This is my first time in an LD jam, so I have to ask is theme voting always so tense?

Final theme voting is here! That means that we get our chance to say what themes we most want. This can be hard though, especially when you don't even understand a theme on the list. The Ludum Dare community has a large number of non-native English speakers who might have a hard time with themes that were written largely with English in mind. And some of the themes can just be confusing. I'm here to help you figure them out and connect the themes to cultural ideas that you might not be aware of. This is all just to help everyone out in figuring out what theme to vote for. This list can help everyone, especially if you're wondering "why would anyone choose this theme?" This list simply gives people a better idea about each theme. Some of these meanings might seem simple or pointless, but if they help anyone then that's all that matters.

What are these themes?

Here are the themes we're voting on in the final round! The themes are alphabetized and contain as much as I can think of that will help you understand the idea. Some of these have an "Other meanings" which are times when I want to let you know about cultural references, weird meanings for words in the theme, or little changes you can make to the theme. These are not the only interpretations of the themes, these are just examples I came up with to help you get started with making your own interpretations.

3 rules

Meaning: A rule tells you what you can or cannot do, and your game has 3 of them. "You cannot move left." is a rule. "Players can pick up puppies." is a rule. "The Queen cannot take away your home." is another rule. That last one is like a law in the story of the game.
Other meanings: 3 rules can have different interpretations. "Rules" is a verb meaning to govern someone or a place (The Queen rules the country.). It is also an indicator of a really good thing (Flying rules!) "3" is a number, but it could also be a name (3 is a fun person, but has a weird name). Even as a number, it can be the subject of the sentence. (3 rule the kingdom, their names are Alice, Bob, and Catherine. -or- 3 Rules! to celebrate the number 3.)

A light in the dark

Meaning: When it is too dark, we need light to be able to see. When people say "a light in the dark" they usually mean a small light that offers just enough light to see, like a candle. Other times, they mean a light that you can see from far away. In this case, the light guides you through the darkness.
Other meanings: Light doesn't always have to be an actual light. It can be a feeling of happiness and hope. The dark also doesn't have to be literal darkness. It can be a difficult time like after the loss of a loved one or during an oppressive rule.

At the beginning there is nothing

Meaning: This theme says that when something begins or starts, nothing is there. Nothing can be an empty space, or it can mean no objects. This theme suggests an idea of starting the game having nothing at all.
Other meanings: The beginning of something doesn't have to be the beginning of your game. It can be about something that happens before the game. It can be about the story of your game. Nothing doesn't always have to be about things. Nothing can be a feeling like emptiness or sadness. It can even be about any situation that has not changed in a very long time.

Color changes everything

Meaning: Color is something that we see. Some colors are red, blue, and green. When you add color to something, we see it differently. When this happens, we might be able to understand something better. "Everything" here tells you that whatever color does in your game, it should be big.
Other meanings: Color can mean life or health. Good color means good health and poor color means poor health. Color can also refer to a flag ("Germany's colors" means the German flag).

Combine 2 incompatible genres (e.g. turn based racing)

Meaning: A genre is a category like "action" or "adventure" or "role-playing game". You can have a thematic genre like "fantasy" or "historical" or "realism" that are about the content of your game. "Action" and "sports" are genres that describe what the player does in a game. This theme tells you to combine two different genres that don't usually work together. The theme gives the example of "turn-based racing" combining the genres of "turn-based" and "racing". The turn-based genre describes games that pause and wait for the player to decide what to do. The racing genre describes games where you are trying to be the first to get to the finish. These genres don't usually work together (they're incompatible) because the racing genre usually uses continuous movement to make a race exciting.

Floating islands

Meaning: An island is land surrounded by something, usually water. This theme suggests making a game where there are islands that float. An island can be said to float on water, or on some other liquid, like tar. A floating island might also be an island that is up in the air.
Other meanings: A raised portion of land that separates two sides of a road is called an island. You can describe anything that is by itself or alone as an island. A table or counter in the middle of a kitchen is sometimes called an island. The phrase "floating island" might describe an island where you can float.

Fragile

Meaning: Something that is fragile is something that is easy to break. Glass is fragile. An egg is fragile. Confidence can be fragile. Boxes are often marked fragile to let people know that they should be careful not to drop the box. When something is fragile, you should not put a lot of weight on it. Fragile things are not considered strong. They are delicate and vulnerable. Fragile can describe a meek or defenseless person.

