I haven't gotten enough ratings on my game in the 2 other LDs that I've done, please help me achieve my goal of making it to the leaderboard! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/dvz

Hi all. There's a game search site and I can't seem to find it. Can someone point me to it?

On my way to have rated 200 of your games, drop yours and any really exceptional ones in the comments below!

No fame without shame (I feel like asking for more votes is unethical but YOLO): https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/a-spark-of-light

One year ago, Ludum Dare 37 came to a close on this very day and, we, as a team, had just finished our second Ludum Dare entry - Hyper Holomayhem 37. Although the game's overall placement and results were quite satisfying, every time we think back at the game we can't stop but thinking we could have done several things differently, and how we could have faced our second entry in a completely different light and with a completely different design perspective.

As a result, it's not a game we tend to mention or acknowledge often, however, having a game created during Ludum Dare early on that we ended up not really being proud off taught us several lessons that helped us change the way we looked at Ludum Dare and how we structured our workflow on every event afterwards, both in regards to the jamming part, as well as during judging.

Up to this day, we still carry those lessons together with us, as our latest Ludum Dare entry, Jazzy Beats takes the stage now, one year later. On this post, as the game celebrates it's one year of lifetime, we'd like to discuss some of these lessons we learned the hard way through it's development, and how they ended up shaped the way we approached our latter jams, including, of course this latest Ludum Dare.

A Problem of Scope

Hyper Holomayhem was a side-scroller shooter where, as a jetpack trainee, you had to stay as long as possible in the Hyperdeck, a room that kept constantly changing layouts as it was powered it gears. As you explored the rooms under a time limit, you also had to dodge and shoot enemies, breaks blocks, and return to the room's core to deposit all the gears you'd find spread across the level. The gameplay hook came from the player's free and unrestricted movement, thanks to the jet-pack mechanic, random room layouts and using the player's weapon to destroy enemies and blocks in order to claims the gears spread through-out. Seems fine-ish and probably fun at first, right?

The truth was that for a great part of the jamming period, we hadn't really agreed on what made our game unique, or what made it stand out. Instead, we had several different, unexplored design ideas in our minds that didn't exactly cohere together, from different environments, to power-ups and puzzles, and by the time we decided to focus mostly on the shooting and speed oriented gameplay, we were already reached a point where we had very few time left to flesh up the gameplay without compromising everything else. On other words, we had an issue of scope, and the feeling that we could have made several different design decisions in regards to it, is one that accompanies us up to today.

This feeling taught us some very important lessons that we'd apply to our workflow on the following jams:

1. Always settle for an idea right at the beginning of the jam, and, if preferably, create mock-ups so everyone on the team understands the game vision and direction right from the start. If the idea already sounds like it's going to be an hassle and you haven't even begun it's execution, then it's preferably better to rethink it. The moment everyone in your team understands the concept is a pretty magical moment and one that you can really tell when it really happens.
2. Consider time and resource limitations and work little-by-little. Although every member knew exactly what they had to do at a given time, because of the lack of direction and scope, we ended up not having a clear distinction on what each of us should be aiming for. If the direction was established earlier on as point 1. mentioned, each member could have worked more coherently to improve gameplay.

Another aspect we felt we could have performed much better on as well as the judging phase, especially with it being the first time we were judged on a Ludum Dare. Since it was at the time where everyone on the team was busy with their personal work, school assignments and commissions, we ended up not putting as much heart and thought into it as we could have possibly have, making it the Ludum Dare we have posted the less, commented the less, and received the less feedback on of all of them, especially when compared to our latest ones.

From that point on, we realized it was important to do things differently, and that, for our next Ludum Dare we'd have to rethink most of our workflow, focus on the scope of our next project, and involve ourselves much more in the judging period.

The Next Ludum Dare

Four-months later, and cue Ludum Dare 38. For the second time, we decided to assemble exactly the same team that had participated in Hyper Holomayhem's development, meaning we were practically giving a second try at our team's structure. During the whole development of this new project, we took into considerations the things that we felt we hadn't played out as we expected during Hyper Holomayhem.

For starters, just as the jam started, we decided to make sure we'd completely settle on an idea before beginning the game's development. After almost two hours of discussion and some rough sketches, we had settled on the idea that would lead up to Petty Puny Planet’s creation. Having a clear vision from the start allowed us to plan ahead much better, and by the end of the first day, we already all of the base gameplay down, allowing us to further refine the concept, additional features and polish and add content for the remainder of the event, a polar opposite situation to what had happened with Hyper Holomayhem. How did some of these rough sketches look into the first hour? Well...

...even so, it was this much of a simple sketch that allowed everyone to understand what we were trying to develop.

Same-wise, when it came to the the actual judging phase, we focused on making sure that we’d spread the word about the game across as needed, and, even if we were still on a busy time of our personal lives like we had been during Hyper Holomayhem's development, that we'd take a moment off each day to guarantee we gave the game the attention it deserved.

At the time, we also cemented the name of our brand-evolved-into-collective Whales And Games, using its logo, name, and likeness for the first time ever in this project. Looking back, our focus on the judging phase after a rough first experience, and on getting the branding out for the first time, was an important step that helped lead to everything that came afterwards.

Jazzy Beats

And finally, we arrive at Ludum Dare 40, which judging phase is going on at this very moment. With all the lessons learned with Hyper Holomayhem and the latter, Petty Puny Planet, we took up the Dah-ray once again, creating and developing our currently in-judging game, Jazzy Beats. Applying the lessons we learned through the development of Hyper Holomayhem, and the changes we've made to our workflow through Petty Puny Planet, we we're able to deliver a project which we believe transmits the same values we have as a collective. For many, those values might not be the most important thing when it comes to game jamming, but for us, game jams are a opportunity to try new things, whilst also showing what Whales And Games is truly about.

