Yup. Another post advertising a game for the better part of 12 people to see before vanishing into obscurity.

For this compo I completed my first game, Mr. Plug (hence the title of this post). Although ratings wouldn't hurt, I really just want as many people to play this game as possible so that I can benefit from constructive feedback. Any and all feedback would be much appreciated!

You can see my game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mr-plug-1

Enemies should no longer shoot you from off the screen.

Go give it a try: https://jason-holland.itch.io/the-overseer

Getting close to that 20 review milestone. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/turn-towards-the-light

Also, I used to be able to respond directly to comments in ld38, but can't now? Anyone know why? I'm fact it seems to... Not do anything when I try to comment.

I need more votes, plz. I vote all the games of the coments.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/portals-and-boxes-1

Finally I reached 20 votes ! Good ! Great, fantastic, but...

I want to have more and more ! I want to reach 50 votes, yeah *FIF-TY* !

Play My Game Here

If you play my game, I will play your game also.

Thnx :smiley: !

This was a lot of fun!

Congratulations to everyone who worked on creating a game... I very much enjoyed playing so many of these amazing games (and there are still a lot more that I need to play).

And a BIG THANKS to Ludum Dare for hosting such an event! This was my first Ludum Dare and it was a great personal challenge and I hope to do this again.

A story-driven game about making the hardest decisions of all: how to spend your time.

Play online here: https://monochromicon.github.io/ludum-dare39/

20 more votes to reach the 50 milestone, that means we are past the halfway point. Why are the 50 votes important you ask? Because of time constraints I was only able to work on the game for 24 hours which was unfortunately not enough time to fully realise what I wanted to achieve with this game. Getting to 50 votes will give me a good indication of peoples opinions on the stuff I did manage to complete which will greatly help me improve the game down the line. I'm planning to use additional time down the line to create a much improved postjam version of the game but only if there is enough interest. In order to decide how far I would go I came up with some milestones:

• * 50 votes or more: * I will fully implement the original theme mechanic which was planned but never fully implemented, additional enemy types and double the length of the level.

• * 100 votes or more: * enhanced sound effects, full length background music, 4 times the original level length and boss battle

• * 200 votes or more: * additional level, new tileset, additional boss, addition magical abilities for the player to use.

Play The Sorcerer's Apprentice Now & Vote!

This is the first Post-Mortem in my life(:slight_smile:)

About the game

Night Watch is a game about using your light and repairing lanterns to destroy ghosts which come to haunt your house.

What went well

• Managed to finish the game
• Created great art(as the people who played the game told me)
• Created a pretty good soundtrack for the game and very fast
• Nailed the mood(:smile:)
• Made also some sound effects

What went wrong

• Didn't have enough time to playtest and balance the game (due to overscoping)
• Didn't manage to polish the game enough

* Here is an in-game image: *

My thoughts

I was impressed of what can I do in less than 48 hours if I am well organised. I will begin now working on an update for the game.

My only regret is that I didn't have time to play and rate more games, but this week I will manage to do it.

* Send me your game in the comments so I can play it! *

* And if you would like to _ play _ the game and _ rate _ it here is the link *

I understand others pursuing their 50, 100 or even higher rating goals, but I say let's not forget about the friendly competition aspect of this event. For me this means that 'no one gets left behind'.

I see there are still a lot of games in the Zero and the Danger category. How about helping your fellow Ludum Dare participants by playing and rating their games?

I think it would mean a lot to them, and motivate them to participate in the upcoming events. Who knows, you might find some hidden gems?

Thanks :)

First time flat design + Animation2d + Brawler in 36 hours. Hope you enjoy ! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/out-of-rage

Mars 9 is a short platformer about a robot created for the LD39 compo.

It can be played hee:

While I'm really pleased with how the game turned out there are a few things I would like to have done differently.

What went well?

• I managed to actually finish the game
• I'm pretty pleased with the main concept of the game
• This is the first game I've ever made with a proper design document
• According to the reviews the game looks and sounds good (Fun fact: All the game's graphics could theoretically be displayed on a real NES)

What went slightly less good

• The game's really unfair at times
• The thing's too bloomin' short. The game was originally supposed to have 16 levels split across 4 acts. Well, that didn't excactly happen now, did it? (As a matter of fact the two songs that play on the intro stage were created as stage music for acts 2 and 3)
• Those bloody blue enemies! Why did I put them there!? They're not fun, they're just in the way!
• I should have created more enemy types to make the game a bit more varied

What went waaaayyyy down the toilet?

• I spent the vast majority of the voting time at the scouting Jamboree in Kristianstad so I haven't been able to rate very many games leading to mine barely having any at all.

I accidentally uploaded this thing before it was done and now it won't let me edit it.

Mars 9 is a short platformer about a robot created for the LD39 compo.

it can be played here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mars-9

While I'm really pleased with how the game turned out there are a few things I would like to have done differently.

What went well?

• I managed to actually finish the game
• I'm pretty pleased with the main concept of the game
• This is the first game I've ever made with a proper design document
• According to the reviews the game looks and sounds good (Fun fact: All the game's graphics could theoretically be displayed on a real NES)

What went slightly less good

• The game's really unfair at times
• The thing's too bloomin' short. The game was originally supposed to have 16 levels split across 4 acts. Well, that didn't excactly happen now, did it? (As a matter of fact the two songs that play on the intro stage were created as stage music for acts 2 and 3)
• Those bloody blue enemies! Why did I put them there!? They're not fun, they're just in the way!
• I should have created more enemy types to make the game a bit more varied
• I accidentally published an unfinished version of this thing
• The title is waaayyy too similar to that of my LD38 game (AXL-5)

What went waaaayyyy down the toilet?

• I spent the vast majority of the voting time at the scouting Jamboree in Kristianstad so I haven't been able to rate very many games leading to mine barely having any at all.

In conclusion

I'm still really happy with this game. In my opinion it's way better than anything else I've made for this jam thus far and it's been a great learning experience.

Unfortunately my colaborator from the last time didn't have time, so the gfx do lack in comparison. Also, as always, not enough time was to be had, so in the end i realized a simple idea that i've had before and made an endless runner on steroids with some very fitting music i found on soundcloud. Gfx and code was made by me, but i used an external music file which is central to the whole experience, so thats why it is a JAM entry.

Have fun and try to relax ;)

Control the player with up and down keys, the rest is self explanatory, don't hit anything :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/running-out-of-pow-e-r

In this Update I fixed a bug that was mantioned by a fellow jammer @goldranger! Thnx to him ! This bug was that when you end the game and you press space you can play the game while the game over screen is shown ! But now you can’t !

YOU CAN Play HERE

In this game, you must fight off robots within your mech to survive! However, if you run out of power, then you need to scavenge for power refills as a soldier on foot!

Play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/you-are-mech

Heya all, we're live on Twitch.tv, rating games and having fun. Stop by and say hi!

Once again post your games below, I would like to check them out :) But please post games for Windows or HTML5 :) If you want you can check our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/no-sorcerers-sky, it is somekind of a management game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jeIhP3i3jo

Hello there wonderful developer person!

I heard a rumour that you Ludum Dari (plural?) like making games. We run a partnered server over on Discord called GameDevNetwork for all things gamedev, whether that be in the form of code support, bouncing back story ideas or just sharing your lovely work.

GDN is a friendly, supportive development community that aims to help you become the best developer you can be!

We host monthly(ish) jams with fabulous prizes (by which I mean stickers and PR mentorship, we strictly avoid monetary prizes, we're here for creativity after all!) and love spreading community flair.