It spreads

Meaning: This theme wants you to make a game about something that spreads. When something spreads, it grows larger to fill an area. Water spreads when you dump it on the floor. Fire spreads when it finds new fuel like wood. Grass spreads when we grow it. A disease spreads when more people get sick. Gossip spreads when people talk to each other about someone else. Basically, whenever something covers a larger area, it is said to spread.
Other meanings: A "spread" is another name for a variety of similar things. For example, a spread of books would be a bunch of different books. We use the word spread when we're trying to say that there's something for everyone in a selection that we have provided. People also call any condiment a spread, like ketchup, mayonnaise, jam, or butter. You spread these condiments on food so that they cover an even surface, like spreading jam on a piece of toast. A blanket you put on top of your bed is often called a bed spread. Although spreading is about filling a space, it can also be used to describe something that has been pulled apart. You spread a loaf of bread by pulling it apart instead of cutting it.

Keep growing

Meaning: When things grow, they get bigger or they change and get older. This theme wants you to make a game about something that is always changing or getting bigger.
Other meanings: When people grow, they often show maturity, integrity, or courage when they would not have before. A person who finally stands up to a bully is someone who has grown. To grow something means to take care of something and help it stay alive and healthy. This meaning is usually used with plants. You can grow ideas by telling people about those ideas or thinking about them. When you're making a game, you are growing a game.

Self-replication

Meaning: Self-replication means making copies of yourself. This theme wants you to make a game about something that copies itself. This could be the player, a character in the game, or something else. The idea behind this is to have many copies of the same thing in your game, and that those copies get made during play, not during design.
Other meanings: In science, self-replication is about something that can change that can make exact copies of itself at any point during its existence. Cells in the body self-replicate. Cultures attempt to self-replicate by producing children.

Shelter

Meaning: A shelter is a place that can protect you from harm or danger. A house is shelter. A tent is shelter from the rain. Shelters are places of protection and comfort.
Other meanings: You can shelter something by protecting it from harm, such as stepping in the way of a punch meant for someone else. You can also shelter a person by not telling that person about something that might cause them distress or harm. A person is considered sheltered when they don't know very much about the dangers of the world. A shelter is also what we call a place where homeless people can sleep and get basic services. An animal shelter is a place where you can find animals like dogs and cats to take home as pets. These animals are usually ones that have been abandoned or taken away from their owners because of abuse.

The environment changes you

Meaning: An environment is a place like a forest or a city. It can be another word for area. This theme wants you to make a game where being in a place causes you to change. "You" could mean the player or another creature. "You" could also be general, changing the theme to "The environment changes everyone".
Other meanings: "The environment" is what we call the general idea of the well-being of the planet. In this meaning we're talking about all the natural parts of the world. When the environment changes, we see many natural disasters. An environment might also be a culture. The "office environment" is the culture at a particular office.

Unusual magic

Meaning: Magic is something that breaks the rules of the world to do something, like controlling someone's mind or making a fire appear in your hand. When something is unusual it means that it doesn't appear the same as we expect it. This theme is asking you to make a game about magic that isn't what we expect magic to be. Most people only know magic from games, books, and films. Magic that is unusual will be used to do things that magic isn't usually used for. It might also be that the magic looks very strange.
Other meanings: Stage magic is a kind of performance where someone tricks people into thinking something has happened when it actually has not. Stage magicians use mirrors, lights, and wires to do many of their tricks. This kind of magic is about making people believe that one thing has happened, when another thing has instead. A famous magic trick was making an entire train car look like it had disappeared.

You are the weapon

Meaning: Weapons are tools use to cause harm to others, like swords and guns. This theme tells you to make a game where someone is the weapon, not an object. This could mean that the player acts as a weapon, or another character acts as a weapon. It could even be that the player controls a weapon, instead of controlling a person.
Other meanings: A weapon is just another word for a tool that happens to cause harm. The harm that a weapon does might not be physical. An idea can be a weapon that changes someone’s mind.

You are what you eat

Meaning: This theme wants you to make a game about someone becoming something they eat. This is the main gameplay for most of the Kirby games.
Other meanings: This theme is a saying that people use to remind others that they should eat healthy foods. It means that if you eat healthy foods, you will be healthy, and if you eat unhealthy foods, you will be unhealthy.

You really shouldn't mix those

Meaning: When you mix two things, you put them together. Once two things are mixed, you usually cannot get the original things back. This theme tells you to make a game about things that someone should not put together.
Other meanings: This theme talks about chemistry or alchemy. These are sciences where you combine substances to make something new. Many stories about chemistry or alchemy are about something bad happening after you mix two things.

Happy Voting!

I hope these explanations help you decide which themes to vote for! The list can also help you think up ideas when the final theme is chosen. Have a happy Dare, and let's go make some games!

Let's go.

I'm going to get out of my comfort zone and use Unreal Engine this time around and whatever else I need to use to get things done. Best of luck - Will 👻👻👻

Over the past year, I've tried to learn as much as I can about making a game. I want to see how well of one I can do in only 48 hours. I wish everyone a good run!

So... This is my first time (that's was she said). I dont wanna screw up, but doesn't matters, i'm gonna try to give my best!

