Hey! This is my 5th consecutive ldjam, first of all I want to thank @pov for continuing with this excellent jam, my first game "Jave and the Neural Networks" was horrible but with the help of people's feedback and time constraints (this really helps you to find solutions in less time and find alternative ways to create games more quickly) now I released a full game Unpacking and my last ld entry "Pecto" is getting tons of positive reviews. So I want to share some tips I learnt in order to make our games more professional and polished!

Release the tips:

Make games, not manuals:

In this play+rate I've found lot of games (less than 40%) that show you a manual larger than a rocket blueprint:

I made that in my first entry:

And I had a real bad time seeing JupiterHadley wasting more time reading all my junk text instead of enjoying the game

^ Conclusion:

• I bet you one of those sun stones that you don't need more than 3 buttons (without counting wasd, mouse and space if needed)
• And also I bet you some diamonds that you don't need so many mechanics to make a solid gameplay
• Think about an ingenious way to develop a gameplay that explains it self (in buttons and mechanics), is what I've done with my last entry "Pecto", is just a dungeon-crawler card game where you move with wasd (or arrows if you prefer) pick cards/attack with 'E', this is explained each time you want to do it:

You click on the card and see this menu:

There is not need to open up again the entry page, and the info displayed on screen is just probability that you can just skip.

• I dropped most of manual games because I am not native english speaker and I got tired of being all the day reading rules that I will forgot in 10 minutes in a language that makes me use more energy to understand
• And also, as the next point is called:

Keep it simple

• As I already said, make a simple mechanics that shows, not teach. Do not show lot of information on screen nor the page of the game.
• Also you should think that there are more than 2,000 games out there (just in this jam) therefore your game should be enjoyable in the first minutes, you can introduce "arcade" mechanics to hook the players more time or decrease the overall duration. And probably you can see JupiterHadley finish your game!

Make it attractive

We eat from out eyes and making an attractive page/cover image is the first step to hook a player. + Put images/gifs/videos on your page and avoid text one more time. Again, I found some games with ton of info instead of showing their game and other ones not even adding a cover image. + Now once you got a player, it wants to download the game...

Make your game accessible

• With incredible pages like itch.io, gamejolt, newgrounds (if you make HTML distribution) some people still host their games on mediafire, dropbox & stuff. Please, try to host it on itch.io if you can, it will give you visibility, accessibility, lot of people (me included) use itch.io desktop client to try the games quickly and accessibility to you, the developer to upload the multiple distributions more easily, in itch.io you have butler, a cmd tool that helps you to upload binary patches in your builds
• As Skyrim, you should port your game to all things you can, most importantly: HTML5, sometimes is just a waste of time waiting to load and having x10 worst graphics than desktop version, but also sometimes this can give you a huge players base, Windows, MacOSX and Linux, yes, there are ton of gamers in linux and they would thank you if you let them try your game natively instead of using wine.
• Ok, so now someone installed your game, probably it took a long time to find the "Download" button on dropbox or closed lot of ads in mediafire or just downloaded it from a decent game platform, now...

Make it attractive in-game

You've made it, someone got interested in your work and trust me, its an achievement! Now lets see some tips:

Feedback:

After years of gamedev I've found that the most important thing of a game is the feedback, you know: + Screen Shake (always in moderation) + Tween and Lerp, search a tweening library for your engine/language or whatever you are using (If you use Love2d rxi created flux, an awesome lib) and animate everything in your game, once I read an article called How to make your game look alive, I don't remember the article nor the writer but the name gave me lot of things to think about. + Sound please, please, please, add sound to your game, it adds 60% of the feedback you need and is easy as creating some sound with bfxr, freesounds, zapsplat + Actions should be addictive, with a good sound, animations and screen shake when needed. You will convert simple buttons like "Purchase Upgrade" or "Attack" into addictive Casino Slot Machines. I really enjoy pushing the upgrade purchase button. It forces me to push it more and therefore increase my playtime.

