Didn't make an "in" post before the jam, so here we go, presenting the entry at the same time~

Ava and Morten made another space game based on an idea by Marte, who otherwise didn't join in this time. c:

* 💓 GO HERE TO PLAY/RATE/COMMENT! 💓 *

Hope you like it! c: Feeling a bit sickly right now, but will be playing your amazing games in the days to come, and write a couple of technical blog posts as usual.

We've done several bugfixes, so check out our game if you didn't do this already!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/arena-sim

I thought I'd share the BGM for our ludum dare game on soundcloud. I mean, it's a bit rough since it was made in very little time, but I think it turned out quite nice. Find it here:

https://soundcloud.com/ashment/the-forsaken-frontier

And if you liked the music, make sure you give our game a play!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/$43635

@togis had tried out my little Compo entry named Proto472 during his stream!

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

Thank you very much for your time @togis!

Anyone who wants to try it for himself can do so here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/proto472

Hi, check this game I've currently discovered, it has very unusual game mechanics and is funny. Needs more rating.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/dont-click-on-tiny-dudes

A tiny bit of post-mortem:

Adding part of Kururin's main mechanic into the game was what made it work for me.

I didn't intend it this way at first, but the moment it happened I just couldn't look back. It made everything in the gameplay and the maps come together.

Having to balance the brute dash mechanic with the careful crawling through tiny-spaces makes for the right amount of easy-to-grasp-hard-to-master essence in this game. I hope the 6 levels I made are able to highlight this.

It's always interesting to see your own game grow organically during the jam. And this is why I participate in these jams.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/aesthetics-raider

I got more than 20 reviews for Quoala, it's really cool ! Thank you for your time and your kind feedbacks.

Most of you wanted a way to see more endings by skipping dialogs. Good news, everyone ! * Now, you can skip texts ! * I share a new build in my source code, in the folder exe_skip. If you want to see what the final version of the game will be, you can try it there. But if you want the version made during the Compo, you can try on itch.io directly. Don’t forget to rate me on the itch.io version, the github version is only if you like the game and you really want to find all the endings quickly :)

Hey,

I would be happy if you can check out my game. I'll also play your game.

You can play my game here: https://jorbits.itch.io/powrconnectr

And then you can go on my ludum dare site: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/powrconnectr

Most of the feedback I received said that the game was too hard.

I am currently fixing a bug in my game and I decided if i can tweak the variable values in the Enemy AI to make the gameplay easier.

In Every Light Goes Out we implemented a new input method that requires you to point a light source towards your webcam, in order to enable your character light.

As you can see it works with different types of light sources (of course it works better in the dark).

In our game you have to escape from a maze before the limited amount of energy you have left to power your light runs out. Here is an in-game screenshot.

If you don't have a webcam don't worry, we included a non-webcam version, but please know that the entire game is designed around that idea so the experience and the immersion will be affected if you don't use it.

Please try out our game and tell us what you think!

Play Game!

I'm really happy with the game I made for this Ludum Dare, I think it is my best entry so far.

Play it here

The main thing that I like about my entry is that the cells are displayed using a single shader. I decided that rather than trying to draw art, which I'm not very good at, I would 'code' the art. This shader ended up using volumetric rendering in 2D and then a weighted voronoi effect applied over the top. This shader than has an array of points sent to it which are the positions of each cell to show.

I'm also really happy with both the music track I made, as well as the simple sound fx made when a cell is destroyed. This only has 2 sounds but I think it works very well.

All in all, I'm really happy with this game, there are still a few things that I would have preferred to have done differently, one of these is the UI, which I ran out of time to do properly. The other thing is that I should have done more levels.

There is one problem I have with the main shader, this is that it makes use of a large number of uniform variables, this is fine for a dedicated Windows (and I think Linux) build, but not for WebGl. This is due to OpenGLES having a lower number of allowed uniforms and so can't compile. So everything is pink. If anyone knows of a workaround for this I would love to hear it, but in the mean time I can't make a web build, unfortunately.

If you missed the first link: Play it here

Hey guys,

I would like to play your games and start live streaming in an hour :)

Just add me a link in a comment.

The only condition is that your game has a web version.

Thanks :heart:

If you haven't seen it, Torgis played my game yesterday - and it was awesome - . You can see the video bellow. Also you can check other videos, he played a lot of games from the ludum dare 39 !

Play Bead on the moon here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/bead-on-the-moon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FR973bTTnk

I always try to 'juice' my game up to make it look fun, and satisfying to play. A lot of techniques are very easy to implement, and really pay off in the end.

(You can play it here)

Here are two great videos on on how to juice up your games. (if you haven't already!) And show the difference it makes!

and Juice it o lose it, by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho Juice it or lose it

The art of Screenshake, by Jan Willem Nijman The art of Screenshake

Hey! We made a multi fighter game named Last Showdown that we've patched in the last few hours~! It took a lot of time and effort and love and now we're all really invested in it! So if you could kindly come and play, it would mean a lot :)

~Here it is~

It's about a band of little holos with unique features turning on each other after the world power plant shut down! Oh no! Who will manage to stay alive? To help you you have at your disposal unique powers, healing pods and the surroundings! !

This was our second Ludum Dare, and hell if we weren't more efficient, we're quite happy with the results all things considered! To make it, we used a mixture of handmade paperback media (map/level design, animations) and computer infographics (colouring, coding, code generated effects)!

It would be super nice if you could come and leave feedback on bugs and impressions so we can make it better! We intend to make a finished version post Ludum with all kind of neat and sassy features we didn't have time to implement because of bad communication and organisation :'( (but did make) like a tweaked map, erasing a few odd white pixels, balanced abilities, a neater menu, character selection and keymapping, ultimate animations, dashing up and down animations, cool laser effects, neat graphics for the healing pods, sound effects, more music, maybe additional maps! So don't forget to say if you'd be interested and what you'd like to see in it and we'll link it up ;) Peace yall and thanks in advance!

I'm just adding a single word to help the players play my game.

