If anyone want to try want a "Breakout / Arkanoid" mixed with "Top-Down Shooter" mechanics, here comes Shootanoid

The game is quite simple, as I had to wrap it up in under 15 hours. It was my first attempt at developing a game using a "fantasy console", in this case TIC-80.

What's a "Fantasy Console"?

I discovered TIC-80 during the compo, and I very pleased with it. It's very easy to develop a game as the software comes with all the required editors: drawing program, map editor, sound editor, code editor (in Lua, Javascript or Moonscript). There is no compile time: make a modification, press "Ctrl+R" and you're able to test the updated version instantly.

My last project was to develop a game for the SNES, and I can tell you it really makes a difference to use tools where you can see your modification in minutes (while working on actual retro consoles involves a more complicated workflow - sometimes you'll waste 1 hour just to display an image on the screen with the right palette / tileset). It enables you to have a lot of iterations, making it easier to fine tune the gameplay in a very limited timeframe.

I've seen a lot of wonderful games created with PICO-8 around here, but sadly none made with TIC-80 yet. It's sad because TIC-80 is equally easy to use, but offer a larger screen area, so why not give it a try? It's free and open source: http://tic.computer/

Play the game

And if you want a example of what can be made in a few hours for a first time user of TIC-80, you can play the game (HTML5 browser) here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/shootanoid

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/grantchester-meadows

Ludum Dare page

Play in browser

Website

Source code (HTML5, JavaScript, no library)

Silent Tower Games Twitter

BONUS: The map editor I made

Hey there !

I wanted to make a post about the colourful design of Rhythm Overdrive.

If you don't know about our game, it's a shootem'up with ennemies dancing on the BPM, with a lot of VFX & particles.

The VFX work was really funny and quite simple. We used Unity to make our game, so I did basically all with the Shuriken particle system, creating simples particle, then animating their color, fade, motion etc.. by tweaking curves and changing values like lifetime or gravity.

I used the same methods for creating other effects like ennemies explosions, combo flames, or even red weapon.

Trails were a bit different. I used the trail renderer component with custom textures, to make ennemies projectiles, yellow weapon, & player reactors.

For those who are new with VFX, trails are basically some 2D ribbons who are following the path of a moving object.

Shader time ! I'm not a CG language / HLSL pro, so I used a node-based editor called Amplify to make our shaders. Because a large amount of our graphic assets are moving to the beat, I had to make easy properties & values that can be animated via a script, to follow the music's BPM.

For example, the texture of the walls have a panning UV value going from 0 to 1, and at every beat it resets.

The method to animate the hexagons was a bit different. To make them "bump", I had to use a texture with gradient all over the hexs, then create a sort of threshold layout in the shader, to use the min & the max values of the gradient as two textures channels. At least, I multiplied these values with a gradient mask & a color (which is animated with our master BPM script).

Same method is used for the bumping hexs of the playing area, and others details in the game.

I think that's it for a quick overview of our visual effects, don't hesitate to ask me anything about this, and if you haven't played our game yet, feel free to test it !

> Rhythm Overdrive page <

Thanks for reading, and sorry for those english mistakes~

We are proud to announce the first update : The Juicy update

With the amazing feedbacks we receveid, we decided to give more energy into the game, and we improved lots of things for you : D

NEW FEATURES

• Mode expert (456 000 to Beat)
• You can now increase your score by stomping into the ground
• New audio feedbacks for power-ups
• New Title Screens
• Highscore on Title Menu
• Juicy Score Bumper powerup
• Block Preview
• Inertia improvement

*NEXT THINGS TO COME : *

• Bomb Powerup
• Grenade launch
• Leaderboards

Normal Mode New Record : 717 000

Now the update is here, we'll spend time testing, rating and giving feedbacks for all your games, because there are amazing things there

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/blocksnblaster-1

Tomorrow's our day off so we'll be able to play a bunch of games! Leave a comment below if you want a review!

Also, you can check out our game if you want, but be careful, it's NSFW: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/tsun-tsun-button-mash

Make sure to sub to see more entries! : D https://youtu.be/O9KQKBqrw8o

Hey. We need more ratings, please check out our game.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/the-epic-41-placeholdername

I'll play games of everybody who comments and rate and comments as well.

Always happy to hear complaints since that's how you know what you could've done better. please check it out :D thanks

Come play https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/avoid

The game I made for the game jam, is supposed to be a mash between FPS and platformer, but you might say that it is only a platformer game...well....haven't you heard of campers! snipers! they never move in 3d XD...they just wait for the moment...and that is exactly how Marco and John roll

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/sniper-and-shield

One of the best features of Elite Beat Zombygons is it's soundtrack. You can now get it Here for free.

Thanks to our Musician @JohnRyanAudio for making it available.

And if you haven't played it yet, be sure to check it out.

Elite Beat Zombygons available for Windows Mac and Linux.