Just play 10 minutes of Broforce take note of everything that moves or make a sound, write in a notebook the effects you see when you jump/shoot/die/kill etc. And if you think you don't have time to do it, stop, you can do that and even more (Broforce started in Ludum Dare 23 (Tiny World) as "Rambros"), just try FTD: Fixin' to Die the animations are excessively professional but try to visualize it with red boxes, its still awesome.

And now...

Critics

• Take note about the critics of people, after all that is the main goal of game jams.
• Give feedback to other developer about details things you would in their games, I always write comments on games without visual/audio feedback.

And most important

• Have fun making your games, and learning new stuff!

Thanks for reading this little guide. Now I don't have more tips on my notebook, but I will try to update this post as soon as I learn new things or idk, create something easier to consume like a video (if you have any, inquiries, tips, love or hate to give me feel free to send me a twitter dm @therodel77)

If you have 10 minutes to spare, I would love to get some more feedbacks on my game, as I'm still missing 4 votes ;_;
I will rate the games of everyone leaving a feedback !

It's an improbable mix of Clicker, Minesweeper and Pachinko mechanics, inside a big dungeon.
And a lot of adventurers will need to die...

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/dungeon-clicker

Thank you for your time, and good job everyone o/

Challenge yourself to make a game in three days!

Geta Game Jam will be occurring between January 5th and January 8th! * Make a game either individually or in a team * Share your progress with our Discord community * Use whatever engine / language you like * Vote for which theme you would like to win

Who will give Steampirates of Bermuda it's final praise/kick/review needed to break that magic number 20?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/steampirates-of-bermuda

If you're still playing games, why not checking out Archibald's Snobbish Journey? Embark on Archibald's hot-air balloon and throw away his belongings to stay alive!

Play & rate!

I'm actually quite proud of myself: I managed to create a tiny game for my first Ludum Dare! Would be awesome if you could check it out.

Happy 43rd Ludum Dare everyone!

Getting your tooling to cooperate is a huge part of being able to get work done during a jam. Our team stumbled upon a tool called Super Tiled2Unity that takes advantage of the recently-added Scripted Imports in Unity. It's fairly new, and I wrote up an article about our experience on our game's itch.io page that covers how we dealt with Tiled maps, collisions, object properties, and more.

I would have posted the original here, but the formatting on itch.io doesn't translate all that well.

Check it out on our devlog page

I considered several feedbacks and updated the game.

Now with a level design more fun and adjustment in the controls.

Play and have fun =]

https://kaish.itch.io/atomic-lifetime-postld

SACRIFICIO Inc. is actively seeking for a sacrifice technician.

Skills required: You are able to fix and maintain an offering machine. The conveyor belts which compose it are a bit disordered. Your job is to put them back in place and send the future sacrificed straight to the death pit to satiate the blood thirst of the gods.

Be careful! One misstep and your offering will take to his heels!

Remuneration: To be discussed. But if the crops are bad, it’s on you...

Play and rate our submission here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/sacrificial-inc

Play it on Android for better controls! 📱

Thanks everyone for your interest and feedbacks!

Made an update to my little game Ethereal. I used the same loose framework of JavaScript code as my last Jams. I created a number of levels... but it just felt like I could make a few more!

So now, I've added some post jam content... six new levels, plus a couple of secrets. :) You can see more on the update to my game page:

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

Hope you all enjoyed it, I'm pretty proud of this one!

So about a day before the Jam, my computer broke down. Luckily, I was able to use a friends computer for the contest. However, I've unfortunately been unable to play anyone else's games for the rating phase and get karma (besides one or two online games). I'm hoping to get my computer fixed within two weeks, so if anyone plays my game during that time then I'll play theirs after my Computer is fixed. If you don't want to, that's understandable.

In particular, I'm looking for a rare type of comment; critical feedback. With a new post-jam version, I would love to know everything done wrong in my game.

