Hey! Im about to make an update to Toasterman, and I'd like to hear your feedback. How can I make this game better? Make sure you play the game, and leave your suggestions in the comments. Keep rating games! 🎮 P.S: Ive added Windows support and WebGL support, even though the WebGL is SUPER unstable.
Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/toasterman-types
I decided to use my trusty custom engine to create the game. I had used it for my previous 2 projects and had made several advancements in stability and performance so it seemed the right tool for the job. I went into the jam wanting to make a racing game, but no other insipiration struct me before the jam. I wanted the game to be fast, fun, and simple but that was about it.
I was a bit time challanged for this day due to a comitment that I could not escape that held me for 4 hours. When I got back I was tired, but wanted to get a good start in. I spent most of my time attmpting to mimic a car's feel and turning but was slightly imited in lack of experience and ended up rushing out a solid, but unperfected prototype. The car felt like a car, but was not physically acurate in any sense of the word. This would come back to bite me later. I did spend some time planing for the future, I was even ambitious enough to think of a gun playing a role, but this idea was later scrapped in favor of more intense platforming.
Here is my game:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/highway-to-hell-first-person-rally
Tomorrow is holiday here and Bag Man want to spend his free time playing some LD games. Can you help me select some games to play?
And if you are looking for some cool game to play, take a chance to "CONFESSIONAL", where you play as the psycho Bag Man and have to "save" her victim. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/confessional
Thanks to everyone for the support on my first Ludum Dare entry! It is super empowering to complete a project in such a small amount of time, and super humbling to have a game I made listed with the games of so many talented developers.
I actually started late, I didn't even decide to participate until noon on Sunday! One of the things I chose to bypass because of the time constraint is adding music and sound to the game, something a lot of people mentioned in their feedback. Sound is not my strong point - but in case anyone wants to play the game with music and sound, I had some free time this weekend and created a post-jam version of the game on ITCH.IO that has music and sound in it. I can't promise the music/sounds are good, but it is probably better than playing in silence - and if you prefer the silence, you can turn the music/sounds off. I also added a new ball-type that lets you destroy gloves which is pretty cool.
Please play the Jam Version of the game first if you haven't already rated the game, and have fun!
https://abraxasinteractive.itch.io/painting-the-black
The Good * Theme - surprisingly the theme worked out well. I initially hated the theme, but spending a few hours at the start just poking fun at possible combinations yielded a concept that sounded feasible. * Simplicity - the actual concept and execution was pretty simple, so completing it in time for the compo was fairly plausible, while still providing a decently fun game to play. Plus not having any actual graphics meant more time could be spent just programming. * Reception - the play experience worked out exactly how I hoped it would. That's such a great feeling to get when seeing people play the game.
The Bad * Time budgeting - managed to lose a few hours to over-sleeping and outside factors. This didn't take away from completing the envisioned gameplay, but did take away from having more of the fun "nonsense" commands.
The Play * Go ahead and give it a try! Just don't turn in the wrong direction.
Seeing that @blu3bird talked a little about the dev process thought I should chime in a little from my angle about the process. I stubbornly chose to use a new set of software this run which I've never tried before but thankfully still could churn something out! Tried out Affinity Designer and Spine (really little I haven't got this quite figured out yet :P)
We were honestly hoping it would be anything but this theme initially as our thoughts were along the lines of if they are two incompatible genres wouldn't that make a game that's not fun and hence not worth making?
But we know whining about the theme would just waste our precious weekend and we got started rather quickly throwing ideas around pitching quick ones to each other and decided upon Time Management mixed with fighting! (Partially coz we realised actually Time management games could be fun - It could have been due to me playing Overcooked on switch not too long ago)
We toyed around ideas of formulating pars to give instructions for moves and of course robots naturally fit.
I toyed around with a few robot ideas and I sketched a round robot which I thought looks like it could take some time to make any movement and it kind of looked like a sumo and it just clicked then!
The Japanese Daruma dolls were also inspiration. For the lil player bots.. I grabbed the Sumbot's belly and played around with it.. #lazyartist
I haven't been working on any art for years so being rusty it took me some time, the previous jam helped kick-start me and this time I took the opportunity to try Affinity which worked out really well to get quick asset exports out. I basically did all the assets in a single file! And it was all vector and I could use adjustment layers and all that it was really neat. Like Photoshop and illustrator married each other. I would highly recommend trying Affinity Designer if you're looking for just one software to meet your 2D game asset needs. It works well with Spine too! And exporting to it was smooth as butter. Had very little time to make the attack animations which IMO are really not how they should be. will do better next LDJ!