I don't think that it is a new feature but I just want to make sure that I am not breaking any rules

Please play this game and don't forget to rate and comment that did you like the game or not I will love to play your game too

MoonBall - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/moonball

Fish-Boy

Our game is Fish-Boy, a procedural platforming game where you are a fish person, check it out here. All feedback is greatly appreciated! :v:

I've made a version for QWERTZ-keyboard users! Just install the QWERTZ version! (I asked Mike for permission!) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/d34th

Reviewing and rating games is much nicer when there's a HTML5 version.

So we made one too!

All Versions

HTML5 https://amarcu.itch.io/last-train-out

PC & Mac https://amarcu.itch.io/last-train-out

LD Page

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/last-train-out

How to Play

Control two characters to manage the systems on the Last Train Out. Keep the power running and you might just escape the apocalypse.

• Speeding up the train damages wheels, and drains fuel.
• Hitting rocks slows the train, so keep your shield repaired.
• Eat food to keep your stamina up after all the hard work!

Keyboard Controls

• Swap Characters: Tab
• Action: Up, W, E
• Move: A, D, Left/Right
• Jump: Space
• Drop Down: S, Down
• Quit Game: Escape

XBox Controller

• Swap Characters: Y
• Action: X
• Move: Left Stick
• Jump: A
• Drop Down: Left Stick Down
• Quit Game: Escape

We heard some staff had issues with boxes sticking to them and holding them back. The boxes were lonely and just wanted to stay with you. We have dehumanized the boxes so they will no longer stick to you. (Bug fixed!)

TINY GIF CLICK HERE TO WATCH ON GIPHY

AND CLICK HERE TO PLAY

I fixed bugs that made the game really hard to play (Used update instead of fixed update, so unplayable for high end pc) and added a html build ! (Cause a lot of people don't like downloading game). Here is the link ! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/bounty-1

Hi there!!! Many people liked soundtrack, so now you can listen it on Soundcloud! https://soundcloud.com/tokatsu/sets/defender-of-the-energy-ost

also, don't forget to play a game:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/defender-of-the-energy-finally-out

thank you very much!

Come and try to beat the game!

Platformer

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/exception-39-core-molten/

All this talk of HTML5 this, Web Version that. What you really need is a dependable old downloadable game and we've got one right here for ya!

Super Helpful Man

Figured I'd put up a play through video of my game so people without VR or people who get stuck can see what's up.

I played with my HTC Vive and my Knuckles controllers in this video but it works fine with Vive wands and Oculus Rift/Touch too.

Spoilers, if you have VR gear and want to play it I suggest that instead of watching this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae-O3_j6cOQ

Feel free to give it a rating, I still need like 15 to get ranked!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/punchey-vr-only/

Been playing and reviewing lots of games and I've seen some great theme interpretations as well as some awesome graphic design. Our game wasn't perhaps that innovative but I'm surprised at how well-received it was nevertheless!

Thanks a bunch for everyone who had the time to check out our game and give us a review :thumbsup:

You can play our game Fear of the Dark here, no download required (but consider it anyways for a smoother experience).

Find Out Yourself!, in trying to restore power to the city. Be quick before all the energy supply is used.

Link to game page!

It is a management game, more can be found there: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/no-sorcerers-sky

:coffee:

Been playing and rating many great games since early this morning, so why don't you grab your favorite mug relax and give our game a go as well?

LINK: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/coffee-hero-powered-by-coffee

Play, rate and comment Coffee Hero to start this beautiful wednesday!

Here's task for you: 1. Count the sheep 2. Count the fence poles 3. Count the voxels 4. Count the grass strands

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-castle

MICROSCOPIC now is updated for WebGL! I have NOT touched any of the source, so everything remains as it should (including the bugs!)

Want to play the WebGL version? Visit the Ludum Dare page here at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/microscopic

Haven't played MICROSCOPIC? MICROSCOPIC is a game where you play as a cell, fighting off virus cells to protect both you and your human. I'm pretty proud of it!

Good luck to everyone!

I have made a HTML5 build for those of you that don't like downloading games. But I would still recommend downloading the windows build. This is because the HTML5 build has NO fullscreen mode. Furthermore, there are a few bugs present in the HTML5 build that aren't in the windows build. These bugs aren’t game breaking it is still perfectly playable, it is mostly just visual (as far as I know).

Game Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/snow-train

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/indiana-stones

This is our first ludum dare and on a personnel note.. we are very happy with what we made.. but as learners , we would love to have our game played and commented upon. Please feel free to comment and tell us what you feel is lacking and what you feel intresting about.

I've recently updated Powerless Miner's ludum dare page to include log list. I thought that this would be a good idea to let people know about some changes or things I want to tell.

Changes:

 1. I decreased the overall difficulty of the game. No one had ever finished the game btw (not sure).

 2. I added a lower quality setting. There is a performance issue due to the graphics.

Game Link:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/lucis

Hi -- I'm going to do a "low perf" build of my game -- Truck, Fuel my Rockets -- and was considering a post-compo "hard" version. I can't really rate much where I'm at due to crappy internet, so if anyone has a moment to take a look and let me know what they think that'd be great :) Looking forward to getting stuck into ratings later in the week.

The version I was playing before I submitted was harder, but I changed some of the timers for the submitted version, and it's now possibly too easy (realistically it should be hard to get past 30 rockets).

Here's the game -- https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/truck-fuel-my-rockets/

Thanks, G.

I am close to the magic 20 reviews of my game. If you rate mine, I will check out yours. Thanks!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/inefficient-plasma-weapon

We set out with the game being playable on mobile (not necessarily built for mobile though) and I figured I'd try a build for it. It "works", although it has an annoying bug where closing the upgrade windows are quite difficult. Might work on an update to this and make it fully playable on mobile, although right now it's definitely do-able.

