Looks like our game Downgradius narrowly scored in the bottom 25% (out of 1044 total Jam participants). I was hoping for a rating around the upper-middle, but I have to admit I saw you all submitting A LOT of very good games :openmouth: and coming up with creative game ideas, considering that game-making is hard™. So y'all definitely deserve a pat on the back :thumbsup::blueheart:

By category:

I guess low scores for Innovation were expected, but I'm actually sad our Graphics rating was so low. I thought the parallax star background was a really good idea. I'm actually proud of the assets Mason created and my own "programmer art" would've looked MUCH worse :sweat_smile:

Humor: I guess nobody knows what an "Option" is in the game Gradius? And the pun title was literally 90% of the reason we even made this game :laughing:

The Fun and Audio ratings were the highest which I agree were the strong points of our game.

Common criticism:

• Too hard, dying on 1st level, hitbox too big
• Lack of innovation or "wow factor"
• Lack of polish: Bland graphics, repetitive music, repeated level

Check out the game page here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/total-party-kill

Results are in and Total Party Kill reached the 1st place in Overall AND Theme! Plus 2nd place in Fun. This was my first LD in ages and I didn't expect it to go this well! Thank you so much everybody!

If you still haven't played it, an extended version with more levels and bugfixes is available at Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/722211

This was my second Ludum Dare (my first one was LD42 with the game Pyramidion), and both times I had a really awesome time with the jam!

This time was definitely more stressful for me, but also much more rewarding. I wanted to write a short post with my results and my conclusions from this jam.

Results

I'm super happy with the results this time! I got top 100 in 'fun', which is the most important category IMO (other than overall), and top 100 in 'innovation'. Also, a great improvement in overall score over my last LD - up by 0.3 points over the 3.525 I got for Pyramidion last time. The only score that took a big hit over last time is graphics. Last time, I got a score of around 3.5, and this time it's down to less than 3.

I think the main thing that worked for me last time is that I had a very clear "ancient egypt" theme which made my graphics very consistent, but it was also an artistic style that was kind of easy to draw in a way that looked pretty decent:

This time, I didn't have such a clear theme for my graphics, and the graphics ended up being pretty inconsistent, with more realistic textures used for the backgrounds, but more "cartoonish" style used for characters and items:

The other thing that worked for me last time is that the game was much simpler, so I was left with much more time for improving the graphics. This time around, I had only around ~0.5 day for drawing all the animations, and much more time was spent on designing levels and improving gameplay.

My conclusions

• This time, I really feel motivated to try and publish a post-jam version. Mainly as an exercise for myself to try and polish the game more, making it a bit more pleasant to look at, but also just because I have many more ideas for improving the mechanics and adding more levels and I want to try them out. I hope to publish a slightly improved version that's also playable on mobile before the next Ludum Dare.

• As for my last game, watching and interacting with streamers playing my game was the most insightful part of the experience. I strongly encourage anyone who hasn't done this to try going to some twitch channels and submitting your games. I learned so much from this experience about what worked and what didn't work in my game.

• I don't think I'll manage to become an artist by the next jam, but I want to study the more polished-looking games in this jam and try to understand how I can get a more aesthetically pleasing game next time. There were many games I played that used very simple "programmer art" but still looked great.

That’s all. I had a lot of fun and I can't wait for the next Ludum Dare. Thank you to everyone who played my game! Even though the jam is over, I'm still happy for more feedback, so if you're feeling bored and like solving puzzles, please play my game and let me know what you think.

Got my placement for F R I E N D G U N! #2 overall (congrats to Total Party Kill!) #1 in the jam category!

This Ludum Dare was a delightful experience, and I really enjoyed seeing everyone else's interpretations of the theme.

If you're interested in my future work, I'm working on a long term tactics RPG project- I make development tweets here: www.twitter.com/hydezeke

Happy new year everyone!

Results are out, which means another cycle of improvement and reflection before LD44 in April!

How I Did

• Unlike most of my previous games, my strong points were Overall, Fun, Innovation, and Theme, all of which were around rank 20 or so. In terms of ranking, Master Key was a personal best in all categories except Graphics, Audio, and Humor!

What I Learned

• Puzzle games are fun to make!

• Tutorial levels and hints do a lot to improve the experience.

• I am capable of making a decent game. My strong areas have been graphics and audio in the past, with the actual game design falling to the wayside. This time around, I put much more focus on the actual gameplay, and was able to get 21st in Fun, instead of the usual 200th or so.

My Past Performance

• Here are my ratings, expressed as percentiles, for all Ludum Dare events I've participated in.

I'm really glad that Fishy Rescue got such nice score! At first I hated this theme but eventually I had a nice idea and managed to make something somewhat fun. It was simple, but I'm pretty happy with the results. Thank you so much to everyone that played it and I'm glad that you enjoyed it. This really made my new year's eve feel much better :)

Well here it is finally, the new year and the results. And both of them were amazing. Thank you everyone for having played Suicidal Knights and for whose who rated it. It was a blast! Hope you had a great new years eve and we wish you the best for 2019 ! See you for the next LD !

This is my best Ludum Dare result so far, and my first-ever top 100 rating! Delighted with those Audio and Graphics ratings as well, especially Audio since I'd convinced myself the sound effects sucked again. (2.33/5 for Innovation though, oof)

I'll have to check the statistics, but it feels like there were fewer entries this year? For some of these categories, I scored lower than LD42 but got a higher overall ranking. Takes the shine off things a little, but overall I'm still really proud of my performance this time round.

Looking forward to even better things in LD44, and I hope you all have a wonderful 2019!

I had a ton of fun making Astronaut's Journey, and now the holidays are over I'm looking forward to making a version 2.

Results are in, and they came out golden!