Made a lot more assets for this game compared to last Jam and am happier about the resulting aesthetic :D
There's really not a lot of two player games around for couples or a pair of friends to enjoy and we hope SumBot Fighting filled that space :)
Give us just 5 minutes of your time and play and rate our game :D comment with yours so we can play yours too!
https://youtu.be/HDepEjS-mhM ^heres a video of our own playthrough!
Alright everyone! I've been streaming people's games for almost a week now and I wanted to share the games I thought best exemplified each category. I'm trying to show some real ### Hidden Jems though some you may have heard of before. :)
Which is a completely regular unremarkable SINGLE PLAYER game that absolutely won't net you +1 true friend. :)
I also made some fanart for it because I loved it so much!
You can play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/shootem
SERIOUSLY I CAN'T RECCOMMEND IT ENOUGH.
This was a very tough category to pick for, so I tried to think about the games that drew me back in for a second go after streaming, and those which offered the most variety and wonder. Dark Soil definitely provided those things, with an addictive leveling system and a difficulty curve controlled by the player themselves so it only ramps up the challenge when you're ready for it. If you want to dedicate the next hour to an LD Jem this is the game for you!
Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/dark-soil
I was really struggling over whether to give this one the Mood or Innovation category win, because it's exemplary in both. This game combines the experiences of playing a videogame with the experience of watching a movie, with two simultaneous situations that ended up giving me goosebumps from the eerie juxtaposition. Definitely an experience.
Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/definition-of-a-ghuest
As engaging as it is frustrating! This entry takes the cake for two TRULY incompatible genres, because one is literally constantly screwing over your progress in the other haha. The unholy love-child of Tetris and Breakout where you're challenge is to get a Trout, which means dissolving 4 lines of tetris simultaneously with the 4-square piece... Good luck!
Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/honest-dans-trout
Truly beautiful as well as being very very fun to play. Strong WarioWare feels here in a game that constantly keeps you on your toes, though I found myself often so entranced by the incredible pixel art that I would get distracted and lose haha. Captures the feeling of 80's arcade games wrapped in modern polish.
Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/portaboy
A shooting game you play to the rhythm the most polished, intense, exciting soundtrack I've seen yet in the Jam. In fact, they plan to release the soundtrack by popular request for free download later this week so check that out if you want. The gameplay, which rewards you for multitasking, accentuates the wicked metal and techno mix of heart-pounding music. A must-play.
Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/elite-beat-zombygons
I'm sure you guys have seen/heard of this one before, but I honestly couldn't pick any other haha. With enough dry humor to be a Valve game, it's also very well polished. 10/10 would get killed by a chair again.
Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/jeff-from-accounting
I'm not usually a fan of horror games, but this one combines it with engaging action, thoughtful puzzles and a dark world I wanted to know more about. Doesn't rely on jump scares but isn't above using them. ;P If you want some quiet, eldrich horror in your life this game is for you. Music is also on-point.
Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/my-game
Super Bass Racing now has a menu of configure buttons (simple) and a build for PC that accepts joysticks !! Call your friend to play! haha
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/super-bass-racing
This has been my favorite LD so far, I had the opportunity to work with great teammates: @Moski arting (he's who drew Skeletorb, seen above), @RobinHoodPT sounding and me coding, and debuting as part of Whales and Games. I had partnered with @Moski earlier, in LD39, and sticked around their Discord annoying everyone until stockholm syndrome hit them again and we decided going for LD41.
Our entry is Wizsnooks, a billiards dungeon crawler!
This is a telling of the Jam's events through my eyes, but not the game's postmortem! Not yet at least. Stay tuned for that one somewhen this week!
Our team decided quite early on on the Snooker RPG idea, so I immediately started working on a prototype for snooker physics ~~so the artist's eyes bled and gave him motivation~~ so we could see with our own eyes.
Then we got the first batch of sprites and I started working on some animations and flair. This will be a repeating theme within this post: make a base mechanic, then fluff it up so it looks good before moving on to the next.
After that, we knew that an RPG needed an inventory, naturally. At the time we thought it would be nice if we had attack and defense stats that would affect how balls respond to collision:
I had a lot of time while the artist worked on a crapton of equipment sprites,
so I spent a lot of the time writing up a very flexible attribute system based
on ScriptableObjects (more on that later) and making the inventory UI with
stat comparisons.