If you haven't checked out Mad Trax you can find it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mad-trax/ Mad Trax is a Tower Defense / Resource Management / Infinite Runner hybrid

• Fixed bug that sometimes kicks you to the main menu when picking up stuff
• Fixed bug that sometimes consumes stuff when picking up
• Made hide animation framerate independent

Thanks to @zee for the hint that helped me fixing the bug!

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

MoonBall - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/moonball

Thanks for all your support. But we have to hit 20 to acquire some position.... Please Play and Rate my game....

Yesterday saw some fixes to my game Electric Castle.

I had to fix something with the bouncing pad and the difficulty balance of level 5.

Enjoy! And let me know if there is anything else.

Finally, after 26 years of development, the totally awesome sequel to ZONE ENFORCER has arrived! See it here for the first time before its official cartridge release! Try this rad game out and have the 411 on it before all of your friends.

Try it here

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/zone-slayer

Hey! Have you tried my game Coffy? Go now! I'll be waiting here, drinking my coffee... and don't forget to leave your feedback! :coffee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DI7N2PHND8

And if you want send me your game link, I will play and rate it!

First of all, thanks for this game jam, It was so much fun to create a ~~baguette~~ game with a team of friends... As I'm 17 and so much in love with game creation since years... well I'm really excited.

LETS GO FINISH THIS GAME

Hello my fellow game devs! I have a question for someone more experienced than myself. How do you go about getting your foot in the door of working in the game development field? I would consider myself an intermediate programmer. But how do I even try to go into working in this field??? Do I need to go to college? Do I need to know the right people?? As some one fresh out of high school I would appreciate any help!!

Starting stream in an hour!

Link to stream: https://www.twitch.tv/pixelformed Link to form: https://form.jotformeu.com/72126959326362 Link to Google Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-U-FPar7Ie9Of-uVJPPbx2dTxm7X5olNlRQKXS8AyoI/edit#gid=0

EDIT: I'M AN IDIOT AND FORGOT TO LINK THE GAME https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/space-robot-on-a-space-ship HERE, PLAY IT, IT'S NOT THAT BAD

Wow, this Ludum Dare was a ride. This was my third LD and after mismanaged and unsuccessful for me LD38, where I assembled a small team, which produced nothing but bad code and misery. Hell, I was writing text description of a final boss battle (instead of making an actual battle) one hour before Jam deadline to put something in there. So, I was ready to learn from my mistakes and make a good game this time.

LD38 game's biggest problem was the scope. We decided to make a metroidvania with multiple dungeons and an open world. So, this time, I decided to make something small and focused. So I made an open world space game. Apparently, I will never learn.

Idea As soon as I looked at the theme, I came up with three ideas. First one, a robot on a spaceship and both running out of electrical charge as you go. Second is written in my sketchbook as "your phone is running out of power", but I couldn't make an interesting gameplay out of this idea. And third is "your character's power is slowly deteriorating". As in, your character loses skills and abilities as you go. So, the game pretty was a combination of first and third idea -- you would be playing as a robot in a ship with limited charge, but can disable parts of it to preserve power.

Prototype I feel, like I did everything In the wrong order. First thing I did was a sketch of a ship.

Looking at what happened after I scribbled on a paper for a bit I decided, that it was good enough, and so the ship would have 4 systems. First two were pretty simple -- Shield Room (because, every spaceship has a magic shield) and a UI Room (because I thought it would be fun). That left me with two rooms to go, so I decided to make a Radar Room to detect enemies (because, of course, there would be enemies, how can you even make a game without murder?) and a Steering Room (thought process behind that was something like "Oh, I don't know, I'll make a room that controls the ship or something, whatever").

After that, you would assume, I made me some enemies or obstacles to shoot. Well, not really. I made a tutorial. In fact, a failure state was one of the last thing, I added to the game. But in the end, my tutorial has bitten me in the ass, as players understood the ship controls, but not ship systems or upgrade mechanics, which I added later. But, as level was finalized and I didn't have time to redesign it, stuff like energy consumption ended up without proper tutorial.

Then, there were obstacles. I was really pleased, that I managed to squeeze a two types of enemies, asteroids and a boss from, basically, the same code, just with minor alterations in variables' values.

Level design I'm pleased with I went for a more organic approach to the tutorial and level design. I didn't want to just open the game with "How to Play" screen. Instead, I wanted to lead players down a particular path through collectibles and passable obstacle placement that would tech them game mechanics and provide structure, while still remaining an open world game. But that lead to some players "not getting" the game and getting frustrated at controls and unclear mechanics.

This is the screenshot from the first day of LD, that shows example of this approach.

You can see two lines of scrap, that you need to collect to upgrade your ship and an enemy (I'm lazy to open my game and take a newer screenshot, so just assume there is a big "Press R to shoot" in front of the spiky Thingy). As you kill an enemy, you would want to collect scrap, and at the end of the line, you would get a tutorial on upgrading your ship. However, even if you collect all of them, you would be a couple of scrap bits short of the next level up, so you would want to collect the bits you saw behind some asteroids. A nice idea in theory, but I failed to tell players, that scrap is important, before trying to lead them through this path.

Other stuff I'm pleased with Oh, and asteroid belt was pretty nice. Looks like, Unity devs has seriously upgraded their physics engine, as it managed to draw that many physics objects without dropping frames.

Oh, and this epic shooting mechanic everybody liked. At first, I decided to limit player's shooting speed and make bullets disappear on collision (in fact, enemies' guns work just like that), but then I thought the chaos that a pile balls spawning every frame created was too funny to fix. Yeah, a bug that ended up as a most compelling feature.

Sounds ended up okay as well. I wanted to write some simple background music, but it wasn't good enough.

Other stuff that's bad Ship controls. I even jokingly mention it in a description, but it's still should have been redone to WSAD movement. The intention was to create a physics-driven ship controls, so you had to compensate the speed of the ship, by applying force to one of the two directions. But, if you wanted an easy way to stop the ship, regardless of speed and direction it's going, you could've press Space to stop, while taking a big hit to energy. But, in the end, ship was too clunky to control, and I became so good at the game, so I wouldn't notice. I had my doubts about controls, and I should've changed them. Oh well, yet another lesson to learn.

