Praying for a good theme :pray:

Ok, now I'm hyped!

Well everything is in the title. I'm brand new to all this ld thing and before reading about how everyone felt like the theme sucks I was literaly talking about it to my schoolmates being like : "The themes are freaking awesome, you can build so much around it or derogate it anyway you want" And so I'm not a true Ludum Dare jamer, coz I dont slaughter, I enjoy some themes more than others but everything is way to green compared to others. So here i'll share my stuff.

Say something

come up with a really good idea for one of the themes that makes all of your other ideas for the other themes seem stupid then you start hoping that the theme you have the best idea for wins despite the very low odds of it actually winning? me too.

Here's hoping I finish something wacky and interesting.

• Unity (w/ VS or VS Code)
• Inkscape

As the title explains, this is my 3rd time entering Ludum Dare.

# Change in mindset

So for this event, I have changed my mindset of how I will be creating these games within a limited time, but first, I have to give credit where credit is due. HonestDanGames had inspired me to start coming up with ideas with the themes that are being shown in during the Theme Votings BEFORE the event starts. My last 2 entry ideas were both made up on the spot as soon as the event started.

Thinking of themes before the jam starts seems obvious to do to probably a majority of the participants and I am confused to why I didn't do this in the first place.

This can be seen in Solar Engulfment, my first submission. Solar Engulfment was an LD42 submission, with the theme being "Running out of space". When the theme dropped, I did have the obvious idea of having to delete data from a computer; An idea which I had seen multiple times after I had published my game. The original idea for Solar Engulfment was the player needing to escape from a room that was being flooded with water; This idea was not achievable to me as I wanted to have Fluid Dynamics implemented but I couldn't find a good solution and so I went back to the drawing board and came up with what you see now.

Now for Caprae Mortem, Caprae Mortem was a LD43 submission with the theme being "Sacrifices must be made" or something similar to that. I could not come up with an idea when the theme dropped. I distinctly remember staying up late until the theme dropped and going to bed; When I woke up, I had a look at what people were doing with the theme, until I saw a post which mentioned something about Satan or whatever, and then I thought of how you would sacrifice a goat to Satan as a form of worship [I don't study religion or care about religion so I'm unsure if I'm right on that], then low and behold, you see Caprae Mortem's result.

# Ludum Dare 44 Themes...

I won't lie, the themes this time round are terrible. Original opinion, I know.

I haven't been able to come up with ideas for a majority of the themes, so far, I have 19 (out of a total of 48) themes that have ideas. These themes, I may add, only have 1 idea to them, no theme on my current list has more than 1 idea. Some may wonder why you'd want more than 1 idea; I think it's important to have more than 1 in case you are incapable of doing that idea and need something to fall back on, something like I did with Solar Engulfment.

I've also had a look back at Ludum Dare 42 and Ludum Dare 43 themes and noticed that there are duplicates. Let's list them shall we?

All themes are with respective listing, meaning that number 1 for LD42, will be number 1 for LD44.

• Ludum Dare 42

  1. One minute
  2. It's spreading
  3. Colour as a gameplay feature
  4. One enemy only
  5. Four elements
  6. Decay
  7. Safe in the dark
  8. You can't control the player
  9. Alchemy & Magic
  10. You can't save them all
  11. You are the final boss
  12. Light is dangerous
  13. Floating islands
  14. You control the environment, not the player
  15. You are not the main character
  16. Shelter

• Ludum Dare 44

  1. 30 seconds - It consists of a limited time to complete or perform a task
  2. Contagious
  3. Colour changes everything
  4. Only one enemy
  5. Four elements
  6. Decay
  7. Stay in the dark
  8. You control the enemies
  9. Alchemy
  10. You can't save them all
  11. You are the final boss
  12. Stay in the dark
  13. Floating worlds
  14. Control the environment, not the player
  15. You are a side character.
  16. Shelter

I do understand that people want to do these themes and possibly see what other people would do if the theme was chosen and I am completely fine with that, but I think I speak for some people where some of us are getting annoyed that these themes keep being suggested and chosen for theme voting. I personally think that those 16 themes that are duplicates of Ludum Dare 42, possibly Ludum Dare 43 as well, could have been entirely different unique themes and as I am still new to Ludum Dare, when themes come up like, Alchemy, I find it hard at how I would implement that into Unity, and needing to research of how Alchemy was theorised to have worked.

Or possibly a better example, 30 seconds or 1 minute; I'd need to think of an idea that would get the user to do something in a limited time. Sure, you have the possibility of testing reaction skills such as "Click the left mouse button when you think it's been x amount of time" but it's a very repetitive gameplay idea and can be very boring to play after a couple of minutes.

Anyway, enough ranting!

