I've started working on a post-jam version of my game "People Poker". I want to both add some of the features that I didn't get to include, and respond to some of the feedback I've received, mainly that it is too hard and unclear what to do.

So far I've added several idle animations which were missing, which adds a lot of life to the game. I also have the NPCs turning to look at the player, and shouting advice and encouragement, a great suggestion that a commenter made.

To reduce the difficulty, I added a lot more cover, and also changed the tentacle behaviour so that it is possible to dodge them. I will probably remove cover and increase the speed and accuracy of the tentacles as the player progresses to create a difficulty curve.

It'll probably be a few days yet before I'm ready to release the update, but in the meantime you can play and rate the compo version here.

Oh boy, I think it’s time for a break now. I’ve done nothing but rate games since this morning. Thanks to all who checked out mine!

And if you haven’t checked it out, here’s that sweet sweet link:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/kill-the-money

And not to forget dat juicy screenie

I’ll probably rate more tomorrow, I’m having a great time with ld 44s games. Absolutely wonderful job to all those I’ve rated!

I'll review the game of every person that comment on our page, so check our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/the-money-hole

The new Borderlands 3 Trailer that got released a few days ago even has them - Hover boards! If you ever wanted to know how the feeling is to cruze and hover over land, then you do not need to wait till mid Semptember to do that!

Just download our game "Cats without Cars" and see for yourself how cool it is to travel with highspeed without touching the ground.

Visit https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/cats-without-cars

This is how we made the islands in Houdini, check it out!
http://blog.borderline.games/tutorials/sliced-mountains.html

You can play the game through your browser at This link.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to participate in ludum dare 44 with my friend JohnnyDalvi.

Concepting

At the event’s start, the theme was announced: “Your Life Is Currency.” The first phase of a game jam is to brainstorm ideas and decide what game to make. Initially, we discussed mechanics such as summoning minions through blood sacrifice and using health to pay for actions. However, I have a policy of pushing back against early ideas because other teams in the event are likely to create a similar game (and based on the submissions, there are a lot of ‘pay with blood’ games).

Game jam themes can be taken literally or figuratively. From my experience, the figurative / metaphorical entries usually score higher. Gameplay that incorporates the theme is not enough – the entry must thematically stand out from the rest of the pack while also having solid polish in all areas – it can’t look like it was “rushed to finish by the deadline.” After discarding the initial ideas, we started thinking of ‘life’ in a broader sense:

• Life as a journey
• Life as a soul, like the soul of a forest

The second idea struck with us and we settled on a game where you play as the protector of a forest who ‘awakens’ trees to fight off loggers. To fit the theme, we decided the awakened trees (‘treants’) would leave the forest – they are no longer part of it after being uprooted. Hence, the life of the forest (trees) must also be spent to defend it.

Production

The rest of the weekend was spent on development. I was in charge of the game look and feel, meaning the 3D models, 2D UI, audio, and visual effects. The aesthetic style I chose was “hybrid poly”, which combines low and high poly assets. I planned to use asset packs as the base for my high poly assets, so I began by creating the low poly blocks using Blender.

I modeled 2 cliff rocks, 2 ground platforms, and 2 small rocks. The base of our level is constructed from these objects, each being rotated and scaled in different ways to break uniformity.

After finishing the level layout, I spent the remaining time modifying content from asset packs to fit our game, setting up post processing, and playing with scene settings to capture two primary moods: “mystical” and “airborne”. Check out the progression over time.

Retrospective

My time allocation looked approximately like this:

• Concepting: 1 hour
• Game Development: 41 hours
• Ice Skating Lesson: 2 hours (yes, I’m an aspiring ice skater!)
• Random Breaks: 6 hours
• Sleep: 16 hours (I didn’t sleep from Sunday to Monday)
• Testing / Tweaking / Building: 6 hours

Those with experience in hackathons and game jams know the actual time a person has to work is about half the allotted amount due to sleep, breaks, and fixing unexpected problems that arise from being imperfect developers. Numerous failed jams have taught me the most important part of these events is agreeing on a concept that can realistically be made in 1/3 of the given time. As my time allocation shows, we missed, and so the testing and tweaking of the game suffered. When this happens, the player experience (emotions, feelings of progress, excitement, etc.) relies largely on the luck of having initially put everything together in a way that creates a memorable experience. See some of the feedback below:

While our game was extremely polished, the gameplay did not have enough variety to entertain. Dullness, or the player feeling ‘bored’ is an experience that overshadows even the best graphics and plotline. What I should have done is drawn the line on polish after the main level was production-ready, then dive into coding to add more dynamicism to the gameplay. We had only implemented a few simple mechanics and none of them (combined with the level design) allowed for interesting emergent experiences.