On Hyper Holomayhem first anniversary, we might not have been able to ship a massive content-update to it as we did with our Ludum Dare 36 game, Colossorama when it was it's one year anniversary, but it's still a game to look back at and, for all it's flaws, realize it was an important milestone that helped us define a lot of our working procedures and direction to go. It's a game that, even if we aren't as proud of as much as others, it's a game that we, at Whales And Games will always consider a part of the family and of our history. One day, we'd like to go back and give the game the proper treatment and love it deserves.

In behalf of our team, thank you for reading, and for all the support you have given us during these past Ludum Dare that has lead us to the point where we are today. We might have gone through some hardships, but getting feedback, and seeing people playing our games is what drives us to keep on going! If you'd like to do some chit-chat, or would just like to keep up with the different things we develop, we also have our very own Discord! It'd be nice to see you there. Thank you! :whale:

Back with an update for my Godot port of my LD40 submission Mutoid.

After struggling to get a handle on the collision system (There's really a lack of good tutorials), I finally got bullets and damage working. From that point forward development gained some momentum. I haven now got scrolling background, mutant attacks and deaths, player shooting working, and player death working. Next up is collision with the upper buildings and viewport bounds. Then start and end game screens, and finally the other two enemies that are currently missing from the port.

After that point, I can start adding some of the new features I have planned. Lots of cool stuff planned, especially with the lighting built into Godot.

Here's a peak at the port progress.

Embedded video isn't working so please visit here instead: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o-zoKDmu0U&feature=youtu.be

Need some more ratings on my game! There is a web version so no need to install :) Any ratings would be very appreciated!

Here is the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/too-much-slime

Don't watch it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiehmL-LVCI

Game Page.

Here's a couple GIFs on what to expect in Lantern, an endless horror-esque game made for this jam! Thank you all for your support! Check it out: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/lantern

(By the way, there has been some confusion about the integration of the theme into the game, and I will explain some different ways the game fits the theme: 1. The more light you have, the more likely you are to be chased by monsters. 2. The more your heart rate goes up, the lower health you have. 3. The more fear you as a player have, the more likely you are to make a mistake. Thank you all for the support!)

Are you not sure of your alignment?

Do you want to find out for sure what kind of person you are?

Well then, you should play The blacksmith. It's the definitive way of answering those specific questions. Make friends, go to the passion room, answer life's big questions.

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

Hey y'all I'm looking to play some browser games! Here's mine if you're interested: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/too-many-chooks

If you have not tried my game, please try it: Panic Blocks

Learn more in dev page

I have started working on the version 2 of the game after the Ludum, perfecting the mechanics and concepts of the game. Coming Soon... Please follow me on Facebook and wait for the information: Facebook site

Thanks!!!!

A secret... The more multipliers you have, the better items will fall. :3

The Theme:

The Enemy can't fight; every upgrade you pick up, every bullet you fire could lead you to victory or your demise.

Didn't get much time to advertise my game enough, here's hoping there's still time left! Thanks!

Leave a comment or a review and I'll check your game out too! :clap::innocent:

Rate Here.

Play Here. (Browser)

This is my first game I made for Ludum Dare, and I have very few Ratings can you Try It PLease

Frankly, my game isn't about graphics - I'm full opt-out on that category, as well as audio. More importantly, I didn't want to give anything away - no spoilers. Some people only make it a third of the way through my game. Some less. I've gotten requests for clues and hints, and this is fully understandable. I've gone back and forth about how much to divulge, and when to do it. If you read my game comment thread, some clues have been doled out. But, not a lot. Even so, a fair number of people have beaten my game.

My game is a one-time experience. It's not meant to be re-played many times (though, I suppose you could if you wanted to). If you see someone else play my game, you can't ever experience it yourself with freshness. It needs to be experienced with fresh, naive eyes. That's the purpose of my game. To be experienced one time. That's it. You play it once, you finish, you don't ever play it again. It's something that you must experience for yourself; Pics, GIFS and/or videos can hinder that.

I'm not saying my game's awesome. It's just different. It's hardly even a game, except it is. I guess I'll just tell you what other people said about my game:

"the font in the game isn’t like what is in the screenshots"

I didn't even get that right. But, I still have a functioning "game." Here's more quotes:

"confused"

At least six people used this adjective to describe their game-play experience. Another person was "not sure what was happening". Yet another person was "frustrated". One player was "angered". Someone else described an aspect of the game as "a little annoying".

"surprised"

At least two players were surprised.

"laughed"

At least three players laughed. One person "giggled". Another person was "tickled".

"interesting"

Five players deemed their experience interesting.

"unique"

At least four people found the experience to be unique.

"crazy and/or wacky"

Two people claimed my game fell into this realm. I agreed.

"trippy"

Three people called it trippy, including the person who made, "I took too many drugs."

"its [sic] something that I could pull off in way lesser [sic] time."

Yeah, someone said that too.

I agree with 95% of the comments I received, and I'd like to hear more, but I don't need your ratings; I have plenty of ratings. I also don't need feedback for future versions; there will be no future versions.

If you want to rate a game, check out one of the games in danger of not receiving enough ratings (20) to be judged:

https://ldjam.com/games/danger/all

But, if you want, you can still play my game - if you'd even call it that.

(My entry is titled "Theme - The Game" because I initially tried to submit it under the title, "Theme" which, apparently, conflicted with some other page on this site. :P )

You can also check out the post right below me.

Thanks to all that left a comment on my game!