Let's do this! excitement and anxiety kicking in

My first time participating in a game jam...I'm very excited! My biggest goal is just finishing a game. Good luck to everyone!

This will be our first time participating in the Ludum Dare, but we hope to come out with a game at the end of this!

Lets do this!

Glad to say that my weekend is free and I will be participating again! This will be my eighth time joining.

• Unity
• GIMP
• Blender
• Audacity / BFXR

Good luck and have fun everyone!

I feel like it was just last week we finished the last LD and now again this weekend is the next. I looking forward to see great games and to be part of that fun.

As programmer my main tools are * Unity 2017.4 or 2018.1 * VisualStudio

Made this in anticipation of LudumDare 41! Get hype!

I love Ludum Dare, and I spend most of them making arcadey twin-stick action games, full of pew pew and stuff flying everywhere. They're always in Unity, and built off an evolving core of base tools that I use for game structure. Controls, menus, leaderboards, all the non-gameplay stuff.

Time to mix it up some!

This time I'll be making a game in Python. And... I don't know Python. But I do have a very big Python book that I've been studying. I won't write any code until the moment the compo starts, and I won't just google/stackexchange the answers either. No pygame, but I'll be using Curses to get some ascii on the screen, and I need an audio solution too. I'll be doing the whole thing live at http://www.twitch.tv/playdungeonmans. Let's see how it goes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq9MBU_NzR0

Hi which theme you prefer ? Please vote, thx https://www.strawpoll.me/15532100

So this will be my 13# time. I'll work together with my crew, Setmind Studios and some guests. It'll be a team of 4 or 5. We hope to do something good, let's see what we can do!

Tools

Well, I always find some useful tools in "I'm in!" posts, so I'll try to make a detailed post/review of our tools

Engine: Godot

Godot it's an open source engine, wich is growing very fast. It's very lightweight and fast, has PBR support, 3D and 2D (Real 2D), very easy and a bunch of other nice stuffs. IIn my humble opnion, Godot is the third element of the holy trinity of the big engines (Unreal, Unity , Godot). You should try it, there are more than 500 actives devs of the engine, and it's only 40mb. Really you should at least download and try it a bit :)

Art

3D

Blender

In my opinion best 3D tool. Yes, i'm not saying best 3D open source tool, i'm saying best 3D tool! It's a Swiss Army Knife tool, very powerful and open source.

Asset Forge

This tool is paid, but believe me, it's worth every penny. Imagine something like building stuff with The Sims build mode and exporting it to an 3D object. You have a variety of pieces and put them together it easily, if you no good with 3D art, use this. And if you know your ways with 3D, you can create your custom blocks.

MagicaVoxel

A free lightweight 8-bit voxel art editor. Very easy to use and free! In case we go for voxel style we will use this.

2D

Gravit Designer

Gravit it's a nice 2D Vector tool. It runs directly from your browser, saves in the cloud, with nice features and it's free! A great alternative to Illustrator.

Photopea

Really, you should cancel your adobe account(kidding), this tool it's a PhotoShop online direct from your browser. For basic editing and cutting this tool is perfect. I no longer use photoshop because of this tool.

Aseprite

We have a pixel artist aspirant in our team, so we'll let this tool near in case of need. From every pixel tool i used, this is the best one.

Audio/Music

REAPER

I'm no good with music, but our main music guy says this is the best tool for composing and very affordable for what it's offer.

Audacity

If we need some audio editing, this will be our tool. Open source and it's very simple to use.

LabChirp

Free sound effect generator. Imagine a Bfxr but with more options.

Team Collaboration

GitKraken

In the beginning there was Git, and it was all dark. Then there was GitKraken, and it was all light. Really if you are afraid or don't understand commits, merge, pull, push etc. Fear no more, this tool will help you. Very intuitive and easy to use, works perfect with Godot. Even if you are a git console user, this tool will make your life easier.

Notion.so

We were thinking about using Trello for planning and team tasks management, but we are starting to use Notion in our job, for documentation and other stuff, so we are planning to test it in the Jam to see how it goes.

End

Well, this was long, but I hope this will be helpful for someone. Good luck and good Jam to you all!

The last of our unfinished time-lapses is done! Now on to LD41!

https://youtu.be/Y4LjmH00DtY

Me and @matt-jones will be participating again, and this time we'll be streaming our progress on Twitch in a big marathon(ish) stream. Come join us over at https://twitch.tv/pothead_pete and https://twitch.tv/rubynovawtd 😄

This is start of my dev log. 2 Days before the start of LD41.

Currently, now in last stage of theme voting. Therefore one of the theme listed will be the final theme.

My plan is to brainstorm ideas for each theme and start making a prototype for each idea. However I found out quickly that making a prototype for each idea simply doesn't work as there are too many ideas.

