This will be my second game jam and my friends first game jam. This is the first LD jam we're entering. Super excited! :smile:

Round 2 was worse than Round 1 if that's even possible, except for the theme "Making Connections".

you can only move or see, not both -1 - Another theme based on the game being annoying to play.

Magic, but at what cost? 0 - A little bit better than straight up "Magic," still too vague.

Alchemy -1 - Too specific, gives me no ideas.

Darkness is your friend 0 - This could be interesting but could get boring

Gameplay described by the title of a song -1 - Would be better if it was just "Gameplay described by the title" and you had to play the game using the title as instructions.

Ancient technology (LD 36) -1 - Humanity has lost hope :confounded:

60 seconds 0 - Many things could relate to 60 seconds in interesting ways but this theme would probably just be used for an in-game time limit.

Fragile +1 - A lot of things could be fragile.

Corruption -1 - I have no ideas from this.

Making connections +1 - My personal favorite theme so far; both "connections" and "making" could mean a wide variety of things. I have so many ideas from this.

Floating islands -1 - Voting authorization check :honey_pot:

Mythology 0 - This could be interesting but would get boring as all of the games are built around some kind of mythology.

Each playthrough builds on the last +1 - I don't have a lot of ideas from this but it could be very interesting.

It's not a bug, it's a feature -1 - A cheesy gimmick that would be used to make a bunch of crappy games justified by the theme.

Decay +1 - Decay can be a lot of interesting things.

Limited resources -1 - Way too vague, describes maybe 50% of all games.

Yep, while I am bad at making things at such tight schedules, I gonna try, yo. Does not hurt to do. I have some ideas I could try, and things I never tried before... Like Unity :thinking:

It's been ages since I've been able to actually do a solo jam, with other commitments and such. Still pretty busy this weekend but I'm going to set aside some time for this. Going to be my 7th solo jam if memory serves me right. Seems like only yesterday I did my first

Good Luck everyone!

Hello! Myself and a friend are looking for an artist to help complete our team for LD43. We are two programmers who use Unity. This will be our first LD, but not our first game jam. If interested, you can find my email on my profile. Thanks and good luck to everyone!

Hey everyone, I'm a longtime visual artist but fairly inexperienced with coding. I'm determined to do my first solo jam and make a platformer in Unity this weekend, and I'm so excited to get started!

It's time to rise up gamers. We've lived in the shadows oppressed for too long. It's time to take up arms and show those bureaucrats who's the real boss.

Gonna be cranking out my first Ludum Dare this weekend and hopefully I can get my stream to work on twitch! I'm gonna be juggling this plus taking care of my 6 month old son, let the fun begin!

For the past 3 events, either work or family have conspired to prevent me from fully participating in the jam. No longer! This time, I am committed to making a finished game.

For those who will use a universal game engine to develop their games, I highly recommend them to build a Mac version. We Mac users don't want to miss the chance of trying these impressive and amazing ideas!

Game of life/psychology. Dessert game - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floatingisland(dessert) - might just be used as backdrop to the actual game. Game with old American cars. You could even do a life in a toilet simulator... (rofl)

Betting there are loads more ;) Have a nice day :)

Is it me, or are there really the same themes in final rounds for like 2 years straight? Floating islands, Decay, Alchemy, Darkness is your friend, It's not a bug it's a feature, Control the environment, not the player... and many more.

Good day everyone! Here's to hoping for another positive community event with LD43!

I've really enjoyed my experiences so far, creating some quirky little games that I'm very proud of (Honest Dan's Trout, Honest Dan's Clutter Damage, My Greedy Dog Steve).

Like the previous game jams, I'll be streaming the development process on my Twitch channel over the 72 hours. Feel free to come and say hi and share your progress during the jam if you're lacking energy or motivation <3

I will also be streaming my play testing of games, I streamed over 75 games last time round and gave feedback - this will take place Tuesday and Wednesday evenings (GMT).

Looking forward to the Jam! I started actively programming games last year and looking to see if I can keep up during the Jam :) If anyone has any tips theire willing to share please do!

I've just found this tool: https://assetforge.io/

The rules of the compo says that "Your game, all your content (i.e. Art, Music, Sound, etc) must be created in 48 hours."

And this tool lets me create objects by gluing simple premade components together.

So yes, I made the object ... but the components which it is made of ... is made by someone else.