*My challenge to you, is to rip my game to shreds. *If you can do that, then I'll tear yours apart with some of the most critical of feedback. Pass me any form of feedback, and I'll drop some feedback on yours. The better your feedback, the better mine will be! :wink:

*Web + Download: *https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/reactor-overdrive

I feel like everybody has played my game and I've played every other game in the jam. Maybe they should make the voting period shorter, right? Anyway, if you haven't played my game yet, here is the link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/alains-sacrifice

In just delete them you delete files to make the assets disappear. Fun right?! I am currently working on some puzzles, bug fixes and other things but in the meantime you can play it, or watch the trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPRk38sGu9I

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

Experience "Beyond", MouthlessGames' latest horror installment

Please note: this post contains some light “spoilers” for my game. If you have some free time, you can try playing my game without spoiling it at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/labrats

Last Ludum Dare, I decided to include several difficulty modes in my game. I wrote a detailed post about the experience. In short, the decision to include an easy mode came about after I had my wife play-test my game and realized it might be too difficult for many players. The decision to include a hard mode was there because I wanted the players to feel rewarded for finishing the game and the put on a challenge that would attract players to try several times until they manage to beat the normal difficulty.

This time, I did not have anyone to play-test the game. Also, since I really like narrative-driven games, I wanted my game to be longer this time, to have some time to develop a story, so I wanted instead of having different difficulty modes, to have the difficulty progress through-out the game.

Since the game I designed this time was a puzzle game with very simple mechanics, I was actually afraid it would be too easy. I really tried to create levels that would pose a bit of a challenge, but after finishing the game I still suspected people would breeze through the entire thing in a few minutes. So, after publishing it, I dreadfully waited to see some streamers play through it, and made a record of exactly how much time it took them to solve each level.

How much time does it take to "solve" each level in my game.

Here are the stats I collected from 22 streamers:

To summarize the data:

• Level 1: Takes around a minute. It is completely trivial to solve, but it takes a while to navigate the maze.
• Level 2: Takes around a minute. It is small and completely trivial, but there is some dialog and story which takes most of the time.
• Level 3: This one had a pretty high variance, with some streamers taking around a minute, and some taking more than 5 minutes. The average was around 2.8 minutes. Most players thought the progression to this level was good, but some complained that it was too complicated as a follow up to the previous trivial levels.
• Level 4: This was the most surprising one for me. I wrote this level as a pure "story level" - it was supposed to show the story of how the rats manage to escape the maze, and to be a gentle introduction to the "sacrifice" mechanic. Apparently, I've made this level much more confusing then I thought. The variance is really high - one streamer finished this level in less than a minute, and two took more than 7 minutes. The average was 4.1 minutes for this level. I'm pretty sure this level would benefit from a few more hints given in the dialog, at least to clarify what the objective is. Especially in the context of a jam, I'm afraid I probably lost many players at this level because they assumed there's no solution and the level is buggy.
• Level 5: This was supposed to be the first actual challenge after the sacrifice mechanic was introduced, but I wanted it to be a pretty light challenge, and in this I was pretty successful. Playtime was around 2 minutes on average, with very few outliers.
• Level 6: Was supposed to be a bit trickier than the previous one. I think it is a bit trickier, but it is actually solved on average faster than level 5 - around 1.6 minutes. Watching streamers, I think it's mainly because levels 4 and 5 did a good job in teaching the players how the mechanics work, so I'm pretty happy with level 6 being easier.
• Level 7: This was the most difficult level I designed for my game. As I said, I was afraid my game would be too easy, and really tried hard to make a level that would not be trivial, but that could be solved by reasoning and logical thinking, and not by random tinkering. I think in that aspect I was successful - the level is apparently pretty difficult (it took on average 9 minutes for streamers, with the longest being 20 minutes, and the shortest being 4.7 minutes). Watching streamers solve the levels, all of them eventually did it by reasoning through the level and the mechanic. However, most felt the spike in difficulty between level 6 and 7 was too high. I should probably have included another level or two in-between to get the players more used to the mechanic before introducing this challenge.
• Level 8: I wanted to finish the game on a dramatic note, so wanted more of a fast paced level. The level is also a "trick" where most of the items in the level are actually not needed, and you eventually finish the level mostly with the power of sacrifice. I wanted this to reinforce the story - you need to sacrifice everyone in order to escape. I think given those goals I was successful - the level is much easier and takes around 1.7 minutes to solve. The response to this was mixed - some players liked the dramatic end and enjoyed the trick of the last level, while some were disappointed by how simple the solution was and wanted more of a challenge like level 7.