Final boss. It's not really bad, it's just too easy an weird. You just fill the room with balls and kill it. It doesn't feel like a boss battle at all. It was, probably, the most difficult area of the game for me. As I was basing it on a common enemy code and putting it in a small room, it kept flying into the wall and killing itself. It was funny, because, I felt the same way as I was fixing this issue after a solid 10 hours of work or so.

Conclusion Yep, the game's alright. Turns out, having a solid plan from the start helps a lot. Probably, shouldn't have overworked, as it hurt the game, but it was a really fun Ludum Dare regardless. And I would like to thank everyone, who played my game and thank even more, those people, who left a feedback. See you on the next Ludum Dare!

This is actually our first ludum dare project it has a lot of problems but we made our best.

Any way we hope you like the game

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/drain-2

If you've played my GnG clone before, thanks a lot. And I urge you to try it again. I've released a small post-compo change which rebalances energy and fixes some other issues. It's a lot more difficult to run out of energy, and it now serves its purpose as an anti-spam mechanic. The weird statues now have a purpose.

If you're hearing about the game for the first time, I'm inviting you now; it's your one-of-a-kind ticket to become a pink fluffy unicorn dancing on a field of kebabs.

Link!

Here's the changelog:

• Jump cost increased from 5 to 10 (what?).
• Shoot cost increased from 10 to 20.
• Energy gain increased from 1/s to 3/s.
• Standing next to a Jedi statue for at least 1 second will now regen energy for 20/s.
• Reduced the amount of Jedi statues appearing on the map.
• You can now rotate while midair.
• Zombies reach the surface at a higher rate.
• Zombies no longer deal damage when they’re not fully on surface.
• Like in gng, crossing the river is permanent until all lives are lost. But you can still go back to the graveyard.

<3 to everyone playing the game so far, it's way cool to see your feedback. Here's some advanced mechanics for the ones interested in getting ahead of the competition!

The power you have in store determines how far you are going to fly off when hit by an attack. The less power in store, the further the distance you’re knocked back! Note that performing attacks costs a bit of energy, but getting hit costs more.

When running completely out of energy, the Bot enters recovery mode, regenerating its power over the course of a few seconds. It cannot act while doing so; it is our version of a “Stun”. Pro-tip: Hitting an opponent in recovery mode will stop the recovery at the amount it is at the moment they get hit.

The higher the current combo, the more Power is drained when landing a hit on the opponent.

The combo counter increases for every hit a player lands without getting hit in return, and drops to 0 whenever the other player starts his own combo streak.

Like resource and time management? Try my PowerLessWorld game and let me know if you won (it's not very easy, I think):

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/powerlessworld

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/powerlessworld

Is this really allowed? And if, what kind of changes are permitted?

Because people got me some feedback, I would really like to improve my game for the fellow jammers trying it out so they won't encounter same troubles :)

I just finished fixing some (I hope all) bugs in my LDJam game "The Ruler's Power". Go check it out! I could use some more ratings!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-rulers-power

Thanks!

The Energy Thief needs your help to collect the batteries!

Avoid the Frogmen and find all the batteries in 500 seconds.

The Game runs on windows or in the Web-Player, so there is no excuse for not Playing :joystick:

A procedurally animated rhythm game.

Play Funkotron 5000

@togis was playing my game called "Cubes run out of power too" on his stream!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwPtD44SvT0

Thank you very much for the time and feedback @togis!

You can play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/cubes-run-out-of-power-too

Now, after a few days have past since the LD and my brain is recovering from the mad rush during Development, I am ready to look back on my experience and share it with you.

my game can be found here

First of all – this was my best LD to date. I had a rough start, but eventually I made a game I was content with, I had some time to add polish and didn't waste all of it. :smile:

Process – Before the LD I spent some time planning when to work and the initial idea was:

• Not to stay up till theme announcement. Instead sleep well so I can start a few hours into the LD, but fresh and ready (rather than having to cut 6-10 hours to sleep during the LD itself).
• Start by creating assets, so on the scripting phase I don’t rely on placeholder assets.
• Have playable core mechanic by 17:00 Saturday.

But “no plan survives reality”. Initially all went well. I woke up in the morning and checked the theme. That wasn’t one of my upvoted themes… in fact I am sure that was one I downvoted in Final round, but… That’s how democracy works.

I spent some time and come up with a concept of “Running out of Political power”. The concept was to have a sequence of turns, on each turn player is presented with several problems, and must decide which minister would be overseeing the solution, and how much of budget is allocated into solving the issue.

Depending on some parameters the problem could be either solved – which would give you some power, or failed (depending on some properties of the problem and Minister handling it)

In process of it the minister could display incompetence, corruption and/or publicity blunders, which would be criticized by opposition (costing you power). And those negative effects will be cumulative. Meaning that critique will be coming in every turn, unless you fire this minister, and replace it with a new one. Which you might not want to do, as Minister also gain experience, which give them better chance of successfully solving problems in future.

Was this game original… well… not the most original.

Was this game over-scoped? Maybe… But I felt confident in coding the logic for it, so I went ahead. And as I was going to start by creating assets, I came to a question – what assets I need to create. And that largely depended on what kind of look I wanted to give to the game. First idea was to show a table with a bunch of papers on it… I tried to arrange something and take a picture, but it was… mostly crap.

So I thought up a meeting room with a big table and the ministers sitting next to you… and so I went into creating 3D models…

Table was easy. Chairs were easy enough too – especially I only needed the back of them.

And then it came to modelling the ministers. That wasn’t the first attempt of me trying to model a humanoid, but it could’ve been my first successful take at it… :smile: And surprisingly the modelling went pretty well. I modelled a head that looked… human-like. In fact, there were two heads – male and female. Then I modelled the upper body… and I started rigging it, so I could position arms and hands in some ways, and possibly rotate heads so they face the player.