Is this against the rules?

Im am so ready!!!

It's my first Ludum Dare, and I always read about "starting small" and "cutting in half your idea". But I fear - if I will make a very, very simple game, then it would not be interesting, isn't it?..

Another round of mostly awful themes. The only themes I enjoyed are themes suggested many times over and that I've wanted to use in the past, so great job with the creativity there...

I think it would be very beneficial to have a cat theme, why? i don't know i just think it would be beneficial.

It's my first attempt at the Ludum Dare, and my second attempt at a jam ever ! I can't wait to start !

I have a strong background at coding but very little skills at making music and drawing. So the only game I submitted to a jam was text based. But I really want to use 2D for the Ludum Dare. Have you got any advice ?

That sounds like the most boring thing I've ever heard in my life, but I know some people are very crafty and interpret the theme in interesting ways. If that did get picked, what kind of game do you think you would make?

Same as with the first round 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.

• Corruption as one worded themes tend to goes too far, but it's a topic I can get behind, even though it'll be hard to vote on.
• Making connections take it socially, take it mechanically.. take it however you want and it can make for a good theme for variety of people.
• Each playthrough builds on the last bit persistent roguelikeish sounding but here's me hoping LD crowd will be creative
• Decay I like the concept of time having detremental effect on objects, relationships etc. Same worries as with corruption.

Ancient Technology I'd vote for if it wasn't already done. Feel like most people would go back to that and take too much inspiration from it.

Gameplay described by the title of a song - it could be very interesting :)

Time for my 11th LD! Done every single one since 33, and all but one have been in compo. My previous best is overall 11th in compo for LD42, so for my 11th LD, let's see if I can beat that! Using GMS2 for everything except sound.

I'm not optimistic about finishing this time round either, because I will be trying out a new engine and I suck at programming so this should be fun! I'll be doing Jam, using Defold engine with the lua language, REAPER for music/sound and Aseprite for terrible pixel art! Good luck to everyone and let's see what you lot come up with!

It's been a while since I've successfully completed a jam of any kind but I've decided to drop Unity like a sack of shit and go back to haxe for my gamedev stuff. So I'll either be using that or making something for my Arduboy because I love that little thing.

I saw a lot of very negative(where I at first also leaned towards) and now also one very positive sided voting. However I think its obvious that, if we vote too onesided it'll result in having less impact with our votes and therefore increases the chance that we get a theme which more people are unhappy with.

Because if for example the only three themes we vote positive on, aren't voted by many others, all the negative votes wont have any impact anymore(or the other way around). If I am misunderstanding this please correct me :D.

I dont want to say that we should vote on themes we aren't happy with or be super critical but I would just say we should think about each theme a bit longer.

This may not be as important in the first three rounds(especially if they are evaluated all together) but I think it definitely would be for the last round.

First time participating in a game jam. Only a teenager just now, but hoping to get a career in the games industry one day. Really excited to participate, even though my artist backed out... You'll just have to put up with some crafty programmer art!

I'm an assistant professor of computer science at Hendrix College, a small liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas. In Spring 2015, I taught my first course in game development. I decided to use Ludum Dare as the focus of our final project. This amazing community takes seriously the efforts of amateur developers as they are making progress toward personal goals, and offered exactly the feedback and encouragement I wanted to provide for my students. My first attempt didn't go exactly as planned, but I used what I learned to make the second time around much better, and I hope that my experience is useful for others interested in attempting a similar course structure.

First Attempt

Throughout my 2015 course, I taught my students with a standard curriculum, giving lectures and assigning labs related to using the Unity physics engine, animations, and 3D models, and programming steering behaviors and AI. However, when the final project arrived, they felt utterly unprepared. We had focused on developing skills in an academic setting, but the students lacked the necessary mental and logistical frameworks to get a game up and working in a short amount of time. Each team submitted a barely-working prototype and was somewhat discouraged by their efforts.

Second Attempt

Our first experience led me to make a large overhaul with drastic improvements for the Spring 2017 version of CSCI 370 : Interactive Game Development by adding in multiple mini-james, a more integrated asset tool section, and Twitch streaming feedback assignments.

