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

Check out my entry for ludum dare 43, Tasty Blocks!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/tasty-blocks

Yo, I will review the first 4 games who comment on this post (as long as you have NOT reached 20+ reviews yet)

You delete files and the game assets disappear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPRk38sGu9I

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

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/i-cantle

We are looking for a new major for our army. Maybe you... Our scouts have noticed a big army, which is heading towards us. Everyone will not survive, you will have to make some choices.

This is our first Ludum Dare, so feel free to give us some advices :smile: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/the-last-outpost

PlayStore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.godotengine.castaways

For a time there was balance in the universe. Blaa and Raa were level and center, but is balance truly an ideal of nature? Perhaps nature in itself is spawned from chaos, and order only appears once dominance has been established.

Does a planet not revolve around a great sun?

Would a planet not greedily consume any outlying satellites that deign near its gravitational influence? Once heavenly bodies decaying in their orbits only to be engulfed in the flames of its hot hot very hot atmosphere!!!

After a weekend of slouching and debauchery this observer returns to discover a red wasteland. Raa has pushed Blaa beyond the bounds mortal reckoning!

CAN THERE BE A RECONCILIATION? CAN THERE BE A RETURN TO ORDER? CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG??

Can you survive to the end before getting captured? If you want to, you will have to capture enemy peices and use them to get across the maps.

Note: There is a bug where, when an enemy kills you, it does not show the capturing (you just lose). You are not dying randomly though :). I’m hoping to fix that in a later post-jam version.

https://youtu.be/o214-OrIhmc

Test Slash Rush : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/slash-rush

Documentia, the small world into your computer files.

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

Hi guys, I already have enough ratings but I would like to push my game Pyrrhic Victory a little bit further:

That's why I need more feedback. Precisely I would like to know if you think that after having been improved (a lot) this kind of game could be publishable. How do you think it could be improved, what should be added or modified to make it a publishable game?

Thanks for your help :-)

Fire Swept is a Fire Fighting Real-Time Strategy game! Fire it up and give it a shot! Please rate and review if you like the game. If you have any suggestions on the game, please feel free to let me know. I take all suggestions, feedback and critique seriously. Reviews will get your game played and rated in return.

Post-Jam Improvements - Improved Gameplay - Redesigned UI - Pathfinding - Unit training - Budget system - Four season time line with dryness effector - and much more!

https://youtu.be/Jjw7kg_Ae1Q

Play and Rate Fire Swept

The Mist

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

Available on WebGL, Windows and MacOS as Jam Version!

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

Itch.io: https://tpamir.itch.io/the-mist

Hey jammers!

I've published post-compo version of my game Soul Traveller.

It has better collision boxes, faster possessing + few minor fixes but basically it contains all you guys wantend in you great feedback! Except more levels unfortunately - but wait for the next upgrade, follow me here or on the Itch.io if you don't want to miss it.

You can download it on the itch.io: https://jhysek.itch.io/soul-traveller

Have fun!

Features - Platformer - Roguelite - Kill villagers to survive

Check out the game page

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

Or Go directly to the game

https://balgorode.itch.io/sacrifice-knight

Please give it a try and leave a review I enjoy reading all comments and learning from them!

Only with less health do you move at a decent speed!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/fuel-duel

If anybody wants to follow my development, follow me on Twitter @ThomasPadfield

Hello, LD jammers! I'll be recording another couple of "Phil Plays" videos for my YouTube channel soon. If you want your game in the mix, please submit it via this form:

► https://goo.gl/forms/BOlMLfafy2fbkEqF3

Thanks!

All in all, the 43rd Ludum Dare was relatively smooth sailing for us. The theme was a bit harder than usual (more on that below), but we had already decided on some things: namely the general art style. We knew we were going 2D with some anime inspiration, so we got off the ground with our ideas quite quickly.

