My game, of course! This jam, I wanted to innovate, so I did something I'd never done before;

Pattern Recognition Algorithm baby!

You draw a spell on the screen, and the game figures out what the heck kind of scribble you made, then casts the spell. It's like a tech demo, but it is actually really fun! The pattern recognition is also incredibly smooth, despite the entire system being made in less than six hours for the 48 hour compo.

So I just wanted to invite you to try it out, and make your own opinion!

Playable through your browser: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/sigillis

https://justcamh.itch.io/sigillis

Here are my best times so far - can you beat me?

CoinStory Game Page

Any% Worth - 49.78 seconds

100% Worth - 90.87 seconds

Remember you lose your worth (/hp) everytime you activate something to cause a distraction - just gotta go fast!

Available HERE ! Also make sure to give me your feedback on the LD page here :v:

My Second Ludum Dare Entry and I'm super excited! Explore the depths of an endless cave, paying for new weapons with your own blood.​ Endless Dungeon Crawler where you sell your remaining health to buy new weapons. The health you have left each level gets added to your blood stash. Accumulate more health and unlock more weapons!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blood-caverns

Would love to know your opinions!

Hi Everyone !

We just saw that the download links were not working .
It is is now fixed !

Please feel free to try it.

Tenshi42

Try this! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/coin-platformer

We created our first Game Jam and it was FUN!! Play and rate us here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/cats-without-cars

Try this please: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/coin-platformer

Thanks you for the feedback, we definitely need to work on some bug fixes and polishing. Mostly spend my time on random world generation and city building :) Me and the other developer are both working hard on our thesis for the last part of our degree.

We would appreciate bug reports and hope to have a new version in the upcoming days.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/ludum-dare-44-2

I've reached room 92 but I'm the dev so that doesn't count I guess...

If you like it PLAY THE GAME!

You should have known better than to accept capitalist offer komrade.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/enemy-of-the-state

TL:DR : We made a game and you can play here

Hello everyone !

This ludum dare was my first and also my first as a solo newbie game developer. I had already done a game jam before (GDG) but with the help (a lot of it) of another student game dev.

For this one, I was totally crazy and I did it with defold that I didn't knew before the jam. Happily for me, the documentation was crystal clear and and the techniques I've learn as a web developer to organize my work pay super well. Some sacrifies has to be done (collision on decor, pathfinding (RIP Astar ...), rounds ...) but at the end the game still plays well :v: . Also sleeping helped a lot, so no more sleepless night in game jam !

I'm super suprized (and proud) to see all the work done with the help of my talented co-workers @nekorio and @thomas-laguz that are still students in animation, but clearly are already very good :muscle:

I'm so ready to push the protoype futher and also to develop more games with @thomas-laguz and maybe in the future create a company for it ? This inspired a lot and maybe you'll see us in future ludum dare !

I'm also super happy to see already all the comments on the game page :blush:

This lunch I've fixed most of the big problems people encounter (monster spawn and keyboard input issue) and now I can say : COME PLAY IT !

The name is Drop of life and you can vote it HEEEERE

And a screen of the game :frame_photo:

PS : Yeah, I've sleep during the game jam but I'm still needing some more go back to bed

So far the record is 32! I can't get past 20 myself. :sweat_smile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN4C5mkf240

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

KNIFE=LIFE now has MAC version, check it out! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/knifelife

Please, play my game! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/life-engineer

Play my game. Please. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/life-engineer

Think about trying our game! It's a little party-game where you shoot your coins to your opponent in order to steal his own coins! You'll need two controllers and a real friend to play it, sorry about that.https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/money-golems-warriors

In "Glad - Gladiators!". Discordya, the goddess of sculpturing, has taken the Roman coliseum and now wants to play with the gladiators!

The four "lucky" warriors will have to obey your orders, even when it means fighting against each other! The problem is when the goddess changes her mind every minute and her target tends to change too!

Each warrior has a distinctive weapon set that can be very useful and advantageous if used correctly and dabedoria. But in the heat of battle everything can happen and the goddess can punish those who had a performance that displeases her.

Game Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/glad-gladiators

Mass is your life source. Consume it. It fuels everything.