After spending a million years perfecting a satisfying loot animation, I bodged together some more code to drop items based on a percent chance. And sneakily, I inserted a new requirement for the code: item rarities! No idea how would they matter, but I wanted colors so I put them in.
We decided going more RPG and less Snooks so we added health and made attack and defense stats affect that.
Oh and also, the initial tileset was in so I had to learn how to use Unity's tilemap in 30 minutes. I sorta did, but the repercussions are visible to this day.
Now, obviously, the priority was adding disembodied hands to the game, like any sane person would naturally choose to do.
Had to add events to every possible situation in the universe so soundman could add sounds to them.
Day One's meneacing seemed to have worked, the artist was quite motivated. All menu sprites were done even faster than I could see them being pushed to the git repository. Tilesets flooded the Assets folder.
I also reused the drop animation's sprites for a death screen, and burdened myself with the tiny visual detail that the death screen's sprites are actually the player's currently-equipped items.
The rest of the time was spent fixing bugs and polishing mechanics, while artman drew more items and soundman made more maps, and balanced artman's items.
We hit publish, having needed the holy Submission Hour, with the game clocked at 19 items, 4 rarities, 4 monsters and 13 levels. Turns out a lot of items hadn't been balanced and added to the loot tables (I mean, poor soundman having to do everything today, but such is life), otherwise we'd have 23!
I spent this day using my webdevguy skills to polish the fuck out of the Itch game page, while secondary platforms were built (Win32, Linux, OSX). I mean, just look at it! So pretty!
I think this was a fantastic jam, finally with a Theme That Didn't Suck, awesome teammates and no social interruptions (for once)!
So many great games! Now goodbye while I go hunt for some more.
I did say
(more on that later)
earlier, did I not? Well, I'll be honest with you, it's 00:30AM Monday, so I gotta hit the hay. I will however do a full post about it Soon:tm:!
Hopefully tomorrow, maybe in 2 days. One thing is sure: I'll have @Moski make a ruckus out of it, so everyone hears it!
In the meanwhile, do check out our entry, and hop over on Discord to have a chat with us!
Hey all, I'm still trying to get my game Hoop Tactics up to 20 ratings for LD. I'm about halfway there. If you could spare some time and check it out I would appreciate it. I will also check out your game as well. Thanks!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/hoop-tactics
I can only easily play web games (HTML, flash, etc.)
If you would like to play and rate my game as well, I am not yet halfway to 20 so I am really trying to make progress now. I cleaned up the project page a bit: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/bait-and-switch-ld41-entry
Screenshot:
Since the main site doesn't support searching for games of a certain platform, many rely instead on external sites for finding games to play that are compatible.
They are often awesome when trying to find a couple of games to play given the constraints of your current platform. There is however a problem if we still want to rely heavily on the coolness system which is trying to level out the likelihood of playing, say, a PC-only game and a HTML5 game. This kind of fairness is a noble cause indeed but it also drives participants away from the main site.
I think that the Ludum Dare site can really help the situation by publishing some kind of guide for the external websites for presenting and ordering the content in the same order as the main site. This is kind of a middle-ground between full search support with tags etc. on the main site and the current situation where games are listed and browsed externally.
Also, play and rate our web game! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/knightmare
If it looks appealing to you, then you should check it out!
Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/citydefense
Smash those num pad buttons on Linux and Mac!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/educational-beat-em-up-punches-delivered-with-math
Are you bored like the youtuber "Gaming Faster than Light" in this video?
https://youtu.be/r7v-bboBupM?t=539
Playing "Tour de France Legstong" takes care of that! (9:00)
Play at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/tour-de-france-legstrong
https://youtu.be/7HbMaaYgSE4
Finally have a Post Jam version for both MAC AND WIN. Check it out! OR, the gameplay vid if the DL is just TOO BIG. <3 TY for all the sweet feedback!
Needs more dinosaur...
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/ftd-find-the-differences
Take a look in our game for the Game Jam, a mix between a crazy shooter and the typical old rpg cell moving. A local multiplayer 1v1!
Enjoy the best-of-5 mode with a lot of crazy gameplay modifiers, which gonna get mixed and create funny combination of effects that will make each round unique.
Link to the page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/ludumdare-41-threerena
Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/gender-circle