Therefore the plan is the list a few ideas for each theme and further expand the list when final theme is announced.

I have a simple way of brainstorming idea from the theme. From the theme, first list out what game component ideas there are base on the theme. Next list out the game ideas from the game component list and the theme. I found this way is more effective than just get game ideas from just looking at the theme.

This is the first time doing an LD in April, as I've skipped previous LD seasons set in April due to weather-related reasons. Seriously, hot temperatures here in Manila don't help in concentration as well as a PC's longevity.

I will be creating a sequel to one of my previous LD games. As to what engine I'll use... that depends on the theme that will be unveiled.

I'll try and join! I have a busy schedule, so I may not be 100% evolved, but I need a break, and this is more than enough!

The game will require the most minimal of aspects, (especially on the audio part), and heavily use special effects to fill in the blank spots! (I'm a programmer and special effects take 10 times less than any other kind of asset)

I'll be using GameMaker8.1 as my main engine for sprite creation/code/compiler And I'll also be downloading some sound effects from sites (royalty free) for the audio part. (I'll tune out of that category, don't worry)

Well, good luck everyone! 😁

Good morning!

I've just made the last commit to my Unity visual scripting library, GameLabs!

Happy jamming! I'm in with Unity, Blender and GL!

Link: https://github.com/neverik/gamelabs

I am beyond hyped!

How do I actually join a ludum dare? I'm new to the website's interface so I'm having some trouble Thanks for your patience

Hey, hello!! My pointer went directly to the "JOIN" button, despite the fact that soon I will take a VERY VERY IMPORTANT exam in May, and I should be studying. This will be my first LudumDare that encouraged me to do something, I have always been a ghost after the votes. I hope it is to de-stress me, or at least distract me a little.

Well here is the result of my votes, I hope I have not been very cruel :)

No idea what's going to happen but I'll try my best.

Jam most likely.

Java, LWJGL, IntelliJ, Photoshop

I cannot wait to start!

I actually don't mind the majority of the themes that made it to the final round this time. There are of course a couple that I HIGHLY dislike, but for the most part, there's a decent selection! I voted pretty harshly based on my favorites though.

I have a burning feeling that one of the one's I dislike the most, will be the winner... since that is usually how it goes, but we will have to wait and see.

Looking forward to the event!

Hey guys, this will be my first LD and also first game jam, so I'm very excited. My goal is to work in game industry so this will be great step on my road of learning!

To everything there is a season, and a time for every Ludum Dare, or something like that. I haven't been able to partake in a Ludum Dare since LD38, for all manners of reasons good and bad, so I'm pumped to be able to get back to it.

I had fantasies that I was going to learn Godot in time for this go-around, just to try something different, but that didn't happen. To that end, the usual tools apply:

• Engine: Unity
• IDE: Visual Studio
• Visuals: Photoshop
• Sounds: I might try doing them all on my Arturia Microbrute - but there's always Chiptone and my bag of tricks in REAPER if need be.

The ol' GitHub repos have some code I might be yoink as need be - stuff like level loaders and my patented two-camera setup for resolution-independent arbitrary pixel aspect ratios.

As a bonus, here's a shot of my workspace - this is it in "music" mode, but all that really changes is the software on the screen:

Nice list of final themes for sure--we've come a long way from those 3000+ in the slaughter round. Looking forward to the main event!

What time will it end on Monday?

I have a dope idea to "You shouldn't mix those" so i hope it wins...

I saw people already had placeholders up but I couldn't find a button anywhere. Thanks :)

I'm in!

This time I'm thinking about doing a game for PICO-8, should be challenging and fun!

It's that time of year again. Ludum Dare. I am rather busy with school, but I will try my best to squeez LD in.

My standard tools are: - Engine: Unity 2017.4 - Code: C# in VS 2017 C - Notes: Google Notes/Sheets - 3D: Blender - 2D: Adobe Photoshop - Audio: bfxr and audacity - Entertainment: Spotify - Streaming: OBS Studio*

* There is a chance that I might stream all the shenannigans, so if you're interrested: http://www.twitch.tv/wizzardmaker

I'm in...perfect weekend for coding and creating a game. All I know now is it will be map based, written in Go(lang) and hopefully fun to play...

Let's do this!

First Ludum Dare for me! Will be using Löve2D. Can't wait!

Lets do this!

Using Unity, SFXR, and ... other stuff

Been loving Godot since I discovered it. Godot, Blender, and Bosca Ceiol are gonna be our tools .My younger brother and I are gonna team up again, we did LD40 together too.

Good luck everyone :)

Hello everybody,

I'm happy to join LD this time. It is my third time in and I hope I will actually make something now, even if its just a circle running around a screen. :D I'm using GameMaker Studio 2, Aseprite for graphics, Audacity and LMMS for music.