Adding bones was easy. And Blender did a decent job at automatically assigning weights to bones… but when it can to positioning them it started to rapidly fall apart.

In hindsight, I could’ve done a couple things to improve the result:

• Add more geometry. I didn’t have nearly enough geometry on the arms. And for good animation having some extra vertices near the joints can go a long way.
• Modelling hands straight = bad idea. Inverse Kinematics needs to know how to bend your joints. And if you don’t have a slight bent in elbows – it will get confused and bend your model’s arms in all the unexpected ways.
• I have a real aversion to assigning weights to control bones. That is a long story why this is… and this effort not let this happen (while recalculating weights) did cost me some time, while I wasn’t going to use this rig with any stock humanoid animations, so I could just ignore this…

But anyway… by 15:00 I still didn’t have a rig I was happy with. And I realized that at this pace I will not have enough time to finish the game… And so I decided to scrap the idea altogether.

A brief moment of panic later I started coming up with an alternative ideas… I needed something super-lightweight, to compensate for effectively wasted half of day… And that is how an idea of a puzzle-game was born.

Instead of having several levels each of which was reasonably easy to complete, it would essentially have one level, that would require several attempts to beat, so finally beating it would give a gratification of completing a game. Sure – the replay-ability of such a game would be pretty much non-existent, but… that is a Jam-game… not a commercial project anyway. :smile:

I picked a pretty tricky puzzle – the Bridge and Lantern. (Though in comments a lot of people were referencing Wolf-Goat-Cabbage puzzle… which is also a good one, but an entirely different one) And just to disguise it a bit more I expanded the number of travellers from original 4 to 8 (though at expense of not having each of them unique and expanded the number of possible solutions from 1 to 3) and added a rule for “protecting civilian ships” which ruled out one of 3 possible “correct” solutions leaving 2.

Then I went ahead with a plan to create assets first, and within 1 hour threw together a sprite map with all the ships and some graphical “effect”. First I drew some designs on paper. Them I digitized them using MS Paint and finally I used Krita to cut out white background.

And this approach seem to work quite well. Having the basic assets to begin with allowed me not to use some placeholders, and as soon as the puzzle logic was complete (about midnight) I effectively had the game that could be played.

So I had the entire Sunday for polishing and adding some mood for the game which allowed me to do some totally unnecessary things like the exposition scene that runs upon game start. Yes. That scene was a shameless rip-off from Star Wars. :smile:

And then I decided to do something that I never had time for in my previous games – add sounds. That was my first time working with BFXR… and it turned out… harder than I expected. All those sliders made little to no sense to me, so I basically had to rely on hitting “randomize” button over and over until I heard something reasonable… Though the “Warp” sound was customized by hand a bit – adding some falloff length, and vibrations…

After getting some sounds in the game, I decided to go all in and add some music. Especially since the exposition scene felt incomplete without it… so I opened Audiotool.com and… Well if I felt overwhelmed by BFXR - audiotool simply crushed my by the number of options there. But I was determined and after 5 hours of voluntary sound torture… I gave up. Basically rage-publishing the game without completing a list of smaller features, like custom UI panel graphics, additional UI information on ships, and so on.

Summary:

What went right:

• The workflow. Basic assets firs, scripts later seem to work well. Will definitely do this again.
• The background. The stars in the background required a custom shader, 5 materials, 3 prefabs and a script to randomize it! The stars were changing colours, slowly rotated and pulsed in size! And nobody noticed it, meaning that the background was… Perfect.
• Sound effects. Yes. It was hard to implement. And it took way more time than was necessary, but I did learn a few things and the sounds I picked didn’t seem to invoke any negative reactions from players.
• Game concept. Based on the feedback – the players enjoyed having a puzzle game and did in fact felt gratified for completing it once. So the intention was met.

What went wrong.

• Chasing rabbits. – Not once, but at least 3 times I started chasing the stuff I wasn’t qualified to produce, and that cost me a crapton of time and frustration.
• … and that is pretty much it. Nothing else that I would call a failure.

In conclusion:

I aggressively started playing other games and giving feedback – as soon as I realized that the rating is open, so within a couple of days my game had 20 ratings itself! Which is awesome!

Looking forward for the next jam!

As suggested I've gotten rid of the awkward button combination and replaced it with hopefully something more comfortable and acceptable.

This morning I finished fixing bugs on my game "The Ruler's Power" It's my first jam game so it won't be perfect XD Go check it out!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-rulers-power

Thanks!

InGame texts got polished to be more descriptive, fixed "Button" to work as intended

Grab version 1.1T @ https://www.dropbox.com/s/bon2w79rsi0tvke/CoreMolten1.1T.32x.zip?dl=0

Ludum Dare page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/exception-39-core-molten/

I'm happy to say I completed a game inspired by the theme "running out of power" in 48 hours for LD39 compo! I wish I had enough time to add music, but having made the game entirely with java, almost all of my time was spent creating the mechanics (with the help of an engine, these mechanics would have been less time-consuming, but making everything from scratch is more fun anyways).

The game's called < Mr. Plug > , here's a link to the download:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwJXVQ9KfShlNXo4RC00Uk5QaFk

Hey guys. I just wanted to share my joy with you: my game has been played by 5 different YouTubers. I added the game play video in my game's Ludum Dare page over here: >>Ludum Dare page<< or in YouTube playlist over here: >>YouTube link<<

Check it out! :slight_smile:

Today is another day, and with another day came another wave of ratings! Here are some games that impressed me the most.

Mad Trax

by boats (@boats)*, Gengi (@gengi), Benjamin Armour (@benjamin-armour), SamHunny (@samhunny), Zahid (@zahid), and EndilWayfare (@endilwayfare)

Ride the magic train straight to the 80s! Defend it with turrets while managing ressources to make sure you don't stall and get destroy. One of the best game yet!

Flicker

by John Li (@john-li), tehgamedev (@tehgamedev), and roaderful (@roaderful)*

In this puzzle game with graphics that reminds you of those gray clouds day, you walk around the city trying to steal its power by overflowing the street lamps with power. Amazing mood and music, and the puzzle are great. There are only a handful of puzzles and its a shame, because it could be a popular puzzle game!

