My last high score was officially beaten! Here's what they got:

Have you tried our RTS + Puzzle game?

No? So Go Green!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/go-green

We just need a few more scores to reach the minimum!

Thanks!

Being gone for two days just to see that I've already reached the 20 ratings. Yay!

Thanks to everyone that played my game and commented on it, I'll certainly take everything into account once I can get back to working on it.

Still gonna play more games though, so if anybody else needs a rating or something just say it.

Cheers!

Hi guys, my name is Rodrigo Denúbila and I'm the developer of CONFESSIONAL.

First of all, let me talk a bit of me. I'm 30 years old, live in Brazil, and work as web designer and programmer. Since I was a teenager, I like to create games but I never did this for living.

Well, when the theme was revealed, it was a shock, I hated it at first. I tried to think in something but nothing came to mind. One of the ideas I had was a turn based soccer match, but after some research I found this idea is not so innovative.

After while I went to a folder where I write all ideas I have and found this idea of a "second person game", and I realized that fits on the theme. The original idea has a longer story, and also has another character on the game, but I had to cut a lot of things to finish the game in time. Maybe I'll work more in this game in the future, when I finish my current project.

Well, when I started to work in this game was already 1:00 am in my country (it's 2 hour minus from the LD official hour). The first thing I did is to work on the environment. For this I used Blender, and make a lot of rectangles and cylinders.

I tried to make a modular environment so, then I had to set up the objects in the scene in Unity 3D.

For some models, like walls, ground, columns and wood, I used tiled textures to make it's materials. I got these materials in this website: https://share.allegorithmic.com/

For the models that needs more detail, I created the material in Substance Painter.

And after setting up the scene, I configure the pos effect, to reach the visuals I wanted to.

After that, I started to work on the main character of the game, the Bag Man. For that, I created the base mesh with the silhouette I desired in MakeHuman, and then I went to zBrush to make clothes and add details. I put the bag in the head because I think is was faster to model an unique character with it, and this fits with the horror mood of the game.

Then I went back to Blender to create a low poly version of the model, and open UV. And then I went to Substance Painter, where I baked the high poly model in the low poly, and created the materials for this model.

The victim model is the same as the psycho, but without the apron and the head / bag, and with different colors of the cloth.

And then, I uploaded my models to Mixamo to rigg and get some basic animations to the model.

I put the model and animations in Unity, but at this time it was already 5am and I was so tired that i went to sleep.

Well, i think this post is too big already, I'll continue it later. See you!

If you haven't played Confessional yet, give a chance: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/confessional

If you haven't yet, please consider trying my game out!!!11!!1!1

Witness how truly incompatible these genres are for yourself! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/a-knight-of-music

Thanks for all the ratings! This is the first time I've met the threshold! Thanks again to everyone who gave their feedback! :)

If you want to, you can play my game here!

I've just made a small update to fix the shield blocking mechanic so it should be much more reliable, but don't get too close to the towers!

Play the WebGL version here -> https://razorlance.itch.io/escape-the-future

And rate the game here -> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/escape-the-future

I'm also thinking about expanding the game, here's what I'm thinking of adding:

More levels that vary in size from about half the current size to around twice the current size

More tower variation with different ranges, shooting speeds and damage amounts.

More runes to pick up and a rune upgrade system. Collect them and use them in different ways to gain upgrades and boosts

Different goals for level completion, e.g. destroy a certain number of turrets then find the exit stairs to the next level etc. The last level might be similar to the current once but the runes needed might be collected over previous levels.

Colour variation to the level to aid navigation, i.e. one colour in the centre which changes to another the further from the centre you go.

Updated visuals so I can add more detail in general to the game.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

My first LD, 3rd gamejam, and first collab - needs some more votes, if you wish, here's the link! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/run-experiment-run/edit

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/taichi

So yeah.. Not that my game prioritizes humor category, but it would be nice to figure out my global rating later on :D
Help me get over that 20 please: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/can-i-fg-die

First of all, if you haven't played the game. Here is a link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/infinite-checkers

Infinite Checkers is a Ludum Dare 41 Submission for the “2 Incompatible Genre” theme. The game combines the fast-paced gameplay of an Infinite runner with a mind-bending twist of checkers. The music track for the game combines French Impressionism with a chill EDM beat.