Good luck and have a nice jam.

Well I'm still looking for somewhere to do LD41 (England, London, Greater London, Outer London) if you have a gathering going on in the area, please tell me about it!?!

Please vote (multiple votes allowed): thx https://www.strawpoll.me/15532100

This is not my poll, I can't edit it.

It's Thursday, my dudes, and the Jam starts on Saturday!

I will be using the following tools:

• Unity as my game engine

• Visual Studio as my IDE

• Blender for modelling, unwrapping, rigging, animating, etc.

• Paint.NET for image editing, like making PBR materials.

• Audacity for recording my guitar (probably)

• Shadowplay for recording my screen (at 4K, no less).

I will be entering the Jam, because I need the extra time and more lenient rules.

Though the competition stretches over 72 hours, I will get a lot less.

According to my calculations, I will only have about 28.5 hours for actual computer time. That's why it's so important that I've already started thinking about what to make. There is no way I'd make it otherwise. Well, to be fair, I will have a lot of time for thinking, and a lot of fresh air throughout.

Anyway, good luck to my fellow participants, and I hope your games turn out wonderful!

Hello fellow jammers, glad to be back with you again 💜

Almost a year ago, we released The Cashbags Man as part of LD38, it was the first complete game from this small team of ours. For one of us, it was even their first game ever! 😯

It went very well, and it was so great to actually finish something, have people play it and enjoy it!

(It was odd that our first game jam together went that well actually, as you may know the first time doesn't always turn well, and we had to quit our LD39, so the mandatory "Failed Jam" box has also been ticked lol)

Fortunately, we did better on LD40 with Between Stations and this time we allowed ourselves to make something that was closer to the kind of games we really want to make.

We also took the time to rate games and take a better look at what other people did. It's stunning how great some works were, and the astounishing number of games that have been made in barely 3 days.

Anyway, we're more ready than ever for this anniversary jam of ours, and we sincerely hope everyone here will have a great time!

We'll be using:

• Unity 2017
• Photoshop
• Ink

  ^ if you don't know of it and are interested in writing games, check it out, we'd be nothing without this awesome tool 😻

Please take some time to rest, take care of yourself and make something you'll be proud of without burning yourself in the process!🐥🐥🐥

Everyone else was making one of these posts so I decided to as well. I've entered a few jams before by myself, hard to put a definite number on it because some jams I spent 50-60 hours working on the game, others I only spent 10. I also used to use Game Maker Studio but since I'm now running Linux on my computer, I'm unable to use it so time to experiment with Pico-8. Definitely looking forward to using it, I love the simplicity yet depth of it.

Game Engine: Pico-8

Language: Lua on Pico-8

IDE: Pico-8

Graphics: Pico-8

SFX: Pico-8

Music: Pico-8

Sleep: Probably, no guarantees

--- oops wrong account!

So now it is here. LD41 is about to start in a few hours (well okay… it’s still about 40 hours…).

Prepare to see two GameDev n00bs trying to create a game with Unity, Blender and a few other tools.

We (@siml and me) are looking forward to this contest. Let’s rock it :)

If you want to have a look at our progress: We will be streaming the whole contest on our (mainly german) twitch channel at http://www.twitch.tv/firesplashtv

Good luck everyone!

It's less than 2 days away from ludum dare 41. Good luck to everyone(and me, because I'm only 11)

Hello! Cant wait for Ludum Dare 41!!

Gonna be my first time trying Unity. But yeah hopefully combined with Gimp and Blender I'll create something worthwhile. We'll see my schedule is more full than it used to be.

Test

That's our third LDJAM and I hope it will be second finished game (we didn't manage to finish last time) If everything goes well our team is @kyasarinn @kamil-lewan and me.

Tools

• engine: Godot 3 :heart:
• text editor: Kakoune
• recording: OBS
• art: Paint Tool Sai (@kyasarinn) or PyxelEdit or MyPaint
• music: LMMS?
• sounds: RfxGen

Have fun everyone!

I'm in, though I plan to mostly play around with my arduino and try to make a weird hardware game that no one will be able to play XD

Im in

..or at least, how can I search for a specific user name in order to ASSEMBLE MY GAME JAM TEAM muahahaha

Here we go again, this time i am motivated indeed to create, lets see what happens :)

Tools of choice this time

• IDE: PHPStrom
• LIB: Phaser.io
• SND: Audiogalaxy
• GFX: Gimp, Inkscape

hmmm, i just read in another post about Godot, that sounds delicious, i might give that one a try :)

When i started doing LD's, i did it to just learn how to write games and actually complete one, but lately i really also want to realize the vision that i have, which is usually difficult with lower level libraries / engines and without premade templates that many ppl here seem to use.

So maybe this time, for the first time, i will use an engine that is more complete and needs less setup for audio and effects like Unity 2D or Godot 2D.