While playing and rating games recently I was reminded of Nintendo's design philosophy about gameplay-first and how they would create a prototype without art, music, etc. and refine it until it can stand on its own. I realized that I never quite understood what people meant when they said prototype, and I learn best by example so I never truly made the connection. I know what a prototype is, but is there something different about how Nintendo makes a prototype?

I dug up Nintendo's GDC17 talk about BotW and found a section that shows a real prototype that they used to make the game and it's very similar to the original Zelda. I thought I would post it here to help give us all a bit of inspiration from the masters of the medium. Enjoy!

Note: There is a lot of info in this presentation so I'd recommend watching the whole thing. They reference the prototype a few times throughout the talk but the actual focus is on multiplicative design and freedom of choice. The prototype is just a means to get there.

Demo of the prototype starts at 18:07

https://youtu.be/QyMsF31NdNc

Help Grandma to sort her pills according to the doctor's prescriptions

Check out our game : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/pile-of-pills

In the Post-Ludum build we just uploaded, we focused on UI improvements for greater clarity in combat and also added some basic music and sound effects to the game. We've kept the jam build on the page for rating purposes. We have also added a new character for you to take to your dungeon ;)

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

We love our bunnies! They're fun to play with, they love carrots, they're cute and there're LOTS of them!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6TQoOCphJ8

It's a gameplay video of our Bunnyfication game, and we'd be glad if you'd give it a try 🙂

It's bunny time!

...and if you like the game, please...

Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen! You're great!

Wanna join a post-Ludum Dare game jam? Why not do Geta Game Jam? Create a game in 72 hours, either alone or in a team, that is based on the theme of CHAOS AND ORDER! :grin: :clap: :thumbsup:

It begins at 11am aest (the same time that Ludum Dare starts) on Saturday, the 13th of January, and ends on Tuesday January 16th at the same time.

Come along and join us. We’re excited to see what awesome games you guys will create!

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE :point_left:

JOIN OUR DISCORD COMMUNITY :grinning:

Paragon Pawns took a hiatus from game jams for quite a while, so Sweltura is the first and last project our team developed this year. Suffice it to say, we came into this one feeling pretty eager to produce something!

To keep the experience fresh, we shifted gears from what we’ve done in the past: developing a 2D game with mouse controls rather than a 3D title with direction input. We also kept our priorities lean and cut what could be considered extraneous from a mechanical or thematic standpoint: those pesky, intrusive win states for example!

If you decide to check Sweltura out, here’s the breakdown of what our team used to put it together. Premiere Pro saw some action for producing movie textures, but those were left on the cutting room floor!

• 2D Assets: Affinity Photo
• 2D Artwork: Paint Tool Sai
• 2D Animation: Spriter
• Engine: Unity 5

If you’re curious about audio, Music for Makers offers those on their mailing list a featured track every Monday from their rather extensive library. Our title and gameplay themes came from their site, so I’d recommend giving it a gander if you hear and enjoy them!

https://youtu.be/6JntY4wKMYE

Here's Sweltura! Hop on it, won’t you?

Post your browser games and your favorites here!

My game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/a-spark-of-light

Based off of feedback on my dungeon crawler, it seems that a lot of people are diving into the dungeon without drawing maps, and are ending up lost in the depths. So I made a significant upgrade to my game, with the goal of making it easier to explore and roam without getting hopelessly lost.

Used to look like this:

Now introducing... The Next Dimension!

This makes it a lot easier to make new walls (1 texture vs 6 pre-drawn images, 4 of which have perspective built in). So, now there are more decorations and details in the dungeon. These will serve as landmarks to help people remember layouts and locations, and to let them know when they've been walking in circles.

There are also a limited supply of fountains that heal, and reduce damage taken to stats.

Play here!

I'm a bit behind on ratings given, so I'll go through my comments and rate games from there tonight.

Ahh! I just want to work on the game... Stupid finals :(

The continued response has been amazing and my plans for a new version expand with each rating. Keep it coming!

Play Sugarplum Summit in browser on our page!

I'm currently working on unity and I want to create a database where I can handle data for leaderboard.

Does any of you have any tutorial or links to give me to help avoid basic security issue such as sql injection and more ?

Thanks

i took some time to check out but thx guys for playing and rating my game until it got the so wanted 20 ratings thx a lot

My game : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/house-a-lovecraft-inspired-game

Thank you all for the reviews and feedback, much appreciated.

Scoring

At the time of writing the game was played 863 times (wow, thanks again)

The average score is 17

Highscore is 178 which also has 2nd place with 134

Top 10 scores are 178, 134, 127, 117, 117, 114, 95, 88, 87, 86 scored by 9 different people.

Here is the dump of all the 863 scores: https://gist.github.com/mess110/74d54a6f463dfd2c5e496a87acbfe188

Feedback

Gathering the feedback, this is what I found:

• clearer starting/ending of the game
• add countdown when starting
• hover buttons effect
• mole needs to be clicked easier (currently using raycasting on the model and ground, maybe will use a box)
• fix crappy clicking hack (but you don't need to know about this :P )
• highscores
• possibility to use keyboard (maybe - will test)
• try to expand the game in an innovative way
• warning if hardware acceleration is disabled

Hope I didn't miss too much, will go though the comments again at some point.

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

Keep on smackin'em

Cute screenshot

We're so close to the 20 ratings!

You can play AND rate OverHeist here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/overheist

Use a controller for the love of plants! Play here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/save-the-plants

Click here to try our game.