Power Town : Dr. Merdioneth's Attack!

by moonlightbomber (@moonlightbomber), alimcomposer (@alimcomposer), and REDKAY (@redkay)*

You are a little robot from a town full of robots, and your golden battery - the things that was feeding energy to everyone - got stolen and now everyone's energy is fading away, including yours. Scour a dungeon full of villains in the search for the golden battery, but beware: something is guarding it.

Coffee Hero: Powered by Coffee

by Guilb (@guilb)*, AmigoPadilha (@amigopadilha), Naya Rangel (@naya-rangel), and Pedro Miranda (@pedro-miranda)

Those pesky developers won't stay awake if you don't help them. So step up your game and make some coffee!

Feel free to comment with your game link if you want me to play it!

I created a small gouvernement style game for the compo. After only 11 Ratings, 6 comments and playing about 10 games from other people I learned a few things I´d like to share.

If someone wants to see my mistakes after reading this he can find my game here: ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/politics-rome

1. Gradually expand your games content. Throwing your player into the cold water makes sense for some games, but someone playing Ludum Dare Games does not want to invest more then 10 minutes in playing your game. So you should expect them to start your game and learn it´s mechanics through trail and error.

2. Make it easy. While it can be fun to die (see Dark Souls), when playing Ludum Dare Games you want a quick fulfilling experience. It can be fun to fight with the game to win even the first few levels, when trying out games other people made I do not want to only value the first quater of the first level.

3. Gameplay > Content/Story. 48 hours is not long. And as most people will only play your game for a few minutes, don´t bother with adding a 200k word long story. I first tried to set up a system for easily adding content to the game by using Ink (a scripting language for interactive fiction). This worked very well, but it was very time consuming. And while it would totally make sense to do this if you want to tell an extensive story, it costs time which spending on improving the gameplay would make the game more fun for other players.

4. 1 Mechanic. The most fun games are the ones that focus on one mechanic and not on an complex net of different actions.

5. Make it simple. Me making my game was a constant struggle between implementing a feature which I wouldn´t need right now, but which could come in handy in the future and polishing the core mechanic. For example my game contains two stat trying to mimic your support from the people. These are called agreement and support. Both are calculated from the difference between the way the player act with the opinion ever citizen has. While this makes sense to some degree and if I had implemented the ability to talk to every person individually, the way I implemented it was total overkill, as in the end i used on Integer variable that rises if the player does something good and falls if he does something bad.

Finishing of I want to say that I learned so much from this jam and I hope to participate in the future.

Typical Gamer...

Gamer : Why do so many lazy devs default to such poor graphics? I hate 8-bit art!!!

Dev : Me too!!! (continues writing 64-bit pixel art)

Gamer : Huh?

Come on everybody! Let's join the pixel-art-is-actually-good movement!!!

.

.

.

Was actually made first, so I would make sure I wouldn't run out of time and have a minimum viable product!

Check out the Leech here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-leech

Use a SQUAD bot to defeat the aliens !

They came to the earth to take our minerals, use the bot to defeat them.

Link

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/squads

Check out Automated Explorer Here!

Automated Explorer is a top-down exploration and collection game inspired by (well, a lot of things, but the most obvious are) the original Legend of Zelda and old Gameboy games. Explore the world, dodge turrets, solve puzzles, and collect upgrades to extend your reach out into the world. Your drone's battery only lasts a short time, so make the most of it to collect new blueprints, battery packs, and system upgrades that will give your next drone a stronger start. I'm not hurting for ratings, but I've gotten a lot of positive responses to the game so far, and would love for more people to experience it and offer feedback.

Take me to the game!

Thank you! Received a lot of feedback, more than I expected.

For you that didn't played it, check out my compo game. You can download to play on Windows, Linux and iOS, but you can play it also in browser.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/constellation-exploration

Play the game here

My little game got an update! But as it was made post-compo, this is just an additional non-entry patch :)

Original version is clearly marked so you can rate that one.

Changes in version 1.0.1

• tweaked speed change
• tweaked power consumption
• tweaked obstacle's spawn counts
• tweaked movement a little
• changed density of the fog
• fixed player's fog awarness
• added blob shadows

You can find the updated version at my GameJolt page: http://gamejolt.com/games/Proto472/273131

Rejoice!

Funktron 5000 is rating your games! (Oh and actually play...)

Just add yourself here!

Play Funkotron 5000

I realized that players had trouble understanding certain concepts in my game, as they were not clearly communicated. Therefore I knocked together some pictures, as they say a thousand words, besides players don't read wall of texts.

Do check out my game here at

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/they-attack-at-night

Play & Rate November Hail

November Hail is the product of our first game jam together (and my first game jam personally) and we learnt a lot in the process. I'm not one to typically finish my games after I start, so I'm very proud to say that this game is pretty much complete. If you play it, any feedback at all would be greatly appreciated!

I thought you did. If so, try out my cube-laden abstract finance game, Tycoon. Your feedback is welcome, and I’ll review you back if you review and let me know here.

Thanks,

Dave

Tycoon LD39 Page

Play Tycoon in browser (WebGL Unity)

Hey, Guillaume here ! I am the sound designer of the game :)

Go play Goo-Boy and tell us what you think. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/$41183

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f34ig1BNB7k My time is 3:31, what is your time? https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/d34th

My fifth LD done. More bug-fixing than usual - I think that goes with shifting to 3D, maybe, although I also think there are some pieces of Unity instantiate that I don't yet understand.

I thought initially about doing a puzzle-style game with a shifting grid of different sorts of tiles, but right after I started that, I realized I could have more fun just with lots of movable cubes. Given how many games I've played where you move a ship/guy around shooting things and gradually running out of power, I'm proud that I went a different way, although with more time I think I could have made it more fun to go along with the unique/weird aspect. Any feedback is welcome, and if you let me know, I'll gladly review you back.