Conclusions

• Obviously, the game would benefit from more levels. However, I was really stressed for time this jam, so I have no idea how I could find the time to build more levels. I guess the only way is to either team up instead of working individually, or just be more efficient in the rest of my work.

• Given the time limitations, I'm actually pretty proud of what I accomplished. I managed to make a game that's pretty challenging. Difficulty progression is not perfect but it's not too bad. I also managed to integrate a little bit of a story into the game.

• I started with a working prototype, using placeholder graphics and coding a very quick version of the game, so I already had the first level working on Friday night, and I had all 8 levels working by Saturday night. This worked great and allowed me to spend the last 1.5 days focusing on polishing the game. Here is how the prototype I had on Friday night looked:

and here's the same level in the final build of the game:

• I should have implemented progress saving. It should have been trivial to implement, and would have prevented many players from dropping off my game. I even had two streamers who accidentally quit the game in the middle and had to give up because there was no progress saving.

• Lesson learned from level 4 - I should be extra careful to make sure that the objective is always clear to the player. It's not fun to try to solve a puzzle if you don't know what your objective is. The level was apparently pretty challenging even when knowing that the objective is to escape the outer walls (I know this because many streamers still took some time to solve the level even after I've told them the objective), but at least then the players know what they're working towards.

• I did not implement a level selection. I'm not sure if I should have - I sometimes feel a level selection screen really reduces the feeling that the player should work towards the challenge of completing the levels. I know for games that have a level selection I tend to be a bit too eager to skip levels, eventually missing out on the accomplishment of working through the challenge.

Would be interested to hear your thoughts about difficulty, in general in Ludum Dare games, or in my game specifically. If you want to try out my game, please do so (and I’d appreciate any comments or feedback) at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/labrats

One last shout-out

Thank you to all the streamers who allowed me to watch them play my game! This has been invaluable for my learning experience. Here are the links to the twitch channels of all these streamers:

https://www.twitch.tv/muzzz29 https://www.twitch.tv/mikeinprinciple https://www.twitch.tv/erebuswolf https://www.twitch.tv/crefossus https://www.twitch.tv/morgstream https://www.twitch.tv/kindreddev https://www.twitch.tv/messinabrothers https://www.twitch.tv/anniehascoffee https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames https://www.twitch.tv/stovoy https://www.twitch.tv/mrjoshuamclean https://www.twitch.tv/yourbr0ther https://www.twitch.tv/syrapt0r https://www.twitch.tv/aggressivecombustion https://www.twitch.tv/bentglasstube https://www.twitch.tv/mknooihuisen https://www.twitch.tv/beanborg https://www.twitch.tv/saoigames https://www.twitch.tv/firesplashtv https://www.twitch.tv/casualgamesnu https://www.twitch.tv/miziziziz https://www.twitch.tv/tigerj

I've not had much time to be on due to finals but thanks to everyone who played my infuriating little coaching simulator!! I have 33 votes now which is MUUUCH lower than my usual but enough to count :wink: If you'd like to play still, you can here!

This post-mortem deals with the graphics of our entry for LD43, AS OF YET UNNAMED. This is a more in-depth follow-up on my Narrated Pixelart Timelapse video. There's a lot to say, so I separated it into three parts.

• Go to Part 1: The Process
• Go to Part 3: Conclusions

Part 2: Out-Of-Game Graphics

Cover Image

This is the first impression of the game. If a player finds your game through the Games section of the Ludum Dare website, this is what they see first. As you can see in my Narrated Pixelart Timelapse video, I make two versions of our cover image: one showing in-game sprites, and one with our entry's logo. I feel like neither option is a bad decision, which makes it harder to pick one, so I present both versions to @DaanVanYperen and together we decide to go for the version with the game's logo.