Considering I ran out of time to add sound, and there's a known instability at the final rocket stage, I think 33rd overall / 18th fun is bloody excellent. It also leaves me wishing I'd had just that little extra time to fix those problems!

If you're looking to follow along with updates, y'all can find me at Twitter, my terribly interesting blog, or Itch.

Don't miss out on participating in the 6th Geta Game Jam!

Geta Game Jam is an online event occuring between January 5th and January 8th. * Create a game in three days * Work either individually or as a team * Share your progress with our wonderful discord community * Vote for which theme you would like to be chosen

Interested? Come and join! 😁

I was going to post this a bit later in the week, included with my Post-Mortem (which I'm still writing) but with these results I HAD to do a premature celebration.

The trend continues I see. Once again the best results I've ever had in the Compo and this time by a WIDE margin. Making it into Top 50 for Fun is an amazing thought knowing that out of all, the game succeeds most at being fun. That is truly awesome :).

Here's a fun (pun possibly intended) progress chart as is tradition.

Here's a sneaky little tidbit at 2.0 ;)

(Yeah I've been working on a dialogue system)

As you can see I'm still in the process of re-designing the visuals. UI got a complete overhaul (Crew part hasn't been added yet which is why there's a little guy peeking in at the bottom), actual backgrounds are being added and soon I'll be reworking the particles. Also trails and lighting (so the lazors are more like lazors) will also be added. ALSO, all current sprites are going to be re-drawn, potentially with a new colour pallete as well (The current one is pretty limiting).

... Basically... I probably won't be done until Mid - Late Februrary; right around Birthday Time :D

Thanks to everyone who played and rated my game. The Post-Mortem is coming soon, but for now. Have a good day Commander!

WE WERE NOT EXPECTING THESE RESULTS! THANK YOU EVERYONE!!!

ResultsForLD.PNG

Happy new Year to everyone. With the end of 2018 the results for "Hyper Skater" were released.

I am not fully satisfied with it (but this is okay :)) as i expected some better votes in some categories - but if i look further and compare they are still great.

The Graphics and Audio are best values i ever had (also i don't make often audio for my games lol but i did this time again :)).

Overall they are okay.

What i really liked this times was the feedback (your comments) for the game. Many liked the game and there wasn't too much bugs as the last time :D

Nevertheless i plan to make a full game out of it. I know - I said this everytime but i think this time it is a great idea to do it.

I performed worse in most categories with this game - and ironically enough it seems that the less time I spend on a game during LD the better it scores =)

The speedrun competition finished at the same time as the LD43 voting and it was a very useful approach for bug testing. Four players in particular played between 100 - 400 runs each to set the fastest time during the past 3 weeks and when they found a multi-jump glitch they cut the time down to do sub-minute runs. This was the winning speedrun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P971qaGI3tc

This winning run made use of the multi-jump glitch, the suicide glitch (press R to go rag-doll, that I used during development for testing), the resource reset glitch (I forgot to reset resources to zero if you pressed "quit" instead of "continue".

Thanks to everyone for playing and rating Blót!

So my second complete Jam game, and first complete solo project has been rated. The results are middeling:

I'll be the first to admit that I agree that this solo entry didn't end up as good as last year's game, which was rated better too. That game, done with the help of a LD veteran, was more or less done after 2 days, with the third dedicated to polish. This year I was still working on the game late into the third day. I guess that's a lesson to take away for next time: Take that polishing time. I also noticed that even small bits of polish in terms of menu's or an intro of some kind can make an amazing amount of difference.

That said, even ignoring the polishing aspect, I'll also admit that this game felt less fun to play than my previous entry. As this game is based on an idea I have for the first "real" game I want to make, this is something to keep in mind. I may have to spend some more time working out how to implement this movement & fighting scheme to be more entertaining. That, or leave the game as a MVP that I'll just use as a practice run and give away for free.

So I don't really disagree with the ratings. I would have liked to see my Theme rating a bit higher, both because I overhauled my original idea for a game to better fit the sacrifice theme and because I kinda like it myself. That said, my subesequent rating spree has shown me that my "choose which skills to level down" idea wasn't exactly unique this jam.

Still, even with a mediocre end result, I am happy that I did manage to deliver a game within the deadline. My previous solo attempt for a last-minute compo entry was a failure. And since it appears increasingly likely that when I start working on my first big game project I'll have to work mostly alone, it's good to know that I can at least get some work done. I hope to get better work done in the future.

PS: Does anyone know where I can find the total number of rated games for comparison?

It has truly been an amazing jam, thanks to everyone who played and rated our game!

Here is a gameplay video:

http://youtu.be/JG6OZa0TRzY

A making-of video will follow - subscribe to the youtube channel if that's your kind of stuff!

http://youtube.com/Nyck0s

http://twitter.com/NyckosTweet

And Food Chainz did... Wait, 1st in Audio?!!

Seriously I never expected anything like this. My goal this time was just to finish a game. It's been about 6 years since I last completed a game jam without being at a real world gathering full of people to keep my butt motivated.

So that was really enough. I honestly never expected I would top rankings in Ludum Dare for anything.

The graphics score is of particular pride to me. Back when I started game jamming, my art was atrocious. It's been a long journey trying to improve it, so it's heartening to see... well, as solid number, saying people liked my art.

I'm rambling. Still kinda buzzing at the result. Thank you everyone who played and rated Food Chainz, and congratulations to everyone who took part!

thank's every one! one more time!

Thanks all for voting!

I haven't been able to play and rate many of the Ludum Dare games this time, so didn't think I would reach the 20+ required ratings, and yet I check and to my surprise I have! I'm so happy with these results! Thank you all, and see you next Ludum Dare! If you want to check out my game, it's called Ultimate Sacrifice.