Tycoon LD39 page

Direct playable link (WebGL/Unity)

In this jam I decided (for absolutely no reason at all... :rolling_eyes: ) to swap from making my entry in GameMaker to Unreal. This was a massive challenge not only using a new scripting system (blueprints are amazing!!!), but also going from making 2D art to 3D. The time it took to make the art was a big shock to me and wasn't something I was ready for (even if my art is still super simple haha), and even forced me to cut a lot of things that I had planned that I could have done if I was as competent as using GameMaker. Other than that it was a great learning experience and look forward to making more things in Unreal.

So I give to you 'I'm Not your President', the game where you run away and actually try to escape from your powerful position as the president of the Free Robot Notion. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/im-not-your-president

Now I have some time and have recovered from the Jam I will begin playing some of your lovelies games :grinning:

Preamble:

First of all, I would like to say that this is my second Ludum Dare, and the second game I've ever worked to completion. I participated in the compo with my entry, "Space Shooter".

Personally, I am very happy with how it came out. I will not deny that there are issues, however. At the time of my writing this, I've received 3 comments giving criticism, which I fully endorse. Some of the aforementioned issues which were mentioned were what I had expected to hear; The player moves too slowly, some things are too bright, and insta-kills are frustrating.

Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/space-shooter

In the game, I tried to make things fair. The most notable features showing this are:

1) Enemies and the player alike can collect and utilize item pickups, whether they be health restores, battery restores, or a new kind of projectile.

2) Both enemies and the player require power to function (as per the theme), when the player runs out of power, they explode. The same goes for any enemy.

Let's discuss what went wrong:

Firstly, when addressing player speed, I had experienced and thought the same thing in development, but never changed the variable that controls speed. During my time play-testing, I did notice there was rarely a time when I wasn't holding the shift key, which increases speed by a factor of 3, which should have been a huge red flag that the movement speed was far too slow. I can't say I have a great reason for leaving it the way it is. In the scale of the game, it does feel as though the player moves incredibly slowly, but that is only because everything in the game is actually very big (as the game is set in space, it felt appropriate). But that meant reducing function in order to appeal to no one at all, thus making it not worth it. In hindsight, I should have made the movement speed much faster and I wall keep this in consideration for the future.

Second, things like the stars and quasars are too bright to see the player. That is a problem that I had encountered since I implemented those features. I tried to justify why I left it the way it is, but I honestly couldn't find a good reason. There are even counter-intuitive systems in play involving bright objects; on one hand, they are very bright and give off a signal that you should stay a decent distance away from them. On another hand, the player ship has solar panels on it, encouraging the player to move closer to bright objects. Another reason one would have to go near stars is that some of the random events occur ON TOP of these really bright objects. That is what you call truly poor decision making on my part. Things I could have done to fix this problem: simply making the objects less brilliant, or I could have weakened the bloom effect from the Post-Processing Stack. Again I would like to say, there is no good reason whatsoever that I left it the way it is.

Thirdly, one-hit kills. This is simply a balancing issue. Most of the projectiles that insta-kill the player can extremely easily be avoided at any distance. There are some, however, that you would need to be a fair distance away from to avoid. This is why I implemented the shielding system; hold the spacebar and you take only 10% damage. I also, very late in development, added a collectible object that increases the player's max health permanently (for the remainder of the current run). I will admit that I think this is a hard game. Generally, a good gauge for difficulty is to take what you (the developer) think is easy, and release that is "hard mode". The "floaty-ness" of the controls does not at all help the difficulty. The controls paired with the previously mentioned blinding brightness makes for artificial difficulty, which is never a good thing.

The lesson I learned? If you feel as though something needs to be changed to make the game more enjoyable, don't try to find an arbitrary reason not to change it.

As for what went well:

Graphics, first of all. I love how the game looks. The skybox which I found on the Unity Asset Store, is exactly what I needed. Unity's Post-Processing Stack is also great for the (somewhat problematic) bloom effect and the vignette. This was my first time attempting the low-poly look for my 3D models, and I can only say I'm happy with them.

Combat. The simplicity, I feel, is perfect for the style of this game. Run, block, shoot. That's all there is to it. The tiny bit of added depth from the battery and health pickups, along with pickups that change your bullets, add a little more strategy into the mix.

Music. The music, while I would absolutely love to say that I made it myself, I did not. I used some pre-made, public, royalty-free loops that I found at https://www.looperman.com/ and I apologize for failing to initially link that in my entry. As far as I am aware, the use of assets from this website does not violate any of the Ludum Dare rules.

Mistakes that I made:

I particularly want to mention that, on Sunday, July 30, I had accidentally published a development test-build of the Windows version and the source code. The Mac version, however, was correct. I changed it the next day, unsure of whether that violated any rules (I deeply apologize if it does, in which case.... oops. nothing I can really do about it now). The test build that I had accidentally released did not contain a single line bug-fix that unlocked a fair portion of content. As I said, the Mac release was the current, correct version, and I didn't actually add any new content, which is why I don't assume I broke any rules.

with your help I have improved the game fixing the double jump, I have to thank all the people that played my game because you helped me a lot with the feedbacks! I think that in the next days i'll add a browser version of the game.If you haven't check that out yet i'll leave you the link down here. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/light

The WISHBONE’s main reactor was struck by an antimatter asteroid! Now, she’s running on emergency battery power… with the crew fast asleep in cryo stasis, only the dog can help the A.I. prevent disaster!

LD39 the Space Dog (click me!)

Shameless plug, I know. We just had so much fun making this. :dog:

~~Is this mysterious enough? :P~~

How about a somewhat retro puzzle platformer?