Mini-Jams

The biggest revision I made was to introduce bi-weekly lab assignments explicitly focused on making small games, for a total of 5 games developed before the final Ludum Dare project. From the moment they were introduced to Unity, we talked about building viable working prototypes. This need for their submissions to be playable and fun was emphasized by setting aside time following each lab deadline for me to play their games and provide live feedback with often hilarious bugs being discovered. Students rotated through different teams for each game, so they could build connections across the class and share new skills. The theme for each game was decided randomly using an online noun generator, providing freedom to innovate within somewhat arbitrary constraints. As new coding skills were added, the requirements and expectations for the next game expanded. Where the first game only needed to incorporate physics, collisions, and mouse input, by the end it was routine for my students to incorporate custom GUI elements and NPC AI characters, and they had multiple solid experiences starting a game from scratch.

Integrated Tools

Second, in the initial course iteration, students gave small presentations on helpful asset tools, such as sprite creators, terrain editors, and music generators, in the two weeks before Ludum Dare. This turned out to be too late to be useful, and most tools were ignored in their final project work. In the Spring 2017 iteration, I scheduled these demos to be staggered earlier in the course, so that as our Unity skills grew, so too did their outside tools. This turned out to provide the right level of integration, and I found them refining their assets and improving their game quality at a much faster rate.

Twitch Streaming

Third, I increased the amount of Twitch streaming in the course. To introduce my students to the wider gaming community and give us all a common corpus of games as reference throughout the semester, the first assignment in the course requires the students to play at least 10 selected games from diverse genres and broadcast themselves on Twitch for at least one. In their broadcast, they needed to be reflecting on the elements of the game and how it was creating emotions, choices, and strategies for the player. Because they had already learned about streaming, I integrated a peer feedback element into each of their game assignment, where they would record a stream of themselves play each other’s games and commenting in the same way as their first assignment. I also modelled this behavior myself in class, streaming each of my lectures to Twitch to maintain them as class notes for further study, especially the days when I playtested their game assignments.

Because of these changes, my students felt poised to successfully create a game for Ludum Dare, and saw it as more intense, compressed version of our bi-weekly labs instead of a brand new experience. Their resulting games made great use of asset tools and GUI interactions and overall were were much more complete upon entry. Two teams even submitted their games to Ludum Dare Twitch streamers, and were very pleased with the feedback they received and the interactions possible with the wider community.

As for the final project itself, participation in Ludum Dare is only half the project, and students could still recover from an unsuccessful entry. I emphasized to them the importance of reflection on successes and failures in their weekend, which fits very well with the Ludum Dare tradition of making post-mortem blogs after submitting your game. Students then spent at least a week trying to fixing all the bugs and expanded their content to fully realize their game vision. I coordinated an opportunity for outside playtesting by hosting an arcade with our submissions in the student union building on campus, and welcomed others to play and provide feedback for their game. To wrap up their work, students made a video trailer for their game and demonstrated to the class their progress since submitting their game for Ludum Dare.

Conclusions

Overall, my students have greatly benefited from this Ludum Dare course integration. By being responsible to an outside audience through creating Ludum Dare entries and streaming on Twitch, my students showed increased engagement with the material and improved quality of work. I found that for this to be successful, the course structure must scaffold and complement the skills needed to excel in game jams.

Of course, coupling a course with an external competition can present difficulties. And it did! First, the timing of Ludum Dare is out of my control, so I needed to rearrange my syllabus once the dates were announced. Luckily our semester schedule overlapped well with the April dates for both course iterations, leaving at least a week following the competition for playtesting and revision. Second, in 2017, Ludum Dare 38 moved to a new hosting website. There were multiple server load issues and broken pieces, as the website was updated often while the competition was in motion. Game submission was delayed for a least a day, and the voting/feedback mechanisms were even further delayed. It was critical to be flexible in my expectations for the students when these outside issues occurred.

Finally, I have found it enormously helpful to participate in Ludum Dare myself alongside my students in the course. I gained first-hand knowledge of any issues they should encounter, with submissions or posting feedback, so I could better guide them through the process on submission day. Also, as I rated other games after the competition, I saw the benefits of the “karma” system, which helps others find your game faster when you have provided quality feedback elsewhere in the competition, and encouraged my students daily to rate and comment on other games. I have since separately participated in Ludum Dare 42, and hope to help another instructor deploy a similar course structure this spring!

Good luck to everyone this weekend in Ludum Dare 43!