At first, we played around with very concrete sacrifices but ultimately landed on a dialogue-driven mystery game. We really haven't made two similar games for a Ludum Dare, nor did we this time either. The more story-driven approach was a bit risky, especially since there wasn't that much time to dedicate on the writing, but judging from the comments so far it seems to have paid off. The short, linear nature and simple controls saved us some time on the programming side to concentrate on the story and actually even do a bit of testing.

Scoping and Art

We decided on having a small number of characters and locations early on. The art & storytelling style was inspired by various games, including VA-11 HALL-A, 2064: Read Only Memories and old text adventures. The final style we ended up with was something that looked nice and was fast enough to produce. In retrospect, the number of characters and/or locations could have been a bit smaller to save time to add a bit more animation and polish.

The story itself was basically Agatha Christie in space, with a dash of Firefly and A Long Way To A Small Angry Planet thrown in.

The reason the characters don't react to the clues you find is also down to scope. Having them react to one thing would make then not noticing another thing feel incohesive, so with the time constraints, it made for a more consistent experience to not have them react to anything.

Overall, the scoping worked out pretty well on both the development and the gameplay side. A short story that can be completed in minutes works very well in Ludum Dare where you're usually trying to play as many games as possible in a limited time, and most players got to experience the whole narrative.

Code

On the code side, a lot was relying on a very simple parser written from the ground up during the weekend. It was a quick and dirty solution, but it enabled me to concentrate on writing the dialogue as efficiently as possible. It's also handy that in a jam you don't need to future proof at all, so adding new features was only a matter of figuring out a new character to represent a command.

One of the riskiest features was probably the scorekeeping for the ending. I hadn't done any web programming in ages, let alone a WebGL trinket that called web pages, so there was a lot I had to either learn or relearn. Ultimately, it turned out the game couldn't contact the server from the Itch.io page (HTTPS vs HTTP), so I put it on my own server which also housed the PHP page.

I also regret not having time to implement a clue window, where you could view a summary of all the clues found so far. I actually wrote down all the clues and even started with the UI, but figured that I didn't have time to come up with a good enough UI and implement it.

Other Games

I have played around 40 different games so far and my impression is that this was a difficult theme. There have been plenty of good and excellent games, but few with really interesting takes on the theme. A very common take seems to be giving the player a bunch of actions and then removing them one by one, or just having some resource as a visible character on the screen.

The theme seems to have inspired a bit darker games than usual, which is not really surprising. There was some very interesting narrative takes on the theme, which made me think of substituting the Humor category with more general Story. It would still include humour but would serve as a broader category where the more serious story-driven games could also compete.

A short list of some of our favourites:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/zoe-and-the-polypantheon

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/total-party-kill

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/keyboard-twister

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

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/silent-whisper

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

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/burn-out

Here's the link to our game if you haven't played it yet:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/room44

SPOILERS BELOW THE IMAGE, I RECOMMEND YOU PLAY THE GAME BEFORE READING

So, there was the ending.

Many have correctly deduced that there wasn't a concrete confirmation on who the actual murderer was. That was completely intentional, even if we knew it might not work out, as Ludum Dare seemed like a fit place to do some experimentation. Also, I think the way you're not sure if you did the "right" thing makes it feel more like a sacrifice.

Here is the score as of 10th of December (around midnight in Finland):

Total votes: 138

Kate: 39

Fiona: 40

Mack: 30

Lucifer: 29

What's interesting here, is that during the first few days, it seemed clear that Lucifer would gain the most votes and Fiona the least, but not the results have practically flipped. There were no changes made to the game during this time.

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

>> Play PeonCraft! <<

Short post for today as our artist is unfortunately without internet. Like usual, we have a whole backlog of posts dedicated to the development of our latest entry in the works to be posted soon! That being said, we wanted to thank everyone that has rated and commented on our latest Ludum Dare entry, Super Sellout so far! We're humbled by everyone's reception and we have already broken our last entry's ratings in this first week alone.