I plan on using the following: - Programming: - Unity3D 2019 - JetBrains Rider 2018 - Art: - Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 - Sound: - Audacity - Modelling: - Blender - Planning: - Trello

I hope that everyone enjoys this jam and can come up with a game idea that is really fun and exciting to play! Good luck to all of you, can't wait to play some of the games that you create with the best abilities you have, whether it's art, sound, gameplay, etc!

So I should be able to participate to this jam. Well I have nothing else to do, except work for my art contest, but maybe i'll be able to do some illustration on the game jam i'll be able to show, so, hm, yeah, I'll try.

I'll try to make something simpler than my last game (Disco Lovers, that ended up being . . . Not good, cause I in 48 hours I couldn't do what I wanted plus the graphics plus a storyline, etc) and also a bit more original. I think I lost my originality somewhere between the end of 2017 and the very begining of this year, so I'll try to do something out of my confort zone this time. No space, no disco, and probably (?) no purple. I maybe already have an idea, so we'll see . . .

I'll be using :

• Unity3d as the engine

• Sublime text 3 as a code editor

• Gimp for pixel art and design

• Procreate for artworks

• Paint tool sai 2 for artworks (as a complement if needed, but tbh I'll probably stick to procreate)

• Garage Band for the music ! (yup, no more "old school but make it modern" songs, i'll do EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC this time !!! And it'll sound good !)

Good luck to everyone, and let's see what you will create ! 😄

Or maybe it's because I have some ideas for a lot of them, I don't know. But yeah, I admit a lot of them are repetitive. I want to strangle myself for forgetting to complete my slaughtering of the themes after I left for the week-end. I could only slaughter like half of the propositions :'(

Anyway, my choices :

So, what do you think ?

Let's just all agree that "You are a side character who is running out of 30 seconds and has two buttons to change color of space islands" would be the greatest theme of all time.

I'm going to suggest that for LD45, seriously

After previous entries in LD38 and LD40, this will be my third time entering the compo in LD44. I'm looking forward to it.

Previous attempts I've used Python and Kivy. This time around I'm looking at Rust and Amethyst. Mainly because I've been playing around with Rust for the past year and want to build something in it, and also it's easier to package up Rust than Python as I lost hours in both LD38 and LD40 to working with python packaging.

Big goals this time: More sound, more motion.

Once again, I'll be streaming (including my practice) at https://twitch.tv/argensis

I'm in!

I wanted to share whatever ideas pop into my head for today's themes. Ideas aren't precious, so hopefully these help inspire other people!

When I'm thinking of ideas I tend to try to think of obvious ideas and ideas that subvert the theme.

Ridiculously overpowered

The best way to feel overpowered is to fight huge swarms of enemies at once. Make a game with tons of enemies!

A game about finding ways to stack abilities to combine abilities to become overpowered.

A game about gamers complaining something is "OP".

* You're the final boss *

Defeating waves of super smug hero types.

What other sorts of "final bosses" are there? A final exam? Maybe you play as the exam trying to mess someone up?

* Everything is a weapon *

Taking this to the extreme, what if the user interface is a weapon?

* You are a side character *

What if you played as someone like Kazooie from Banjo and Kazooie? You'd have to trigger abilities at the right time to help the main character.

Games where you run an RPG style shop are also pretty fun. The world ending might be big business!

Or you could be some other profession like a dungeon janitor.

* Shelter *

Shelter implies sheltering from something. The cold, wind, rain, negative emotions?

You can build shelter, or seek it out. Shelter often feels important when it's for you and someone else. Maybe you're a family of animals? Maybe you create shelter for others?

* The more you die, the more the world dies *

Each time you die, part of the level goes away? Maybe you play as parts of the level, so you are the world?

Could you use the word "dye" instead and make things change colors?

* You can't save them all *

Escorting lots of small creatures Lemmings-style comes to mind.

What about "saving for later" style saving?

Or what about a game about the Trolley problem?

* You are the quest giver *

A "quest" is a search for something. What if you are a librarian of lost objects, and you ask adventurers to find lost objects?

What if you're just giving "quests" to your dog to go find a ball?

Maybe you run a quest giving business as an inkeeper, and you are paid to give quests to adventurers?

* Contagious *

Make a game about the Dancing Plague of 1518.

* You control the enemies *

Obvious: You play as an enemy stopping a hero. Like a Goomba instead of Mario.

Less obvious line of thinking, if something is an "enemy" to you and yet you still control it what does that mean? Maybe you can control the enemies but they still cause damage? Think moving a bunch of monsters around a city at once as you press the arrow keys, but because they all move at once some will bump into buildings while some run into range of your weapons.

Maybe it's a game about herding zombies?

* Alchemy *

What "matter" can you transform? The level itself? The rules of the game (like Baba is You)? Can you perform Alchemy on yourself to change yourself?