It's been a pleasure to have participated in my first Ludum Dare game jam alongside so many incredible games! I haven't got the chance to play many games quite yet, but I'm really looking forward to it (I've got a very long list on itch)!

I thought you folks might be interested in a time lapse of our creation coming together! It was the first real weekend of spring here in Ottawa and we chose to spend it bringing this wonderful monstrosity into the world. The time lapse only covers 48 hours, since that's all the time we could get together to work on our game.

https://youtu.be/J8PeJ9DeReA

The game we made is MotherDucker and we eschewed the theme to bring to life an idea we'd had the week before when brainstorming. Our game is a mother duck simulator where you play as MommaQuack and try to get her home through a terrifying mix of bear traps, saw blades, and cannons. Good duck leading your babies to safety through this strange and quacky world!

https://youtu.be/m1wH7l75kz4

make little update where i add restart button and add new menu string where you can listen some music compositions what i maybe make for this game

I could use some more ratings on my game if anyone wants to try it out... https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/snowy It was made from scratch using Java and LWJGL. I wanted to submit it for the Compo because it was all original content, but I didn't have enough time to get it to the point I wanted even after 72 hours. I also included the source code even though it is not required for the Jam.

So i've reached weekends at last and started to cook new update from prototyping new art. Will appreciate some feedback if i'm moving in the right direction or old art style was better. Thanks! P.S. Don't forget to rate my game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/sword-step =)

If you rate ours, each member of our team will rate yours.

Plus I feature one game below 20 ratings that I like every day. It could be yours!

Check ours out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/super-slime-slasher-ultra

Check out my play through of this awesome game, and make sure to hit that subscribe button to see more playthroughs of LD41 entries! : D https://youtu.be/yYbAeT5CK-8

What Went Well

Idea

It took me about half a day to come up with an idea I liked, but once I came up with this one, I was set on it. All of my earlier ideas were things that were funny to say like "tabletop + mmo" or "physics-based + text adventure", but none of them felt like something I wanted to make. I was feeling pretty dumb and getting close to giving up on entering this time around, but "match 3 + connect 4" managed to be both funny and strangely compelling.

Within a couple hours of having the idea, I was already well on my way to a functioning game:

Animation

One of the first things I mentally planned out was a small animation sequencer. I didn't end up building this until after getting the mechanics mostly working, so it took a bit of refactoring, but once it was in, adding polish was almost trivial! The snazzy intro, the explosions, pieces falling into empty spaces; all of this was driven by the same basic system. Having a solid plan for how this would work let me add tons of little details that would have taken much longer to implement otherwise.

User Testing

To be honest, I left this later than I should have, but doing it at all had a huge positive impact on the end result. Towards the end of the jam, I had a couple quick sessions with my sisters which led me to make crucial balance changes.

Before testing, the game was almost the same as the final product, with one key difference: there were no swap points. Players could swap pieces on their turn whenever they wanted. This conceptually seemed fine, but testing proved it was a terrible idea: it became far too easy to prevent your opponent from getting close to a win by swapping to make match-3s with their pieces and blow them up. The games inevitably became boring, perpetual stalemates.

I went through a couple quick iterations, but effective use of swaps always ended up dragging the game on. The first version which actually made a difference was the one in which I introduced points: in this version, every time a match was made, it gave that colour an extra move on their next turn. De-incentivizing blowing up the other player's pieces made a big difference: the board actually started filling up a bit, and complex strategies started emerging.

Ultimately, swaps still ended up being over-powered, and planning around extra turns made thinking ahead more difficult than I was comfortable with. In the final version, the players have to earn their swaps by matching pieces. This provided a great balance: defensively blowing up the other player's pieces is a trade-off between denial and giving them a powerful resource, and it also gives you incentive to blow up your own pieces in order to bank up swaps for later.

What Went Wrong

No AI

Putting up a local multiplayer game without an AI is always a big ask for LD. Some folks'll have ready access to a willing partner, sibling, friend, etc. to play with, but most people are just going to be able to demo it on their own. I had planned from the start to make an AI, but it was already submission hour by the time I had something kinda-sorta-but-not-really working. I think I made the right decision to scrap it, but should have budgeted my time better so more people could have a chance to play the game as intended.

Menu

A number of people have had issues with the default enter key behaviour in PICO-8. It's easy to take PICO-8 stuff for granted when you've been using it for so long, so this one kind of surprised me! I think this could have easily been fixed by changing the start menu to read "press z/x" or something along those lines.

Conclusion

Overall, I think this is one of my best LD entries to date. It's not perfect; there's definitely more I would've liked to do with it; but I feel like it was both a solid idea, and a solid execution of that idea.

I'm out of the house at the moment, but once I get home, I plan on playing and rating some entries! Feel free to post your games below, but those with less than 20 ratings will be given top priority!

And I will play and comment your...