Thank you all for your support so far! :tada: It’s incredibly humbling to get all of this support from the community and we’ve been trying to do our best with reviews too, trying to cover as many entries as possible while micromanaging through getting material done to post, hosting server events, and handling school work. We’ve been seeing some great entries, and have been trying to always give as much accurate feedback as possible!

Speaking about server events and feedback, our team at Whales And Games has a discord server of our own! It's a mixed bag of sorts, serving as a home for developers, people who enjoy games (look at one of the rooms and you’ll mostly find Smash and Warframe there) and creative people! We’d love for you to join us and share your own game there, and help us make the community more diverse!

Of course, if you prefer something more focused on Ludum Dare, we absolutely also have to give a shout out to the community-run Ludum Dare discord server.

Whichever server you decide to join, we hope to see you there and we look forward to playing more of your games! Cheers! :whale:

Hello everyone !

Since it's allowed, I worked a bit on my compo game to fix the main gameplay broking bugs ! So now it should work perfectly ! I add better resolution support as well so it's easier to play in browser ! (and it dont crop anything if you dont play in 1920x1080 anymore)

PITCH :

Sacrifeature is a ~~(buggy)~~ little arena-shooter, but at the beginning of each game you have to choose wich abilities you are going to play with.

HOW TO PLAY ?

• Move with Q and D
• Jump with Space
• Aim and shoot with the left click of the mouse.

You can play it in browser here : https://thob.itch.io/sacrifeature !

Of course your feedbacks and advices are really welcome !

Please play and rate my game at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/maze WARNING: if you use Firefox it won't work! Sorry:(

Help Archibald make decisions on his snobbish journey! What will you sacrifice: a hamburger, a gold bar or the teddy bear from his childhood?

Play now!

Download

Ludum Dare game page

For my very first Ludum Dare, feedback and ratings are appreciated! I'll try to rate your game if you rate mine.

Happy 43rd Ludum Dare everyone!

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

Fire Swept is a Fire Fighting Real-Time Strategy game! Fire it up and give it a shot! Please rate and review if you like the game. If you have any suggestions on the game, please feel free to let me know. I take all suggestions, feedback and critique seriously. Reviews will get your game played and rated in return.

Post-Jam Improvements - Improved Gameplay - Redesigned UI - Pathfinding - Unit training - Budget system - Four season time line with dryness effector - and much more!

https://youtu.be/Jjw7kg_Ae1Q

Play and Rate Fire Swept

We listened to your feedback and just released a bugfix which fixes to small (game breaking) bugs with big impact...

If you like to, just redownload and try the game.

Also check out our Twitch-Play&Rate-Submission form for you game: https://goo.gl/forms/XU10c1MVnCjQ3dYX2 Next scheduled P&R-Stream: Wednesday Evening!

The road to Omsk is long and dangerous, good thing you have a singing company with you and a couple of fresh horses. A dark growling pack of wolves is closing in on the trojka, who do you sacrifice to give the others a chance of survival?! Give it a try here:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/trojka test_render.jpg

Come experience a typical viking snowball fight. Play it here in HTML5.

https://youtu.be/248mYJpBMec

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to move into a shwanky medieval castle? Well, the new Duke of Walesbury has done just that. While the old castle is a lovely sight to behold, he's found the subterranean floors lacking the same charming demeanor of the upstairs. Particularly one annoying feature, there are spikes jutting out of the ceiling, walls and floors. That just won't do. Before the Duke can let his Cocker spaniel, David, run free and invite guests over he is going to have to disarm these spikes.

Happily, he finds that the residences of Walesbury are more than happy to assist their newly appointed lord. And so, the Duke invites them to help with the disarmament. The only problem is that his plans mostly center around using the spikes rather than removing them. Will you sacrifice your fellow peasants in order to help the Duke make his house fashionably morose, but safe?

