https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/face-to-death
Face for Death is a 2D runner platformer videogame developed for the April 2019 Lumdum Jam.
You play a double faced coin that have to scape from a city plenty of evil rich dudes.
Dont let 'em catch you and enjoy it!
Spoiler: I never see good one too). But you can test mine https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/bloodvirus Also share strategies or TD games in comments
Hello!
If you have a web-based game, feel free to link it in the comments and I'll play and rate it :smiley:
We would love to get some feedback on our game too!
i tried hard to make a unique idea game on this game jam and it's my first game jam at last i make one game its idea is unique from all others and based on the theme check it out and help me to improve and fix bugs if the game have. This is link https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/boxes-rush-1
A silly game please play and rate.
Hi all!
I have recorded all the development of my game "Meaningful Life". It's really fulfilling to see all the process from the start to the end in just 11 minutes. It's also quite useful to analyze all the areas of possible improvement for next edition.
I highly recomend you trying it next time
https://youtu.be/9xNeIxknICw
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/meaningful-life
If you have a web-based or macOS game submit a link in the comments and I will play it, rate it and possibly even give some feedback!
I would love to get some feedback and ratings on my game too! :smile:
This is a write up detailing my personal experiments, trials, and tribulations of Ludum Dare 44. For the uninitiated, Ludum Dare (to give a game) is a 48 or 72 hour game jam where participants are given a theme and then tasked with building a game from start to finish in the allotted time frame. The compo portion is 48 hours, no teams, and published source code. The Jam portion is 72 hours, teams, and source code is not a requirement.
I set some interesting goals this time around. First and foremost, I wanted to see how well our team would do with noone leading the charge. I didn’t take notes, write tasks, document plans or features, or set goals. Second, I wanted to work in 3d, as we haven’t published anything in 3d yet. Very straightforward.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/coinus-accumulus
The theme this time around was “Your life is currency.” The inclusion of the word “your” in the theme was a huge sticking point for a lot of people, including us. Our brainstorming session, or as we like to call it in-house: mindphooning, went fairly quickly, lasting only about 2 hours. Ludum Dare has a theme selection process that involves three rounds of theme voting, and then a final round for the winners from the last three. Our process is to take the list and jot down some quick and dirty first impressions before the event starts. This gives us a base to work with, where we can immediately start talking about mechanics.
Once the theme was released, we reviewed the list and saw that we had… Well, we had basically nothing. The best idea from the list was “pitfall but your bodies persist” and the next idea was “health insurance simulator.” We ended up scrapping the entire list and ran with something on a whim. The conversation was something along the lines of: “So you’ll play as a coin.” “And do what, pick up currency?” “Katamari style?” “Ok let’s just go with this.”
We did a small bout of pre-planning. DJ mentioned he would jump on enemies. Dan started modeling out a coin or two, then to valuables. I started with the character controller. We had decided that the quickest way to do the art pipeline was with vertex colors on simple meshes.
By midnight we had a working prototype. You were a coin. The coin rolled around and picked things up. As you picked things up, you grew larger and could pick up more things. Everything with a mesh calculated its volume and requirements thus could be picked up. We had a game and all we had to do was add more stuff.
After these basics I worked on getting the movement to feel right. This was actually some pretty intense tomfoolery. The player, a simple coin, is actually five objects: - The player itself, which housed the controller and rigidbody. - The Z pivot, which was used for tilting the coin left and right as you turned to give you a proper sense of movement. - The X pivot, which was used to rotate the coin as you moved to give you a sense of forward or backwards momentum. - The collider. - The ground check trigger.
I started with a full physics implementation of the coin. Anyone who has written a character controller in Unity knows that physics is your enemy. Real world gravity and friction just don’t feel good to play in. Starting with the physics implementation told me what I needed to do, which I then pulled out of real physics and tried to make it feel good. The player itself doesn’t actually spin as it’s moving forward, but the X pivot (which has the mesh renderer) does. The player doesn’t actually tilt when turning, but the Z pivot does. The player object itself only moves forward, backward, turns, and jumps.