For example, most game jam entries do not have an Options menu. The time I spent creating this one could have been better spent elsewhere.

Overall though, we created a polished strategy game that even rose to the front of the ‘Popular Strategy Games’ section of itch.io for one week. I’m proud of what we accomplished in 72 hours and am already looking forward to the next weekend intensive.

Play our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/heart-of-the-grove

I need to play and rate more games, so I'm looking for more games to play after I get off work tonight. Please leave a comment below with a link to your game and I promise I'll play and rate it tonight.

I really appreciate all the kind words and helpful tips thus far on my little shooter game, "Darkling." If you'd like to play and rate mine, it would really mean a lot to me! Thanks everyone and have a great day!

Please Play and Rate Here

I wrote a postmortem / long form article over here on itch and then forgot to publish it before linking to it. Sorry for that! https://dignz.itch.io/work-life-balance/devlog/79560/making-of-work-life-balance

A rambling account of the decisions and development process for my LD44 game Work Life Balance..

If anyone can beat 6 minutes 28 seconds OR $3,624.00 profits for the corporation let me know! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/work-life-balance

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/kaumaha

Say something

Don't worry if you can't, Stoks the merchant can upgrade your ship. But at what cost?

Play and rate here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/memories-of-a-captain

Also be sure to exchange your game url in the comments and I will rate+feedback if you do!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/bloody-accord If you haven't played our game, you definitely should! It's pretty fun! You have to learn the right tactics to destroy waves of on-coming enemies by buying shop items and using spells. See how long you can last!

My submission just got major update:
TWO PLAYER MODE IS ADDED!
So grab your friend and try out Wanted!
Link to the submission: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/wanted-1

.

If you are into shopkeeping and crafting, then this game is for you! Gather some materials, create potions and make your customers happy. Getting tired of customers? Gift them a potion you brew and see their reaction!

I will return feedback to your game too, so don't forget to leave a comment.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/bloodalchemist

*Play in the browser: Here =] *

This blog post starts with some apologies: to everyone that played my game and found some bugs, I'm really sorry.

My game's page is becoming really long, and I don't think it's worth writing this here. So I will take this opportunity and expand on my thought a bit.

You can play S.H.R.O.U.D.. Some of you already did, some of you didn't. It's fine.

I think it's a great game. It's not good, it's not bad, but it's great. And it's massive; it's massive for a Jam game. Let's talk one second about all the mechanics it has. Sorry for the long intro but I think it's needed for the point I'm trying to make.

• Shooting
• Eating and Drinking
• Health
• Radiations
• Using items
• Chests with random loot
• Vendors...
• ...that are randomly stocked
• NPCs
• Buyers
• Drops
• Interactions with objects (signs, unique models, etc.)
• A radiation zone
• Quests
• Selling body parts...
• ...which influences the core gameplay based on the sold body part
• One unique animation for every combination of sold parts
• Lore
• Sleeping
• Multiple days system
• Enemies

You might read this list and think i'm just trying to brag, but I assure you it's not like that. It's not like that because... Almost every single feature in my game is somehow bugged.

I guess that the point I'm trying to make in my post is that the more mechanics you have, the more likely they are to be broken. Especially in a jam, especially with spaghetti code.

And I'm really sad about this, because whenever I build a game I try to do it with passion and with love. For me it's not just a way of having fun while coding, it's not about the competition. I always try to consider as a piece of interactive media; so whenever it's not played at its fullest, it's just awful.

And that's why I'm really sorry when bugs happen. Not only I am sorry for my game, because I delivered a poorly functional product; but I'm also sorry for you, the player, that took the time to play my game just to find it unplayable because of gamebreaking glitches.