Play Hazardous Clean Up, my entry in LD43, to find out. The video above is a short post mortem I put together for the game. Nothing necessarily insightful, but it provides a little glimpse at how and why the game became what it did. Ludum Dare was incredibly fun this go around, and I sincerely hope that I will be able to participate in future ones as well.

LD Game Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/hazardous-cleanup

Play Here: https://owlandjackalope.itch.io/hazardous-cleanup

play and rate my game! It would be greatly appreciated! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/melancholy

I've been looking at past Ludum Dares, and the themes in the final round seem oddly familiar. :thinking: Take Ludum Dare 38, for example:

• Dark / Light

• You control the game, not the player

• Parallel Dimensions

• Pausing has Consequences

• Keep it Alive

• Two Colors

• Island

• A World in the Skies

• You are Alone

• Inconvenient Superpowers

• On / Off

• Death is only the Beginning

• Start with Nothing

• One Tool, Many Uses

• Everything has a Cost

• A Small World

Any ideas on this?

The music from Dark Roads is now available for listen on Soundcloud!

If you haven't played the game already, check it out here!

Hey! If you're looking for a blend of shooter with a moody atmosphere, Night's End might be for you. I've been struggling for over an year with blending those two characteristics and I think I've come up with something pretty interesting.

If you have some time right now, please take a look at it ;) the link is: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/nights-end

Cheers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6UgxL6JdGw

I'm continuing to work on LD43 entry Blót. This version isn't released yet - I will release it after the rating period of LD43 has ended so it doesn't get confusing. In this video, I have added vertex shader animation for trees when they are struck (Fortnite-like bobbing =) and the tiles shake when you land on them and when lightning strikes. I have also changed the sound to some of the thunder sounds that you can get from my Universal Sound FX pack.

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

Fire Swept is a Fire Fighting Real-Time Strategy game! Fire it up and give it a shot! Please rate and review if you like the game. If you have any suggestions on the game, please feel free to let me know. I take all suggestions, feedback and critique seriously. Reviews will get your game played and rated in return.

Post-Jam Improvements - Improved Gameplay - Redesigned UI - Pathfinding - Unit training - Budget system - Four season time line with dryness effector - and much more!

https://youtu.be/Jjw7kg_Ae1Q

Play and Rate Fire Swept

Hey everyone we have made some quick fixes to the game! now the profiles at the end of the game move slowly and if it's still to fast we added a scroll bar at the end :3, and some other fixes! if you haven't played you can do it here and for rating go here. Who will you save???

I Am Bird is now playable in your browser! Check it out and drop some feedback for it here!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/i-am-bird

Can you break into the Vault and steal the Golden Mullet? Come and find out! Be careful, using your own Nodes destroys it for good!

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

Game-play example...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAQJ-HWYpZE

I made a timelapse of the 48 hrs of dev for my compo game Pigheaded Pirate. I interspersed gameplay snippets at various development stages, which I hadn't seen before! Hope it gives a sense of how the game went from concept to prototype to shipped.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQG4oNJIwn0

🐷 Check out Pigheaded Pirate 🏴‍☠️

You delete files and the game assets disappear. Fun right!? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPRk38sGu9I

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

Usually I only really ever make games for Ludum Dare Jams but now I still have the game making itch like I used to :D So I'll be working on a few projects between now and next Jam :)

Anyway, here was my submission for this one. My cannibal simulator.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/transit-terror

You are a research robot. In the middle of a day, these cute aliens (aka. ginions) crashes their spaceship. You can eighter wait for the storm to calm down and left them to their death.

Or you can help them by repairing and charging their ship. But the thing is you need to sacrifice some of them for batteries and upgrades.

Here is the game

Test Slash Rush here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/slash-rush

With @antoine-vion

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/they-are-coming

Made this for the Jam all alone!!