In retrospect, the collider and trigger should have been moved up to the root level so that they weren’t affected by the non-physics actions like tilting and rotating. This would have helped with FPS for the physics simulation, though the impact was negligible for this particular project.
After I had a working character, Dan handed me the first round of models. Two coins and a few jewels. I dropped the coin in for the player and realized that Unity doesn’t have a built in shader for vertex colors. This threw a wrench in the whole “speedy art pipeline” idea. So I started writing a shader. Getting this basic vertex color shader up and running only took a couple hours at best. One major weakness in my skill set is writing shaders. But I did it. I had a working vertex color shader, and I was proud. I called Dan over to have him take a look and he said “The coin isn’t shiny.” Oh.
Thus began my descent into madness, which lead into the next morning. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to get shininess to work on the shader. After it was all said and done, I had spent about eight hours working to get the coin shiny. This wouldn’t be my first foray into wasting time, either. Immediately after this, I spent another six hours or so trying to get diffuse lighting working on this shader. As a little aside - we didn’t end up with specular or diffuse in the final game. This was over half a day wasted. Giving up on lighting, I decided to press forward on the gameplay.
Dan had a whole slew of items ready to go, including a whole dungeon kits with tiles and walls. I mapped out a basic level and we liked where it was going overall. Unbeknownst to us, there was a major problem brewing that we wouldn’t address until the next day.
In any Katamari game, you play as a sticky ball. The object of the game is to roll up as much stuff and reach a set goal size for the level, usually accompanied by a timer for pressure. As you collect items, you increase in size, which allows you to pick up larger items. The cycle repeats. Everyone once in awhile you reach a “breakpoint” where your katamari levels up, accompanied with a zoom-out of the camera and a pop-up telling you that you can enter a new area. Why does this happen?
As it turns out, this is used to get the game back to sane values, load in larger areas, and generally do maintenance on the game state so things stay in control and reasonable. Well, as reasonable as a Katamari game can be.
During the level design process I kept running into one issue over and over again. The player got out of control. There were a number of contributing factors to this: movement speed, camera position, number size limits on objects with large volumes, player scale. The one thing I couldn’t answer was how to reel the player in. I spent the better part of the second day tweaking numbers, adding multipliers to change value scales, and generally failing. I was focusing on the details and not the game.
A small part of me wanted to give up on the idea, call the whole project a wash and change the game idea. I stepped back and laid on the couch, taking the opportunity to watch some gameplay from various Katamari games to see what secret sauce I was missing. That’s when it dawned on me - our player never leveled up.
From an architectural perspective, this level up system is pretty advanced. It involves loading in new, large objects and unload old, small objects. It also involves resetting camera values, player scale and volume settings, and any other maintenance that needs done. Unity has some support for this built in with additive scene loading and unloading, but this is at best a partial solution for the whole problem. We were reaching the end of the second day.
Sunday night. Very little had changed the entire day, and I didn’t think I’d have time to change the architecture of the project at this point. So I asked what the team thought. Should we go for pure katamari and focus on the systems, scrapping all of the AI work DJ had done and shifting all focus on getting loading working, or should we scrap most of the katamari system? We decided the best route for the success of the game was to do the latter, and thus it became a 3D platformer.
Our game looked terrible. During the previous day, one of the largest complaints was “I can’t see through this stupid bookshelf.” I had extended the shader a bit to discard geometry that was close to the camera, but after I wrote it I realized I could just increase the near clipping plane in Unity to get the exact same effect. I knew I could do better, so I got up in the middle of the night. With my newly grown shader muscles, I set out to add dithering to the cut. This worked marvelously and made me think of the latest Mario and Zelda games, which made me want to try my hand at the lighting again. This time around I discovered how to write custom lighting, so I wrote up a bit of toon lighting. Then I went back to bed.
