE WORS IT GETS!

How long will you survive!? https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/mobs

Thanks for all the great feedback. We decided we'll do a patched Version of our game on friday. If you have any more feedback or ideas for it, please let us now. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/drugrun

We only need a few more ratings to have our first scored game in a Ludum Dare! If you haven't played it yet, please check out our game, Avarice and let us know what you think! We have big plans for this title post LD and would love your feedback.

I made another patch based upon some feedback.

Version 1.3 note: -tutorial has been added -crouching stops momentum

The compo version is still on itch. The unity project on itch is from this version (no patches).

Game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/prinsen-gulden

Hi everyone. This is my first Ludum Dare effort and I'd love to be able to get rated as well as hear your feedback on how I can improve my game development skills.

Thanks and appreciation to all those who have voted and commented!

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

If you're using a engine with a browser exporter, use it! If you only have one platform, the web should be it. Everyone can play that, and it's way faster and easier to play and rate your game that way.

our bugs wernt correctly spawning but i fixed that so now you can correctly have a heart attack https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/invasion-of-the-bugs

I'm at it again! Last night went really well and I played a lot of great games and I would love to play more fantastic games!

Would love to hang out with everyone over on my Twitch and chat about all the amazing works everyone worked so hard on!

If you want to show off your game on my stream simply enter in my twitch chat !addgame followed by a link to your game (in the same line) and you will be entered into a queue. If the queue is full don't worry though cause I will be clearing up new spaces as I play each game!

All of its animations are procedurally generated!

play

play

Inspired by an earlier post by@eric-lathrop , I have released a web build for Eskimonster: Pingus Rising on itch.io. It was surprisingly easy for Unity so I encourage anyone to try posting a web build if you haven't already.

Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/eskimonster-pingus-rising

8 bit Samurai vs Robots!!!

We are a two man team, one developer, one graphic designer. This was a tough theme but we are proud of the work we accomplished in roughly 2 days if not less. We decided to go with the 8bit theme as this was uncharted territory for the designer and beloved style of the developer. We plan to continue to work on this project to completion and hopefully a mobile app game.

• The character design is 100% original. • The music compositon is 100% original. • The logo design is 100% original.

We appreciate a rate, thanks a bunch: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/komainu

Success! I got my first rated Ludum Dare project! Thanks for all the support!

If you'd like to give a try to the best snowball-rolling game in town, give it a play here!.

this time we got a 5 minute timer to keep the queue going fast!

twitch.tv/csdoescs

I've updated my game Shape Invasion!!

VERSION 1.1 CHANGES

Less detailed background

Removed music (I did NOT like the music at all)

New Pixel Emulator font (this WAS in the original version but I realized thanks to @pkenney that the font DOESN'T magically appear in the game folder)

DOWNLOAD LINKS:

GAME

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HRoExpSwz0or3Ts81eVlTK1tp6GzuS9g/view?usp=sharing

SOURCE FILE

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1suNaveKoOQqtCOf1JvuJYd0XWlIu2kzu/view?usp=sharing

Playing and rating the game would be appreciated (you don't have to).

Play Online!

Earn points for collecting coins and distance traveled but don't get too greedy, all that gold can really slow you down!

Hint: Hit spikes to shed extra coins. Beware if you don't have and coins though!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/coin-collector

I expect the players play my fast-paced platformer like this:

And my best score is 11 so far.

...

Until my workmate break my record with an unbelievable high score: 19

And he showed me how he achieved that...

:joy::joy::joy:

If you find any difficulty in beating my game, maybe you could try this playing style with a gamepad... :joy:

Play Hunt Together and challenge the high score!

Make America zombie free again !

PLAY NOW: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/cat-basket

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/a-stack-of-gifts

This is probably the simplest game I've ever made for an LD (I knew I was not going to have the full weekend available) yet it's surprisingly the most addictive gameplay I've conceived off :-)

Try go deliver as many gifts to the sleighs on either side at the top. But for every 10 delivered, the gifts start falling faster and you can only afford to drop 5! Tip:if they stacked crooked you can use the side of the screen to throw and recatch them better!