So as I did with the features list, I will do a bug list, just to make a point:

• Animations are not triggering correctly when selling body parts
• Ammo is not always spent properly
• When you use your rifle sometimes you use gun ammo
• If you sell the arm while holding a rifle really weird things happen
• Some of the chests have the npc dialogue box and vice-versa
• Sometimes the radiation zone doesn't reset
• Enemies get stuck in walls
• The cavern makes your game freeze (this bug is solved because I completely removed the cave event, but I spent 6h trying to fix it without success, so here it will stay)
• Sometimes you get twice the amount of items from the ground
• One NPC doesn't talk
• Balancing issues

Everytime I watch someone play it, I discover something new. In yesterday's build people didn't even get the final screen, the real reward of the game...

And let's not talk about the empty world, the poorly explained mechanics, and the not that fun or even useful ones.

What I'm trying to prove? A game doesn't need to be big to be fun, it doesn't need to be complicated, it doesn't even have to be innovative. The more you try, the more you fail. I'm not saying you shouldn't try, I'm saying that you don't have to try harder than necessary. Something that we did. During the development, after the first 24 hours, I was still thinking about things I could add to the game.

I was really overconfident, and you should never be.

So once again, I want to do some sincere apologies on my behalf. I know it's the Jam, I know shit happens. But I really feel mortified for bringing you a messy product.

I'm sorry, but I really still hope to see you in the wasteland.

Hopefully in a better one.

Hi! I'm one of the devs of The Necromancer Saga! We received a lot of feedback the past week, and I took a bit of time to do some bugfixing. I hope that new players enjoy the experience a lot more, and previous players are welcome to try it out a second time.

List of bugfixes:

• Lighting is improved. Now you can actually see behind those shadows!

Before

After - Loading screen now’s working as it should (It’s used to avoid that camera flickering at the beggining). - Lowered music volume as it was too high. - Skeletons now fight the enemy that was hit by a fireball, if they weren’t attacking before. - Added particles to fireballs when they collide with an object to provide more feedback on the player when it’s attacking an enemy - Enemies were nerfed. (Needs a bit more playtesting, as I find them a bit too easy. I’ll probably do a balance patch later).

Haven't played it yet? Here's the link to the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/the-necromancer-saga-endless-dungeons

Hope you enjoy it!

As of now the art for the base tarot set (22 cards) and the suit of swords (14 cards) has finished, this means I have the visuals done for 72 scenarios, halfway done!

Whats left for a final release; - 3 more suits of art for the other suits of cards (14 per suit) - A total of 156 scenarios (currently 8 implemented) - Item card art (partly through this) - Change the death/finished run visuals - Options menu - Android testing - Unlocking suits through play - Drawing a run before play begins, ensuring duplicates are not present (can’t be done until 11 scenarios at a minimum are implemented)

That seems like a lot but considering the time consuming parts are the art it's almost done!

I could still use the communities feedback on 2 things however;

The first thing is the potential for an “unhinged” joke set of scenarios; As of right now there will be 154 scenarios that are more or less completely serious, this would mean adding a 6th suit of cards that would consist of 5-7 cards (10-14 scenarios) that would all be humorous.

Now the concern with this is would this break the immersion and feel of the game? any feedback on that idea is greatly appreciated!

The second thing I need feedback on is the item cards; Since the jam item cards have been implemented, these cards are given to the player when they choose an option that boosts a stat, with specific items being tied to specific stats. Now the art for a base set has been done for these cards, the thing is that there are essentially only 8 functions these cards will serve with 5 of them being the heirloom cards that will be hard to obtain (2 heirlooms completed).

If you were playing this and got the same item every time your strength stat was increased would you be annoyed? Would you want more than one item visual even if it did the exact same thing?

As an added bonus visual for this post, I call this card (almost identical to the actual tarot visual) the "Why did I spend all my money on swords" card

Don’t forget to play and rate Fools Fortune here; https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/fools-fortune

You can follow Fools Fortune’s post jam development at:

Twitter;https://twitter.com/Gear_Steak

Itch.io;https://gearsteak.itch.io/fools-fortune

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/les-pattesthe-legs

THANK YOU!!!