Lets see :)

So people, goeth forth and designeth / codeth / playeth

I have one goal... To manage my time and not spill over from compo into jam...

• Unity
• Pyxel Edit
• Ableton
• Synthwave Playlists

We're taking a break this weekend from our first IP, Shots Fired, and will join LD41!

We've had success before with Ludum Dare, in fact, Shots Fired was first made under Ludum Dare 34.

This weekend, we'll be trying out new project management tools such as the beautiful HacknPlan and our new-found love, Todoist.

As far as game dev tools, we'll be using the following tools: - Unity 5.6 + uFrame MVVM - AseSprite - BitBucket - FL Studio

Follow us on Twitter (@chrysedev)!

This is my first ludum dare and I super excited I'll be using these tools:

1.Godot 3.0 2.Inkscape 3.Gimp 4.Krita 5.Lmms

I'm excited to be participating in LD41, my fourth jam! I'm going to once again be using my custom C++ engine built on top of SFML. Here's to having fun and finishing on time. Good luck everybody!

This is the first ludum dare I'm participating on. My game making skills are not that good, but I'll try my best! Waiting for the theme, im so nervous. I'll be using Game Maker Studio 2 and Photoshop, basically. Maybe I use FL studio for something, idk.

Looking forward to getting stuck in this weekend. Hoping to use LD this time round as an excuse to get more hands on with Unity.

Hope everyone has fun!

Let's do this!
This time i think i will make game in fantasy console. It depends on idea.

• TIC-80

or

• Luxe
• Krita/Inkscape
• Ableton

Good luck everyone.

Here's the thing: For me and my four fine patners in crime this Ludum Dare is going to be way more than just a game dev competition, i'd rather call it a scientific experiment.

What kind of results can you expect from a group of crazy, sleep deprived and unexperienced creeps with a strict diet plan consisting only of pizza, cigarettes and way too much instant coffe?

Will they claw each others eyes out? Are they going to be taken over by their coffeine fueled delirium and destroy something in a fit of incredible anger?

Will they produce a fun game in the process? What kind of maniac would conduct such an horrific experiment? So many questions, but no answers...

On a more serious note: This is going to be the first time we seriously participate in an event like this. Most of the time when we start working on a game together we quit halfway through, thus never really making any progress. We hope, that by having a bit of pressure working "against us", we'll actually get something done for once. Also, for the first time ever, we have someone in our team who can actually draw!!, isn't that something? No more weird looking stick figures! Woooo! We'll mainly be using GameMaker Studio for making our game, as that's the tool everyone in our group is most familliar with.

Organizing everything was a bit difficult though for some reason. Can someone tell me why? All the cool kids kept talking to me about that myterious number "420", that they had something planned. Is it something with the date? And why does it always smell like herbs in the streets since a few days?? What's up with that? 🤔

Anyways: We're really looking forward to playing your various creations and seeing your interpretations of the topic given.

Good luck to you guys! And most importantly: Have fun!

btw: If you live in germany and see a couple of zombie looking kind of fellas walking towards you, trying to talk to you about their "cool new game" and asking for change, run as fast as you can. Don't even look at them.

Hello everyone! I hope your planning for the upcoming jam is going great, and you could make enough free time for it! For those who had to cancel any jam plans this time, I can't wait to see what you'll come up with next time!

I'm currently very focused on learning a couple of new things about Gamemaker that will possibly make the game I'll be producing during this jam more fun, since that is my focus this time. I would love to hear what you have planned this year, any specific things in mind already? Personally, I want to make sure I include Pathfinding in my game, just because its so much fun to play with and I could see it used to make a game that much more fun!

I hope all of you have an amazing Thursday, and i can't wait to see all of your games! If you want to stay updated on my LDJam journey, I'll be covering every minute of it over on Twitter! http://twitter.com/beautifulpanda__

The tools ill be using this time:
Gamemaker Studio 2
Aseprite
Bfxr

I'm was wait a capabilities to take part of LudumDare for a long time, and finaly here the time! I'm will use Unity 5 for my game, 2D features. I'm will stream development process on twitch https://www.twitch.tv/serious07, and send posts on twitter https://twitter.com/Serious_07.

Let's make game that does not exist yet, yeah!

I've followed this event for several years now, and figured I'd finally partake in it. I'll be focusing on the Compo and look forward to seeing you all there!

Tools - Unity - Visual Studio - GIMP - Inkscape - FL Studio - 3ds Max

Good luck everyone! :D

I have never participated in a game jam or Ludem Dare, so this is my first! Im super excited to get started! I will be streaming the game dev. at https://www.twitch.tv/pixels_everywhere

Been a while since my last game Jam and am definitely looking foward to this! Good luck everyone!