We also have a #gamejam channel reserved to contain the intense action of fantastic jams such as Ludum Dare.

Drop by and talk about anything from your Ludum Dare project to what your favourite pizza topping is over here: https://discord.gg/gdn :tada:

I'm also an avid game jammer/hackathoner, feel free to poke me about AR/VR, code things or just some of the cool projects you've worked on :heart:!

Oh hey! we've also got an awesome game jam coming up next month! Check that out here: https://itch.io/jam/game-dev-network-dragon-jam

About the game

Take my charge is a philosophical game where you have to solve puzzle and explore deep into the dreams of an advanced AI.

What went well

• Game finished.
• Sound effects that relate to the mood.
• Managed to write a cohesive story.
• Simplicity on art made me spend less time on it and more onto polish.
• Easy design led to quick development (All features were done in ~5hr).
• Some cuts on the game design did not affect the gameplay.

What went wrong

• Spend the first day working on another game, them realized the scope was to high.
• Wanted to do compo, but decided to polish it further for a better release.
• Physics sometimes feels a bit clunky. (Should use Unity physics only for collision detection)
• Camera follow is slow and offsets too high on the Y axis from the player. (Spend ~3h on this and after release solved it by putting the camera as a child of player).

Conclusion

I got caught on the first idea I got and spend a valuable day on it, I should have done more planning before compromising. But at the end I managed to make something simple with a great user experience and I’m proud of that.

Next time I’ll try be more careful on what idea I decide to work on.

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

Universal Powers is my first LD entry, for LD39.

If you'd be interested in checking it out, you can find it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/universal-powers

Even though I'm proud of what I made (and I probably should be), there's some problems with it... Both minor and major.

The Great

• The amount of content: In the time-span of 48h, I managed to get 66 situations working, drew about 35 unique sprites, thought of 80 somewhat witty buffer-screen texts, and even found time to get some neat little things going on the background.
• The "repeating"-buffer: Because the game in completely based on randomness, there'd be a chance you get the same situation three times in a row, so I added a "repeating"-buffer, which makes sure you get at least 33 unique situations before they can be used a second time. This also holds for the planets displayed.
• The fact I finished the game.

The Good

• The art: Even though the pixel-art is probably sub-par, it was my first real attempt at trying to pixel-art, and I thought it turned out really good. You can see four of the "planet"s I'm particularly proud ofdown below.
• The humor: I'll come back to this later.
• The sounds: Even though they weren't the highest quality, I quite liked how the sounds turned out and how it gave the game a bit of character.
• The polish: Though not perfect, I believe to think the game was quite polished.

The Bad

• The humor: The main problem with the humor is that it's focused on very niche groups of people. It's all over the place with the references (Isaac, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, League of Legends, memes, ...), and every situation basically has a reference in there that at least one group will understand. Though this isn't per se bad, it's not great either.
• The flow of the game: Even though it's meant to be a slow experience and the enjoyment should be from reading the absurd texts

The Terrible

• The balancing: Even though technically all the outcomes were fairly balanced, the game was made in such a way that it was impossible to balance properly. The problem lies with the arbitrariness of the choices made. They result mostly in absurd outcomes (they are both a blessing and a curse, really), which technically line up with the stats gained, but it's off-throwing more often than not.
• Artificial difficulty: Don't hate me for this, but because I feared people would go on playing this game forever and would think it's "too easy", I added a secret bit of artificial difficulty in there. All stats are automatically being drained constantly, with the formula taking care of it being:

(currentSituation^1.5f - 2 * currentSituation) / (65 + currentSituation * 1.75)

This isn't that big of a deal, but the fact this sets a rush behind the normally relaxed feeling of the game after situation 10, and the fact it's not clearly communicated to the player, this decision was the worst one in there. This also makes it virtually impossible to get past situation 20 consistently.

The Conclusion

Overall, I think the game turned out fairly well. I feel like I did good on all aspects I'd never think to do good on (art, music, humor), and failed on the only thing I really got going for me (game design)... which is interesting, to say the least. In the end it did turn out way better than anything I've made in the past, which feels kinda great, but is kinda sad at the same time.

Hi guys!

Björn, from GameDevCompany, made a review of The P.U.R.G.E. Protocol earlier today in his Twitch channel. You can see it here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/167175816?t=02h14m33s

Here's the game if you want to play and rate it: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-p-u-r-g-e-protocol

Thanks Björn!

In my garage I've built a sound recording room which is a super silent padded room where I record sound effects. I have three kids and for LD36,37,38 I sat in my normal room making my games and I also spent much of those Ludum Dares away from the computer with my family and other activities.

For LD39 I wanted to dedicate the full 48 hours to making a game to see what I could come up with. As my wife and kids were home I thought I'd virtually lock myself into the sound room so the night before I moved my computer and essential gear into the room. I got up before 3am (which is when LD starts in Sweden), made a cup of coffee and went out into the room. Initially it worked great - I had a solid 6 hour stretch with 100% focus on making my LD entry.

I went in to the house to have breakfast and the kids were awake. That was the end of my privacy :) They thought it was super exciting to run in and out of the sound room and I couldn't bring myself to actually lock the door so for the remaining 48 hours I got interrupted pretty much the same as for my previous three Ludum Dares.

Lesson learned: Not worth going into the sound room, better send wife and kids on a weekend trip or just be in the house like I did before.

There was one benefit though... I had a good spot to record my sound effects for the game even though I only spent about 30 minutes on those for recording, editing, and implementation. Here I am recording one of the sound effects during LD39, about 2 hours before the deadline.

If you want to give Robot Power a go (not Rocket Power like I write over and over again for some reason) there are HTML5 and Win download versions here:

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

I just uploaded a timelapse of GLOW. Check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EdILENQbA8

This time I decided to go with something different and do a top-down dungeon crawler/shooter (instead of the usual platformer :P )

I got a lot of helpful feedback, and I'm very happy that most people liked the core mechanic of the plug!

I might even try to make a post LD version (even though I always say that...)

Dunno why GIFS turn out huge so here's a vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-7fRbPGpO0

Play it here: (HTML5 / Windows)

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

Play (and rate!) RagooP!

I'm a huge puzzle game fan and just wanted to give a shoutout to two really good puzzle games I've played so far.

Robo-Power

Program robots using a loop of at most 4 instructions and direct them to drop a power box at the exit. The levels are really well designed and can be quite tricky. I also really liked the funny narrative that went along with the game.

Don't Be (The) Patient

An arcade style puzzle game where the goal is to find the sequence displayed on the bottom in the given grid. As you progress, the sequences get longer and longer. The game has some really nice audio; the jingle with each sequence you solve is really satisfying and the pulse gradually gets faster to warn you that you're running out of time.

My second Ludum Dare game. I feel I did much better this time around and the theme was one that had a bit of wiggle room I felt. Not really sure how Post Mortems go so I guess I'll just start from the top.

Pre-Jam Brain Storming

I gave myself the goal of coming up with 3 ideas for each theme once the final vote was on, more to do with being incredibly bored at work than actually being something useful. This was actually incredibly useful though! As soon as the theme was announced I had three items to pick from and the one I picked was the one I got most excited about before hand, so I already had a bit of structure to work around. I decided to do political power as a theme, where you control an empire but have to do 'something' to keep them under control. That something turned out to be lightning fast minigames. Most of my programming resume are little javascript toys that I write during the down times at work, so I figured that it suited my strengths pretty well.

