You delete files and the game assets disappear!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/just-delete-them

Ever feel like a humble farmer being ruled over by a tyrannical God? Well now you can!

I made a timelapse of the development of my entry! Check it out!

We are very pleased to present "Consilium - A history of life and choices" for this 43rd edition of Ludum Dare.

In a world of limited resources, there can be no infinite growth. Will you promote innovation to the detriment of some or promote equality at the expense of progress? Use the elements to develop your different territories and forge your society in a limited time. Sacrifices must be made and decisions come back to you...

You can play here and rate there

This Ludum Dare I wanted to make something simple and have a lot of time for polishing. So I was thinking about making a platformer since I've made a platformer a few times before and even won the Jimjam with one recently (https://itch.io/jam/jimjam-2/results).

* Day 1 *

Since in my part of the world Ludum Dare starts at saturday at 3:00 AM, I didn't wait for the theme announcement and went to bed early. I woke up about 7:30 AM, 4.5 hours after start. LD webpage was already full of promissing progress. I started thinking and after about 30 minutes I got the idea. I decided to make a platformer where you are able to possess your enemies. I was implementing similar idea in one of mine unpublished games so this wasn't entirely new for me as well.

I about 11:30 AM I got prototype of basic movement and possessing functionality:

After that I started with a music - at all my previous jams I made music few hours before deadline or I didn't make it at all. So I started with that early this time. Music set the atmosphere so I made some fitting graphic elements. Music is inspired by the Sin City theme which gave me direction for graphics.

4:00 AM - first version of character with animations, tiles and simple lighting effect.

7:00 PM - playing with postprocessing effects (it's never too early for polishing;) and created background and a sawblade. It looked like I have Limbo mixed with the Super meat boy instead of Sin City :)

I fixed light occluders, polished tiles and the character. So I had everything for making a tutorial level

https://youtu.be/dg_HXc4XpBY

It wasn't even midnight of the first day. I got an idea of flying bird which you could maybe possess as well if I got time for it.. And this is what I had about 1AM in sunday, 2 hours before the halftime of LD.

https://youtu.be/vecr0DU51Qk

I thought I'm just playing with stuff because I'm tired and not making important features (such as shooting!;) But later it turned out that possessing a bird is one of the most surprising and memorable moment in the game - just look at some twitch clips, it's priceless - Elysia Griffin https://clips.twitch.tv/SingleTangentialKumquatArsonNoSexy?ttcontent=chatcard&ttmedium=twitchchat , - Neilrankin1984 https://www.twitch.tv/neilrankin1984/clip/BitterSquareDragonfruitNomNom?filter=clips&range=7d&sort=time , - Tim Rusick https://clips.twitch.tv/AmorphousRudeThymeAMPEnergy

* Day 2 *

Next day I felt tired already but the coffee done it's job :) Nevertheless I was stuck in polishing frenzy and despite I had no real level I made reeealy pretty menuscreen :) And also decided that menu needs it's own music!

https://youtu.be/ayINtl1X4Jk

It was 2:30PM already! So after that I had no time for recording progress, it was too hectic.. bugfixing, polishing, bugfixing and oh a level design and polishing, bugfixing... oh I need a shooting mechanics.. you can imagine :) Long story short, I fixed the most bugs on the list (not all of them though), third level is a bit sloppy but I made it in time!

You can play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/soul-traveller

Enjoy!

This time, because my idea for the jam was a puzzle game, I had very little intuition for whether it would be fun. I was terrified that I'd end up working on the idea for a long time only to find out it's impossible to make challenging / fun levels with the mechanic. So, I decided I'd try to make up some levels as quickly as possible so I could scrap the idea quickly if it doesn't seem fun.

I started by drawing some schematics for levels on my ipad. Here's an example of a schematic I drew, trying to come up with a somewhat challenging level given the simple mechanic:

It gave me some confidence to draw some levels, but it was still very hard for me to get the feel of how it would actually feel like to play these levels. Maybe the concept that seems challenging on paper will be too simple once you could actually play around with moving characters? So, my next idea, to avoid wasting a lot of time on coding, was to build a paper prototype. I cut little pieces of papers for the characters, keys, and locks, and played around with them. Here's the same level built from paper:

It was helpful in giving me some intuition, but eventually playing with pieces of paper became very cumbersome. So, I made the most scary decision - I will try to make an actual working game as fast as possible before the first day (Friday) ends, so on Saturday morning I could decide if I want to keep the idea or scrap it for a new one. Here is the prototype I had before I went to sleep on Friday (it's the same level as above):

Eventually prototyping was an amazing experience, and really made me feel how powerful it is that you could basically build a working game mechanic with unity starting from an idea in less than 3 hours. I later spent Saturday designing all the levels and story/dialog for the game, and then Sunday-Monday on polishing to make it feel more like a real game (or at least like a better thought out prototype). Here's the same level using the final code and assets in my LD submission:

I'd be really happy if anyone wants to try out the game, and would appreciate any feedback. Please check it out at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/labrats It's available on web, windows, mac and linux.

Do you like puzzle games? Then try Effigies - a solid puzzle game for 1337 with a minimalist aesthetic. You could be the first one who finished all levels. Please rate it - don't forget to leave a comment and I will rate your project too. I wish you the best ++

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/effigies

This is my ld43 game

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/its-yout-life-dude

any suggestion is welcome, even anonymous one :smiley:

thak you!

:)

https://youtu.be/btvw3ZD4gEw

Thanks to @BrainoidGames for putting together this awesome 50 second trailer for our LD43 entry!

Play the game yourself here (PC build and WebGL available).

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/the-vault

*Hey ! *

Come try our game !

If you play on web build, we highly recommend to play fullscreen. Embed unity player is weirdly stretching the screen causing UI bugs. Anyone with a solution for that?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/medic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNsjiSi_1mM

want to have some fun?

⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/S9-project

CROM is waiting for you to play his game.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/crom

(In all seriousness, we hope you'll have fun ;) )

Hi all! Hope you will have a relaxing weekend! :)

If you are looking for another entry to try please play our "game".

It's a peon scout simulator. You know from those in RTS games, early game. Just now you are not the commander, but the expandable one.

>> Play PeonCraft! <<

You're still on time to play and rate my submission, a turn-based puzzle about goals, problems and sacrifices called "Accept this offering".

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/wizard-malikens-spell-failed

There was a bug with zipping and choosing the needed files for the game. Now the zip archive is more than 80% smaller. A big thank you to the people pointing this out. If you want to try out a story driven game with good reviews, please try it :). The start is a bit hard, if you need a hint, there is a base64 encoded spoiler in the game description.

Actual Review:

It took me a while to figure out what to do with the first few items. [...] Immediately after that, though, the logic of how to progress became clear and I was able to solve the puzzles pretty nicely. I really like the world you’ve built here. The setting has a nice mood and the characters are a bit deeper than in the usual LD games. :) [...] Overall, a solid and enjoyable entry.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/plateformer-txt Platformer.txt is a game where you manipulate files to influence the state of the game and your avatar in order to complete the different levels

you can subscribe to this newsletter to follow the developement of the game https://tinyletter.com/Platformertxt

If you are looking for a game to play, try ours.

It's a short game about little bees trying to defend their castle. Amass a giant swarm and defeat yolo jackets!