With a fresh vision we hit the ground running, trying to glue as much of this together as possible. We really rode this one out to the max. Thanks to Unity’s timeline feature, we were able to put together an opening cutscene in about 30 minutes. DJ’s enemy system wasn’t implemented in the main level until about 3 hours before the deadline, where we had to pause with level design so that he could implement it. We then rode level design out right up until submission hour. The game wasn’t even able to be won until about an hour before the deadline.
This was all leading up to the big takeaway from this Ludum Dare: You need a manager. Whether that person is yourself or someone dedicated to the role, it is vital to the success of a project.
There were many moments where I found myself flying blind, problems in front of me but no guidance or priorities. There were moments where Dan didn’t know what to work on next because he didn’t know what was important or what would make the cut. There were moments where DJ wanted his work to get implemented but we weren’t ready to add it because the scene was checked out willy nilly.
A manager’s role is to give you the tools you need to be effective at your role. They’re to provide you with direction when you’re lost. A manager should identify potential issues and work to find a solution before the problem presents itself. We didn’t have any of these things.
It’s easy to get lost in a sea of “what if” scenarios, but I can confidently look back and say that we would have had almost a full extra day of development had I taken any time at all to lead the team.
Overall, I think we succeeded. We’re all very competent in our own areas and, at the end of the day, we were able to pull it together to make something that was largely enjoyable. While looking over the comments we’ve received so far, a few points stand out that very clearly illustrate our running out of time, not having priorities, and not thoroughly testing. Had I stepped back to assess the situation, those would have been improved.
On future projects I intend to make sure someone is holding the reigns at all times, even if that someone isn’t me.
Thanks everybody for playing and rating my game :smile:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/humanmarketing
MEGATOID is a side-scrolling shooter made with HTML5 canvas. This is my first Ludum Dare submission.
Please rate it: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/megatoid
Come check out my entry for the compo! If you rate me and leave a comment I will return the favor!
Hello everyone! This was our second Ludum Dare and third game jam overrall. We hope you will enjoy playing it! Please leave a review :)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/warlock-soul-war
So I asked my kids if they wanted to participate in Ludum Dare with me this time and they were super exited. So exited that I decided to step back and let them create the game they wanted to, and not influence them at all. They shocked me at their creativity in storytelling, art, and music composition.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/ransom
After taking a little break, I'll start playing some nice games you people produced!
I hope you all had fun at this LD too. Time to play games and click on stars!
My first gamejam thing, hey! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/take-them-with-you
Pit King is a fast paced shoot em' up x tower defense game where you're a little skull, more exactly, the king of Skeletons! Using the bones of your foes you can place defenses, shoot and grow in size to destroy the armies of the human king which seek to steal your treasure, don't let them cross through!
Be sure to check it out
I've updated my game with few bug fixes(and also uploaded mac an linux builds) so now it is fully playable. You can try it at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/shinigamis-new-assignment
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/lights-out If you can find the Easter egg in the game, I will paypal you $1 USD. ONLY to the first person that finds it! post a screenshot of whatever it does/what it is, and drop your discord/twitter/paypal link lol GL (also rate the game while you're at it lol k thx)
We used the weekend to work on a simulation game for currency trading. However at some point we noticed that it was actually too hard. We didn't manage to make it easier. So we started from scratch and quickly wrote this clicker game :)
Give it a try here: https://lexenson.itch.io/saxman-gold
Can you manage to afford the mansion? It's $1.000.000 :seenoevil:
Hey all,
There's a game-crashing bug that only occurs on the Windows Executable. Removed that download for now until I can fix it.
Otherwise, you can still play the game in your browser!
Some bugs were fixed.
kard is a 2D pixel-art platformer placed in the future. You play as a memory card on amission to save the world.
Please try it here
Very basic prototype top-down adventure assets, for the programmers who hate looking at squares ;)
Feel free to use in any way you like!
https://fisherg.itch.io/a-deal-on-the-moon-assets
Actual game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/a-deal-on-the-moon
Check out 60 Second Supermarket Sweep today!
https://www.twitch.tv/nayakidraws/dashboard/live
https://forms.gle/kj8jcTz3XzWb8dZs5 Queue
So this was my first Ludum Dare and my second GameJam in total. I' m a programmer, not an artist, so the art is not top notch ;). I have never before this created PixelArt and only a few times music.