Check it out here - play in your browser!

Just brought it out for the browser! :id: If you'd like to try it out: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/lifleline-warriors It'doesn't take long and I update it all 12 hours!

Would be happy to get feedback from you!

P.S.: If you get the lettuce boots upgrade... TAKE THEM ON!!!

Unable to play the game but want to see what Bloodbarn is all about? Checkout the gameplay trailer below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD66dAfSBc8

If you do want to play, there is HTML5 and Windows builds available on the itch.io site! Hope you enjoy, yeehaw!

Check out our jam game! Please rate fair and hope you like it :v:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/no-pain-no-gain-1 https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/no-pain-no-gain-1 https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/no-pain-no-gain-1 https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/no-pain-no-gain-1

So I was playtesting a minor bugfix update that addresses some of the more immediate issues and...

Apparently you can fall out of the world :sob:

Play our campy old school FPS here! :grin:

Play 60 Second Supermarket Sweep right now in your browser

Well, after two years I still don't see any means of searching interesting games using ldjam.com. No search functionality, no paged game list, no resolution scaling(it is pretty annoying to look at game list in tiny vertical strip taking less than 1/3 of screen space).

Am I supposed to search for LD games on itch.io, twitter, anywhere but ldjam.com again?

Is it really THAT hard to implement simpliest paged list like it was on ludumdare.com? (I am not even asking for search functionality, it is probably impossible for ldjam web programmers).

Play: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/finger-fighter-high-stakes

Hello everyone! i'll be streaming some Ludum Dare entries on twitch giving feedback live! come say hi to: https://www.twitch.tv/siraeron

you can submit your game here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd3BMYL1jWQiizDkz2jbgnPtZ8XOhb1hThzvIXifp9SMlVmg/viewform?usp=sflink

Hi i just participated first time on ludum dare. I like you to checkout my game and tell that my game have bugs or not.

LINK https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/boxes-rush-1

                               You can play it HERE!

                          PIZZO TYPING HAS ARRIVED!

               💸💸 TYPE TO PAY SICILIAN MAFIA 💸💸

                                         CREDITS:

                        💻 Ignacio Muñoz Márquez

                        💻 Miguel Melgar Reyman

                      🎨 Antonio Carpintero García

                      🎶 Ricardo Roldán Fernández

                                       CONTROLS:

                                      JUST TYPE!

                             💕 Thanks for playing! 💕

                             📤 Thanks for sharing! 📤

                               You can play it HERE!

I would like to open a discussion

Here are few points why Ludum Dare should be every 4 months, like it used to.

1. People are used to it
2. The event is non-profit
3. It helps people engineer relationships and ideas
4. There are no prizes for the event
5. 4 months don't just FLY BY
6. People love it. I do, you do, and everybody does.
7. Game industry is very competitive
8. Now everybody is just me, me, me, check me out, check me out
9. You don't have to participate in all of them

Why change the standard?

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

Congratulations to everyone for finishing the jam!

Last night my brains was overloaded by the bugs that were still present in my game(still submitted it though). Managed to hotfix most of them after a good sleep :) So it should be in a playable state. Try it oout if you have time!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/lost-in-afterlife

This wasn't our favourite theme.. during voting we said things like "it's too similar with the previous theme", "no good ideas of making a game on this theme" and we did give it negative score.

But when we did meet up to start working we had two ideas very quickly and I'm glad that we did pick this idea. A tower defense game with a graphical style like Geometry wars. After the first day we had a pretty solid working game.

The suddenly when we added the health pickups we discovered that we kind of had made mixture of a tower defense and a clicker game. At the end of day two it was almost a finished game but lacking music, sound effects and a way to actually get game over and restart the game.

So day three was polishing day. Small details here and there that made the game even more solid in the end. During day three I also started to play the game more and more while testing.. and if you get lost 30 minutes playing your own game instead of working on it that's a good sign, isn't?

What went good

Basically everything.. the flow this time was almost magical compared to previous games.

What went bad

As always so much more ideas that we didn't had time to put in. * drones picking up hearts for you * more upgrades and possible a few more weapon towers * different levels after reaching a number of waves.. the code for different levels is actually in there but no way for switching and no levels designed.