Have fun and rate, rate!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/a-stack-of-gifts

Anyone on Mac or Linux who wasn't able to play Sanguinite before can try it out now! The wonders of the web player, what a time to be alive!

Took longer than I thought to get it ported to web, but happy it's done! Game Maker Studio's HTML5 module introduced some pretty gnarly bugs that took a while to iron out. Programming is hard!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9d4cNEQASw

Play here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/tiny-bullets

I understand if that takes away the point of the game jam.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/drink-or-die/

Underwater shoot’em up IntenSEAty follows the quest of our deep sea diver on a hunt for new marine creatures. As he travels down the abyss, he finds himself with a hoard of strange aquatic wildlife. But will he succeed or will he fail on his quest for discovery?

Becareful what you fish for… because the intenseaty is going deep below sea levels.

:smile: Interact with UI to increase DIFFICULTY & UNLOCK New Fish! :joy:

Enjoy and Having Fun!

URL: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/intenseaty

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

Clones - native browser game

KILL PAST VERSIONS OF YOURSELF!

Fast paced, action packed, fury inducing fun! See if you can beat the developer(me)'s high score of 105!!!
if you do then I'll getchu one of your very own free (Non refundable) Big Ol' Bundle of NOTHIN'!! Can't beat that deal

Play Now!

okay I'll stop being annoying now.

It's been ages since I last took part in a game jam and I've been itching to finally participate in one!
So here's an arcade game titled Busy Room, where you have to avoid everyone in a room packed full of people.

https://youtu.be/gSveVBI2kuk

Play it and tell me what you think! =)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/busy-room

I posted a new version of my game ! I just changed some controls that are mad for some peoples so you can now play nicely the game ! I'm working on another version with maybe other levels or kind but ill keep my LD version available (with all the bugs :p)

Looking for honest feedback! :) A very silly game guaranteed to make you laugh (or your money back) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/herding-cats-the-400th-south-winchester-jr-semi-finals-with-fiona-pennywhistle

The updated version now features a level that's slightly less hard (but will still be a challenge). Go love some cats!

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

I had to make a couple of changes to the brightness as others were saying that its too dark, that should be sorted now.

I have quite a few ideas for the future of this so i will work on it more and improve what i know to be ready for the next Ludum Dare.

Please give it a go and leave honest feedback if you have time, have fun all.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/temple-hunt

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/yellow-beans

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

Do you like puzzle platformers? Do you like games with a steep-ish learning curve?

Then you're going to like Super Mailman!

Play and rate it here: LD/Super-Mailman

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/eat-and-poo About Version 0.1.3: Hopefully fix the problem of player stucks in the bricks and error may occur when player gets into WC.

Ludum Dare 40 was, as is normal, stressful. While I was trying to finish in 48 hours to qualify for the compo, the scope of my project and the amount of testing and polishing required was at odds with the goal. My final build was uploaded a nice 20 minutes prior to the close of the jam and in the preceding (almost) 72 hours, I believe I worked about 45-50 of them. During this time, I revisited the story progression three times, published 63 builds, collected bugs and feedback from 10 different testers, and fell pretty far off of the caffeine-free wagon. Again, stressful.

The game itself that I set out to make was an incremental/clicker game using pico-8. We are all familiar with incremental games now, but only a few years ago games like Candy Box! set some of us loot addicts on fire but were otherwise unheard of. While they aren't really considered "games" by most, they leveraged progression systems that were being spearheaded by popular social and mobile games. Most critically, these games use the timed release of rewards against a certain amount of perceived effort to create a positive feedback loop of engagement.

While these games inspired me, I wanted to try something a bit different. Most of them depend on conveying information relatively directly. Numbers like "cookies per second," "wire per second," and how many factories you own are generally up front as a statistic. So I set out to try to create this style of game but where all but one number is displayed in a more abstract visual form. Some are still overt such as a crate representing a certain unknown number of marshmallows and which is worth $20 if you watch, but others are less so such as the speed of the loader automatons and what a speed improvement means for them.