1st Night

The first hour or so I brainstormed 10 or so of the minigames I would try to implement. As the final game only has 5 minigames this was a bit ambitious but because I could complete one then move to the next I figured it gave me a really flexible core for managing my time. The rest of the first night I worked on the frame-work game (which is the part where you are actually running out of power) and the first minigame which turned out to be the 'take a bribe' minigame. No art was done at this point so the main screen looked something like this:

1st Day

The first part of the next day was wasted as I slept in much too long. It was a long week at work, what can I say =P. I coded up 2 more minigames which I finished around 4pm. It was at this point that I realized I should probably start adding some art assets and sounds. I hadn't really though about how I was going to do sound so I ended up working on the art first. Art takes FOREVER for me so that took up most of the rest of the day. I started making bleep and bloop noises in bfxr but I didn't really like how any of it sounded. I decided to put in some placeholder sounds by just making mouth noises in audacity I could create later. I also had a few friends try out the game at this point to see what they thought of the concept. Their feedback helped me fine tune the speed of the framework at this point and convinced me to leave in my placeholder sounds which they thought were funny.

Last Day

I finished up the art for the 3 minigames I had finished and rushed out the last two which simply used the same mechanics and functions from the first 3. I had about 3 hours left when I decided no more games I have to make music, start menu, end menu, and tighten up the balance of the game. Again art assets took the longest to create which is why the start and end menus have identical backgrounds. Finished up everything with 15 minutes to go, so managed to push it through submission hell just before the server fires of '08

What I did right

• Scope: My scope was small but expandable. This was much easier to implement and have wiggle room than if I had started with a larger scope and had to make concessions later. It also helped in the speed of playtesting and getting the balance right.
• Time Management: With such a flexible scope I was able to see early on where I would end up getting snagged (the art) so I was able to compensate much more quickly.
• Playtesters: Testing the game myself was fine, but some of the biggest changes I made were from suggestions of my friends who tried it out as I went a long. They convinced me to leave in the placeholder sounds which seems to be what people like most about my game and greatly helped with the balancing. If for whatever reason your friends are jerks and won't play your game I highly recommend finding some sort of place where people can play and give you feedback on your game not just once it is done, but while you are actively working on it.
• Balance: While I'm not 100% happy with how the balancing worked out in my game (I think it is a tad slow in the beginning) I am confident that the game has a good arc the first time you play. The game has very little in terms of tutorial (only my voice shouting what you are supposed to do) but the beginning is slow enough that you can make mistakes and be fine. By the time it ramps up you will have seen all the minigames a couple times and know what they require while they do get more difficult so you will find small changes to trip you up.

What I did not so right

• Art: I am no artist and a lot of the assets in the game are very rushed. Even being rushed as they were they were still the largest time sink. Mainly I just need more practice with creating art in a short amount of time. In the coming months I will try to practice this. Specifically consistency in style is lacking here. I'm proud of the 'launch the missle' minigame art which I put too much time into making look good, but it's pixel graphics style doesn't mesh well with the other hastily cobbled together color blobs.
• Clarity: The biggest complaint I've had is with the 'Get outta here' minigame where people are unsure what to do. The game is short enough and the options limited enough that most people should figure out the solution, but that is a lame excuse. Some simple arrows or even making the borders of the screen glow the first time it is encountered would have smoothed things along at a low enough time cost. Seeing where these sorts of faults in a game are is difficult, but the player should know the options available to them at all time, and especially during a particularly frenetic game such as mine.
• Usability: Making a javascript game, it should have been simple enough to implement a full screen mode, or a scaling size for the game to make it viewable on smaller screens or even mobile. This is more of a lack of knowledge on my part I think, and I will be looking into quick ways to implement these features in the future.
• Time Management (Sleep): I slept too much and wasted a lot of time doing it. Wasted a good 4 or 5 hours I could have used to make better art or another minigame.
• Naming: The Political Juggle is a really lame name and doesn't really convey any information. I should probably take longer than 3 minutes to come up with a name in the future =P.

Overall I'm pretty proud of what I made though no game is perfect, especially not a game jam game. I stumbled into a lot of the things I did right but will definitely keep them in mind as things I should keep doing in the future. Where I faltered comes down to things that need to be practiced and I think will come with more experience. I hope you enjoy my game if you decide to play it, as I know I've enjoyed many of the games that the community has made. See you next time!

If you'd like to give my game a shot, you can find it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-political-juggle

While going through the list of games to hand out reviews I encountered some games that were just too awesome to pass up. If you haven't played any of these yet be sure to give them a spin, you won't regret it.

Running Voltgun

Blast through three stages defeating enemies and bosses as you go. Be careful though as your battery meter continually keeps losing power. You can toggle through two power modes, (low and high) to help crush the enemy. Collect pick ups, avoid traps and blast your way through victory!

Be Queen Bee

It’s bad to bee queen! Can you survive?

A local multiplayer game with 2 game modes. In MOB mode, mobs will chase the player with the crown. In TAG mode, the players can chase each other as well. In both modes, the winner is the last player standing.

Heal The Dark Lord!

Oh no, it’s true! Our Dark Lord got interdimensional flu! Сure Him before his physical form dies! We’ll help you with our rhymes! We can’t summon His Highness twice! Treat him nice!

Run around as a cultist collecting ingredients to brew a cure for the sickness that ails your dark lord. Beware that cures can also be toxic and induce a heart attack which can kill your master. Will you make it in time?

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

If you are still on a voting and review spree and you haven't checked out my game yet then please give that a try too.

Good day everyone!, just wanna share again my game on Android that I developed prior to the LD#39,give it a try if possible share it rate it if you like it thanks! :D Preview Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7upTRhAmyU

The Unhuman reached 20 ratings! But is it enough.. Yes, probably :D But I'm still hungry. Feed me more votes!

My alternative title for this post was:

Feed the hungry developer before he devour all the known universe!

Yea this one is better:D

Click here for game page

Hey everyone!

This was my first time doing a Ludem Dare Jam, and I had a blast doing so! Me and my team (consisting of Rose "Super Shark" Hammer, and Evan "evbo" Andrews) created the Rhythm Shmup, 'Cosmo Beat' and you can find it here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/cosmo-beat

There have been some great constructive feedback for the game, as well as some people requesting to hear the soundtrack. It's really nice to hear nice things being said about the work I put in, and as a result, i've recently released the album on Bandcamp.

https://zorsy.bandcamp.com/

This has been an amazing experience for me! In the 72 hours, I had forced myself to create music in genres i adored but never really attempted such as future bass and Drum n Bass, and combined it with a few jazzy elements. And i'm really happy with the result! Feel free to give any feedback to the soundtrack/game as you see fit and i'm excited to do more of these in the future!

~Zorsy

Hello there wonderful developer person!

I heard a rumour that you Ludum Dari (plural?) like making games. We run a partnered server over on Discord called GameDevNetwork for all things gamedev, whether that be in the form of code support, bouncing back story ideas or just sharing your lovely work.

GDN is a friendly, supportive development community that aims to help you become the best developer you can be!

We host monthly(ish) jams with fabulous prizes (by which I mean stickers and PR mentorship, we strictly avoid monetary prizes, we're here for creativity after all!) and love spreading community flair.

We also have a #gamejam channel reserved to contain the intense action of fantastic jams such as Ludum Dare.

Drop by and talk about anything from your Ludum Dare project to what your favourite pizza topping is over here: https://discord.gg/gdn :tada:

I'm also an avid game jammer/hackathoner, feel free to poke me about AR/VR, code things or just some of the cool projects you've worked on :heart:!