Instructions: Click LMB/RMB or Alt/Ctrl to move diagonally. Hit the flat red pieces to increase score multiplier and move faster. Avoid getting caught by the hazard chasing you. And drop off the ledge to change starting tile. And collect all the “LUDUM DARE 41” alphabets to win (It is hard).

--TEAM COMPOSITION--

Infinite Checkers was made by myself(Programmer/Designer) and Blake(Sound Designer). It was our first time working on a project together, and we completed infinite checkers in about 48 working hours.

--GAME IDEA--

One of my biggest priority was to make sure the idea was scoped well. It was my first full game in Unity, and as I was the only programmer on the team, I had to make sure that I had ample time to finish the content, work on bugs and polish whatever possible. As neither of us had Art experience, I planned to think of concepts that would require minimal to no art. Another priority was low mechanic complexity, I wanted to make a game that was easy to learn by anyone regardless of gaming experience or skill.

To achieve this kind of scope I looked at some fun mobile arcade games. As mobile game genres are relatively low-scoped, I decided to look further and picked "Infinite Runner" as my game's first half genre. For the second half, I needed something simple that could easily gel with the first half. After thinking for a while and scrapping about a dozen ideas, I thought why not board games, and hence came up with infinite checkers.

--DEVELOPMENT--

Overall the development of Infinite Checkers went pretty smoothly. Here are some screenshots starting from the earlier stages of the game leading up to the final product.

--WHAT WENT WELL--

The idea of scoping low from the start worked out in our favor. By the last few hours of the Jam, I hadn't slept for 23 hours and was still fixing some game crashing bugs.

As I am a programmer by trait, I like to make my code as neat and organized as possible. Doing that in a game jam might sound like a bad idea, but it made my life a lot easier the last day of programming.

Getting the game's music to be the same pace as the gameplay was a bit of a challenge. The last thing we wanted was to have was a fast-paced game with super slow zen tunes. This was something that took the majority of Blake's time. Read more about the audio of Infinite checkers here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/infinite-checkers/the-music-of-infinite-checkers

Making the game in Unity was a breeze, everything that I needed was super easy to do and most answers were readily available on the internet.

The game started being fun early, and hence we decided to add polish as we developed instead of leaving it for the end. This ended up being a smart idea as by the end we were super out of motivation and energy.

--WHAT WENT WRONG--

AI for enemies: This was something I had planned initially that ended up being cut as it got really hard to balance the AI for a fun experience. The enemy pieces either seemed impossible to beat or stupid random. I wish I hadn't spent those 5-6 hours trying to make it work and cut the AI earlier.

Almost No Playtesting: Apart from me, Blake, and another friend who worked around us on his own Ludum Dare game, we had no one else to playtest the game and because of that some things like difficulty settings were not tuned properly.

Bad control schemes: Another one of the things that we should've paid more attention to. Using RMB/LMB tired people out pretty fast. Adding an alternate arrow keys mode on top of mouse buttons would be great.

Not good documentation of rules and controls: Aside from the bad control scheme itself, there was not much documentation that was added in game describing some essential rules and controls.

Static Backgrounds: The initial idea was to make the path go through a 3d valley of sorts but making something like that perfectly tileable was a pain so we decided to go with a static 3d background.

Not tuned well: The game is hard, almost stupid hard.

Need more juice: This kinda ties into the next point but when I thought of the concept in my head. It had a lot more cool shaders, effects and Juice!

HUD and Feedback: Players still do not know what causes them to win the game, it gets clear after a few tries but it is not apparent during the first run. Things like player's speed boost after hitting the flat pieces, or the score multiplier added for repeatedly hitting the flat pieces are some that really need some sort of obvious feedback.

--FINAL THOUGHTS--

Thanks for reading our post-mortem and what we learned from Ludum Dare 41. Quite frankly, we learned a lot and did something we liked. I am sure after a bit of time, and few game projects later we will come back and finish Infinite Checkers by doing all the things mentioned above and more. The idea is to publish the game primarily on mobile where you tap the left and right half of the screen to move. We think it could be a good fit for the platform.