I'm going to give Ludum Dare a shot for the first time. Yay. Yay me.

We Are In!

This will be our second Ludum Dare (not in a row). And this time we have expanded our team from 2 to 3 people.

We will be using:

Engine: Unity

IDE: Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code

Art: Aseprite and PyxelEdit for 2D and/or Blender for 3D.

Music/Sound: FLStudio & Audacity

This will probably be our last project using Unity as we are moving to Godot, however we are not quite ready to make the move just yet.

People love to create, and sharing is great but the voting system just bugs the heck out of me. We vote on which themes and then create games based on them. That's fine. The issue comes afterwards, where we have a VERY hierarchical, pseudo-fascist system of voting. We rank pieces of art in order to find the "best" art. The winner. A truly democratic system would not vote on the merits of each work, but allow them to stand on their own as something to be enjoyed. It also clouds are thinking; We don't experience art, we "judge" it. We pick it apart. We look at the process of making it. All of this takes away from the most important aspect of game dev, finding ways to spread true ideals.

Thoughts? This is just my opinion.

I'm slightly confused by this website which probably isn't a good sign, but I'm very excited to join my first ever game jam! I don't know if I'll be able to finish a game with my current level of game dev skills but I'll sure give it a try.

Here's the list of tools I'm planning on using:

Engine: Unity

IDE: Visual Studio

Art: MagicaVoxel, Blender(?), Gimp/Inkscape

Sound: Reaper

... and most likely some free assets because I might not be able to create everything on my own (that's why I'm going with Jam category even though I'll be working alone).

Good luck to all of you fellow jammers!

This is the first game jam I have ever entered in, and I am using the jam to improve my skills as a developer.

I really haven't made any long term projects in unity3D but have a reasonable amount of experience.I anted to participate in the 40th ludum dare but my exams ruined that plan ....

So anyways wish me luck and good luck to the other first time jammers out there.

Forgot to mention the tools I will be using in my "I'm in" post.

Unity 2017.3

Paint.NET

Bosca Ceoil

MagicaVoxel

sxfr

Good luck, everyone!

I post this because I am excited !

It doesn't really work that well mixing those languages. I do still want to make a game about language, preferably procedural. Let's hope for a theme that helps with that.

If not, I'm open to anything. I installed my vector and pixel tools, but also my 3D and Voxel tools. My mainstream engine, my cute (yet arguably completer) engine and my non-existent engine are here too. I'm also derusting my sound editor and DAW. And my beast IDE, but also her little brother, on both the rivalling OS's are ready.

For the record, the tools I meant are respectively: Illustrator, Aseprite, Blender, MagicaVoxel, Unity, PICO-8, cl.exe/node.js, Reaper, GarageBand, Visual Studio and VS Code, MacOS and Windows 10.

So yes: "I'm in."

Best of luck to all of you, may the best game-devs have the most fun!

Since I've already done 3 rounds of going through all the themes (find at the bottom) I'm just going to quickly post my final round vote distribution. By far my favorite theme out of the bunch is "You really shouldn't mix those", Not a place, not a scenario, not an object, not a mechanic, just a great theme that almost asks a question in the reader: "Mix what?". When the reader has to ask a question like that THATS when the ideas start flowing in. This theme is just perfect I believe and also an inherintly better version of "Combine 2 incompatible genres".

Themes that I don't want to see? hmmm...

Keep Growing - Garbage, worse version of "Growing" (which was a previous theme)

Combine 2 incompatible genres - You know why

Floating Islands - A theme which is telling me where my game should be set, no. Also Islands was a previous theme

Otherwise, I'm very respectfully hoping we don't get any other themes which I -1'd. Anyway... have a good day!

Voting Round 1: Opinion!.

Voting Round 2: Opinion!.

Voting Round 3: Opinion!.

During the weekend I'm gonna livetweet the creation of my game on Twitter ( at least as much as I can). If you are interested you can follow me here : https://twitter.com/Le_Toulousaing

Good luck everyone !

PS : Did you know I made a game ? Because I made a game. Please play my game : http://touloutoumou.com/games/Oldcomputer/

Hi!

Me and my friend is going to participate in this ludum dare. And its our first time. BUT, It says that it starts april 20th but on the countdown (its tuesday) its says that there is 1 day and 13 hours to the start(so its the 21th) can you pls help?

I just made a planning, 9 hours of sleep in 48 hours... seems reasonable, so hyped for the weekend

I'm going to be using:

Unity 2017.4 Blender Bosca Ceiol Paint.Net

I never had so much pressure on making something! Seeing that this is gonna be my first game, I know it's gonna be a small and short one. I wish everyone the best and luck!