Oh hey! we've also got an awesome game jam coming up next month! Check that out here: https://itch.io/jam/game-dev-network-dragon-jam

Hey everyone! We are the Button Masher Bros!

We are back and ready to showcase more of your favorite Ludum Dare games!

It's the season premiere of Ludum Dare to Believe! It's S:10 Ep. 1!

(May contain strong language)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scjBTw9HsCY

With so many submissions, there was absolutely no way we could play them all.

Special thanks to our friends at Reddit, twitter, and Youtube who all stepped up to give us suggestions - you guys are the BEST!

If you like the games you see, be sure to check them out on Ludumdare.com and let the developers know what you think!

Today we will be highlighting:

Title: Manual Overload

Category: Jam Entry

Creator: Shawn Beck (@shawn-beck)

Title: Remote

Category: Compo Entry

Creator: oab (@oab)

Title: Visioff

Category: Jam Entry

Creator: torcado (@torcado)

Finally, we'd love to hear what you think! You can comment on the episode linked above, comment in this thread, or tweet us at:

@ButtonMasherBro - Show account

@MathBlasterRitz - Chris

@SuddenlyZach - Zach

or @jwowBMB - Josh

Thanks Everyone and HAPPY LUDUM DARE!

Hunt for the glory of Ull, the god of winter, in this nordic-themed action game !

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/berzerk-hunt

Your Fury is the only thing that keeps you alive in this harsh environment. How long will you maintain it to survive ? Squash rabbits and fight wild animals using your powerful abilities !

We dearly hope you enjoy our creation. Have fun !

Hello all I'm gonna do another playing and judging your game(s) stream and review them critically and talk about them in depth! jump by and say Hallo :D https://www.twitch.tv/jacksendary

Just a few more days to cast your votes, use DTBB to find some games you may have missed otherwise, have fun!

Hi all, that time again, my

• instantly searchable
• instantly filterable

games browser has been updated with the latest games. The new LD site is shaping up but you still can't beat the speed and ease of use of DTBB in my opinion. In addition, it has a full archive of LD games going back to LD 15.

Find More LD Games to Play!

The SecondDimension team have really enjoyed playing and rating games for LD39. We’ve been amazed by the art, imagination, interesting ideas and gameplay that we have seen. So we thought we would share some of our favourite games we have played during the rating process, if you haven't already we think you should give them a go. Here are our picks:

Air Mail by @rubna

A relaxing game about delivering letters by plane. Lovely graphics and a calming atmosphere

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/AIR-MAIL

Ministry Of Synthesis by @impbox

A game about manipulating waveforms. Interesting mechanic and very professional presentation

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/Ministry-Of-Synthesis

Oh no! Democracy! by @tim-eriksen)

A digital card game about developing a space program in a dictatorship. Short, fun and very solid for a game jam

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/oh-no-democracy-1

The Music Box by @ddrkirbyisq, @xellaya, and @acexl03

Lovely graphics and style with an intriguing story. I recommend listening to the fantastic soundtrack as well.

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

Despotism 3к by @nikolaykuznetsov, @rune-drawer and @cardinal90

A fun game with a dark sense of humour. Breed tiny people and use them in your machines to make power.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/despotism-3

TITAN, Defend Earth before it's too late by @michaeltwg

Climb around a giant mech to manage it's power and fire it's weapons. The most metal game I've played this LD.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/titan-defend-earth-before-its-too-late

Our Entry- Modular Destruction Labs

If you have a moment, give our game a go. Create and pilot a robot and then try to complete the level before you run out of power.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/modular-destruction-labs

Wow we just reached 50 ratings on almost all categories! I did not expect that for my first real LD! Thank you guys all for this! I'll keep playing your games and hope we can reach an even higher score! I don't want to set a goal because if we don't reach it I will be a little disapointed, so I'll just leave it at the good acomplishing one!

Remember, if you leave feedback I will be sure to check out your game in return! I have been doing so for all comments recived, so there won't be an exeption unless my internet goes out!

Hi ! I need only one other rating on my game to reach 50 ratings ! My dream !

And you can be this one who is going to make my dream true ! So pls rate my game, and I'll rate you back !

YOU CAN PLAY HERE

Thanks to everyone that played and gave feedback on my game, its all much appreciated.

As the rating for this LD is now almost done I made a post jam version with a bunch of the stuff I originally meant to do, but ran out of time for including, updated background and graphics, more levels and a few additional mechanics and a bit of polish.

The main point people raised was control/movement of the player so I spent quite a bit of time trying to get that to feel better. Also due to popular demand, I took out the limited lives so you can replay a level as much as needed without starting from the beginning again.

If anyone wants to give it a try and tell me if the control/movement is an improvement or not that would be appreciated. Happy to return the favour and try anyone else's post jam versions or original submissions if i didn't already.

LD Page here

Itch with Post Jam version here, including web version, this also has the original as a download.

In case you didn't already rate the game and felt like doing that the Old LD Submission version in web player is now here

I already have enough ratings though, so if you only want to play one, feedback on the latest version would be more helpful. I'm sort of tempted to try and flesh it out into a real game, so feel free to tell if that sounds like a good or bad idea to you and if so if I should pay an actual artist to do the artwork? :)

This was my third LD and I had a blast again, already looking forward to the next one

Finally, my dream... I got 50 ratings ! Thnx to all those who rated my game !

I want more and more 'cause I have another dream ! I want to reach 100 ratings ! So pls help me by adding your game to the comments ! I'll rate it, and you, you have to rate me back !

Play HERE

I RREEEAALLY need ratings on my game! i still dont have 20+ points! Help me out please! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-rulers-power

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

I've included a playable build for Mac and Linux (for those who doesn't have a Windows system). I don't know how stable these builds would be because I don't have a Mac nor a Linux, but go ahead and try it out :D

*Game's here * [Find the Itch.io or GameJolt link]: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/battery-penetrates

Yup, just what it says in the title. Priority goes to games that still need their 20 ratings, but want to see what you've got regardless. Have at:

I live for feedback, baby!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/plagued-station

-

If you like turbo blasting your way around obstacles, saving identical people and experiencing a bullshit randomised finale, you’ll maybe enjoy hating Plagued Station.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COIM1csM5MM

Mac users reported that the game didn't work on osx, so i made a playthrough.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/ads-will-tell-our-story

I added a Mac OSX build of Robot Power. I'm just learning about OSX and it feels a bit like I'm on a different planet, but hopefully it should work :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vitlk5IHSYk

Robot Power Page https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/robot-power

If you played our game, you must have noticed amazing soundtrack which emphasizes setting and atmosphere of the game.

Our composer wants to share his music with you! Check it out, I'm almost sure you will like it. :musical_score:

https://soundcloud.com/utamaru/sets/sunseeker-ost

If you like it or hear this for the first time, feel free to play and rate our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/sunseeker

We will be very grateful to you for your feedback!

Hi everyone, if you could please spare some time to play and rate my game id appreciate it!

Thanks!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mr-e-mcpower

Can you deafeat the boss? https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/d34th

Hunt for the glory of Ull, the god of winter, in this nordic-themed action game !

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/berzerk-hunt

Your Fury is the only thing that keeps you alive in this harsh environment. How long will you maintain it to survive ? Squash rabbits and fight wild animals using your powerful abilities !

We dearly hope you enjoy our creation. Have fun !

Hi fellows! The final version of The Light City of Karola was released!