This meta goal created an interesting problem. Without the numbers to focus on, everything else needed to be both entertaining but also visually meaningful. According to feedback I managed to meet this challenge with some success. The crying robots, the news ticker across the top, the weight gain of customers, and other elements all created an environment where it was fun to watch, try to see what was changing and what your actions meant.

Unfortunately, all of this richness (cough complexity cough) also created a problem. See, when I set out to create my game I didn't have a clear path on how to build it. These games generally depend on a tapered rollout of gameplay elements, with phases gated on time, player triggers, resource triggers, and sometimes just RNJ prayers. Only having an inkling of what this really implied for the implementation, I started building my game around a primitive manual trigger system and hand coding each individual element in a system easily controlled by such a basic scheme.

The result? A game with a number of totally unique game objects but no game object concept, just a system of uber controllers and their draw calls. Smattered amidst this are magic numbers for the triggers, duplicated logic segments, and generally a complete mishmash of "engine," gameplay, input, and system management code. This was all exacerbated by my determination to do all of it "the pico-8 way" and not use an external editor which made mid-session refactoring extremely tedious as pico-8's code editor is put down by all but maybe ed.

While I'm happy with how the game turned out for the jam (it's fun and short), I'm less pleased with what I shipped in general. I'm setting out to release a V2 of the game with audio, overhauled progression, and a slightly longer story that may gasp take a day or two to beat if you want to leave it running in traditional incremental game fashion. I plan on documenting this process and the horrors that I committed across those first three days so check back for progress on my quest to right my wrongs here or on my site loren.io.

If you'd like to try out the game in the meantime (and who wouldn't, its GOTY material) you can find it here: Happy Happy Marshmallow Factory

o7

So, my idea is to create a Unity base project package, available for any LD participants to use in future events. It'd contain the following:

• A title screen with a menu.
• Buttons on the Title Screen: Start, Options, Credits, Quit (the last of which will be auto-hidden on WebGL builds)
• Volume and Difficulty sliders in the Options menu.
• Credits screen where names/roles/contact info can be inserted and possibly ordered randomly
• Scripts to add pause/quit functionality using ESC throughout the entire game
• Ability to adjust volume or mute in pause menu

The goal is just to get some of these very basic things out of the way so they don't fall through the cracks. No custom art assets will be included, just blank placeholders.

I've thought of this because of how I've let myself neglect these features in the past, and I still see many other devs who forget basic things like allowing the player to quit the game.

I've run this idea by Mike Kasprzak to confirm this wouldn't be breaking the rules, it'd fall under the use of existing code and tools. However, he encouraged starting a discussion as some in the community might not agree that this is a good idea, esp Compo participants.

Thoughts?

Hi all, in our game you can experience a job interview as a conductor. Can you distinguish the musical instruments? :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/ldjam-40-music-puzzle-game-name-pending

Food fight is an FPS Survival Horror involving some very sugary treats! :yum:

Please play and rate! 𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝! :wink:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/food-fight

FALSE!!! You can try Marching Band Parade now!!!

Chitin Conquest is an action shooter where you're tasked with killing off alien insects. Come check it out.

GIF is sped up a bit to show gameplay.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/chitin-conquest

P.S. The aiming button needs to be held, not toggled

Actually I couldn't do much things in list.

I used cubes for create navmesh because of navmesh doesn't work with sprites .After creating navmesh I deleted them

THE GAME :smile:

BIG UPDATE

Witness the power of the Doge!

Now you can! Check out our game Captain Capsize here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/captain-capsize

today i will play ldjam games at twitch so if u guys want me to play ur games. in the meanwhile why dont u play my game

my twitch : https://www.twitch.tv/lerpish my game : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/house-a-lovecraft-inspired-game

Our entry for this jam still haven't that many feedbacks and before doing some change we would really like to know what you guys think about it, what could be done better ?

If you have some time give it a go :smile: thanks

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/battle-survivor

Hey everyone!