Last Ludum Dare was my first game jam ever. I tried out LibGDX and I found it's a really nice way to get to know a new tool. Does anybody have a good tool or engine I could try out this time around. I saw a lot of people using Godot , is that any good It can also be graphics, audio, whatever helps me make better games.

Go go go 👍👍👍

I am so sad that I am going to have a maximum of 10h to work this time.. The date is just so bad for me. Hope that I am going to get at least something going ;)

Very excited for my 5th consecutive ldjam!

Tool: + Engine/Framework: Love2D 11.2 + Code Editor: vscode forever + Art (I make it, so it should not be called art): Aseprite + Planning and Brainstorming: Trello and my slow 2MB/s brain + Music: LMMS (with AudioThing's miniBit plugin) and a c99l r3tr9 radioshack midi keyboard from earlies '00 + Procrastination: Chrome with twitter and ldjam page logged in + Probably a lot of stackoverflow + Some coffee to upgrade my slow brain into 4MB/s + And spotify to make the development more relaxing (and more importantly is the theme is "Gameplay described by the title of a song")

I am in and ready to do Ludum dare again! We are looking for others to join our team.

We are an ambitious team who worked together in multiple game jams. We will be making a 2D sidescroller using Unity. We are mainly looking for:

Coder - good with implementing art and music assets, optimization, polish, or animations

Art - background, environment, and platforms artist

Design - level design, who knows how to add assets into unity and arrange game objects to make a fun game

Join us and let's make an amazing game and have fun!

https://crowdforge.io/jams/ludumdare/teams/2653

While we're still working on getting our next game ready for show (it's made a ton of progress but we're picky that way), we're taking this weekend off for another Ludum Dare. It'll be our 12th one dating back to Ludum Dare 30.

We'll be streaming our progress live - as usual - on our Twitch channel, twitch.tv/alphasim. We tend to get a bit goofy and sidetracked, but we've always come in on time so far. Good luck to everyone involved!

Well took this one a little more by impulse... so here we go ;)

I had to find something that rhymes with 3 ok? Anyway, last round is most certainly upon us. Optimistic Nutty is in for the scoop. Here we go!

*You are what you eat (-1): *Too specific. Eating is a very definitive verb, "eat", of course you can also interpret it as "consume" and while that does give you some more possible ideas to work with the more I think about the 'you are' part the more I realise that all this is is a "consume entity and get some parts of this entity" game mechanic.

*Sacrifices must be made (+1): * I love games where there is a certain struggle. FTL, XCOM etc. and this theme is basically that. Yes, it could be seen as vague but unlike some other vague themes this one is actually measurable, instead of '60 seconds' which is basically a tick box, with this theme you can actually determine how much of the theme you want to incorporate into your game.

*Everything Grows (-1): *More specific and garbage version of a previous LD theme.

*Inputs are expensive (-1): *There had to be an input based one somewhere among the pile. Here it is! I find this theme quiet dull and can already see pages upon pages of games where basic movement is punished.

*1 v 100 (-1): *Too Restrictive. Moving on.

*Evolve (+1): *I just like this theme. Yes it's vague I know, I know, but I just love games based around 'something' growing to 'something' throughout the game. So this one is just completely out of personal favorites.

*Work with your enemy (-1): *Nice paradox. If you're working with your enemies then they aren't your enemies. I mean, unless you're thinking of the time old "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" but re-read that quote and note the part where it says "my friend". Maybe I'm interpreting this incorrectly but in that case this theme is too confusing for me to care.

*Transform your surroundings (+1): *I will be honest. Originally I called this off because I was thinking of terrain or building games. But then I re-wrote the theme in my head using some synonyms and I came to, "Change your world" and then I realised this is actually a really good theme. Maybe a game about changing the views of the local people. Maybe a game about making anyone who passes you in-game a hot sexy boi. Loads of possible interpretations.

*Symbiosis (-1): *Don't exactly wish to do research for a theme, and I'm sure those who are less versed in English would want to either.

*Two connected places (-1): *Down this theme, go back to round 2 and up "Making Connections". Thanks.

*Mistakes are permanent (-1): *Again, pages upon pages of games that will be based around "haha, couldn't kill that one guy? Well enjoy having him screw you over for your whole play session". Uninspired, basically.

*Only one shot (+1): *Actually not a bad theme. Reminds me of "Running out of Power" since if you look at the theme literally, it would look garbage, but then when you start twisting the theme some other ideas may arise. I, personally was thinking of real life situations where you may only have 'one shot' such as job interviews, or life-changing opportunities. Me likey!