We've decided to include only 8 levels in total so it's a pretty short game, anyway we hope you enjoy playing it like us enjoyed making it 👍

Play it on itch.io

Robotilab. Here is my game of ludum dare 39. There are some bugs but it remains playable with a good pc. Come try and make me your returns and impressions

Hello, i'm just coming back from vacation and i'm a bit late on votes. I'm workning to test as much games as i can after work but our game severly lack votes :/ to help you test it easily i just added a Web version for the game.

here is the web link : https://helscar.itch.io/ld39

and the game page : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/blackout-for-the-new-warden

thanks for all of you who take some time giving us feedback !

Hello Mr. President. I'm glad to see you here.

First of all, congratulations of being elected as President. It will be a pleasure working with you.

Now, the city is under your responsibility. People chose you to lead them towards a better future. You are able to build the greatest city in the world.

Keep your promises and take care of them.

You are the Leader we deserve and need.

Start now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0xZ1hD-INM

Due to a surplus of 90s nostalgia all beverages have been replaced with Capri Sun Commercials.

Game Links

Power Cube Station Box http://bit.ly/PowerCubeStationBoxLD

Electric Lovers http://bit.ly/ElectricLoversLD

The Final Boss http://bit.ly/TheFinalBossLD

Got a game you'd like to submit? Use this handy Google Form! http://bit.ly/LarryDoesLudum39

There are still many games without 20 ratings.
Why should you rate those games? Their creators don't rate back.
1. First of all, if more games get a rating, your ranking will have more meaning. (You came in 63rd out of 1000 sounds better than 63rd out of 500, no?) 2. Giving feedback to those who need it. They will learn, and I think thats what Ludum Dare is really about. Comes with free Karma. 3. There are some hidden gems. (But they are running out, quickly find them before someone else does!) 4. Admittedly I got most reviews before rating any games, I got a bunch of people rating back, even from the ones who hardly rated other games.

Find games to rescue here:
http://feedback.ld.intricati.com/?event=32802&sorting=received
(At the time of writing there are 14 games without any feedback - not even a "download link doesn't work")

There are other groups of people that rarely get any ratings. For example this list of 16 VR games.
http://feedback.ld.intricati.com/?event=32802&platforms=vrgames&sorting=received
There's also a hand full of board games
http://feedback.ld.intricati.com/?event=32802&platforms=board&sorting=received

Hey ! You want me to play your game ? It's possible ! Because I'm going live !

Stream : https://www.twitch.tv/impauljs (French and English Stream)

Give me your game (Web only for now) : http://bit.ly/2vM58NV

Rate mine : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/i-need-power

Hope to see a lot of people !

So the game gathered 20+ votes! Hurray!

Thank you those who voted and thank you for your feedback!

Now I'm working on improving the game and playing and rating other games.

Send your game in the comments so I can play and rate it!

And if you would like to try my game here is it

Good news — we still have one ​​tesla-generator.​​​ Bad news — it’s half dead…

Defence your broken tesla-generator. Stream its pulse-power to the turrets in the most effective way. Survive.

PLAY IN WEB NOW

Hey, everyone! I'm pretty new to Ludum Dare so I don't really understand how this whole rating thing works too well, but I put a lot of time into playing, rating, and leaving meaningful feedback on other people's games. But, for some reason, it seems like no one is really rating my game, and I'm worried that I won't get enough ratings in time to be judged. Please help me by playing and rating my game!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/short-lived

Also, if any LD veterans have any suggestions on how to get ratings, let me know!

Hi everyone,

Lots of great games this ludum dare. Not long left now till we can see all the results!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovTB1vR3DMI&feature=share

If you haven't checked out my game yet have a play and rate the more the better.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/electric-neon

Thanks :)

I'd like to say a big thanks to all reviewers of my game, your feedback encouraged me to keep working on the game.

Now the first beta for Android is out, you can sign up here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.casualgames.nu.PixelDriver

Or if you're on PC: https://casualgamesnu.itch.io/pixel-driver

Hello everyone!

Looks like LD39 rating period is nearing its end, huh? We used most of these weeks gathering feedback and polishing Corrupted past its initial state, and now it's updated to v1.0.4.

Aside from minor bug fixes, we added long-awaited sounds and music, implemented full Russian localization, improved in-game tutorial and overall balance. The roguelike nature of the game essentially means there will be good runs and bad runs, but hopefully, with the latest addition, the risks should be more manageable.

The 72-hour version is here, if you'd like to rate and comment;
And the post-jam version is here.

I think it's safe to say we had a great time with LD39. Thank you for your feedback, it helps immensely and motivates us to work even harder.

See you, and good luck in the jams to come!

Hello there wonderful developer person!

I heard a rumour that you Ludum Dari (plural?) like making games. We run a partnered server over on Discord called GameDevNetwork for all things gamedev, whether that be in the form of code support, bouncing back story ideas or just sharing your lovely work.

GDN is a friendly, supportive development community that aims to help you become the best developer you can be!

We host monthly(ish) jams with fabulous prizes (by which I mean stickers and PR mentorship, we strictly avoid monetary prizes, we're here for creativity after all!) and love spreading community flair.

We also have a #gamejam channel reserved to contain the intense action of fantastic jams such as Ludum Dare.

Drop by and talk about anything from your Ludum Dare project to what your favourite pizza topping is over here: https://discord.gg/gdn :tada:

I'm also an avid game jammer/hackathoner, feel free to poke me about AR/VR, code things or just some of the cool projects you've worked on :heart:!

Oh hey! we've also got an awesome game jam coming up next month! Check that out here: https://itch.io/jam/game-dev-network-dragon-jam

Hey all! My game is still a short ways from reaching the threshold, so it would be great if you could check out Power Struggle, an intense game of dystopian hide and seek.

It’s the near future, and the power of the State and its ruthlessly efficient AI is being challenged by a group of insurgents called the Resistance. Play against someone else on the same screen using a mouse and a controller as these two factions vie for power. Hunt Resistance agents hiding among the NPC populace as the State or try to complete objectives quickly as the Resistance on two maps with randomly generated NPC movements and objective locations.

For order, or for liberation, join the Power Struggle.

Out of Power

If you like ridiculous space puzzle adventure that are also not completely polished, a bit bugged and miss a few features maybe you'd like to check my game The Fifth Exponent.

Gameplaywise it might not be completely obvious but you get to meet a whole bunch of quirky characters if you manage to beat the game, which I wish you sincerely.

Accessorily the game still has not got enough ratings so if you feel like helping out, you're absolutely welcome.

And as always please leave feedback! Even though you completely hated the game! :smile:

Only 4 days left!!! Don't forget to play and rate our game!!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/dont-ask-me-to-stop-being-a-outdated-junkrobot

First I would like to share the gameplay videos I received (Thanks a lot @icxon, @sarrixx and kanetsu).

@icxon video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx1-dbh-Q3A

@sarixx video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yDZ1gd1QPE

kanetsu video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4rQoQJPX5Q

And finally my own gameplay video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flvY9mD3D4o

As the developer of the game, I already know how to finish the game; no exploration needed and I even believed that the game was too easy that nobody is going to ever die. It is easy to see from the feedback and the videos above that I WAS WRONG and now I understand: Respect the wisdom of the elders, Respect the long praised feature "The Checkpoint".

However, It took me too long to implement it but it is now ready. Version 1.2 on the Itch.io page has checkpoints implemented at the boundaries between area (gates).