My third LD and i think it turned out fine even though i didn't have a lot of time

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/its-just-space

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

Howdy! Yesterday I posted part one of a series of indeterminate length about technical aspects of my LD43 entry. Today we move on to part two! 💃

For my last few jams I've been focussing a bit more heavily on graphical fidelity than I did this time, as you can see below, but that doesn't mean there aren't things to be said about the kind of approach I went for this time either! c:

You can play my LD43 entry F.O.U.R. here!

Character variation

Since F.O.U.R. was going to be a kind of narrative (but also puzzly!) detective story I needed a cast of characters to interact with in the little town where the game takes place.

This is where the simple cubic art style for the game was first decided upon, as I figured it would save a lot of time to have all the characters consist of feature-poor building blocks, LEGO style!

Concept

I did my initial sketch on paper:

Thus there were five segments to vary: hair/hat, head, eyes, torso and legs. This was quickly modelled up in Blender and a script was set up in Unity for selecting different colours, models or dimensions, depending on the segment:

Implementation

If you read part one, this all comes back to that one grid-based texture used for everything in the game. A reminder:

I added a numeric property to the shader (the one used by all of the 3D objects in the game!) to offset the horizontal UV position on a per-instance basis that allowed me to move the UV's of a segment along the x axis on the texture to a different colour on the grid. This made it easy as pie to vary character colours by changing the values exposed in the inspector by the script! 🥧

The property at the top of the shader:

_OffsetX ("Tex x offset", Range(0, 7)) = 0.0

Since the grid on the texture is divided into 8x8 squares, I limited the property to that range. Then I simply applied the offset when sampling the texture:

tex2D(_MainTex, IN.uv_MainTex + fixed2(_OffsetX / 8.0, 0.0))

Since this time I didn't do anything too fancy with custom shaders otherwise, this is just a default Unity surface shader, so the names of the sampler and other variables retain their default names.