*Non-Traditional Magic (-1): *I really hope magic based themes don't just start becoming a trend. Anyway, this is basically "Inconvenient Superpowers" but wrapped under a different name... so... yeah!

*Self-Replicating (-1): *Not my taste. An, ok theme but doesn't strike me as very interesting, that's just my thought process though.

*Nothing is permanent (-1): *Just another dumb theme. Yeah. 99% of things in video games aren't permanent. That's not a theme, that's just a fact of games. This theme is so vague that someone could just make any old game and there would be a pretty high chance that it would accidentally work with this 'theme'.

*Symmetry (-1): *Meh. Too mathsy for me. All I can think of is building, architecture and maths and I'm not really interested in any of those things.

Surprised we didn't get Buttons or Colour anywhere in these rounds. Not complaining. Not complaining. At least some actually GOOD themes replaced them. Anyway, we're nearly here! Not long to go now.

Just cleared the weekend and got some vacation days for before and after. Pumped for another iteration!

Planning to do something music-heavy. Let's see whether those piano lessons paid off.

I love the music title theme. Fingers crossed!

The last day is all I'll have to make the game, which is good. I tend to make something complicated if I feel like I have the time.

Getting everything set-up. Updating every software and driver, getting the pizza number ready, cleaning my room. I'll probably be completely out of reach for that day so I'm trying to let everybody know: this is my day. Ludum Dare feels like a vacation time to me.

I celebrate the countdown almost as the new year's. From the moment the theme is announced my mind is racing. Then, the site gets too crowded. Update the page and I see desperate souls like me not knowing what to do. This time I'll have a long time to think before making anything though.

Never looked at the event as a competition but more like a celebration. I don't know any of you but we all come together and create lots and lots of cool games. I can't wait to see what you guys will come up with this time.

To finish this wall of text, here are my tools:

• 🎮 Engine: Construct 2. Been using for years and years. Trustworthy;
• 🎨 Graphics: Aseprite. Love this program;
• 🎧 Sound: Audacity + Chiptone. Probably going to record a bunch of random sounds around my house with my phone;
• 🎼 Music: BoscaCeoil. Cool simple program, although it's probably not going to sound like a music at all because I have no idea how to make a song.

Good luck, everyone!

To help drive pygame 2 development, we are making a game with pygame 2.

The whole pygame community is invited to take part in this one game.

More info. https://renesd.blogspot.com/2018/11/first-pygame-2-community-game-starting.html

Round 3 was terrible; I am now rooting for "Making Connections" as the winner.

You are what you eat -1

• Too specific.

Sacrifices must be made 0

• Eh.

Everything grows -1

• Gives me no ideas.

Inputs are expensive 0

• A bit too vague but I could work with it.

1 vs 100 -1

• Rather vague and would definitely lead to a lot of 1 vs 100 battle games.

Evolve +1

• "Evolve" could apply to a lot of things; I could definitely work with this.

Work with the enemy -1

• Too specific, games would have to have an enemy that you would have to work with.

Transform your surroundings 0

• A bit vague, could be interesting.

Symbiosis +1

• You could make a wide variety of interesting games with this theme.

Two connected worlds 0

• I don't really understand this one.

Mistakes are permanent -1

• Basically the same as the one below it.

You only get one shot -1

• In this situation you wouldn't be able to play again or the game would be a shooting game; either are terrible.

Nontraditional magic -1

• Really not any better than "Magic"

Self-replicating 0

• This could be interesting but doesn't give me a whole lot of ideas.

Nothing is permanent -1

• Much too vague.

Symmetry 0

• A bit too vague; could be interesting.

It "forgot" my text... wups ...

Is it okay to use standard fonts? or do you have to create your own?

Ok, I'm joining the Jam this time with a couple of friends but I can't seem to figure out how we all join. I have an account (clearly) and have created a game to join as a team leader, but the only info I've gotten was from this pop-up box. How do my team members add me as a friend on here though? It seems like this should be more intuitive...

A lot of repeats this round.

Two connected worlds:

Connected worlds (LD 30 theme) but even more specific.

Evolve:

LD 24 theme was Evolution.