The Checkpoints are invisible and activates only once on entering the region. Upon death, the boat returns to the checkpoint location and all actions done after the checkpoint activation are reset.

Implementation Details: The checkpoint system is implemented using a stack to store delegates to undo each action (activating switch, opening gate, etc). * Whenever an action is done, its corresponding undo delegate is pushed into the stack. * Upon death, the stack elements are popped and applied till the stack is empty. * Entering a checkpoint clears the stack and stores the new boat location, rotation and orb power.

I don't how efficient it would be compared to storing the state of everything but it won't cause a problem in the current version since the number of actions are low.

LD39 Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/aeos

Tags: creates, dice, guide, hunter, neil, recreating, tutorial

Decided to add a mechanic where the player can remotely turn on and off lights, which affects power drain. The GUI element for it is currently still a WIP. I'm hoping to have be a pop-up menu that pauses the game when it's open and shows where the lights are. I would also like a minimap, which shouldn't be too difficult since the game already has a grid system in place for the wire scripts to know which wires to power. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the progress on this. Maybe I can convince the team to help make this a real game that could be published on something like Itch.IO or, if we're so lucky enough, Steam.

Only 4 days left to rate our puzzle-adventure The Music Box!

Here's some selected highlights from the feedback we've gotten so far:

"By far the best game I’ve played so far. The art style feels nice and meshes together with the music and the dialogue to a very cozy and charming atmosphere and environment. Very nicely done." - @shinmera

"Amazing game! It was a nice break from most of the action games that I’ve played so far. ... This has to be one of the most polished games I’ve seen so far for LD39 ... The creators did an exceptional job!" - @maxthecat

"Ok, this was adorable. The artstyle was just so appealing, the music fitting, and the story simple, yet compelling. It... it felt like it all came together really well." - @vulpem

"Amazing game! One of the best I have played on this jam. The music, the mood, the narrative, made it a great experience. Congratulations to the team!" - @theonethatneverwas

"Am I the only one who thinks this game is like 'Night in the Woods' meets 'The Groundhog Day'? I love it! The art style is unique, the sound effects and music are good and the idea is very original." - @ferran-benavente

We're on our way towards 50 ratings -- you can help us! Your feedback is greatly appreciated :D

Play and rate The Music Box at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-music-box

In case some of you are itching for another jam, this weekend is the 'Broken Engine Jam'. No theme, you just have to write a game in the most obscure/obsolete/broken engine you can think of.

If I get time I'm hoping to knock something up in C64 basic for the first time in 25 years. I did look into the possibility of building something for the prototype C65 but haven't been able to find a reliable emulator. I guess there's broken and then there's non-existent!

https://itch.io/jam/broken-engine-jam

Also please feel free to check out my LDJam game ;)

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

SEND HELP :bell:

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

Hi folks, just a quick beg for a few more ratings on my game from LD39, I left most of my playing a bit late so I missed the initial rush. I'm apparently 5.625 ratings short of the 20 I need, so any more would be appreciated if you would be so kind!

My game's Nyctophobia, a game about darkness, mazes, non-functional shadows and inevitable failure. Much like my life. Just kidding, everything's great here, apart from the rating situation. Which is less great. Come for the mood, stay for the satisfaction of being the only person besides myself to legitimately beat it. Because I may have run out of time to tune the difficulty properly. Woops.

Nyctophobia

Hi everyone !

Thanks for your amazing feedbacks, I am very happy that more than 50 people play and enjoy my little/strange adventure game. Thanks a lot !

On this new version, I have fixed a little bug happening when you finish the game. Also, some grammatical mistakes have been corrected.

If you didn’t try it, don’t hesitate to give your opinion about this new version ! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/quoala

Just hit 20 ratings. Thanks to all who played our game and gave us awesome feedback. Cheers to you lads.

This wasn’t my first attempt at a LD, but was the first one in which I managed to complete a game. It was, indeed, a very enlightening experience (and still is) and I wanted to share some of the things I learned along the way.

In the The P.U.R.G.E. Protocol, you wake up in a room of some ship, flying in space towards an (almost) unknown destination. There’s a holo-computer at the center of the room requesting you to “start” something, and then the questions begin. The game is mostly a quiz game, but I also added some sort of story to give it more sense and adapt it to the theme, of course.

What went right

I finished the game

I know, this is obvious, but to me this represented a huge achievement. I usually get the ideas for games when there’s not enough time to implement them or they are too big for a jam (or both). This time, though, I had an idea that I liked in time and I managed to keep the scope at a reasonable length to make it doable.

I use my own engine

Another important achievement. I’ve been working on Crimild, my own engine, for several years. Although it's designed mostly as a learning tool, it has been used for production-level projects before. But to be able to use it for a jam, making a [reasonable] stable game in just 48 hours was just amazing.

The idea

Before the theme was officially announced I knew I wanted to make a game resembling escape rooms in real life. I recently had the chance to participate in one here in Buenos Aires and it was a great experience. It’s a game that you play in just an hour, which makes it perfect for a short video game. With that in mind, I just needed to wait for the theme. And when the theme was live, the whole spaceship-IQ-test-escape-room made sense. Oh, and here’s my "design document”:

The art

Considering that I’m still learning how to do 3D art, I’m very pleased with the result. I went for a low poly technique, using references from space movies from the 60s, 70s and 80s (particularly, Alien and 2001). There are a lot of contrast with oranges/browns and blue. The holograms were created simply by using a translucent theme with a light at the center. I was aiming for adding textures and shader effects, but I liked the end result as it it feels like the double exposure techniques used in early films.

Cutting features

When the time was running out and I new I wouldn’t be able to complete all the features that I wanted to have in the game, I had to make a choice: include more things but let them unfinished or go with a more polished “product" but less diverse. I went for the second one and I still think it was the best idea. Sure, the game should have more diverse questions and maybe other elements, but it felt good in the end.

A reasonable schedule

Like many of you have suggested time and time again, sleeping and eating is a very important while making a game for a jam. And so I did. Once the theme was announced, I went to sleep thinking about how to use it for an escape room. The next morning, I went for a coffee and start drafting the idea. From then on, I worked at home, having breaks from time to time and I had a great time. And I managed to get together with my friends to watch Game of Thrones in time :)

THAT moment in the story

I don’t want to spoil the game for those of you who haven’t played it yet, but there’s a moment when things start to make (some) sense. I wasn’t sure if the players were going to like it and they did. My engine still don’t have a good support for real time shadows, but it work well enough for this game.

What went wrong

No audio

This was the biggest request from other players. There is no sound in the game. No FXs, no ambient music. From the very beginning, I had decided not to include sounds in order to concentrate in the game itself but, in the end, this proved to be a bad choice. Just a couple of sounds would have make the game a lot better.

Technical issues

I spend much more time fixing bugs and other problems than I would have wanted. Some of those bugs were caused by things that were not fully tested in my engine. Others, because I wasn’t paying enough attention. I wasted a good couple of hours trying to understand why I couldn’t t select objects in the game and I could have I use that time to work on more diverse puzzles. The engine needs more testing. Lesson learned.

Limited puzzles

Again, I made the call at some point during development. But the puzzles ended up a bit repetitive and some of them don’t fully respect the story and mood of the rest of the game.

The ending

There are two endings in the game, depending on how well you answer the questions. While the bad ending is ok, the other one is not good enough. Almost no one realized that, as the ship is getting repaired, the lights turn on in the room. Instead, it seems like there was a bug in the lights.