Play

We working on postjam version, and add first postjam build with interactions result messages

Build available with jam version too on itch.io. https://byters.itch.io/run-joseph-run-ld?secret=SDVEJKp7ByGxGXitAu0WMwmuyc

More info about project https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/run-joseph-run

Wow, what a fun experience this has been. I'm really happy with how my entry turned out. I started a game in LD38, but it was really unplayable and totally incomplete so I didn't bother to submit it. LD39 is my first Ludum Dare, and won't be my last. Check out ROOP - Running Out Of Power and let me know what you think. Known issues are listed on the game page.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/roop-running-out-of-power

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Eaf8ACdPgc

Exception 39: Core Molten will be developed as Post-Ludum title, come check the Ludum version now and give me some suggestions to make the game better!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/exception-39-core-molten

Some changes that will be made in Post-Ludum version:

Rebalanced difficulty (easier start, harder end)

"infinite" mode

Graphics will be drawn by someone who can actually make graphics

Music will be added

Story mode with aimed playtime around 2 hours on perfect run

Online leader board

Check points will be added

Gravity will be adjusted to be more realistic adding room for skilled players to play faster

Hi everyone !!!

I will introduce you our Ludum Dare game entitled Deus : lightning force.

Our game pays tribute to the old 80s arcade games.

In Deus : lightning force, you embody the lightning god : Zeus. In role of Zeus, you have to protect a little temple from monsters, but be careful your power is not infinite. Don't worry, you can trust on faith of humans, so place yourself above the halo of prayer to recharge yours lightnings.

Try to survive as long as possible and make your best score.

if you are interested, don't hesitate to play, rate and share our game.

Our LD page : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/deus-lightning-force

Thanks for reading.

I have been downloading and playing a lot of excellent work submitted to the Ludum Dare 39 :joystick: . Here is a list of those I enjoyed to play.

UnitS2 / https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/unit-s-2

Coffee Hero / https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/coffee-hero-powered-by-coffee

Defender of the Energy / https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/defender-of-the-energy-finally-out

Dashfister/ https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/dashfister

And a Special one / Led Adventure- Running out of Power / https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/led-adventure-running-out-of-power

Hello everyone ! After some sweat and tears, I finally compiled a Linux version for Fukushima Robot, have fun ! (I'll try to make a mac version for this week-end)

The game is currently available for Windows and Linux, go play it ! :)

Fun fact : I tried to make a HTML5 version. Performances on a 6th gen Core i7 with a GTX1060 were poor. Crysis run on intel hd graphics poor.

Next on the todo list is making a post-mortem.

I got off to a fine start. Progress was great after a mere two hours in. The world of "The Last Gladewarden" was coming together nicely. A few of the trickier mechanics were already slotted into place and even Blender's insatiable desire to swallow my soul appeared less vengeful than usual.

Disaster struck as I headed to bed at 5 AM. I realized the spark was gone. There wasn't anything wrong with the Gladewarden, there just wasn't anything new about it. The planned hybrid action/tower defense was far too close to Antagonistic, my last Ludum Dare title. Sure, there were a number aesthetic and gameflow differences, but the code I was writing was painfully similar to that previous title. It wasn't new enough, different enough, 'dare'ing enough.

The next morning I awoke to a sobering realization: I was quitting. Ludum Dare Compo may very well be one of the most grueling technical competitions in the world and I wasn't about to kill myself rehashing the same ol', same ol'. I was out.

A mere hour later, I was back in. A concept had bloomed in my mind so bonkers is simply had to be given a chance. But could I make it? I had already lost nearly 15 of my scant 48 hours. There was only one way to find out!

With only six hours left on the clock, I was still missing the victory/failure conditions and an actual algorithm governing the main power mechanic. It was going to be tight, to say the least.

The game was completed with less than 30 minutes left until the deadline. Nothing from the original game ended up being usable in the new one.

Thus, without further ado, I present Airship Engineer: A gonzo little arcade game that challenges you to maintain three cantankerous steampunk engine contraptions to keep your travel schedule. Admittedly, it is missing a couple of my signature touches (such as an animated main menu), but it is a fine bit of silly fun. I hope you enjoy.

Check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/airship-engineer

I'm testing your games on twitch, come and suggest me your entry!

add your game to my queue

https://www.twitch.tv/togislp

To add a game: just type

!addgame yourGameUrl

in chat

for instance:

!addgame https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/thirst

I am looking for a few more games to play and rate this afternoon. If you would like me to play and rate your game, please link below. Limitations - has to be a Linux or Web game. If you used unity for native builds, you will have needed to do the 64 bit or Universal exports.

You can find my game here and post mortem links below - Artifact Dive - Artifact Dive Post Mortem

Well I had to do some updates on my game. It's was full of probrlems and some issues.... And I finally add the MacOs Version.

If it's possible, I'll bee glad if you play my game and vote. I doing my best to play others LD games, and voting. And I have to confess, there are a lot of awesome games hahahaha

Link:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/squads

I want to rate more games. If you have any games for me to rate then be sure to drop a link in the comments. If you want you can also rate my game

Hey! It is my first ludum dare! It was a fun experience overall and I have already received very good criticism. Having that in mind, I look forward to improve in the next ludum dare :) My game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-attack-of-dr-evil-1

Post your games in the comments so I can rate them!

I had 40 views on my game, and got the 20 ratings. Wasn't expecting all that, thank you very much! Ludum Dare was a great experience, will definitely return.

Sparkling was my first published game with Unity, and I intend to work more on it based on some feedback here and some ideas I have that didn't have time to implement.

I'm exploding of happiness here (and working hard to get more done). Thanks again, and have fun!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/sparkling

The Jam is over and we got some sleep! Also having lots of fun playing some amazing entries.

After receiving a bit of feedback we decided to do a quick update to address the most pressing issues first, but we still have a few more updates we would like to make in the future.

We fixed a UI bug that presented itself when the game was played on certain resolutions. The bot build info also now dynamically changes it's position based on user input (gamepad vs keyboard) specifically to make building on the keyboard more intuitive.

Here you can see the buy info update in action. Layouts for gamepad and keyboard keys 1 to 4.

We are also planning on enhancing the sound and creating some music for the game, we feel that would greatly enhance the experience.

We would love it if you checked out our entry :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/scrap-metal