Bugs/issues I wish I had fixed

• Closing all menus.. it's annoying if they are left open.. especially since you can accidently kill yourself from a misstaken open menu (purchasing something more expensive than your health since the check for cost code was run when opening the menu)
• Quicker restarts... the intro screen should be skippable.. stupid me!
• More work on balancing the mob spawner

Can you beat wave 19?

Something happens with the mob spawner and things go crazy.. but I have heard someone at least reaching wave 20!

Oh the game.. it's here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/ticker-clicker-defence

Now I need to go back and try to beat wave 19.. I mean to Play and rate other games :)

Why chasing humans for their souls when just one evil cat can provide 9? Or is it 7? It really depends where you are from. In Italy cats are said to have seven lives, but Shakespeare says they are 9.

Play Zoltan'Idea here and find out :)

kidnap your favourite cat and see what misdeeds it can do...

game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/enemy-of-the-state

For all the non-Windows folks - you can now play D.R.I.E.D. in your browser :metal:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/d-r-i-e-d

We all should read this post from the old Ludum dare site on how to package the game.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/2016/04/21/how-to-make-your-game-into-a-single-exe/

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/bravebelly-funny-dystopian-thicboy-runner-with-dark-undertones

Me and a few friends finished BloodKeep last night. This was my first jam, and I had so much fun (though not much sleep). Will definitely be back in October :v:. Now it's time to play your awesome games. If you would like to try BloodKeep, you can do it right here:

Play BloodKeep right in your browser

Any feedback is really appreciated.

It was a great experience for our team to work together. We worked very hard and achieved, in our opinion, a good result in 72 hours. And to read pleasant comments, to see how our game is liked by people is the best part of the Ludum Dare. Thanks you!! :wave:

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

Impress the slavemasters so you can fight another day!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/nameless-hero

It made sense to me that it may take more than a screenshot to demonstrate a game. (Supreme goal, of course, to be self-explanatory ... whoops 😅). So I added a description of the gameplay!

Check it out: Cashier Simulator

Apparently, something was wrong with my game, NewLife. At this point I just really want to make the game playable to others.

If wanna check this pretty better version of my tower defense

Check It Out!

Leave your games bellow on the comment so i can play and rate yours too! :)

It's hard to get your head out of a project that was intense even if it was only for a weekend. So here's the little demon of our game!

HEARTLESS DEAL >> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/heartless-deal

It's oddly satisfying spending half the night playing the nonsense you came up with even after the jam ended. It turned out to be more fun than we even expected!

Want your part of our fun, too?

Get it for Windows

PS: Enjoy the music!

After two intense days of crazy laughing, here is our little project do not hesitate to make your feedback this is extremely pleasure ...

The game is playable on browser

You are the mighty Euro.. Seduce the greediest money-grabbing wolves and condemn your followers to the chasms of eternal fire.

yes..Dirty Cash is here!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/dirty-cash

Put your link in comments if you want a constructive review on your game and you need the 20 ratings to get a score

And if you want, check mine too :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/ollos-life

And you have you try my game ? I have fix small display problems and collisions bugs. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/save-and-sell-them

Yooo already got a few nice reviews! All feedback is welcome! We will also try and fix a few of the issues that people mentioned (mostly balance). I'm actually surprised so far no bugs were found.

BTW we have all the builds! WEB, WINDOWS, LINUX, MAC

I'd love to check out some hidden gems of ludum dare. Comment with your game and I'll be sure to leave a review! Maybe check out our game as well :) edit: thank you for commenting! I'll be checking each and every game out as soon as I get home from work :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blood-quest

We finished this time...woohoo! Give our game a try if you can, we had a lot of fun making it! Make sure to post links to your games so we can check them out as well!!

https://nightember.itch.io/heartstring https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/heartstring

Help Bob and Larry to summon the Blood God!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/bloodlines

One trade, and more than one life to be lost

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/enemy-of-the-state

This jam, I made my own pattern recognition algorithm, and used it as the primary form of input for my compo game; Sigillis! Draw patterns on the screen to cast spells and defeat waves of enemies. It's like a tech demo, but it's actually quite fun!