If you have some time Play my Game and Rate it. Its on itch.io but sadly due to an Bug the Sound sounds terrible in the Web version so i recommend downloading the standalone Version. Link: https://minosoft.itch.io/hold-your-castle-ld44 Thank You!
First time ever in a ludum dare I'm having a really great time just chilling and playing these games through with my friend! We just rated around 30+ games and it feels like PogChamp!
Never do anything like not playing the game and rating with just screenshots or a gif or someone elses comments. Ruins the fun from YOU and the CREATOR!
Don't think about it as you HAVE to but think about it so that you WANT to play them! It's really coooool!
Oh and I have to plug this somewhere so here you go if you want to play a funny game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/a-life-at-stake
After a day and a half I finally figured it out.
If any Windows users were/are interested here's the game link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/the-healthy-gladiator
Our game is ready and Mimi wants some coins! Be sure to play and let us have it with your reviews! Thank you so much to all of you who have reviewed the game so far! We really appreciate it.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/meter-maid-dx
Some artwork that was done but not put into the final cut because of the deadline.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/money-cabin
Played 10 games tonight - thought I'd call out a couple of my favourites!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/goals
This is a short but sweet puzzle game with lovely atmospheric sound and a really interesting puzzle mechanic. The levels are well-designed to introduce the tricks, and I enjoyed playing through them all. A brief but enjoyable experience!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/triwar
Pick up white triangles that become resource to summon troops, which swarm around your commander ("the priestess"). You must avoid enemies whilst encouraging your troops towards them to attack. The game has an interesting consistent aesthetic, and the levels were good fun - even having to try some a few times was enjoyable!
I'll feature more good games in blogs as I come across them :) And please check out my team's game - it's playable in a browser :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/goldf
If you can help by giving some criticism, I will be very grateful. br the game
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
To all MacOS and Linux users out there: You can finally play our first created Ludum Dare Game aswell!
You can rate and download the game right here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/cats-without-cars
We are looking forward to your opinion to our game!
Happy review-period everyone! I just completed my first jam as a duo with my old friend Rob, and for the first time ever I took a backseat from programming and tried my hand at being the asset-man. I even bought a big fancy tablet thing and a microphone in preparation. I thought I'd write about it here, or forever lose the lessons learned.
Our aim with this jam was simplicity and polish. We were hoping for the two-button game, and so we ended up making one anyway despite making our life, well.. you know - currency.
Before I dive in, if any budding UX designers, illustrators or sound engineers would like to trade feedback, leave a comment and check ours out here - thanks!
We started with whiteboarding as per usual, and then made a greyscale UI wireframe to help us lay things out in the Unity editor. This got the mechanics mostly nailed. I can't emphasise enough just how important doing these little bits of extra work are early, as opposed to just eyeing it later - I think it saved us a lot of hassle.
Then, I sat and wrote a manifest. A manifest is an easy way of rattling off all of the individual assets you think you'll need - mine looked something like this:
- Icons
- Attack
- Defend
- Timer
- Containers
- Action
- Speech Bubble
- Buttons
- Left
- Right
- Go
This evolved over time, and essentially became my mini issue-tracking TODO list that I ultimately used to help us cut features.
Lesson Learned: The programmer will recognise plenty more assets needed than you anticipated, such as 'generic' assets to be able to adapt in an Agile way to the necessity for small tips, different kinds of button states (up, down, active, hover, disabled). Account for this time to adapt.
I prioritised the UI since the game didn't strictly need the character art to function. Although you use a keyboard, the UI is the most important part mechanically as the game was to feature a shop. We also wanted it to work cross-platform, so making things big and bold helped.
Lesson Learned: Keep a consistent stroke-width between assets on the same layer! I had to re-do the health bar at one point because, although it looked pretty, it's fidelity brought some inconsistency that I believe is called 'noise' into the scene that meant the player's first look at main game loop would be overwhelming. Account for this time to be fussy or you won't be happy.