Finally in the C# script I just updated this property in each renderer's material based on the values set for each segment:

``` mrendHead .material.SetFloat("OffsetX", (float)mcharacter.colHead); mrendTop .material.SetFloat("OffsetX", (float)mcharacter.colTop); mrendBottom.material.SetFloat("OffsetX", (float)m_character.colBottom);

if (null != mrendHair) mrendHair.material.SetFloat("OffsetX", (float)mcharacter.colHair); ```

Since bald characters were an option, the hair/hat had to be checked first. All of these colour variables were unsigned integers in the range of possible colours, which were not necessarily eight for each segment; skin colour could be one of the three first squares on the first line of the texture; leg colours one of the three on the second line; hair and torso colour any of the eight on the third line. As is clear from looking at the texture, the eyes had their own spot on the texture.

Details

Speaking of those eyes, I made it so that characters will blink in their 3D conversation portraits just to make them more dynamic!

I did this simply by animating the scale programmatically at random intervals and again by moving the UV's so that the eyes would turn completely black in the blink state.

This also added a level of detail to the larger portraits, since I made the eyes invisible on the characters in the actual game world since I thought that looked better. With the exception of the main character, since the eyes help the player see what direction the character is facing (whereas all NPC's are always facing the camera)!

Next

We'll probably talk about those very 3D portraits in more detail next time. Thanks for reading! c:

https://youtu.be/vGe6gjNfMhI

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/dark-villagers

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

Please drop me a rating and feedback if you have time! I'm here to improve!

For those who had problems with the controls: you were right! There was a technical issue. I've uploaded a fixed version on itch.io (but I also provide the original version).

The new post-jam version will be updated from time to time. Now it contains the popular claim: different skins for the astronauts.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/cosmo-buddy/

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

You delete files and the game assets disappear. Fun right!? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPRk38sGu9I

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

We have made a trailer for our LD entry.

Please take a look and comment if you have any advice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6M-wG5JGBk

Money Run https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/money-run

Here's some of the best I've played so far (out of only about 40+ - so many more to play!)

Eternal home floristry by @marineteta and @deconstructeam

Such a beautiful game, and the only LD entry that's ever made me shed tears (I get set off easily, so perhaps a bit of a diminished compliment).

Sacrifices must be made by @danman9914

I want to eat this game. A simple card game with some really clever rules, with a fantastic presentation.

Scapegoat by @linear, @thomas-kresge, @angiekatneko, and @aurel

Play for the professionally sung theme tune, stay for the clever puzzle mechanics.

Cyberdisc-0 by @almax, @dale-smith, and @hi-im-greg

Whilst gameplay is a bit primitive, it more than makes up for it in style and polish. Look at that backdrop!

Threadpoint by @marksman117 and @mike-inprinciple

This game knows how to go really really fast.

They are coming.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/they-are-coming

This is a descripion

I still do not know. Somebody please tell me

Somebody please tell me

You delete files and the game assets disappear. Fun right!? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPRk38sGu9I

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

Find the right animals to sacrifice them to the ancient god by using his hints.

​The ancient god Uguun is angry and there is only one way to appease him again: Sacrifice the animals he chose to him! But he is too angry to communicate clearly so use his hints and find the right animals. Beside that you have to care for your farm and the food production of your village. Good luck!

Tiima’s Sacrifice is a puzzle / strategy game.

Play Tiima’s Sacrifice

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

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

Hey!

I only have my company laptop today, so I can't run any downloaded binaries and can only play web games.

Please post your games in the comments so I can play, rate and review them!

If you feel like also playing my game, I’d be of course very happy if you do, but don’t feel any obligation :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/labrats

And that dream is to have my game played in a "best of ludum dare 43" kind of youtube video! (And ending up in the top 100 jam entries but i don't want to ask for too much, hehe ^^)

So come check out my game "Not-So-Nicer-Dicer"! A difficult puzzle platformer with light story elements! (BTW: If you leave a comment it's highly likely for me to check your game out if you still need ratings or just want feedback :) )

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/not-so-nicer-dicer

You delete files and the game assets disappear. Fun right!? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPRk38sGu9I

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

I decided to keep developing my submision and I need a LOT of ideas. Very little has been implemented so far so if you would like to try out my game do leave your suggestions/ideas for new content :D! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/we-fight-together

Here's 20 videogames I've rated for #ldjam. Savage rating! After all, all indies are expected to make AAA quality game over a weekend.

Popular picks from itch

https://youtu.be/OTbPLk7yhNM

• Super Sellout
• Unnecessary Evil
• Rogues Like Beer
• F.T.D
• Well-Hidden Genie

Ludum Dare Smart Filter

Part 1

https://youtu.be/mv5wZ4CEKGA

• Whole Hole
• Doom Trails
• Cave Adventures
• Dungeons and Death
• Overtime
• Slime Dungeon
• Vegefrice

Ludum Dare Smart Filter

Part 2

https://youtu.be/EpfWW2xKN1g

• Penance
• The I in the Team
• Sheepy
• Sacrifice
• Santa Saves Christmas
• Debris Trail - LD42 actually ¯_(ツ)_/¯
• Sacrifices Must be Made to the Dragon!
• Arkham 2043

🔥 I'll appreciate if you return the favor at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/stupid-sacrifice 🕵️‍♀️

(https://www.twitch.tv/videos/347534209?t=21m36s)

Game:

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

Chat comments:

"I mean it was actually really entertaining to watch though"

"Get all the animals drunk. Drown your worries in Schnapps, goat!"

"what the hell is this?"

"TOUCH IT!"

"Ursa, you should better not have touched that"

"All you did was stuck the carrot through the hole xD..."

"I think i need more alcohol after this trip to feel sane. x,3"