I've uploaded a full playthrough of my retro dungeon crawler, The Burdened Raid. The game was made using LibGDX, and was the first time I tried a 3D game for Ludum Dare. It went pretty well, and as always was a great learning experience!

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl0VPuhJFVI

And the entry page if anyone wanna check it out! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/the-burdened-raid

Hope you all had a great LDJAM! Now its time to play some games!

My LD game now properly plays on mobile. It auto-scales and supports multi-touch. Check it out!

:globe_with_meridians:Go to game page

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

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

Thank you :smiley:

With my friend and one of his graphic design friends, we decide to participate in the Ludum Dare of December 2017. We have one month left to train before the fateful date. As we mainly develop on Javascript, the techno choice was Phaser.io.

I had already used Phaser.io for the Ludum Dare 34, which I unfortunately had to give up because of... You know, life. I rediscovered my old project of the time, Ultimate Farming Simulator (nothing but that!) and decided to train me on it, improving all possible aspects (new isometric system, animations, new graphics, refactoring code...) and my friend is training to recreate a brick break.

Voting for themes is coming and we are slowly starting to think about ideas that can inspire us. It's not easy for all of us, if not see the black hole for some of them (hello, Tiny Machines!). More than hope to have a good draw!

D-Day arrives, and finally, I find myself rather alone to develop the game...

And if that wasn't enough, the theme of the day,"The more you have, the worse it is", is one of those that inspired us moderately. Nevermind! An idea comes rather quickly, a kind of country management simulation, where "The more" would simply be humans. Follows a draft idea, which adds parameters, themselves adding rules, and finally a project starts after 2 hours of reflection. As I'm not really a graphic designer, I try to focus on the gameplay. A lot of ideas are added, like events per turn, but I have to be reasonable too: time is limited. The question, which will be asked all along: how to make the game understandable via an interface?

First step: make a deposit on Github with the minimum files: the assets and dist folders containing phaser.io, an index.html and main.js files. The project does not have a name yet, it will be called project0 for the moment.

Second step: display player and surrounding countries settings in order to test the future rules. Do we have to show all the parameters? How to store and manipulate parameters internally?

Step three: think about starting the interface. Simple enough not to confuse the player, but manage to have all the parameters and possible interactions at hand. Thinking about the interface also allows you to make choices about the rules and interactions that will be introduced or eliminated. Doing something global, the interface will inevitably evolve during development.

The rest tomorrow! In the meantime, you can test, comment and rate my game here ;)

For the artsyle for our game BUM BAG BANGIN I wanted to develop on a style that I've played around before just visually.

I really loved this art style and pitched it to the team of something I'd like to do. But after some discussion it would be a bit of a nightmare to do gameplay in an isometric perspective. So someone suggested the Pokemon type perspective so I smashed out this drawing.

Then eventually developed it to this once we decided thats what we were going for.

This style was definitely outside of my comfort zone as its a little more difficult to make it feel like it has depth.

Eventually it came together to look like this,

Our coder set it up with 2.5d which made it feel a little more dynamic and gave it some more depth. I wish we had some more time to play with it, but I was definitely chuffed to see it in-game in all its glory. I'd definitely like to try this style in a more RPG type game.

Check out the game if you want to give it a whirl. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/bum-bag-bangin

We have been getting some great feedback and we want to get yours as well. Play and tell us what you think. Maybe also have some grog with us.

Since it's my first Ludum Dare I need to ask some things about Ratings and Metrics. I understand what they mean but I can't understand how they work. For example, the Ratings received metric on my game is currently 29.8571. How? Why not 30 or 29? The same applies to the rest. Also I cannot understand the Classic Balance and the Smart Balance. What are they?? Last, the Total Ratings section tells you the total ratings received on each category and not the total stars?

Thanks in advance!

Also this is my game if you would like to give it a go and some feedback: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/type-them-down

I have applyied new good formula :

Input Settings for Keyboard = ["Arrow" layout] + ["Azerty" layout] + ["Qwerty" layout] = Happy players :-D

In Unity :

To test it : http://eice.be/ld40/

To "Windows" versions : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/uss-deep-explorer

I've already received a fair amount of reviews for my game, considering it's my first time and all. But if you still haven't played it please consider doing so :D

The game is playable on Windows, Mac and Linux!