Play Infinite Checkers Here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/infinite-checkers

There are lots of posrmortems about games people made, but what about postmortems about games people DIDN'T make? Well, here is one such posrmortem! I originally wrote it for my blog - I'll put a link at the bottom of the article.

Ludum Dare 41 was my first game jam, and I was determined to produce a complete concept. I’d read some horror stories about developers who overscoped their games and couldn’t really finish them by the deadline, and I wanted to avoid that. Unfortunately, I also had a minor cold, so I knew my productivity was going to be hampered. Oh, and my wife was working night shifts at her job during the week, so our sleep schedules would both be thrown off. Hooray!

One of my design skills that I’m most proud of is the ability to model game systems in my head and find problems quickly. This can be dangerous, of course, because if I use it during brainstorming it can hamper creativity by closing doors too quickly. But when brainstorming ideas for a game jam, it’s actually perfect because I don’t have a lot of time to work out design problems; I need a concept that I can for sure build, and that satisfies the criteria I laid out for myself.

Oh, it’s also worth mentioning that I wanted to make a game for the Compo, which allows for 48 hours and has strict “make everything from scratch” policies.

So, here were my criteria:

• The idea needs to be simple enough to be a “complete thought.”
• It needs to fit the theme – “Combine two incompatible genres”
• I need to be able to execute thoroughly on both genres so that the concept doesn’t feel like a cop-out
• It needs to be something that I can pull off with my very limited art skills
• It needs to be in Unity, because that’s the engine I know best at the moment and I need to be productive
• Preferred: I want to make something 3D.

So, let the brainstorming begin.

Idea 1: Roguelike Walking Simulator

This is the discarded idea that I spent the most time on. One of the things that appealed to me about it was that I could use my voice and build a narrative. I enjoy both voice acting and writing stories, so this would seem to be a good choice. I also enjoy weird narratives, and nothing could be weirder than a randomly generated narrative.

As I pursued this idea, I thought about how silly I could make it. I wanted to create a bunch of rooms, and then fill them randomly with objects. The objects would be silly too – my brainstorming list includes “Disco ball, flan, cactus, suitcase, giant sausage, large orange, and dais.”

Finding an object would trigger narration tied to that object which would contribute to a larger story. But I would also make the game shorter than the length of the story, so that the only way to get the whole story would be to play through the game multiple times and try to figure out how all the elements fit together.

But then I started to have second thoughts. Roguelike implies more than just procedural content generation; It also implies things like permadeath, and an actual challenge. I considered changing the genre definitions to “procedural generated walking simulator,” but procedural generation is a method, not a genre.

I also considered adding some challenging elements or some kind of death mechanic, but nothing made sense with the rest of the concept.

So I moved on.

Idea 2: GUNBALL

It’s a pinball shooter! The idea here is simple: Spacebar controls the flippers, mouse aims, mouse click shoots.

At first, this seemed like a perfect fit. Neither of those mechanics seem especially hard to build. Unity comes with enough built-in physics that I could probably make a pinball game pretty easily.

But… could I? In theory, maybe. But game physics are full of gotchas, and I don’t have enough experience Unity’s physics to confidently make a game based entirely on physics.

There’s also the problem that a good pinball game actually has a lot of moving parts, and I’ve never made one before. I would have to build out curves that would work properly with the physics to move the ball around, bumpers, and those things that hold the ball for a second and then spit it back out again…

On top of that, I would need shooter mechanics.

I also explored how a level would be designed. A single board may not be enough fun or enough gameplay; Multiple boards would require a lot of design work.

At that point, I couldn’t see a way forward that wasn’t altogether Way Too Much Work. And so, onto the next idea.

Ideas 3-X: Brain dump time!

It was after dinner – several hours had elapsed since the theme was announced, and I still didn’t have an idea. At this point I decided to just start trying to metaphorically stick my finger down my brain’s throat and vomit out as many ideas as possible.

I thought, what have other people made with Unity? I remembered all those tiny horror games made with Unity that are basically “don’t let the monster get you,” and I thought – what if when the monster gets you, he asks you questions? Hey, it’s a horror/quiz game!