I also use a screenshot of the Games page and cut out a random cover image as a template. The cover image has two overlays on that page: the orange overlay in the top-right that shows whether it's a Compo or Jam entry, and the slightly transparent grey overlays at the top and bottom of the image that show the entry's name and which Ludum Dare it was made for. The orange overlay stays overlaid. I do not want to put anything vital in that part of the image. The grey overlays disappear when you scroll over the image, so that's less of a no-no area, but I try to keep the main art within those bounds. Now these dimensions change depending on how many thumbnails you choose to see per row, but I base this on the default setting of four, assuming people stick to that (I have no data to back that up).

Wait, Is My Ludum Dare Game Page Part Of Graphics Too?

There's definitely an element of design involved in how you present the game on your entry page. I do not claim to know for certain what works best here, but I find it's worth the time and effort to consider how to fill this page out. And the best thing? You can do this after the deadline.

Logo, Description And A Big Link

Since we have a strong landmark graphic with which to capture attention, I put the game logo at the top of the page. Then I add a brief description; a short text that humorously captures the idea of the game. Since the logo is pretty big, I use markdown to enlarge this text. I try and keep the description in a similar tone to the game. Don't promote your game about grief with a one-liner.

Underneath this, I add a big, hard-to-miss link to our game with the addition that it's a web client. The official link to the game is all the way at the bottom of the content we add here, so I do not want to make people scroll down past everything if they do not want to. And as people are more likely to try your game if they do not have to download it, the HTML5 tag is pretty vital.

Illustration in Moderation

After that, a single animated gif of the game. Something that shows off the game sufficiently. I used to post multiple screenshots before, but that just makes for more required scrolling again.

Control Yourself

Possibly the most important part of the game page is noting down the controls. Going into the game with some knowledge of how it is played is really important. A large part of the audience will only play the game for a few minutes. If they have to spend unnecessary effort learning controls that they could have just read at a glance, they might be more frustrated playing your entry. Our game can be played in two different ways depending on the platform, so I leave a simple instruction for both mouse controls and swiping.

Credit Where It's Due

Including this time, I have taken part in eight Ludum Dares. @DaanVanYperen has even more titles under his belt. This means that some people may recognize your name, which might in turn make them try your new entry. I add links to social media or other platforms that each individual wants to profile themselves with.

And To Complete The Hub

We usually make timelapse videos of our process, which I add to the game page so those who play our game and are interested can quickly access them. Finally, I do the same for the blogposts I have written, treating the game page as a landing page for everything we post in regard to our entry. These post-mortems, for example, will also end up in that list.

Next, I'll go over my conclusions in the cleverly titled Part 3: Conclusions.

I was reading through the comments on my game Sacrifice Knight, and I really enjoyed all the feedback and critiques, it's giving me lots of ideas on how to improve for next time. With that said I am looking for more people to play my game, and if you do, please leave a comment and critique it. I will try to get around and play your guy's games as well.

Check out the game page

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/sacrifice-knight

The Ancient Ones are pleased by your sacrifices so they granted us the permission to give you some clues about your mission.

Just some tips for you to make some things clearer:

1) Gather items for hidden lore (notes and red bags) that appears in the lair. (check the wall too ;))

2) You can run past a confused NPC using SHIFT to hide quickly.

3) Steps while running make noises. Squeaky doors make noises. Use sounds wisely.

4) You can’t run past a triggered NPC, so if you bump into him you’ll lose. Stay calm, stay cold blooded, think about a strategy.

5) NPC will be looking for you if you are spotted. Hide and wait for a while.

6) To finish level you need to kidnap a prey, put him in the cart and run away.

7) We’re sorry, but we didn’t have a time to give you an opportunity to save your game. Play it now and play it until the end.

8) Speaking about the end, the 7th level WILL surprise you, so try your best to play it and beat it ;)

That’s all for now, we can’t tell you more. Embark, hide and kidnap the poor souls! Let the Ancient Ones be proud!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/of-gods-and-rain

The Rain will last forever!

P.S: Check out our trailer too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpRulBnPH3s

This drawing is about the sacrifice of one man to the prince. See what happens next by playing to our game.

Have fun!