Check it out here!

Clickbait title!

The newish notifications thing we have access to is pretty useful, do you make use of it?

Going to the full feed can be useful:

But it can get very crowded and difficult to go through when every single comment in a game you've commented on gets shown. So I use two find on page searches to find the ones that I care about quickly.

Search "mention" to find people specifically talking to you

Search "their" for authors messaging on their own project, this is useful as sometimes authors give replies without mentioning the intended recipient.

That's it, hope this has helped you and hope we all make use of this cool feature more :)

Thanks to Elysia Griffin who test our game! We laugh a lot when we saw her reaction. There is still some bug on the game but we are actually working on it.

If you want to discover the talented Elysia Griffin check her twitch account here : https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin

And if you didn't test the game yet, you can try it here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/bobbys-awful-idea

Thanks for all your comment and feedback, that's help us a lot

For anyone having your game hosted at itch.io, it is currently down, just wanted to let you guys know!

Hi all, i thought about something and would like to hear what you guys think too. I'll omit my own opinion, also on the "post jam/compo" versions, so that i won't influence you. As a disclaimer, i'm not looking to legitimize anything with this, nor will change anything. But it's an interesting topic to me :)

What do you think about post-content, that is clearly marked in the game? For example, if you have 3 levels that you made in the jam, but then create a 4th one that you very clearly mark in the game is "post compo/jam", or even build a little screen so the user has to understand that he is leaving the original version.

Hi all, in our game you can experience a job interview as a conductor. Can you distinguish the musical instruments? :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/ldjam-40-music-puzzle-game-name-pending

Toxic gas looms over the abandoned planet as a futuristic-looking space shuttle drops onto the surface. The door slides open... a human-looking figure cautiously steps out into the poisonous atmosphere. He draws out his pistol as he gazes upon a horrifyingly ginormous FLY NEST. Flies... the size of CARS buzz around the nest, vomiting out ACID onto the grass...

COME PLAY INFESTED.

I'm a beginner in game development and fresh attendant in LDJAM. As I found that I've got enough number of rate recevied, I want to thank them with my great sincere here. This is a great encouragement to me no matter what. Thank you!

Hey guys !



Check out our game For Better or For Worse, a short story telling ambient experience, where you lead a father thru a dark night trying to attend his daughter’s wedding.

You can download it on our entry page:

 https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/for-better-or-for-worse

Hope you will have a great time playing it !



The LD Jam was as usual a great experience, a way to breathe and let creativity speaks for itself ! 
We can’t wait to check out as much games as we can and see all the great things this contest provides.



Thanks for everything.


Cheers !

Play the game here!

Did you play to Flirt the mall yet? What are you waiting? You have here our favourite character Rosendo! Press here to Play on-line: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/flirt-themall

Yo guys! I've fixed my target tracker bug and now it's much better playable. How many missiles you need for a big bang? ;)

Hi everyone ! You can see my work on this terrific little game over here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/the-darkest-light

Please give us some feedback, and hope you'll like the sound ;-) (we will definitely play your games too...! We are super motivated :-D)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/venny-is-in-trouble

If you haven't played it yet, hurry up to discover the secret bunnies life! :heart: :rabbit: :heart: :rabbit: :heart:

Here is the link to the game : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/horny-bunny

Thank you Ludum Dare. After almost one year not coding and not making games and not even trying to, now I've got new motivation and inspiration for making just a small game in two weeks. Keep it simple. That's what I've learned here. Just make a game and FINISH IT!!! Often heared, but now I understand.