But then I remember that there’s an entire game in one of the Jackbox Party Packs that is literally a horror quiz game, which made my idea feel less interesting. Also, I felt like if I was going to go to all the trouble of making a game, I should probably find a more interesting concept than “avoid a thing and then take a quiz.”

Next up, a match 3 platformer! I’m a huge fan of games like 10000000 and You Must Build a Boat (okay that’s basically the same game) where there’s a match 3 mechanic and action/RPG mechanics. (I also think Puzzles and Dragons is utterly brilliant.) I considered a more deliberately frustrating, troll version of a match three game, where the match 3 part of the game is in the middle of a platforming level, and the player has to walk around the level picking up colored bubbles and dropping them on top of other ones to match.

I just wasn’t that excited about it though. It seemed more like a “hey look at this goofy concept” than something that could actually be a fun game. I mean hey, a game that’s basically 100 fetch-quests, right?

And finally, a stealth physics game. I thought about taking two concepts that are completely opposed to each other: Games where you have to break as much stuff as possible (like Angry Birds) and games where you have to break as little stuff as possible (stealth). So, I imagined building structures out of physics objects and letting the player fling their stealth agent around, over, and through them while causing as little destruction as possible.

But that would present one of the same challenges that caused me to rule out pinball: I don’t know enough about Unity physics to confidently build that game. And I know that Angry Birds, in order to offer as much destruction as possible at 60fps, has finely tuned physics code. And that’s something I had neither the time nor the expertise to manage.

Final Idea: FPS Cooking Simulator

The pitch I wrote down on paper is simple: “Shoot enemies, push their corpses into stew.”

I wrote down the major tech requirements, and it was only two bullet points:

• FPS controller
• Camera facing sprite script

In truth, that wasn’t actually the full list. I also realized I would need to learn and use something to build level geometry, so I picked ProBuilder (which is now officially a Unity product, and free).

There’s also the fact that I’ve wanted to build my own FPS for years, literally since I was in third grade and played Doom for the first time. My notebooks from then until age 12 are full of sketches of levels, monsters, and weapons for an imaginary FPS. (That wasn’t my only imaginary game – there were many others!)

And my plan as an indie developer is to eventually build a fully featured FPS inspired by Doom 2, Quake, etc.

So this felt like a good start.

Before I close out Part 1, let’s see how the concept fits my requirements.

The idea is definitely simple enough to be a complete thought. The shooter mechanics can be simple, and the cooking just needs to be “include the correct ingredients or you lose.”

• It fits the theme.
• Given the simplicity of both genres (IE the requirements for a game to fit the genre are simple, unlike, say, Roguelike) I can execute on both fully enough
• I can pull it off with my limited art skills by using billboarded sprites in a 3D world.
• It can be done in Unity
• It’s 3D

So, at that point, I had chosen a concept I was 100% sure I wanted to execute on. In part 2, I’ll explain how I did it, and where I made mistakes.

If you enjoyed that and/or want to see the two pictures of my brainstorming pages with my terrible handwriting, it's all on my site: http://www.aaronnemoyten.com/2018/04/30/ld41-postmortem-part-1-the-games-i-didnt-make/

LD Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/gender-circle

Hey everyone !

I'm at work, and as usual I'm gonna play and rate browser games during my lunch break. But this time, I'll only rate games with less than 20 ratings. So, if you don't have enough rates, and your game has a browser version, put it in the comments. I'll make sure to play as much as possible during my break, in about 3 hours (and if not, I'll rate it after work).

Oh and while I'm here you can play my game too, even if it has already enough ratings, all comments and critics are welcome : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/dungeon-of-high-school-romance

We would greatly appreciate it if you would take a bit of your time and check out our game! If you will give some feedback for our game, we would look at your game as well. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/the-forgotten-jacket

latest ROLL and shoot at anything

challenge yourself! Try to destroy all enemies and score 8200 points

You can play it in your browser Or download it to your computer (windows) have fun

play the game here =) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/crazy-cube

Now with chests!

Check out there: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/firun

Thanks for playing and commenting.

Try it and solve it. :D https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/bright-voice

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/rackety-rekt#/comment-200044

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/black-horizon