I was on the phone about 18 minutes ago, discussing the start of December, and it brought me to a realization: what if my flight is before the 4th of December NZST deadline of the Jam?

Due to my far east time zone, Ludum Dare - and many other events dot dot dot - are centered around a different time of day than they are in their native land. In this case, Ludum Dare 43 starts and ends on 1PM of the respective days. That makes sense.

This also means that Ludum Dare's Jam spans the territory of four days when you live here, without actually changing its length. Interestingly, that means a start time of 1 PM on December 1st, and a hard finish date of December 4th. That also makes sense, it's no stranger to me.

This year, I have a very important, quite expensive flight I must take to go live in another country for a bunch of weeks, and it's right after the Ludum Dare. That's... wow, look at how well it fits.

Then during the phone call I go and check what date my flight is, just in case.
It's December 4th. And I have to leave for the flight very early in the morning. Uh oh.

So, if I were to go with my original plan and join the Jam like a safe-player, I would lose more than 13 hours of game development time, sleep requirements for flight included. That's approximately 20% of the total period given to make a game in, should I choose the Jam. Rather than pick the easy version just to get props for something easier that I wasn't even able to put my full power into, I have decided to put all my efforts into the maximum-props, maximum-credit, most prestigious achievement I can seek: The Compo, Ludum Dare 43.

I know the Compo is really hard and that my 48 hour time limit might fail, but it just doesn't sit well with me to spend 58 hours on a game just to get it judged as though it were 72 hours of work. If it really comes to it, I'll submit my late Compo game to the Jam, but I will try very hard to make sure it never comes to that. The Compo is something harder than the Jam, officially taking more work in a smaller period of time. I imagine that produces some serious respect. It sounds like it would be amazing if I made a pretty good game in a shorter amount of time than usual and kept my head straight. Harder, but with greater bragging rights.
For me, I think it would be much better to try the hard mode and spend just 48 hours on a game that is viewed for exactly what it is: somebody who's never succeeded in a Ludum Dare solo before making a game with relatively low amounts of experience completely following the rules of the Compo... here goes.

I think this will be my 4th Ludum Dare that I won't miss (was pretty mad I missed the last one by about a week). It starts while I'll be at work so if anything I'll have a good amount of time to think about the theme. Super excited!

Despite having a pretty fun time last year but overall failing with my game and not knowing the system to get ratings I’m going to join the compo.

Last year I made a game for LD42 and I had a hard time but came up with a game me and my friends had fun with while still noticing the flaws. Sadly I lost the file to the game and it’s no longer up in my Itch.io page. I was planning on not doing the jam this time, or maybe even ever again after the experience I had while making the game but I realized, it made me make an actual game.

This year I will try harder, work longer and try to complete a better game than last time with my experience I’ve learned from a long time of working in the engine during the past 3 months. So I will participate and try to get a better game than last out for this jam!

My software: Engine: GameMaker Studio 1.4, an old engine but the only one I’ve ever comepletely learned very well. Art: Krita & the built in editor. Krita is a great software I’ve been messing around with for a while. I’m gonna use the built in editor for place holders and maybe, hopefully not, the final build. Sound: Sfxr, my room, and audacity. Sfxr is great for getting my sound effects down but I can make better sound effects with objects from around my room and editing them in Audacity

I wish you all luck in your adventures in this LDJam and hope you and I can all get our games out!

Best of luck, Grey

I have a bit of insight into "Darkness is your friend" that might make it seem a bit less frustrating than it does currently. I'm not gonna try to change the way anybody thinks or say that it's a "Great" theme, and I certainly understand why people don't look fondly at it, but just so we're covering all bases and know everything we should...
The theme doesn't necessarily force a specific game mechanic. If it said "stay in darkness to survive" or "you can only move when inside darkness" then yes, instant minus 1 from me. Thankfully, however, there's a subtle underside to it. If darkness is your "friend", so to speak, what does that limit your gameplay to? At face value, probably a lot, but since we're talking about what your friends are and not what your style of movement or abilities are, there is a lot of room for making connections that weren't originally there. Example:
"Darkness (uncountable noun, easy to take non-literally) is your (for the player, the character, or all characters?) friend (reinterpretable noun, part of many different proverbs, can mean a reverse-hindrance to gameplay but very easily to a literal friend with NPC or story-based significance)"
A sentient refraction of missing light is your companion and ally
Jump from platform to platform and use the shroud of darkness as solid bridges and weapon/defense methods

This is why the theme may be just a bit misunderstood. It sounds like something about a weird puzzle mechanic where you gotta avoid light, but logically there are a lot of possible scenarios where it's not. It could be anything ranging from a survival game about being a pillbug that thrives in damp, dim areas of soil under a plant, to a branching-decisions story game about how you're being assisted by the forces of darkness and literally Satan himself. Darkness itself is such a poetically broad word, as well, that you could quite feasibly end up with a game about depression, or a perfect excuse to make a really grimdark story.