There are a lot of video makers and live streamers that play through Ludum Dare game. If you are one, make a comment about yourselves here and post a link to a way to submit games (Google Sheets or something).

This is game is called Gods Thirst. It is my first finnished game and I made it for Ludum Dare 43. As a new developer some feedback would be really helpful.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/gods-thirst-my-first-published-game

The story is: ​You have angered the god of war, Ares , and now you are forced to fight in a 1v1 ​gladiator arena to kill and sacrifice your opponent just for the fun of the gods. You have to choose, it’s your life or theirs.

If you want me to play and rate your game please send a link to it in the comments.

Fire Swept is a Fire Fighting Real-Time Strategy game! Fire it up and give it a shot! Please rate and review if you like the game. If you have any suggestions on the game, please feel free to let me know. I take all suggestions, feedback and critique seriously. Reviews will get your game played and rated in return.

Post-Jam Improvements - Improved Gameplay - Redesigned UI - Pathfinding - Unit training - Budget system - Four season time line with dryness effector - and much more!

https://youtu.be/Jjw7kg_Ae1Q

Play and Rate Fire Swept

Want to see a game made completely with tools not made for game design? Want to follow along a story that turns and winds then abruptly stops, as if there were some time constraint on its production. Are you ready to play a game that walks up to the edge of decency and has a panic attack and then vomits on it?

Then please play our Google Form/Choose Your Own Adventure game. If more people play, my robot overlords have promised a 10% reduction in beatings for the next 4 hours.

No downloads, just a fast webgame to try and tolerate.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/aberth-simple-text-based-choose-your-own-adventure

So I'd like to recommend a book which is very close to me:

Masters of DOOM

I wanted to make this video because it holds a special place in my heart, and luckily as it turns out, yesterday was Doom's 25th anniversary. Just in time :smile: Yaaay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR04kWU6YYc

Before Ludum Dare commenced, I wrote what my rules are for doing game jams. I figured I'd go back through them to show how I went into making my game, Tank Gauntlet.

These won't be in the order I originally set them for the sake of describing the progress.

Know your Tools

I already had my tools in mind before the theme was announced, I used my SFML-based C++ engine, Piskell for animated sprites, Photoshop for any bigger assets, BFXR for SFX and cgMusic with LMMS for music. A lot of which I have used before, but for audio, I feel as though I need to find more other ways to create the SFX I need without the use of a sound library, and maybe diversify my music credibility (I used Megadrive Emulation Soundfonts so there was a bit of a 16 bit vibe to the music).

Small Scope and Stick Mostly with What You Know

When the theme was announced, it wasn't one that I was entirely keen on, and the only idea I had jotted down was "diet simulator". While it was doable, it wasn't really that original and a simulator might have been a more laborious task. I slept on it and figured I'd do a tank combat game. To fit the theme and my "1 unique/main, 2 optional mechanics" approach, The unique mechanic would be sacrificing gameplay input for power/speed, with the two optional mechanics being shooting and melee attacks.

Gameplay First

The first thing I did Saturday morning was work on the main game, by setting up a simple tilemap and a rectangle sprite for the player. Then I made sure the player could move, jump and collide with the tilemap, and the player could wrap in all directions.

Oh, a basic tip on how to handle platform jumps: Do math. Don't bother guessing the right values for acceleration and jump velocity until you get it right, set up some variables and apply some vector maths, the below code will be enough to work out how high and how fast you want to jump, as well as how fast you want the player to move horizontally:

float Height = -85.0f; //Maximum Height of the Jump in Pixels float Distance = 80.0f; //Distance travelled in Pixels float Time = 0.5f; //Total Time of Jump float MoveSpeed = Distance / Time; //Speed in order to travel the set distance in the set time Player->MaxVelocity = sf::Vector2f(MoveSpeed, -2 * ((2 * Height) / Time)); Player->Acceleration.y = (-2 * Height) / (Time * Time); Player->Drag.x = Player->MaxVelocity.x * 10;

If you want to extend it further, check out this GDC talk on Building a Better Jump.

After using the code I have written previously for bullets, tweaking it to my liking, and adding enemy rectangles that can spawn periodically and move at different speed and be of different sides. I had most of what I needed.

I also added knife melee attacks and enemy damage before I worked on the menu that would handle input sacrifice.

Make Your Content Easy and Noticeable

For the last game, I made a racoon sprite that had a full running animation and was heavily detailed to the best of my ability, along with a tilemap and background to resemble a temple, and it took five hours. In the end, the environment didn't look all that great and the racoon sprite was so small that you couldn't see the detail.

This time around, I decided I wanted something simpler and easy to resemble, a tank. I loosely based the design on the StarFox Landmaster. With it being a tank, there didn't need to be many frames.

I decided to keep the sprites and tilemap monochrome, using shading and tones with around 20 shades of grey in total so I could randomize the tint to add some variety to it. The enemies were kept red, as it's an easy way to convey them as dangerous.

I found using fonts a bit more frustrating than normal, SFML doesn't use the nearest neighbour for fonts so on a game with a low resolution (Tank Gauntlet uses 320x180), it's difficult to use a font that isn't too big and wouldn't get blurry if the font size wasn't set to a specific factor.

621 and Take a Walk

On both Saturday and Sunday, I walked into the town centre to get food and other things to relax my mind and not stress over the game too much. I also tried to get some good sleep, so I didn't stay up too late and got up at around 8-9am on each day, oh and I took showers.

Find a Friend

One of the comments I got from this rule is that it doesn't have to apply to team-based projects, having a friend to look over the game or provide feedback is beneficial to a solo project. As such, I'd like to thank my friend Kris for putting up with me sending him screenshots and asking about ways to make the game feel better and if I'm making the game too cruel or not.

I hope you find this simple process interesting, after doing 12 game jams this year I'm kind of happy this one felt mostly streamlined. There were some issues like with audio, not to mention technical issues post-submission, but I hope people find the final product enjoyable.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/tank-gauntlet-control-vs-power