History

Starting this project we all decided because of work and university, that we'd do a small game. We always say we'll do a small game, but they never end up being small because of feature creep. Our first successful ludum dare we made 'Barbarity' for ld36 a boat game that ended up being us trying to replicate Sid Meier's Pirates. So not a small game. Next we made 'Silicon Boulevard, a robonoire story' for ld39, a narrative game with combat and basic puzzles, so it was smaller, but still quite big for what we were able to accomplish in 72 hours.

We wanted this game to be smaller.

The Idea

When the theme was announced we didn't really know what to think. It seemed like the curveball choice got in but we started talking about ideas. Specifically to think of ideas we listed things that might get worse the more you get and built games around those ideas. The most prominent early on was a boat game where if you take on too much water you have to start throwing it out your ship, but as we had already made a boat game we let that idea slide.

Our final idea, as it often does with us, came from one of us off-hand suggesting an idea as a joke and then someone else latching onto that idea and building up a game from it. The idea was feature creep, you were a game dev studio and having too many ideas would be bad for your game, and this was the start of our feature creep.

At this point it was 3am so I went to sleep with a vague idea of what the game could be, but not what could make the game fun. When woke up I found out that @soldierbear had already made a prototype in Pico-8, this made me realise what could make the game fun. We had already decided to make the game in Love2D so we started out remaking that prototype.

The Pico-8 project was just a simple game where you run to people, slap them if they have a bad idea and don't slap them if they have a good idea. What we decided to make a new version of that, with a game development tycoon slapped onto it.

Development

Our first idea was a lot bigger, we would have moving employees, publishers, a boss character, a literal feature creep, random events etc. While we never worked directly on implementing them we had to generalise a lot of our systems to allow for them to be added, which took time.

Being new to the engine we were not really aware of how to do things like collision detection easily without the physics system, but we had been advised to not use it for simple projects so we wrote a movement system while we thought of how to do the collision. Then we rewrote it when we gave in and used inbuilt physics. But we didn't know of any method to work out what we'd collided with so we made a basic system for checking who was in the area, that needed refining. It was not refined.

Meanwhile, we made many of the systems without testing them, and since some of them were implemented only much later, they carried bugs throughout nearly the entire process. When we did test we found out that '=' for tables in Lua doesn't work like variables in most cases. It only sets the pointer equal to the same section of memory. Which caused problems when we wanted to make a copy of an object from a database, so this required some work to redo.

All this extra time spent working on things meant we left things like map design and making the controls feel nice to later and later, or not at all. It meant we didn't realise how unreadable the font we had chosen was, or how little time you actually have to get to people, until it was nearly too late. We never implemented any of the game ideas we wrote, partly because I didn't know if reducing the clarity like that would make the game any better, so we kept with the placeholders.

But unlike in previous years, we managed to finish the game ahead of time, and it was relatively stable (apart from a few bugs in later levels) release.

What was good about the game?

Both the graphics (due to @david-mason) and the audio (due to @soldierbear) worked really well I think, also I think the humour worked quite well, even if it did get in the way of a clear description in the opening cutscene.

Things we could've done better

Controls were awkward and the systems were not fully explained to players due to poor font choice and large amounts of text.

How We'll Improve For Next Time

We've said this after every ludum dare we've done, but we intend on making a smaller game. Specifically next time we will concentrate on a single aspect of the game, polish that and build a game around that instead of focusing on too much at once.

How to Play

Finally, I want to explain the idea mechanics because many people have been having trouble making money.

Basically our money system in Revenge of Feature Creep is linked to the review score, you get 1 star for a completely finished game, to ensure a game gets finished slap the crunchtime gong to stop employees having ideas and adding work – the green bar at the side of the screen – and you have to do this before you lose too much money – the yellow bar.

To get a higher score you need ideas, but only good ones. At the start of each level you choose a genre for your game. If an idea is bad (or in a different genre and risky) then you lose score, if you have risky ideas (or good in a different genre) then there is a 50/50 chance it count as very good (effectively as 2 good ideas) or bad, and a good idea in your chosen genre increases your score.

The number next to an employee is their happiness, it increases for ideas let through and decreases if they are slapped. If happiness is below zero at the end of the level they leave.

I don't like advertisements, but here is my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/intruder-alert

Really thanks for playing and leaving feedback :) This year I went for compo and it was ludicrously hard to complete a whole game in a way that it looked like a game... And do that trying to live my normal week-end life (AKA: go to the lab and take care of my cell lines). For my second ludum dare I went for something with a story (short and super simple,but still a story). I hope you will enjoy! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/the-gravedigger

Introspection: We have received so much feedback on our project. We definitely need to update collision detection (this could be updated pretty easily, but for the LD entry we feel this would not be a bug fix), and make our art a little more consistent. Our original idea of 2-3 targets per level with 8 total levels seems like what people wanted. So we feel justified in our idea, but with such a short window, as with most LD projects, cuts had to be made to make.

We hope to get some more ratings, but are also pretty happy and thankful for the feedback so far. If you have 90 seconds to play and 30 more to rate (for a grand total of 2minutes) we would love for you to play our game.

No download, just an embed https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/kittie-reaper-a-depressed-cat-tale

Hey guys, The pretty little mansion is under ZOMBIE ATTACK ! Please help it from being wrecked by zapping the zombies.

Play it over here

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Kcj-oIjaCnzJKilPMBineyJNPq5dwd7g

Its an apk file so may be a little bit of download and installing hastle but its a lot of fun. And please do comment and rate !

Heading back to play Your games now ;)

Play my game "Critter Sitter" on your browser! Let me know what you think!

Compo

I was inspired by my previous LD38 game Honey Home to make a mass-unit action game, especially because of the LD40 theme. Tamagotchi had crossed my mind while brainstorming, then I immediately rolled with the idea of controlling many needy Tamagotchi-like critters at once!