You are invited to play it here and rate it over here! I've been loving a lot of your creations, and I hope you like mine too :smile:

I wanna play the games from you guys who think you don't have much attention! Links here and I will give you all an honest feedback!

If you wanna try my game, here it is https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/tales-of-haroldo

Hi everyone! I would love for you all to give me some feedback on my first full game & first game jam! I'm a high school student and this was a great project to practice my programming skills (and not so good graphics skills)!

Rate it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/obsessed Play it here (web brower!): https://oktarian.itch.io/obsessed

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/boxes-rush-1 This is the link of my game check it out and tell do this is good awesome or bad or which things i need to fix more in it.

Hey everyone I'm here dropping my game made with Pico 8 and HTML5 exported

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/ghost-avenger

Comment down and specially if your game has a html5 export I'll play and rate!

Hey Guys ! Come try LifeMare, a top-down rogue like which is our second entry !

Have fun :)

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

Feel Good Inc.

Play Arm & A Leg now on Windows!

Discarded by your owner, you need to sell your parts to escape

I honestly don't know how I got this done in time. The idea was kind of ambitious for the time frame and without having a team, but it's done! As much as I hated the theme, I think this is my best jam entry yet!

The game is only available for Windows at the moment, but I'm hoping to release an HTML5 version soon!

Excited for people to play and get feedback, and I'm also excited to take a well-deserved break and play everyone else's games. Share your entry in the comments below! I'm looking for things to play.

Also, my friend is a speedrunner, and he currently holds the world record on this game. Give him a run for his money and see if you can beat it!

Speedrun

My game is for you!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/money-is-life

I now have the Windows, Mac, and WebGL versions of Wizard of Worth available for all to play and enjoy :smile:. Please check it out, and I will also check out your game as well.

Help the wizard defeat the demons and their minions with nothing but a pocket full of change!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/wizard-of-worth

Please tell me why in games tab and smart filter jam games are showing not compo games show?

check it out here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/the-trafficker

Please tell me why in games tab and smart filter jam games are showing not compo games show?

Then you will like our game! Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/lifelust

Hi guys ,please check my second entry for ld here:https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/space-rabbit

Pucamuc is a platformer where you control Puck, who wants to get an iFone. The problem is that Puck cannot walk, he can only jump. To make the matters worse, the payment is done by blood, and his only source of blood is chickens and babies.

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

The first feedback is in.

@velvetlobster

"... how can someone make such a complex game in such a short time ..."

@oktarian

"... The fact that you managed to do all this in 3 days is impressive - congrats! ..."

@frog5tar

"Fun Game Impressive for 3 Days"

And even you can play our game! Come here!

Hey guys I’m here to show off my new game, Barter in Blood! It’s my first ludum dare, so I underestimated how much time I needed to make the game. A lot of features I wish I could’ve included are extra enemies, different looking stages, a restart function, and more weapons. Anyways, I hope you give it a shot and let me know what you think at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/barter-in-blood

In “Shopping sucks the life out of you” you need to get things on a shopping list. But there is a twist. Each item you put in your cart takes years off your life, you need to get as many items as your can without getting to old.

Play it Here

On the way to the hospital a horrible accidents happened! The doors of your ambulance car swung open and you’ve fallen out, lying on the ambulance bed. In the last moment you’ve grabbed the tube of your blood transfusion.

We had a blast of fun creating CrazyAmbulance - and we hope, that you have a blast of fun playing it!

Has this ever happened to you?

You are getting swarmed by enemies and it takes so much time to get rid of them? Don't worry, there is a solution! Introducing GERYDAS TOWER 1.0.1!

Now featuring a bugfixed sword so you can hit more than one enemy at a time.

nice.

Other highlights include enemies behaving as intended (and in a way that makes sense (most of the time)) and a ton of other nice bugfixes.

For a full changelog and the new download, head over to my game page HERE.

Don't waste your time!

Play now: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/clock-of-your-life

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/extracted-souls

Hi ! Cats get 9 Bets 🐾 is my Compo entry for this Jam. It's a Party Game that consists in placing bets using your lives. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/cats-get-9-bets

Of Course in a party game, the more mini-games the better ! And I almost made it to my goal of 3, but one was discarded (it makes for a sad mini-games roulette admittedly).