Hi all, in our game you can experience a job interview as a conductor. Can you distinguish the musical instruments? :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/ldjam-40-music-puzzle-game-name-pending

For those who want to play our game but have slow internet speed, you can now download it. Thank you for you pacience! If you want to rate it, we would really appreciate! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/inky-pinky-square

This is the post mortem for my LD40 entry: grooOW! Here I'll be sharing what I learned, the tools I've used to make the game, and my dev log. This log shows the step-by-step process I used, with screenshots. I love to read these, if you wrote one, please let me know in the comments –I'd love to check it out :)

As always, I participated in the "compo" category of Ludum Dare. This is the classic category, in which the goal was to make a game solo, in 48 hours, creating everything (source code, art assets, music and sound effects, etc.) from scratch, around a theme that was announced at the start of the jam: "The more you have, the worse it is".

Please consider playing and rating my game! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/grooow

Log

Saturday

My energy levels have been really low these weeks, and this affected my performance in the jam. Nevertheless, I decided to participate anyway, specially since I missed the previous edition in August because I was sick then.

My intention was to wake up early, but I slept in until 8:30 AM. I immediately went online to see the theme: "The more you have, the worst it is". After showering, I went outside to have a walk and brainstorm potential ideas. But it was freezing cold! I got inside a café and had breakfast there. I wasn't having many ideas, which was frustrating.

After breakfast, I headed back home and kept on thinking there, this time in a more structured way, doing a mind map. This was more fruitful, and around 12:30 I settled for an idea.

I decided to make a platformer game in which you would have to pick up some items to advance to the next level, with a twist: every item picked up gets you bigger and heavier, making it more difficult to move, jump and avoid enemies.

I had lunch then, and then selected a colour palette for the game. I used a tool that allowed me to lock a colour I liked and then randomise the palette again preserving that colour. I went for this one, which features sand, purple and fuchsia:

Then, coding time! Instead of generating placeholder PNG's, I had Phaser to generate the image data dynamically, since I didn't know which size the platforms would finally be –usually this is solved by using tile maps, but since I wasn't planning to do any scrolling, I figured I could get away with just using sprites to represent the world instead of tiles.

I first coded the core mechanic: move and jump to pick up items, and have the main character get bigger and heavier.

Then I added a basic enemy, which just walks over the platforms and turns around when it gets to an edge. And I implemented a "Reload" button which lets you restart the level if you get stuck –i.e. you picked up too many items in the wrong order and now you're to heavy to reach a platform that holds more items.

I used a 8-bit sound effects generator to make some basic sounds to provide feedback for jumping and picking up items. This is crucial to playability, and since I was posting updates on Twitter with the URL of the game for people to play, I didn't want to leave it for later.

Sunday

I didn't wake up early on Sunday either, and I didn't make all the progress I hoped on Saturday, so I started to considerate the idea on keeping the art abstract, with just simple figures, so I could spend more time coding and doing level design.

To make it look a bit nicer, and not just "programmer's art", I decided to add a bit of polish by adding some animation to the main character: a "squash" when it lands on the ground. I believe this makes a big difference in the look & feel of the game!

I also made a simple animation for death.

I didn't want to leave all the level design work to the very end, so I implemented a level loader from JSON files. To test it, I created what later would be the first level of the tutorial, that teaches the player how to move, jump and advance to the next level. I also added some UI that shows how many dots the player already picked up.

The evening arrived, and my TODO list still had lots of things very much not done. I reduced the scope: definitely not doing any sprite work this jam, and I reduced the amount of enemies and levels in the game. I really wanted to make cannons that fire laser beams, but a flying ghost was way quicker to implement… so hello floating, semi-transparent, purple circle.

Then I built all the levels that would serve as tutorial. I implemented some tooltips to give indications to the player. They are not very flashy, and could have used a bit of animation, but…

I had dinner, and afterwards switched to do some music. I used an app I downloaded the day before (Bosca Ceoil) the jam because a lot of people recommended it for its simplicity. I can not agree more. After following the short, in-app tour, I was able to create my own music track!

Then more game design work and bug fixing. I finished at ~1AM, which is a bit later than usual –I aim to get to bed at midnight in game jams–, but since this week I'm on holidays, I could allow myself to get up late on Monday.

