In Ludum Dare 43 some friends and I created a small game called Organic Harvest. You can play it right now! Let’s see how this highly praised game was made.

This game makes you think. Very emotional choice. — BloodJohn

The game is about a surgeon who has to transplant organs. Unfortunately there are not enough organs so you have to decide how to use the available organs, who to save and who to sacrifice. Given the theme was „Sacrifices must be made“ this seemed quite fitting.

Making of

The first day of the jam, a Saturday, started with brain storming as always. We didn’t have many ideas, or even good ideas. Luckily a friend was more creative and he suggested the idea of having to transplant organs. As we did not have any better ideas so far and it seemed like this was going the best we chose to take it. After about one hour of brain storming we got to work and started implementing the game.

This time we used a game engine, specifically Godot. Compared to previous jams where we used more low level game frameworks such as libGDX or Löve this proved to speed up development a lot. While we had a lot of difficulties to fight which would not have occurred with the other ones it was still a lot faster. For example having an editor to visually place items is worth a lot. Also being able to animate everything is very nice. And not having to implement the UI elements yourself…

After the first day on Saturday evening we already had implemented most of the important things like the mini game pictured above to connect the newly implanted organs. Most of the art was done as well. This meant that we had almost the whole Sunday to polish the game and improve all those small annoyances.

On the second day we finished the remaining features such as the mini game to cut open the patients (see below), being able to buy upgrades and improvements to the art such as animated fire to burn the unlucky patients. We then started adding sounds and polishing everything. For example we added an ECG to show the „heart beat“ (never mind that it keeps going if the heart is missing). The sounds are synced to the visuals and both get faster if the heart rate increases.

On Sunday evening we were done with the game. We even had a single background song! As we had to go to university again we considered this version of the game finished and were ready to upload. We also sent a demo version to the friend who suggested the idea to test it. He came back with a long list of stuff to improve… So we decided to use Monday evening to polish some more. We had to balance the cost of everything, the income of successful surgeries as well as the impact on the esteem and the speed of people arriving. And many small things such as improving the recognition of placing the blood vessels. It was early in the morning again once we were done. We now also had three more background songs. The game benefited a lot from this extra round of polishing.

Things to do better next time

• Create better music.
• Increase the scope of the game but keep the degree of polish. Doing a larger game as we used to do would be really nice.

Things that went well

• Finished the basic game quite fast.
• Spent a lot of time polishing and improving the game.
• Working in Godot was way faster than with other frameworks.
• We had enough time to sleep and eat well.

Conclusion

While we at first didn’t like the theme very much it turned out to be not that bad. We had a lot of time to polish the game and I think this shows. In the future I would like to create a bit a larger game again, but keeping the quality of this one. If you still have not played the game, you can do so now!

I would gladly rate your game(prefer HTML5 as i'm at work :) ).

If you are kind and have time, here is mine: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/life-in-the-trenches

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPRk38sGu9I

Check this game out

I have made a game about the end of the world and I am looking for other entries that deal with the subject. Kind of a trendy topic these days, if yours is related to this subject or you know some, please could you link to them in the comments?

For know I have only found Humanity Hero and The Dilemmnist.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/dev-jam

13 ratings on SITW! Help me get out of the zone of danger and rate the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/somewhere-in-the-woods

Hi all, that you to those who have already left positive and critical feedback to our game already, your comments will be helping us with our next game jam for sure, and any more will be well received :smile: We are just one vote away from our 20 vote needed, if there's anyone who would like to play our game and help rate us it would be much appreciated! Do feel free to link your game in the comments as well and we'll be sure to play your games too and share any feedback we may have :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/return-to-kreswick

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

Finally after 5 days of follow ups developing, we have pushed our game closer to our original idea. And we listen to our commmunity feed backs, and made it eazier, so enjoy it! Here are a few update notes: 1. All 4 levels can be accessed now. 2. Will enter safe house after a game. 3. Before any level but level one, you can chose three othere people to take with you( becareful, thoes who are left behind are left behind. 4. Better Musics! 5. Better Sound Effect! 6. Better Images! 7. Better StoryLine! 8. Better Codes!(let's give our coders a few credits

Come give it a try

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/i-dont-wanna-die

Which teammate🤕 are you going to sacrifice☠ next in order to save the others from the zombies🧟...?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/i-dont-wanna-die

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/i-dont-wanna-die

Hi there!

Today we are Play-Rating Ludum Dare 43 Games live on twitch! You want your game rated? Submit it to this form:

https://goo.gl/forms/DmttN0GhV8f8ARsq2

We will do Play&Rate-Streams on Monday and Wednesday for two weeks now: Plan is subject to be changed.

We would appreciate, if you'd also play and rate our submission:

I just finished the Mac & Linux builds, but I'm unable to test them. If someone could give them a go and see that they work that would be awesome. Please don't rate down if there is any trouble with them but let me know about the error messages, I will get it fixed asap!

Puzzle Kids Submission page

We were a little disappointed in the result of the game. We aimed really high and didnt quite hit our target. We learned a lot during the process of making the game though and thats what its all about.

the combat and animations dont have that polished feel like we wanted. If anyone has any tips to improve these I'd love to hear. This project was a big stretch for us but we had fun making it

I checked yesterday and my game (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/alains-sacrifice) has more than 120 ratings. Amazing!

My game about a centipede like creature who eats his own legs in a world with bizzare creatures don't have a lot of feedback.

Maybe because I didn't play other people's game too much as well. At first I limited myself only to web versions of games, but now I think I will try windows exes as well.

Give my game a try and tell me about your game in the comment and I will try it out as well.

I made my original game much easier for you guys!

Come and play it, find out whether you can made it to the end!

Later I would upload a video to show how to do it!

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

Do you have 10 minutes to spare?

Then you can play and rate my entry "Accept this Offering"!

Now with 1000% more support for touchscreens and mouse. It runs in your browser, even on Android!

Took the opportunity also to add some :heart: to the amazing Godot Engine, with which I made this game.

And also solved the most requested fix: show some visual cues when health changes.

Hope you'll enjoy it and thanks for playing!!

Please look at my game at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/maze

Work together wuth up to 3 other players to bring the great JumJum the sacrifices he discribes, before you become the sacrifice! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/all-he-can-eat

Are you an artist? :art:

Are you looking for a job? :spy:

Are you in a hard moment of your life and you can't say 'no' to any job offer because that would mean your instant death? :heart_eyes:

THIS is the opportunity you have been looking for!

You can be part of the most SELECTED GROUP OF ARTIST IN THE WORLD!

Interested? Check out the conditions HERE :arrow_right: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/together