Meet "Maze Ra(t)ce" a mini-game in wich you bet on one of the 4 "rats". In the screenshot, they look like Beerus because I had to save time, Haha... They all have their own behavior, the maze is proceduraly generated. The only code that's not there is the one to determine who won (so close!!!).

Also, if you have more than 1 controller (and more than 1 friend) I would be curious to hear about your impressions ! I myslef, haven't tried more than a 2 players / 2 Computers game.

@purrseus

"It’s a little like a Darkest Dungeon typing gambling game"

⚔️If you like it PLAY THE GAME!⚔️

Procedural platformer/roguelite with narrative elements

This project is probably my largest jam project! It's also way overscoped so it's a bit rough around the edges ;-)

Thank you so much to the whole team for this wonderful experience :heart: Everybody gave his best to finish the game. Special mention for Drenock and Julien Noël for their first game jam ever.

I hope you'll enjoy playing! We're all excited for your feedback :wink:

I just try hard to thought a idea. So now i completely finished a unique idea game. Link of the game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/boxes-rush-1 check it out and also give link of our game.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/bravebelly-funny-dystopian-thicboy-runner-with-dark-undertones

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/bravebelly-funny-dystopian-thicboy-runner-with-dark-undertones

I just try hard to thought a idea. So now i completely finished a unique idea game. Link of the game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/boxes-rush-1 check it out and also give link of our game.

@mrjoshuamclean is live now playing LD44 games!

Submit: https://goo.gl/forms/voMWRU3hCLp9yA7m2

Watch: https://twitch.tv/mrjoshuamclean/

And... What happen when you use your blood to complete puzzles?

The Game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blood-worm

Developers: Lucas Vieira and Pedro Moreira

NOW YOU CAN MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE! JUST PLAY *PANDEMONIUM* AND ENTER TO THE SCARY HELL! DEMONS ARE WAITING FOR *YOU*!

PS. You can also check my twitter.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/mahou-shoujo-monster-promised-fate

It was so fun getting to get the whole gang together and hyper focus on making a game though! No matter how we do in the votings, I am really proud of how far we've come! Its crazy looking back at our past work and comparing it to what we did this weekend.

Just the fact that we threw the monster dollset together in just three days is insane! If you want some "behind the scenes" of the monsters, the maker for them is published here:

http://farragofiction.com/DollSimE/?type=427

We finished in time :v:

The game is a shoot 'em up with a branching storyline. Please leave us a review ! -> Submission page

-Fixed slow movements -Fixed laggy score UI

Play Nekobellum here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/nekobellum

I have finally finished everything. I was late for my submission so please consider my first LD as a sort of a test run rather than an official sign up. But even though I was late the game itself was made within 72 hours and I learned a lot in the last 3 days.

I made a game that is a prototype of the kind of adventure games I used to play as a game and wanted to play. This was my first time attempting build at least a semblance of a dungeon.

Things to consider for the next LD: - Focus on the main base game and then proceed to polish it - Pixel art takes as much time if not more than regular art. Specialize in an art style in advance - Prepare tons of more base code and mend the rough edges of your skills and engine related knowledge base - Do not underestimate the time it takes to build, error-check, and publishing the game

Again, I had tons of fun. Enter the link below to play the game. I hope to join in the next LD as well !!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/lifeheart-exchange

Dust off your Game Boy or boot up an emulator!

This LD we made a game for original Game Boy: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/heart-knight-1

This was my first Ludum Dare particpation. I could not do everything I wanted but it was a good experience.

You can check my game Bloody Money here: https://high-level.itch.io/bloody-money

Our team attended Ludum Dare for the first time and that was indeed a fantastic experience! Especially counting that we've actually finished our first game.

Of course a lot of things were cut from the final result, primary because of the time limitations. Considering that we had spent roughly one hour balancing difficulty level, the game went kind of hard to master, sorry for that in advance :sweat_smile: But anyway we've got so much fun creating it!

Please find our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/pomidorko

And now I guess it's time to go and play some other's games as well :cat:

Please check this out! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/coin-platformer

Give our game Hot Slots: All In a spin.