Tools

• Code: LÖVE2D (Lua), Love.js
• Editor: Atom
• Hosting: itch.io, GitHub
• Art: Aseprite
• Sound: Chiptone, my mouth

Compo

Ideas went straight from my head to the game, and I spent very little time writing things down (except for pet characteristics for balance purposes). A lot of things got scrapped: originally, walls hurt pets which made the game EXTREMELY chaotic. Also, I originally thought to let the player buy pets, but I instead went with spawning, to keep the player on their toes and avoid developing strategies to exploit some pet combinations.

I was focused on design and code, so spend no time on music (unfortunately) and very little on graphics. Given the graphics time restraint, I went with a minimalist Undertale inspired look that was black and white with red + green accents. I focused on making sure the game was arcade-like and had scoring that people could use to compare with other players! I think that aspect made my LD34 entry really entertaining. I also made sure it was playable on web for accessibility, which is something that greatly helped my earlier LD entries.

By the end of Sunday, the main gameplay was complete and has remained untouched! I spent an evening after the Compo ended to add a results screen and make the game web-compatible. I was unavailable until Wednesday, which is when I finally posted the game for playing.

Hope you enjoy Critter Sitter as much as I enjoyed working on it!

Really happy about all the nice comments. If you haven't played it yet, go check Boomstick Leaper https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/boomstick-leaper

If you like to read something, here's a little blog I wrote about my experience with Unity and Ludum Dare 40.

Also if you want to rate my entry, you can do so here.

Sorted is a time management game about sorting crates. Features an online leaderboard!

My game finally got past the 20 ratings, Thanks guys! (You can play it HERE BTW :nerd:)

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

This LD I made a type of game I had not done yet for an LD: a text adventure / visual novel! (I seem to make a different genre of game every LD :laughing:)

I had a real blast writing and making it, dipping into the extra day of the Jam to get some extra time.

So, please check out ...

The Dark Castle

94 screens, 18 endings, 225 choices, 4785 words

An example of the types of choices you get to make:

Have fun!

We would love to see one of the categories, any really, turn from 2 digits to three. We are so close and would love the help, who is going to be magic 100?

Fast game, just an embed, no downloading required

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

Godot part is going extremely well! I have the base game completed now, killing mutants, death animations, scrolling background are all done. I took some time today to play around with some of the lighting features that Godot offers, as well as some particles (for blood in this case).

Here's a peek!!

If you haven't played my LD40 submission yet, give it a go! It's the same game, but written in JavaScript using the CraftyJS library.

Hi all, I normally review LOTS of games. But I'm in hospital recovering from surgery, removal of kidney tumour. Don't have the lap top here, feeling really sore with 30-40 staples from open surgery. Please at least get my game over 20 votes :) You are a fox, eating rabbits, which in turn, eat the grass. Rain rejuvinates the grass... HASEMPFEFFER! check it out :) peace all.

The top 3 folks at the top of the leader board on judging day will receive a prize! (Hint: It's a Steam Key for our recently released, unrelated to Ludum Dare game.)

Just make sure you sign into the game with your Ludum Dare name so we can find you!

If you want it, you have some work to do...

As always, your feedback gets our feedback in return.

Haven't you tried Greed Mania Yet? So this might be the time! :D

Check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/greed-mania

Rate and tell me your thoughts! If your game has a linux or HTML5 version, I will rate and give you feedback too!

Cheers!

Send me your and your favorite browser games. I'm on my way to have rated 200!

My game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/a-spark-of-light

S11E2! Doctor Who Series 11 Episode 2: The Ghost Monument Online. Alright, this is very promising to watch about it, Doctor Who series / season 11 episode 2. Entitled well enough as The Ghost Monument, and here’s the plot offered, Still reeling from their first encounter, can the Doctor and her new friends stay alive long enough, in a hostile alien environment, to solve the mystery of Desolation? And just who are Angstrom and Epzo?

Doctor Who (series 11) reminder here, The eleventh series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who premiered on 7 October 2018, and will consist of ten episodes.

Working Here:
https://bit.ly/2yeb30E
https://bit.ly/2pN88Hl

The series is the first to be led by Chris Chibnall as head writer and executive producer, alongside executive producers Matt Strevens and Sam Hoyle, after Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin stepped down after the tenth series. This series is the eleventh to air following the programme’s revival in 2005, and is the thirty-seventh season overall.

It also marks the beginning of the third production era of the revived series, following Russell T. Davies’ run from 2005–2010, and Moffat’s from 2010–2017. The eleventh series broadcasts on Sundays, a first in the programme’s history, after regular episodes of the revived era have previously been broadcast on Saturdays.

The series introduces Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor, the most recent incarnation of the Doctor, an alien Time Lord who travels through time and space in her TARDIS, which appears to be a British police box on the outside. The series also introduces Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, and Mandip Gill as the Doctor’s newest companions, Graham O’Brien, Ryan Sinclair and Yasmin Khan, respectively. Filming for the series, which is set to include a Christmas special, commenced in November 2017 and concluded in August 2018.

“The Woman Who Fell to Earth” reminder here, Ryan, a dyspraxic young man, comes across some strange lights and interacts with them, causing a blue pod to appear. Ryan calls the police, receiving help from PC Yasmin Khan.

Ryan’s grandmother, Grace, her husband, Graham, and Karl find themselves trapped onboard their train with a floating orb of tentacles and electricity. Ryan and Yasmin head for the train, arriving just as the Doctor falls through the ceiling. The orb departs after implanting everyone with DNA destroying bombs. The others and the Doctor track the pod down to a warehouse, where they encounter a humanoid alien. The Doctor, missing her sonic screwdriver, constructs another from spare parts. The group intercepts the orb, a mass of biological data-gathering coils.