Also, I don't know if this can be shared but for some beginners I found this useful schedule that you can use as a example to plan out your days!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/2014/11/20/how-to-prepare-during-the-ldjam/

I know they say don't help the competition but what fun is that, when you can have more fun and polished games to play? :D

This time i will be participating alone, along my students, who currently have a class of mine about Unity and development. Some of them are going to participate in teams, and I wish them best of luck! As for myself, lets see how it gois this time :)

Hey folks,

I see you're all as excited as me, ludum dare here we come, w00p w00p!!!

This will be my ludum dare #4. Currently preparing my template project with some basic functionality so I can hit the ground running when the jammin' starts (and probably throw away everthing I am doing now...)

If the theme will be "spawn useless cubes and spheres" I could publish my game right now and be done with it!

I might post progress during the jam on twitter: https://twitter.com/MarcGrabow

Here is my cross-platform Go game prototyping library in action.

This little space ship was created in only 47 lines of code:

package main

import "github.com/gonutz/prototype/draw"

func main() {
    x, y := 60, 240
    var bullets []bullet
    draw.RunWindow("Game", 640, 480, func(window draw.Window) {
        // handle input
        if window.IsKeyDown(draw.KeyRight) {
            x += 3
        } else if window.IsKeyDown(draw.KeyLeft) {
            x -= 3
        }
        if window.IsKeyDown(draw.KeyUp) {
            y -= 2
        } else if window.IsKeyDown(draw.KeyDown) {
            y += 2
        }
        if window.WasKeyPressed(draw.KeySpace) {
            bullets = append(bullets, bullet{x: x + 15, y: y, life: 1})
        }

        // update world
        n := 0
        for i := range bullets {
            bullets[i].x += 6
            bullets[i].life -= 0.01
            if bullets[i].life >= 0 {
                bullets[n] = bullets[i]
                n++
            }
        }
        bullets = bullets[:n]

        // render
        for _, b := range bullets {
            window.FillEllipse(b.x-5, b.y-5, 10, 10, draw.RGBA(0, 1, 0, b.life))
        }
        window.FillRect(x-20, y-20, 40, 40, draw.Red)
    })
}

type bullet struct {
    x, y int
    life float32
}

If you love the Go programming language as much as I do, why not create your game in Go? Give it a try. If you have any questions or suggestions for improvement, hit me up!

Awesome people could you share your opinion? I see that many people don't like the "Shelter" or "Fragile", while I'm quite fond of them.

I'm really not sure about the "Combine 2 incompatible genres", "At the beginning there is nothing" and "Color changes everything?". They seem quite limiting, and or force you to focus on one specific part of your game. :fox:

I seem to have forgotten about Ludum dare until yesterday. Anyway, I'm in! I'll be using: - C++ with SFML - Gimp for graphics - Sfxr for sound - Lot's of random and procedural noise - My extreme knowledge of the tools I plan to use

Got a new PC that can finally create games, and what better thing to test my game creating skills on than Ludum Dare!

Going to use Godot 3.0 and some painting tools, looking how things go, possibly Krita or GraphicsGale

Hey beautiful people. I've constantly seen people complaining about the themes in the last days and I want to say: there's no reason to do so. You can get really creative with interpreting the themes and I often end up with something that just barely relates to the theme - if at all. And I think that's okay. This is about having fun and improving your skills, don't stress too much.

last time I participated in ludumdare it was #LD34 and my entry was this : http://ludumdare.com/compo/2015/12/15/growing-diseases/

anybody lazy like me who is unable to participate in every ludumdare, please show me your last creation, so that I can feel bad about my skills (which I don't have).

If it's going to be combine two incompatible genres, i'll be greatly disappointed. The other ones seem fine though.

hope we do well and all...

http://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/842451/BUILD/index.html

That's a demo game made in Unity with GameLabs, my own visual scripting extension. 0 lines of code!!

Link: https://github.com/neverik/gamelabs

"Combine two incompatible genres"...Only theme in there I just don't like, other than that the rest are pretty good.

Hi there,

For my fifth Ludum Dare compo participation, I'm going to try a completely different game engine than what I've been using so far (flixel / HaxeFlixel); the Godot 3.0 engine. I've been testing it the last few days and it seems really cool, hopefully it will help me save some time coding.

I'm also going to try to actually compose some music with a MIDI keyboard and Mixcraft 8 Pro Studio.

In short, here is the software I will probably use: - Godot 3.0 - Corel PaintShop Pro 2018 - Bfxr - Audacity - Mixcraft 8 Pro Studio

Really looking forward to this!

Going to do my first ludum dare jam this weekend. Using Love2D. Been building up a code base for a couple weeks so I can get on with the actual game design rather than just solving coding problems.

I've done a bunch of other jams in the past that you can see on my site https://www.ashleypringle.ca/ but this is the first jam I've participated in in a while so I'm pretty excited!

Looking forward to LD41, the seventh time I’ve joined the compo!