LD43 is closing in and I'm in for a 8th consecutive compo. Can't believe it's been that many already. I remember when I participated in LD36 I thought, "great, that was a lot of fun, glad I participated once but probably won't find the time to do it again". Yeah right =)

I'm just checking my tools now to ensure everything is running. Made a low poly character in Blender that I am rigging and animating (that part is super importance to practice prior to LD for me as it saves a lot of time remembering everything on game day otherwise). I am also making a track in Cubase to ensure all works as planned there as well and no surprises with the software when it matters.

I'm often in Unity anyway so that seems to be a stable environment too.

Here's the low poly guy I am making:

And you can listen to a draft of the music I am making here: https://soundcloud.com/imphenzia/imphenzia-astro-draft (This time it happens to be trance which I haven't made in about 2-3 years for one reason or another)

This is what I do the week before LD starts. I can highly recommend playing around in the software that you plan to use during LD.

Wishing everyone best of luck and a great event!

I'm looking forward to seeing if I can actually finish my game this time. I'll be using the Unity 2019 beta and (probably) paint.net/Gimp for my graphics.

I'm ready for this Ludum Dare challenge once again for the third time. Hoping to be more organized this time. Ill use Unity and visual studios as well as paint.net.

My son and I are going to make a game for the Jam this time around. Should be fun.

I'm going to using an engine called Monkey because I'm familiar with it. Fireworks for graphics. SFXR for sounds. Probably Tiled for maps or something. Etc.

Maybe just HTML/CSS/JS depending on the game.

So this time I'm going to try to make something with RPG Maker for the competition and I have to ask because I wasn't able to find an answer on this:

Are we allowed to use scripts made by other people? Because they can vary a lot: They range from simple effect assets to scripts for making cutscenes. If anyone has previously used any would you mind sharing what's considered "okay" and what's considered "not okay because you didn't make it" ?

Hi Guys!

Our team is joining LD43 :). We had a lot of fun doing LD42 and hopefully it will be the same thing this time around! We also recently updated our previous game if anyone is interested in playing it and giving some feedback :) Link to the game: https://auxiliarycarry.itch.io/littleshop

Look forward to a twitch thing

First time here. I'll join with a friend, and we'll use unity. Looking forward to this! Best of luck to everyone.

I like Lua so I think I might use Love2d instead of unity2d like I originally planned. I don't know though. For sprites I'll probably use gimp and for sound I have no clue.

Whew.

I'm, again, very neutral on most themes. I really like the one about nothing being permanent, and the transform your surroundings one is super cool!

I'm virtually talentless and Red Dead Online is out this weekend but dang it all I love game jamming. Best of luck to all!

I don't know why, but I've somehow completely forgotten about Ludum Dare - even after having talked about it and shared some plans with my sister just this weekend.
Going to have a go anyway, though we'll see how well things go with only two days of prep work.

Tools of choice are probably going to be;

• KDevelop / Vim
• GIMP
• (Audacity)
• (LMMS)

Might just grab some royalty free audio and skip the judging on that though, don't tend to be very good at sound design.

And the language / toolkits will most definitely be;

• C++ 17
• CMake
• SFML

Going to try my best to not go overboard with the lower level stuff as I usually do, no need to write it as a generic engine with an LD game inserted after all.

Put a couple of more hours of practice in Blender to rig and animate. It's past 2am and I have work tomorrow, and alarm clock will go off in less than 4 hours. Why am I still up? And why did I even make a video like this when I have no idea how to keyframe dance moves? :) Happy prepping!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHXZBiD3igI

3 days 0 hours 0 minutes

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!

It's almost time, time to stock on energy drinks, time to keep the neighbours up with music all night, time to enslave my girlfriend to do my art for me.

As usual, here's my "I'm in" post...

_Tools_:

• Unity2017.4.1 - Engine
• Visual Studio 2017 - IDE
• Language - C#
• Art - Sai/Photoshop
• Health status - About to drop in 2 days

Last LD my submission 'We Need Space' got great feedback, I went solo as usual and pushed myself to prove I could do better than my previous 'attempts'. Now for the first time I'll be working with someone close to me and pushing her and myself to do even better!

Good luck my dudes and dudets.

I have no words for these themes. I'll let you argue with me down below.

Just a small feature request: When I go to http://ldjam.com the website is "not safe", so I've to manually click in a button to go to "secure website", wich is https://ldjam.com Can you guys automate this?