The second alien suddenly appears, revealing himself as Tzim-Sha, a warrior hunting humans. The group track down Karl, the actual target. After climbing a crane, Tzim-Sha captures Karl, but the Doctor orders Tzim-Sha to leave him. Tzim-Sha detonates the bombs, but the Doctor transferred them into the coils, which were self-implanted into Tzim-Sha. Grace destroys the coils but is fatally injured. The Doctor later tells the group she must find the TARDIS. She bids the group goodbye, but accidentally teleports all four of them into the vacuum of deep space. Do a perfect watch for it after all fans, Doctor Who series 11 episode 2.

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

In Mobs, you play as an ambitious breeder with the goal of repopulating the world with adorable mythological mobs!

Dragons! Hydras! Chimeras! Oh my! How many mobs will you be able to hatch before you are overwhelmed?

You start with the sole egg your precious mob gives you. First egg! How exciting! Like any good breeder, you need to incubate the egg to ensure that it hatches safely.

A few eggs in and you have yourself quite an impressive collection!

How far are you going to take this?

... This is fine.

How far will you get?

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

Some of the new characters have been vectorized. Sketches about 15 minutes each and "vectorization" with all limbs as separate objects takes 30-60 minutes based on character complexity. This repetitive work in Illustrator is really effective learning of Illustrator which I've struggled with in the past (now I finally feel comfortable with the pen tool =)

Hi everyone !

We took a few hours to make a gameplay video of our game : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/onion-rush and to remove a few bugs that were blocking you from replaying a match at the end. Come Check it out !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WMFLIUC088

Reminder :

Onion Rush is a local 2 players party-game in which the goal is to chop more onions than your opponent, but be careful, the more you chop, the more you cry !

Chop special onions on your board to get bonuses like cleaning your screen or picking multiple onions at once, or on your opponent board to give him penalties like frozen onions or dirty ones !

You haven't played the blacksmith?

What, you don't care about your family?

Don't you want to put a smile on their faces? Also, that ding in your transport vessel won't fix itself...

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

Thank you so much everyone for the valuable feedback, I have added music, some basic sfx, clearer UI and fixed some bugs unfortunately I couldn't make a web build due to some issues with unity and my project. I have planned to build a powerstone like game with this physics based character controller. Once again thank you for the feedback https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/house-party

Hey there. @william-macfarlane and I have been making a podcast where we talk about video games for a little while now, called Side Quests. After making Starbage Man for the most recent jam we recorded one where we talk about the jam, our experiences and processes, and we get derailed and talk a lot about the relationship between video games and movies and sports.

Side Quests in on iTunes and Stitcher, or you can find us on Sound Cloud.
https://soundcloud.com/user-433639808

Also, you should check out our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/starbage-man

Play Now

Play Now

* CONTROL: Use Left and Right arrow keys to control your band. *

Play with music to enjoy the wild west atmosphere! :cowboy: :horse: :gun:

* Money is waiting for you!!! * :moneymouth: :moneymouth: :money_mouth:

* Game Page https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/robbery-of-a-train *

It's been a while since I've posted about our progress in making "Shoot off their lumps." So what has changed:

• I've polished some visual effects. Now monsters die with different animations based on how you kill them. Also if you kill fiend standing nearby him you'll get sprinkled with blood and (()@#%( that was not easy to implement XD

• Shooting mechanics changed a bit. Your hero automatically aims when standing still. But if you shoot very close to target it doesn't matter though as game respects the distance between your character and target.

• Fiends can be executed by simple shooting but it takes waaay more time to destroy them in such way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sij4sTS2wq4

So the game is made in Unity3d that is faar more better now for 2d featuring a lot of improvements such as 2d masking and atlasing textures out of the box.

Maybe the most interesting task for me by far was adding blood to the character when fiend gets killed. To achieve that I use a special blood mask:

Then I made a special shader with a threshold to change how much blood I want to see on a character. This shader has the direction by texture mask to reveal blood ( it's a white mask if the pixel is white than draw blood from sprite otherwise show nothing ) - a simple concept.

After that I made blood masks for all directions my character faces ( not many: up and down ) - and the second version of a mask for special animations such as reloading gun as this mask didn't fit. And played with animations in unity3d a bit to be sure that mask moves along with the sprite.

• Original ldjam entry (outdated)
• Discord
• Twitter

I'm expecting to finish new demo somewhere this week.

First, if you haven’t tried out Toxic Towers and enjoy platforms check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/toxic-towers

Thanks to everyone that has tried out, voted on, and left comments on the game. I really enjoyed reading all of them, and appreciated the feedback that was given. You guys are the best.

Toxic Towers is my third entry into LD and I was happy with the result. While it was a platformer, a genre that has been explored thoroughly by many people, I felt like I was able to put an original spin on it with the poison mechanic. I had fun designing around the fact each individual mistake was not very punishing but over time those mistakes would catch up to you if you couldn’t finish the levels in time. People seemed to have liked the mechanic and it fit the theme pretty well so I was happy with it.

Level Design: With a couple of exceptions, I felt the level design worked out well. Most people seemed to enjoy the somewhat maze-y feel that levels had, and I felt it gave me room to hid power-ups and give players an alternative path through the level. However, there were some drops that I didn’t make clear enough to the player that resulted in some “leaps of faith”. Additionally, there were some areas in which you could jump behind the health bar which resulted in some awkward platforming. In the future, I would like to go back to these areas and adjust them so they feel fairer to the player.