* Break the cycle *

You could be a malicious railroad designer, optimizing for maximum congestion (parody New York's MTA to get New Yorkers playing your game).

Perhaps some sort of automatic system tends to reform cycles and breaking them might be tricky?

* Underground *

Rabbits, moles, worms, and other animals live underground. What is their life like? How might they move and what struggles might they overcome?

Skeletons are underground, what if you're playing as a skeleton in the afterlife under a graveyard?

* Nontraditional boss battles *

There were old flash games about beating up your boss at work, but that seems unusually violent.

What if you have to talk things through with the boss. What if you were a negotiator sent to reason with the dragon?

Maybe the boss challenges you to a dance off?

Is it the boss that's non-traditional, or the battle?

* Two characters, one player *

There are lots of good platformers where you swap between characters to solve puzzles.

There are also good mechanics to be had by controlling characters at the same time and figuring out how to complete the level with both of them at once.

The theme doesn't specify you have to "control" the characters. It could be that you're one of "two characters" in this world. Is there some way you could disguise which player the character controls? So the player has to figure out which one they control?

* Tiny town *

How can you make a small space meet certain goals? (this Ludum Dare game was a brilliant implementation of this idea: Tiny Towns)

If a town were on the surface of a small object, like a cube, or a marble, what would that mean and how might that impact gameplay?

What if it's a game about "small town" rumors spreading. Maybe you try to spread rumors to get more popular, but other people are trying to spread rumors about you as well.

Real talk tho, most themes are ok, it's just that I don't feel like I can come up with any original ideas for them, or that I have seen them already on previous LD theme suggestions or other jams. And also, what's the fun in having a theme that is "OK"?

You can vote on suggestion and suggest themes before the 3 last rounds happen. That's called Theme Slaughter.

It is the most annoying thing to talk to people that think games are easy to make. Now i have to go do some things on Friday and Sunday (luckily I freed up monday). It is so nice to talk to people on here that understand how difficult it is. Everyone seems to think that a game just takes a few hours top to make and never actually think about all the things that go into it. Dealing with people like this is the worst part if my day.

This will be the second time the team and I are doing a Ludum Dare game, our first one was quite successful, with 74k views and 43k+ downloads!

Should be really fun making another one! Slightly less time to do it than before, but we'll work hard.

Last LD was December 2017... didn't actually submit anything but had fun anyways. This is the first time I've got a VR setup at home for an LD event, so I might do something with that.

Anyways...

• Unity
• Blender
• Possibly giving Masterpiece VR a try for throwing together some models
• ASEprite for textures usually or possibly

• Gimp

• Audacity if I ever actually get to do sound for one of these

Good luck to everyone. I see everyone's complaining about the themes being terrible, so it's good to know nothing has changed too much :wink:

In light of [@ian-kettlewell]{https://ldjam.com/users/ian-kettlewell} idea of suggesting ideas to get people thinking about the themes, here is my 2c

Cards are your weapons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwY1i1cR-VM Standard JRPG

What about a ground-hog day were you can't remember the game word between daily resets. You need to create notes (on cards) to yourself to solve problems.

The bufferfly effect

The weather is the same everywhere every day. Constant drought or constant flooding. We need chaos causing weather butterflies!

Only one enemy

Escape a mirror you.

Fight a giant fungus (appears above ground in many places but is the same creature)

Light as a weapon

Starwars, Any Vampire game. A really brutal dieting regime. Airships pirates ("Weight then down and send them to Davie Jones")

One room

Classic escape room. Papers please. Basically make you character stand still and bring the game to the character.

Regular jobs, but in Space

Make a sandwich but all the ingredients float around.

The environment is a weapon

Bar fight, everything from tables and chairs to wall, light fittings and the bar can be used to injure. Populous; strike your enemies with lighting, floods, earthquakes, like the vengeance of an angry god.

Change the genre of a classic video game

'Strip poker' manage a Las Vegas casino in a business sim.

'Doom' The real time strategy game.

'Rimworld' racing game.

'Secret of monkey island' cooking game.

Take a lovable plumber from a platformer and put him in a racing game ;)

Decay

Murder mystery in a haunted house.

Stay in the dark

Vampires again.

Sith lord tempted by the light-side of the force.

Side effects

Puzzle game, push one block another moves in sympathy.

Can only move sideways.

Two-button game

Rhythm game?

Platformer/puzzle game but jumps, spikes, traps, block puzzles, monsters and of course exactly two buttons.

Time is the currency

The past it threatens the fastest weapon, you wouldn't make it past a second. Sorry I don't know what came over me.

Thyme is the currency?

Risky power-ups

Running short of inspiration, but you get the point.

Permanent damage

Perma-death

Don't let it escape

Just don't let it escape.

Could you actually vote on round 1 even if round 3 already began?

Here's first version of the player...