And victory! I'm really happy I was able to submit after all. And despite the lack of "art", people seem to be loving the game. It has received praised on the core game mechanic, as well as level design. It always feels great to see people playing your game and asking for more levels! :)

Lessons

What went well

• I was able to submit!
• Being able to get away with not having "real" artwork. I think the key to this was having a colour palette from the start –instead of relying on a black background and #ff0000 or #00ff00 for the sprites and platforms–, and adding some animations with tweens.
• The music app was really easy to use and I could make a track without too much hassle.
• I did not panic. I gave myself permission to not to work way too hard during the jam, so instead of being stressed for not being on scheduled, I cut down the scope and moved on.

What went wrong

• There is a physics bug in the game, due to the way Phaser handles its physics engine. This can cause some problems in slower machines / browsers. Fixing it would require quite a lot of work, so I decided to let it go, since most folks were telling me they were able to play normally.
• Not much energy, which led to low productivity. Maybe I should have started with a smaller scope so I had more time to do proper art.
• I didn't meal prep in advance. I ate super healthy on Saturday, but did not so well on Sunday.

Tools

• Text editor: Atom with vim-mode-plus.
• Game engine: Phaser (HTML5 / JavaScript framework)
• Version control: Git repository on Github
• Mind map: Paper for iPad
• TODO list and notes: Bear
• Sound effects: bfxr
• Music tracker: Bosca Ceoil
• GIF screen capture: GIF Brewery 3
• Palette generator: Coolors

Wow Sugarplum Summit has reached over 50 ratings. I honestly did not expect this level of response at all and I'm absolutely blown away. Thank you everyone whose left feedback! I plan to implement it all, but right now I'm too busy with finals :(

Thank you again for the phenomenal response! If you haven't checked out Sugarplum Summit, head to our Ludum Dare page.

Hey! We have made a try of web site making with the content of this jam! You can try to play on the WebGL version of the game. Tell us if there is any issue with it!

http://jeremy.rabouan.free.fr/exoteam

@odd @akadream

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O64d8v1QTVQ

We reach 20 ratings for us first submission, thanks a lot from the whole team

My game now has 333 ratings. This insane. I would like to thank everyone who has played it. :smile:

Here a little sneak peek of the comming android version:

Buy Rum of course! Or buy Rum and go Off Course, whichever tickles your fancy the most.

Get some rum here and show us your results!

We're doing a video of me and my brother playing LD games. Link them in the description for us to play and rate.

:droolingface: :droolingface: :drooling_face: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/quantums-rick The game is about collapsed time, that Rick’s is trying to fix it. A simple game, with one click on the screen, the player can restore the normal flow of time or multiply the number of universes in two.

:yum: :yum: :yum: [Thanks to all that you write us a lot of comments and put an excellent rating! we love you all, friends*] [If you have not played yet - enjoy this little game and comment a little. All our team will be find your game and will appreciate it]

It's the first game I've ever made public, and I'm so happy with all your reviews... <3 Definitely planning on doing the next LD. Much love to everyone.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/blood-clot

Press here to Play on-line: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/flirt-themall

It is the first compo in a couple of years where I put myself both in the situation of a participant and a judge; and boy is LD challenging if you want to try tons of games ! I only have an exe for a love2g game, so I have no html5 export to directly embed the game, and when I want to try a game for which I need to download/unzip/navigate/launch, it is quite a lot of friction.

As such I suggest everyone pushes their non web game to the itch.io app ! In my case you can just search download and play as if it were on steam, it is sooooooooooo nice and easy and frictionless !!!!!!

If you enter my game name in the search or the link in the adress of the app, you can try it without sweat !!!! https://trabitboy.itch.io/ld40-danmaku-burp

(Sugar Addiction for Windows) https://drive.google.com/open?id=1z8dVfRKqiywbfcGJ9jZqYQdKdj1O_MH8

(Unity 5.1.2 package) https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SOHAkXCeiacRCAimHYgTomw9S_3WWUgN

Yeah, we did this! Thank you all of us, I really appreciate this.

Very soon I add mini update for game. Watch for updates here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/space-crash

Today I sketched out new characters for the game to expand on the idea of just having a robber and a single police.