```

void Update(){

if (hasTime){

Application.OpenURL("https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/reactor-overdrive");

StartCoroutine(playGame());

} }

//Play game function. Used to distribute the game; Reactor Overdrive. TODO: Support extra game-types. //Sets up a coroutine to keep the viewer playing for a while.

private IEnumerator playGame(){

URL url = new URL("https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/reactor-overdrive"); if(url.getGame().looksFun){

Application.Play();

yield return new PlayForSeconds(300f + Random.Range(0f, 1500f));

int awesomeness = Application.Rate();
ReactorOverdrive rd = new ReactorOverdrive(url);

//If terrible, destroy instance. Incredibly unlikely to arise, given the awesomeness of the game.
if(awesomeness <= 0)
  Application.Close();

else if(awesomeness >= 1){

  //Rate. Takes in a float value of number of stars overall. 
  rd.rate((float) awesomeness / 2);

  //Handles sub-ratings, such as audio. Values are interpolated, based off overall rating.
  rd.subRate(rd.rating);

  if(rd.deservesFeedback && hasTime){

    Human human = rd.getHumanPlayer();
    rd.sendFeedback(human.generateFeedback());

    if(rd.getAuthor().isAmazing)
      human.follow("@justcamh");
  }
}

} } ``` https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/reactor-overdrive

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

Your favorite tactical kidnapping simulator is back - now with less bugs and more credits!

Come, play and rate: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/of-gods-and-rain!

I've gone through all the games on my to-rate list so now I need more web-playable games. :)

If you would like to try my game, which is a very simple board game proof of concept with an optional “AI” opponent and mobile HTML5 support, it is here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/monastico-ld43-entry

My game is not anything prize-winning, but I am primarily interested if there is any potential in the concept that I might want to pursue. Any input is appreciated!

Come Praise the Snek with us! Bring your offers to the gods!

◆ ◆ ◆

2 players (keyborad or pads)

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

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◆ ◆ ◆

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