I'm in. I also did the keynote address this time. I have 14 LDjams under my belt wow. Where did time go!

I'd describe my game-making style as "OH NO I SPENT TOO MUCH TIME ON GRAPHICS AGAIN". But hopefully I'll make something fun :)

I couldn't get an artist on the team this time either, so it's just veteran engine and backend programmers :( I'm used to Unity and resort to making stuff out of boxes/cylinders/etc. I've got some experience with Maya but I can't make anything too artistic. I'm always wasting shitloads of time doing placeholder textures and meshes, either in Unity itself or Maya.

Do you, guys, have any recommendation for improving programmer 'art'? :) The improvement should be mainly in the production plane (time to make) but also possibly in the visual.

"Learn Blender" doesn't count, it's too late for that.

What are you, fellow programmers-without-artists, gonna do? :)

Gonna give this a shot and I'm gonna finish this time! Got a nice office space, caffeine and no distractions. :)

I can't believe it will be my 13th Ludum Dare. Even so, it's still fun to do. I am kind of addict.

Create, build, and have fun everyone.

This time I'll be solo.

I'm gonna give this a go for the first time. I started coding about 6 months ago, and feel like doing a challenge, any things i really need to know?

Since I'm mainly a coder, and not much of an artist, I've been messing around and doing some art to practice for this LD! (all these sprites are 6*11)

I'm in for the Jam ! 2 of my buddies will join me for this event ! It'll be my very first gamjam :)

Just to be sure : to join the jam, we just need to upload our game before the end ? Do my Friends need to have an account on this sites too ?

Oh boy, it's my first game jam ever! im not used to do programming stuff but i have experience with gamemakers so we'll see how it goes. Right now im thinking about simple art style so i wouldn't spend a lot of time on it Soo... Good luck to everyone C:

Game Engine: Unity 2018.2.14f1

Code Editor: Visual Studio Code

Music: Bosca Ceoil

Sprites and UI: Adobe Photoshop

3D: MagicaVoxel

Sound: Audacity & Sfxr/Bfxr

My second LD, yay! I participated in LD30 and I hope the theme for this LD is not going to be about Connected World again :)

Compo, UE4, Cubes as characters. Some Blender and FL Studio, just for fun.

I know how to finish the project, that is a nice skill. But now I want to try to make something that looks and sounds good.

Feeling super excited. My first game jam ever. I will try to finish the game. Started prep. Brushing up coding skills and just animated walk cycle for a pixel Mario:-$

I will be using the following software-:

Unity Gimp for 2D assets Blender for 3D assets Visual studio Bosca ceoil magicavoxel(never tried it though so, may be)

Wish you all a great jam!!!!

I dont know if you care or not :D But i tell you.

Software: - Game Dev: Unity 2018.2 (and Rider) - Design: Aseprite mostly (Photoshop if i need some high res images) - Sound: Bfxr / Famitracker - Music: Famitracker / boscaceoil (or LMMS) - Concept: Notepad++

Also i create a Folder Struct everytime where there is a "inspiration" folder. That folder contains screenshots or something that i inspirate from other games or other pixel art styles for example :)

If time runs too fast up and you need music - opengameart.org is your friend. Look for the public domain assets but be fair and opt-out audio.

So i wish you all the best :D

I know you all were in depression since we disappeared... But i'm glad to announce that we're back, and we'll make an awesome game! Stay tuned!

I have my Unity on the left, VS Code in the center, and Discord on my right.

Just going to document what tools I will be using this go around. I will have others on my team, but here is my side of everything (coding and technical work.)

Game Engine: Unity 2018.2.17f

An interesting note here, I am using the lightweight pipeline.

Version Control: GitHub

IDE: VS Code

Basic Image Editing: Paint.NET

Good luck to everyone!

Yaaaay! Joining the next DL! Can't wait for it! Also, I could use some technical info: is randomly generated music ok for the compo? Like the one on this website: https://www.fakemusicgenerator.com/

Oops I clicked the post button and [do]n't know what to say

We are here again!!!

This time we will (try to) use pygame to make our game, posting updates here and on our official birb-social-network account (DeadBodyOutline) - probably something on the individual accounts as well (rogerzanoni | mdkcore).

Also, a lot of beer to ignite our brains (a.k.a. beerstorm).

Good luck to all of us!