So yeah, I'm not gonna tell you how to vote, but I think everyone should know that DIYF isn't narrow, it's actually quite open.

Second try. Jam. Alone. Will try to publish this time. Probably using Twine.

Picked up some numbers during the voting and to me.. it seems that either Making Connections or Break the Cycle might be ahead. This is (still) my first GameJam and I have only been fiddling with Unity for around half a year - and only in my sparetime. A couple of things I thought about - do you guys have a set game type even before the theme is finally announced? (Building game, Top down shooter, small strategy, fps..) or a couple of candidates - On the whole 2d/3d decision - I suspect you have a preference up front?

Furthermore.. I'am a bit worried about the technical issues from last time around - It sounded like a lot of people had issues - how soon before the deadline do you start uploading? Do you upload an intermediate build (just in case)? What failed? was it the description part of it (on ldjam) or the external site (whichever you chose to use).

Sorry about all the questions - it's just that... I only have one goal for this first jam - a successful upload and hopefully... a ranked game.

I am so excited to take part in my third LD! My results are better with every game, and i also got new computer to work on so I expect to be in at least top 50 :D (especially in audio category). Good luck everyone!

The dispute between different opinions during theme selection is always inevitable. In my experience I found that there are always two types of creators:

1) Coders - These people focus on the gameplay, they don't care much about the visuals or story, they simply want to challenge their coding skills. So they are happy to have a theme that creates a coding challenge for them like "You can use only one button".

2) Storytellers - These guys will make a story even out of pure technical themes. They focus on the mood/art of the game and their mechanics are not that innovative. They prefer open minded themes that are not too strict so they can use their imagination as much as possible.

Neither of these people are bad they are simply different.

Is there a list of real world gatherings for LD43 somewhere like there was before?

Anyway, I will be hosting one outside of Nora, Sweden. We are 4-8 people, and if you want to join you can get in touch!

If you are hosting one comment below and I'll keep this updated until we find a more official spot.

Real World Gatherings

• Sweden, Nora - 4-8 people planned, space for more, contact jsmars@gmail.com if you are interested.

Two days until LD 43, can't wait to start this amazing challenge ! ;)

I'll be jumping back in for this compo. This is my 4th compo, and I intend to use my Super Play game engine.

Hello all of you wonderful people! I'm so excited for this LD, I can't wait! I did not get to participate in the last LD, so I've got a lot of jamming to catch up on this time.

I'll be using: * Custom engine built in JS * Aseprite * Audacity * Garageband

I'm looking forward to trying your games!

This is our 5th Ludum Dare and this time we're bigger than we've ever been before. We're a group of students from the RheinAhrCampus (RAC) in Remagen (Germany) and meet regularly to learn about game development, create games or just discuss ideas. We have a lot of new members for whom this will be their first game jam.

See you at LD43 and have fun theme voting!

After years of being fascinated by LD, and just game jams in general, I've gotten permission from the wife and am finally in! Using Unity, Audacity, Photoshop, and Bosca Ceoil.

This is my first time alone. I am not good at English because I am Korean.

Good luck, everyone!

혼자는 이번이 처음이에요. 한국사람이라서 영어는 잘 하지 못해요.

행운을 빌어요, 모두들!

Same as with previous rounds whatever sounds ambiguous and novel without going too wide gets +1. I don’t do ‘0’ otherwise we’ll end up with a compromise no one likes.

• Sacrifices must be made gives a few varied yet managable ideas just from reading.
• Work with the enemy sounds fun, open with a sound direction.
• Mistakes are permanent likely will end up with a lot of reverse-roguelikes, where you build up handicap over time. In more optimistic perspective I see this genre-less, talking about life, giving space for less-machanic savvy designers.

Already let myself go in the previous round so it was a no-go for the overly wide themes.

Hope theme will be fun this time. My main priority will be actually finishing the project though...

I'm in! Solo again. There are some decent themes IMO, and here's to hoping that one of the ones that I perceive as 'decent' gets voted in! I'll be using Gamemaker, Photoshop, ASEprite, LMMS, Audacity, Maya (maybe), and anything else I might need.

It's been jumping in my head to try to build some kind of weird asynchronous multiplayer... so maybe I'll attempt that.

Already participated in 3 jams - i feel like it's time for COMPO though. It will be really hard - but i wan't to do it anyway :)

Tools: * Unity * Photoshop and/or Pyxel * MagicaVoxel if i decide for 3D (i would rather keep it simple though with 2D - no time for modeling) * BoscaCeoil / Bfrx * Audacity

I will try to keep it simple and not overdoit as i always have tendency for making too much irrelevant stuff...

Wish you all great jam and finished games in time! See you on the other side!

PS. You can check out my previous entries here: https://ldjam.com/users/bartosz/games

I've dabbled in game development here and there for roughly the past 4 years but only got into it full-time earlier this year. Good friend of mine recommended this to me and so here I am! I shall become coffee's bane in 2 days!