Where to go from here

Like I said, I’m very happy with the result. I have received a lot of feedback during the last couple of weeks and I intent to use that to polish the game as much as I can, once I have some free time. I’m going to add more story and gameplay mechanics. Probably release it an iOS version too.

If you haven’t already, you can play The P.U.R.G.E. Protocol here. Feel free to leave comments and suggestions.

Thanks everyone for playing and rating my game!

And special thanks to my Number 1 Fan, whose support was incredibly important ;)

Im so close to get 40 Ratings, can you help me to get 40?

Game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-rising-of-the-machines

It's hard to limit yourself when design a game for a LD. To know where to stop, when the feature is a nice to have instead of a required.

For example, I wanted to created a Destruction Derby/Twisted Metal based game, using energy as your Health. You run out of energy, you have 5 sec to steal another vehicule (if you have a key in your inventory).

To add more variety, I decided to create enemies procedurally. So instead of having a set of enemy prefabs, I designed the tanks as modules. A main part, the engine, and additional parts (shield, extra turret, a jumping module, etc)

I coded everything ! Almost non-stop. Result : Yes, my enemies are created procedurally and are never the same :

But !

Sometimes, too much...

is too much. The gameplay was not balanced anymore. Some tanks were so big that they could not even move. Some were a little bit too fast and jumpy and would leave the arena Ciao Bye!

So just before releasing the game on LD, I rollbacked and deactivated the procedurally generated tanks, a day of work. I implemented a nice Entity Components Systems, I was really proud, because hey, it's a LD context right ? But in the end, it was useless. Game balancing is a requirement, not a nice to have and I got kicked in the arse for forgetting about it, like this little green tank being lasered by that yellow behemoth.

Here is the link of my game if you dare battling with an army of little tanks ;)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/tanks-battle

At last! I finally have a post-LD version of my game available for free on the Apple App Store, the Amazon Appstore, and the Google Play Store. For now, the app is completely free, with no ads, and no IAP. I'm pretty happy with the app, but be warned, it does unfortunately have some performance issues on certain devices. I would really appreciate it if you guys would take the time to play it, rate it, and give me your feedback. I'm really glad I was able to participate in LD39 and I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did. :smile: I also renamed the game Outback (hopefully to prevent confusion with the LD version)

If you know of anybody else who might enjoy playing this, be sure to let them know! :wink:

ok so this will be our last challenge and that challenge is to get 110 ratings in the game i think we can do that

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

Looking for more web games to play as a distraction from post-jam coding >_> So if you're still looking for your twenty, or just want more eyeballs, go ahead and post below!

Thanks to everyone who played, rated and commented on Probe Abuse. I've been steadily working on a more complete game taking into account a lot of the feedback that I've received. One comment that showed up a couple times is the request for an HTML5 build. Apparently Flash isn't the preferred delivery method anymore :smile:

My engine, Haxeflixel, does output to HTML5 with some limitations. One of the limitations in my case was the lack of blend modes in the HTML5 versions, which means that all my screen fades and transitions weren't working. "That's no good", I thought to myself. "I'm going to work around this engine limitation". So I looked for some other methods that would work (fade in a big black rectangle the size of the screen, swipe the camera, etc) but I finally decided that I was going to do the other thing that I've been meaning to and use shaders.

Lime and OpenFL (the tech HaxeFlixel is built on) support shaders using OpenGL in their latest iterations, but Haxeflixel needs some major changes before they will be fully compliant. They are part way there though and so I downloaded the demo, wrote a few shaders and got them running in the engine.

In the game, the probes get scanned and any upgrades they possess become part of any future probes. I wanted them to sort of pixelize and fade as they disappear. So I wrote a pixel shader, and got it applied to sprites.

You want to pixel fade an apple? Here's a pixel faded apple! (Imagine it is running at a smooth 60 FPS. The Gif is captured at 33...)

So after all this, I find out that HTML5 OpenGL isn't supported in this version of HaxeFlixel either. :sad: So the transitions will look sweet whenever HaxeFlixel supports OpenFL 6.0.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/probe-abuse - You can play the compo version here.

Before We Begin...

For the full story of Artax, I have to go back to Ludum Dare 38. Back then we made a game called Little Fortune Planet - a peculiar global physics simulation that pretended to be a card game. It was a fun process, and a lot more experimental than our previous entries, but at the end we had to ask ourselves: ”Is this really a game?” We ended up making a post-LD full sandbox version that dropped the card mechanic altogether as well. “Next time we'll make something more traditional,” we said. And we did.

What Is Artax?

Artax is a more traditional puzzle platformer in which you escort a large robot with chronic power depletion syndrome. In return, he protects you from nasty critters, provides you with a mobile platform and smashes through doors you cannot otherwise open. The game is named after a character from an 80s movie, because of foreshadowing. There is also a trailer video.

Evoking Emotion

The original idea in our document was this: Emotional robot guardian game - Robot is big. Needs power. Helps you. Squish bad things. - Player helps the robot guardian survive, but depends on robot’s prowess and is weak himself. - Robot acts as scaffolding to get to other platforms. - Emotional dialogue. - Solar powered or battery powered? You’ll notice the emotional dialogue bulletpoint. We wanted the player to bond with the robot, but somewhere along the line we decided against written dialogue. @daanvanyperen did a great job planning the emote word-bubbles and requesting specific animations from me, and the interactions during the game in combination with the final “cutscene” at the end resulted in what I feel is a successfully bittersweet little narrative.

We have a full playthrough of the game on youtube that @meatmachine made, so if you just want to watch rather than face the challenge, now you can.

My Pixelart Goals

I was looking forward to making 2D movement animations, given what I had learned the past months from various pixelart tutorials by Saint11 and Sandy Gordon. I’m really happy with how my animations ended up, and had a blast just moving around. Of course, the robot required a lot of animations as well, and while I could re-use and edit a lot of frames I had already made for new actions, this probably took the most time.

My final tilesheet contained 75 robot animation frames and 84 player animation frames, though the player was really three sets of the same 28 frames with slight edits for the two batteries they can hold. My greatest failing in this tileset was the poorly animated water. If we do a post-jam version of the game, that's one thing I will definitely try to fix. I made a pixelart timelapse video of the whole process.

Failures

• The game seems to be too challenging for many players. A lot of people don't get to access the more emotional narrative segment at the end of the game.
• After the initial brainstorming phase we took a more freeform road to development that eventually led to some misunderstandings in our team, which resulted in some frustrations. This isn’t a true failure as we recognised what happened and worked everything out, but clearer communication on our workflow could have helped there.

Successes

• We managed to get a lot done. I've never animated this many frames for a project before, we have six pre-built levels, five individual songs in our soundtrack, and a game that feels pretty complete.
• As we all started our own processes at the same time, we had (parts of) a soundtrack before I had produced any graphics at all. Either luckily or through having figured out a clear vision for the game during our brainstorm, we all felt that the audio met the visual.
• The feedback we’ve been getting has generally been very positive, and with nearly 80 ratings there's been quite a lot of it. It’s difficult to be objective about your own game, but I feel that we got a good amount of quality of work to go along with our quantity of work.

Participate again next time?

Yes!

Credits

• @daanvanyperen | coding | twitter, github, website
• @flaterectomy | graphics | twitter, soundcloud, website
• @meatmachine | music & audio, level design | twitter, soundcloud

The "sequel" to my entry is still in development. Here's a screenshot:

Original entry

Hey everyone!

I need another 6 ratings for my game to reach 20, if anyone could help out by giving it a try and rating it that would be amazing! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/revolution

Thank you!