Difficulty: Most of the feedback I got said this game was on the difficult side. While the difficulty was not necessarily a bad thing, I feel like I should have made some parts a bit easier, so that more people would be able to enjoy more of the game. I feel like toning down the second act of the game would made it more accessible while still leaving a more challenging final act for those who are experienced with platformers.

Music: I felt like improved with the music compared to my last entry. I was able to get more tracks into the game which I was happy with since 95% of my last entry used 1 track. This is an area I still improve on but it filled the role it needed to.

Art: I have accepted that art is not my strong suit, but I still feel like I am slowly improving. I tried to keep things like the background and tile-set simple and it was ok for what it was. I was happy that I was able to include some animation, even though it was simple, for the player, enemies, and bosses.

Other things I would change: One common suggestion that I should have added was an item to reduce poison. I felt like this could have been used to help balance out some of the levels and reward the player for exploring some of the hidden spots on the stage. Additionally I felt that falling of the level was too punishing. One aspect I really liked about the game was that the punishments were small for each mistake and would build up over time. Falling off however, would often result in restarting the act due to how punishing they were in the second half of the act. Lastly I should have also included the arrow keys for movement instead of just WASD for people that prefer that.

Overall I had a great time doing the jam. I enjoyed the theme for this one and liked the game I ended up making. Shout outs to the people in the LD discord, it was cool hanging with you guys. I am excited to see what the next LD will bring. Bonus meme: lava lamps are the best.

Hi guys, before you start reading, feel free to play and give me feedback about the game.

Usually, we tag for LD as a team but for this one we decided to tag alone to challenge us and to see what we were capable off. My goal for this one was to have a playable prototype and learn everything I could about handling 3D in Unity. As we only did 2D games in the past. So we were ready and motivated, even if we were not doing the same game, we were together and we could help each others.

DAY 1

i found the main idea quite fast : "The more light there is, the worst it gets". Previous ideas were about hearts and viruses, i was like "Meeeh..!". So I choose this one. After the idea came the design, what is light sensitive ? A Ghost !

I had a better picture in my head at this moment : A little ghost, lost in an unknown forest which never ends.

So I did this procedural algorithm and integrate 3D models (and everything which come with it) into the game.

The script worked quite well :

And the isometric and low poly atmosphere was nice, I liked it a lot, so I went to bed, confident.

DAY 2

Day 2 was rough, I was struggling to implement the right spawning and positioning algorithm : I wanted a 11x11 tiles platform, where each time the player goes to a direction it creates new tiles in front of him and destroy those behind. You were suppose to walk into an infinite forest, procedurally generated, avoiding lights, and collect some stuff to win.

But I didn't succeed to implement this algorithm, I'm a web developer student and I didn't have enough knowledge in math (and 0 patience too).

So I cut it during the evening and I created a fixed 100x100 platform instead.

DAY 3

I was at work all day, so I only worked from 7p.m to 2a.m. But during my work time I though about how to have some gameplay implementable in less than 5~6 hours.

So I decided to add a "slender man" which follows the player with a "flashlight". he could pass trough trees and stuffs, and he is always following the player.

By the way, I didn't do any of the 3D models, I found them on https://sketchfab.com, I don't know 3D modeling, and I didn't have the time to learn it at the same time.

So this is what I did when I came back home, implement the enemy and his behaviour, aswell as all lights behaviours.

Funny thing, and I didn't think about it before but lights are post processed in Unity (aswell as many engine I assume) and I couldn't easily get how much light there is in an object. To keep it simple I just calculate distances between player and all lights and make him loose if he was too close.

I also added music, sounds and a menu quickly. such UI/UX, wow.

Conclusion

My main goal is fullfilled, because I learned a looooot about 3D and post processing in Unity. And I could use thoses knowledges in my WebGL class !

At the same time, I'm a bit sad, I want to work in the industry as a game design and this game has a very poor gameplay, I was too focus on programming and stressed about time that I forgot the most important.

I'm still proud of it, proud to have finished something, and proud to participate at ludumdare !

Feel free to tell me if there are english mistakes and don't forget to check the game :wink:

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!

ARRRRRR!!!

'Ave ye e'er wondered what ye should do with a drunk'n pirate?!

E'er sat on ye poop deck ponderin the great masses o' booty ye could loot from a shite-ton o' floatin' debris?

Want ye some slick arse simple control scheme that makes ye feel like a hardcore pirate type?

Does ye like truly freakin' awful music recorded on an iPhone at 3AM and rigged to create random funnery?

GET SOME BOOTY LOOTIN!

OK, nuff o' that...

I made this solo for the Compo, and it turned out really damn slick IMO. Give it a whirl if you're looking for something fun to play :)

PC and Mac builds.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/booty-looter

(Talking about https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/too-much-money-earning-simulator )

This jam I didn’t have much time, so I had to make something really easy and fast to programm. Here are some “tricks” I used:

Trick #1: One variable

Game is tile based and each tile has only one variable: Money.

Trick #2: One State

Each tile has one state: "Which building is it"

Trick #3: Two Events

Each tile has two evens: 1. Passive: happens every second. 2. Overflow: happens: when tile has too much money. (special action)
- Few money – no chance of overflow; - Lots of money – 10% chance to overflow; - Way too much money – Will definetly overflow;

Trick #4: One interaction

The only way to interact with the game is to click on a tile. Each tile type has it’s unique action

To Recap, here is a sample info dialog

This means that Mill1 tile will passively cut forest tiles and when it has too much money, it will upgrade to better mill. (Which is worse for you). Hovewer you can prevent it by clicking on it, which will decrease the money of this tile, but give you more money.