Play as a deviously adorable sentient money bag and use your fists to defend yourself from ~~children~~ greedy adults trying to steal your coins! This was my first solo game (although not quick enough for Compo :cryingcatface:). I'd love if you gave it a try, and I'll try my best to play your game in return!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/puncha-ching-bag

It's not our first game jam, but for some reason, this time around our working process was a total mess. But we still managed to finish the game, so that's good I guess.

It's a story about a robot named Crunky Burns, living in a slowly sinking robot-town. Everyone in town is a robot, so the only currency around here is your own body parts! So go check out his adventures in this strange town.

Also, if you don't want to suffer through tons of misspelled dialog lines, please consider playing the post-jam version. It just fixes tons of writing mistakes, I made in the last hours hurry.

The game is hosted here: https://worldy.io/play

Please excuse any downtime with the server. I will try to keep it up.

Play with friends and watch each other and each other's lazers flying across the screen.

the game is a game that I could not do everything I wanted because I was alone in the project, but I did the best I could in the time I had, I hope you like it

The controls and goal are in the game menu, I count on your vote :)

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

Prospective here

My second ludum dare (and two of our teammates' first!) is complete! It was a huge success for us, and I'm really stoked our team turned out to work so well together.

Starting Out

We began coming up with ideas for all the theme finalists the day before the reveal. You can see those here. I was really looking forward to Limited Memory, Ridiculously Overpowered, and Side Effects based on what we'd come up with. While we had an okay idea for Your Life is Currency it was kindof on the bottom of the list (just above Change the Genre of a Classic Video Game, which is objectively the worst).

So when that theme got picked we all kindof sighed, but with my cat Taki as our muse we ended up ditching the death-harvesting-furnishing idea and developing the mechanics of what turned into Don't Die, Dumpstercat!.

What Went Right

• Having a starter cart ready to go we were able to jump right in and start working on making a game rather than an engine. By the end of the first day we had basic platforming and collision stuff done, as well as an almost complete game-loop (even if there weren't any enemies yet).
• We pivoted really fast into a working idea that would be small enough in scope for our skills and experience.
• We took advantage of PICO-8's new #include functionality and took the time to make sure everyone knew how to work git in a basic sense, which made version control a lot easier than last time.
• We had people who actually want to make art and music. This was huge for motivation as we could see the game getting better even when the coders were stuck on a problem.
• WE FINISHED! And not only a barebones game but one with multiple purchasable abilities and different enemy types. Yes, there's only one level, but feedback has indicated that the abilities add to the replayability of it, which affirms that we put our effort in the right place.

What Went Rightn't

• I failed to understand how the PICO-8 cart is laid out as far as art and music go. This led to some version control headaches until I figured out that placing a blank sprite on each sheet fixes the issue and makes everything simple to merge.
• We didn't build the game with new levels in mind right away. By the time I went back to try and implement this it was 6pm on Monday and I ran out of time.
• We didn't document as much as I wish we had. Photos, timelapse, streaming? All of these would have been fun but I guess we were too focused on the game to bother.
• We didn't end up with much time to playtest so balancing the game proved difficult. We as a team felt that the game was too difficult and wanted people who were quickly playing through to give it a rating a fair shot at completing it, so we tuned it to be a bit easier. But now we're getting feedback that the game is too easy. Game balance is really difficult, especially under a time constraint, so I don't feel too bad about this one, and I also feel that we were in the right to lean toward too easy rather than too difficult. More time would have done wonders for fine-tuning though.

In Conclusion

This Ludum Dare was a big success for us. Not only finishing something but making such a stride over the last one feels great, especially with new teammates, less coders, and a theme we weren't actually looking forward to.

We already have enough ratings to get ranked, and most of the comments have been positive:

Next Time

We're going to take some time between this jam and the next one to get familiar with Godot. Debating between gdscript and C#/C++ for scripting in it but I think we're ready to step out of the fantasy-console world and into something a little less restrictive.

For Now

Gonna spend the next 20 days playing and rating as many entries as I can. I've been blown away by some of the ones I've played thus far. Nice job to everyone who participated, and thanks for playing!