Thank to all of you who rated!

Im very suprised about this, because this was my first entry ever on a GameJam and i got 40 Ratings!

(Next Goal is 50 :P )

Thanks to Gamejamcurator for this review and letsplay (spoiler alert!) of Rise Shine Fall, the game we created for Ludum Dare 39.

The mission of this project – collecting unusual gamejam entries – seems to be a great idea. And, of course, it was very inspiring for us to receive such feedback.

Also, thanks to everyone who has played and rated our game so far!

Team: ijona and Supr.

Come fight other players around the globe.

We've launched a HTML5 version of our game on Itch.io that is lighter and have improvements on a lot of things.

Will you be able to get top 20 and fight the best Vampires in the world?

Play at https://arknostik.itch.io/pob !

and check our official entry for the jam at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-power-of-blood

Just 2 more ratings, we would have 51 ratings. then I would be able to claim I have (rounded up) 100 ratings :smile:

Clone Colony is a strategy game with "eXploit, eXpand, eXterminate" features.

You lead a team of clones to extract minerals on a distant planet for the company. However, it's not only mineral & profit waiting for you there, a good bunch of Alien hives are burrowing under the planet surface, and they're not very hospitable. It's a pity that the company cannot provide a transport to get you back due to the profit margin. You are suggested to use everything you have to eliminate the hostile native creatures and keep working for the company's interest.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/clone-colony

Less than 3 days for the results. Hope you all had a really fun LD39. And one last shout out to this cool game over here! And if you have some free time, I would really appreciate it if you could take a look at the mobile version of my LD entry. I spent a lot of time on it and I hope you guys like it. :smile:

If you know of anybody else who might enjoy playing this, be sure to let them know! :wink:

Thank you guys for your support, votes and comments :D

This is the first time we all participate as a team. Both @elmismopancho and myself have participated a number of times before, and @ignius has also been part of the LD experience a couple of times already. @mspawa on the other hand was new to this and it was really awesome to have her on our team.

The Plan

Before the jam even started we already had the idea of using voice commands as input for our entry. Quite a few number of options during "Theme selection" looked like easy candidates for voice-controlled action, so we were pretty confident that we would be able to go with that idea.

At first we thought a phone app was our best option, but after some research and quick tests, we found out that the HTML5 Speech recognition API was going to work just fine, at least on Chrome. Having a game that does not need to be downloaded is always good.

Only problem? None of us (devs) had used a HTML5 framework before, but I had heard of Phaser, so we quickly looked at the docs and examples and decided to take the leap.

So, in summary: We wanted our next game to be voice-controlled, and that meant using mostly tech we had never used before, which was exciting in its own right.

LD Starts

We met on Skype when the theme was announced Friday night, and we started discussing ideas. We went to bed with a rough idea of what we wanted to make and a plan of meeting Saturday somewhere, to jam together.

The next day we worked on the voice recognition and implemented the first stage using placeholders, while our artist, @ignius was sketching game elements, and worked on the title screen. @mspawa wrote the script, which constantly had to be adjusted as we decided on the details for each part of the game. We intended to make around 5 stages but it quickly became apparent that 2 or 3 was a more realistic goal.

Sunday was an interesting day. A lot of assets were done and added to the game, and @mspawa started looking for sound effects when no changes to the script were required. We settled for 2 stages, and by the end of the day we had both of them working.

As many of us had to work on Monday, it was mostly a day of fixing bugs, adding the intro screen and a quick message at the end, inserting the sound effects and uploading everything to our servers. This was when we discovered that the latest version of Chrome required HTTPS for microphone input, so @elmismopancho quickly got a SSL certificate for his server that night, just in time for submission hour. I did the same the day after, to have a mirror for the game, just in case.

What went well

• Despite using a bunch of stuff we were completely unfamiliar with, we managed to make a game that we are all proud of.
• Speech recognition worked better than we expected.
• It's always fun to be with the rest of the team in the same place, working on a game, and for most of this LD we were able to do that.

What went bad

• We had to cut a bunch of level ideas and scale down the game a lot.
• While a Chrome-only game was better than an Android-exclusive app, we would've loved to make something that everyone could play on their browser of choice.

What worked...somehow.

• I was really sick during that weekend and not feeling terribly well, but I managed to make my part anyway.
• We originally wanted to have commands that made sense but were mapped to the wrong actions, but we soon discovered that the Speech recognition had problems with short commands like "up" so we were in a tough spot. This, however, made us go with completely nonsensical commands, which added some extra charm and humor to the game.

Post-Jam version

We also made a Post-Jam version, with some minor improvements and language options, so now you can play our entry in Spanish, or (what we think is even more hilarious) in English but using Spanish commands!

Big thanks to everyone who has already played our entry, we LOVE you all, and we really hope you enjoyed our game!

Special thanks to those who took their time to leave feedback, be sure to check their games too!

@andidebob, @badly-drawn-rod, @c0nst4ntin, @deadlyalive, @dorkandy, @dotsquid, @dragojt, @evil-as-shit, @gamesplusjames, @geck0, @guckstift, @herniewise, @huitre, @irishbruse, @jason200101, @josehzz, @jsmcag, @lereveur, @machinetribe, @mamoniem, @mathiouza, @matt-fabius, @naminuz, @oddballdave, @pavel-kouril, @peachtreeoath, @pfeyffer, @phlip45, @pixel-game-wizard, @pjchardtthesecond, @prodigalson, @qzqxq, @rafael-souza, @ratly, @rixud, @robotsandmuffins, @rootpew, @simonhutchinson, @simplepotential, @steve-johnson, @sugarbyte, @sythgara, @teacapn, @thecodefactory, @tjakka5, @tmpxyz, @tyler-miller, @valphera, @vasco-rodrigues, @virtualacademy, @zyow.

If you haven't tried our entry already, you can try it now, and if you like the idea we encourage you to try the Post-Jam version, which has some extra polish.

I only need about 2 more ratings to get a score! Thank to every people who had comment and rate on my first entry, I really appreciated it :D https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/light-out

EDIT: Yay! I got pass 20 ratings! Thank you.

AHHHH less than 3 days left! Vote for games and give some genuine feedback! Save the people with less than 20 votes!

ok ok. Now that we've settled that, hello my name is Will! I made the competition entry Dorgus Needs Power and this is a series of blog posts I'm making leading up to the end of judging period. If you haven't tried the game, I highly reccomend you do to help understand the content of these posts! My last post discussed how I've begun to evolve the art of my LD entry and in it I mention that I'm likely to change it even further. That is exactly what I've done!

What a cute boy! This time around his head, head, torso, arms, and legs are all separate assets that are going to programmatically puppeteered to add more life on top of some actual animations. Enough of all this though, this post is about growing in terms of game feel!

Since the comp ended I've been toying with the physics and movement to make the game feel better all around. The gun still retains it's hard knockback but I felt as if the horizontal push of the gun was far weaker than the vertical and lead to a singular strategy that was incredibly vertically based. I've also changed the jump to have variable jump height based on how long you hold the jump for. It's hard to convey but I'm including a gif to help illustrate the movement

This is all still very WIP but I love sharing the snapshots of how this project grows. Sadly, this ldjam is coming to a close and I won't be posting any further blogs here

BUT!!!!!!!!

If you are still interested in seeing the growth of Dorgus or my work then you can find me on twitter here

...and if you read this without playing for some reason here is Dorgus Needs Power

Thank you very much for reading and I look forward to the end results and rating as many games as I can last minute!!!