So what now? Well, I can define each tile using a table (Spoilers):

• name: just a name and unique identifier
• sprite: a sprite name x.png in my resource folder
• ofMin: when tile reaches this amount of money, it might overflow
• ofMax: when tile reaches this amount of money, it will overflow
• onClick: What happens when you click the tile
• onPasive: What happens every second with the tile
• onOF: What happens when tile overflows
• toolTip: text that is shown when we hover over the tile.

Hey I'm looking for games playable in browser! To start it off here's mine: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/too-many-chooks

I've really came in the festive spirit on my stream today :D Come and look at the new Christmas theme while I play your LDJAM Games and critically review, judges and rate them! :D https://www.twitch.tv/jacksendary Hope to see you guys there for a cozy evening with lots of awesome games :D

hEY gUYS tHanK YOu All for Rating My gaMe. Still need a LOT MORE TO Reach 20. So Please PlaY anD RATE and COMMENT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.

have fun zapping....

Play Here:- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Kcj-oIjaCnzJKilPMBineyJNPq5dwd7g

Watch here:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8C_AOT1wXo#action=share

As I have already said, I'm working on a more elaborated version of my ATARI-like arcade game, Greed Mania (this one here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/greed-mania ). I added some stuff, calibrated a bit the difficulty and asked for an artist to make a box art for it. Here is the cover:

There is also the back part, but it will reveal too much (hihihihihihihi)

I really, really, REALLY get waaaaaaaay to excited with these things. Really.

Cheers!

(Art by: https://twitter.com/f5kn)

Play Drunk Santa on PC or in your browser here!

Hey!

This time our team tried to make a game as fast as possible. We didn't have much time but really wanted to make a game. We decided to make a product with simple gameplay mechanics, simple goals and, as you could expect, simple graphics. These hand-drawn style arts turned to be very stylish. We are happy with what we made.

If you want to try out our game you can find it in the link below.

Good luck, have fun! :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/drunk-santa

:pick: Hi! My game Cavern Breakout needs just 8 more ratings! It's a platformer where you build platforms with materials you collect. But be careful! The more materials you have the more difficult it gets!

If you haven't played it already, please give it a try!

It's my first game, so I'd like to get as much feedback as possible!

PLAY IT HERE!.

:grinning: Thanks!

:grinning: Also, if you have a game you want me to play and rate, tell me its name and I'll give it a try!

Help Saving the FatMan by controlling the boat and The Physics

I hope you like the game :)

Please give me a feedback if you played the game :)

Play the Game Here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/fatmans-fortune

Play the Game Here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/fatmans-fortune

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/zap-the-zombies

Here's my page. Please do comment and rate my games and DO post YOUR GAME link !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8C_AOT1wXo

Hey Ludum folks,

my game just need seven more ratings. Please help me to make it :) I will test and rate some games tomorrow. If you want, leave me a link to your game in the commments! :raisedhands: Thank you! :slightsmile:

In case you missed it this is my solo entry of this jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3EyWksKge4

Although it has no sound fx I'm really proud of the result :smile:

You can play the game here :joystick:: https://gerigames.itch.io/diet-time

And you can vote it here if you feel like it :whitecheckmark:: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/diet-time

Help me keep Billy well fed and healthy! :apple::grapes::cherries::lemon:

Doing a youtube comp later

Also don't watch this one...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENw1GKw331A

Game Jam Page here

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

Do you enjoy watching Adult Swim at 4am? It doesn't matter. You have to defend the kitchen from the cooks. There are too many of them!

A single round of the game generally takes about a minute, as you climb through the weapon progression and the cooks grow to an overwhelming population.

If you are interested, Mac & Windows Builds are hotsted on Itch.io which is linked through my project page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/too-many-cooks-1

(This game is based on the "Too Many Cooks" Adult Swim short film. As such, this is a tribute to that film and no profits will be made from this project.)

As I had so much fun putting together a timelapse for Ludum Dare 39, I thought I'd make one for my entry in Ludum Dare 40.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnli8MzLtOY

Hope you enjoy the video, and please play, rate and comment on the game - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/rebel-call

Thanks,

@SeanNoonan

Ludum Dare revealed to me this simple fact -- players don't like to spend time reading stuff in your game. No matter what it is -- game intro, prologue, tutorial, or even super important npc dialogue. THEY. DON'T. READ.

Especially during game-jams when a lot of games need to be reviewed to get those sweet 'Ratings given' points.

So, the secret is:

- Skip button is a must for any long/optional text in your game.

There are some skippable comic pages in our LD40 entry as well:

Everyone love comics... r-r-right?

I know there are could be some exceptions, especially for RPGs and text-based quests.

Drop your link in the comments and I'll check it out!

Come play and rate my game aswell!

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

My Ludum Dare 40 game Shape Invasion has a logo that looks like this:

and the game's entry page has this picture:

This post is supposed to show all of you the creation of these images, from what they ORIGINALLY looked like, to their final versions. As I thought that I should show you all what happened. So let's go through the buildup from start to finish.

THE LOGO

I originally started drawing the logo in GIMP, as this:

I then traced the picture in Inkscape, making it look like this:

I loaded this picture in GIMP, and I colored it, and included some shapes as well (and removing the black line at the top), this became the final image seen above.

ENTRY IMAGE

This was the most interesting (and tedious!!) picture to create. I opened up Blender and rendered this picture:

I then traced it in Inkscape, like the logo, producing this (I also made Jake's head bigger than in the render):

I went back to Blender, rendering this:

Traced it in Inkscape (with render):

And without the render:

I then inserted the background into the image, and after painstakingly cleaning up the picture (getting rid of gray/white spots) I had this final picture:

And that's it! That was a quick runthrough of how I made the logo and entry image. Hope you enjoyed this post :)