Old health bar:
New health bar:
At one point I accidentally added a drop-shadow to my UI folder, giving shadow to every UI element. The result made me groan, because it was much better, and cost me an hour re-exporting them all, and Rob an hour re-positioning them since their sizes all changed slightly.
When sending my stuff across, I also sent a screenshot of my Photoshop layers. I knew we were short on time, but keeping things organised really pays dividends, and this structure helped Rob order his scene graph in the Unity editor.
This ate the majority of my time. I'm not an animator. I remember playing around with Flash in the Newgrounds days, but I have no idea if Photoshop support 'onion-skinning'. Either way, I settled for drawing an idle state (2 frames), an attack and a hurt outline for each character, and then colouring them in a background layer. I had to flit between the idle images in my file explorer and just hope. I have a lot of respect for actual animators.
Lesson Learned: There's a reason some disciplines have whole University courses dedicated to them, and I do not want in.
Thematically, the idea of our game is that you're a big tentacle monster and people are stumbling across you over the course of history. That being the case, we decided that the characters should reflect that - basically only weird, exotic, or world travelling things should find us and try to kill us. This meant we ended up including things like Roman Legionaries, a time traveller, and more abstract concepts like climate change. We knew we'd have to cut some ideas - each new character required new sounds and art, but since the game was content driven those decisions were able to be made lucidly, at the very end.
Lesson Learned: Taking your work less seriously and designing things to be data-driven can give you a lot of creative wiggle-room.!
To my chagrin, I proved all of my primary school teachers correct during this project - with practice, my style got more confident and consistent. The first enemy I drew was the mushroom, who had lighting. Then I drew a Royal Beefeater without any outline. Then, I drew a T-Rex, who, with a lack of consistent reference images on Google images, ended up looking like an escaped zoo animal from Chernobyl.
With those done, I realised I preferred characters with outlines, and bold, bright colours to contrast the moody background. I made their attack images way more vibrant, and I was for the most part pretty happy.
I used DaFont and found a license-free sketchy font that fit in so we could say farewell to Arial.
Saving a million Photoshop files meant that I could re-appropriate assets. We found that the control scheme for the game was a little esoteric, so I was able to make some tutorial graphics pretty easily.
Additionally, we made an app-icon for the good look-and-feel, using the main squid monster's face as a motif.
I used OpenGameArt and FreeSound for all of the UI sounds.
At one point, people came around to watch Game of Thrones, so I rushed upstairs with my microphone and garbled a bunch of character intro noises into Audacity. Hopefully you hear them and think they're charming... ;-)
The game is sort of a rhythm game - enemies attack on beat, once every second. Doubling that with some hard mental-maths to get 120bpm, I composed a short instrumental that sounded emptier on the attacking beat, resulting in some fitting ambience that aligned itself with your play, but wasn't too distracting.
Since during the game you move through the eras, I thought it would be fitting if the music changed - but alas, it's only a game jam, and there's only so much time. Cleverly, if I do say so myself, I cheated and went back into Cubase, changing the three instruments used to period-appropriate ones, and turning our one monotonous track into a whole soundtrack!
Lesson Learned: Working smarter and not harder is a epithet that only makes sense during lightbulb moments at 2am
Being creative for long periods of time is hard. We all do it in any role, and so this has added to my ever-expanding list of things that are hard. You end up cutting corners, your arm aches...
But it's worth it.
The comments coming in are so positive, and it makes me so happy to know that I've made something better than it would have been. It wasn't essential, but it took a game jam game and made it something I would be proud to put on Steam (albeit for free). That said, I don't think I'm looking to change career any time soon.
My biggest takeaway was that Rob ended up deferring most, if not all of the design decisions to me. By his account, he preferred it that way, because it meant he could concentrate on building the damn thing, and we went toe-to-toe on mechanical decisions. I almost felt like I was requesting features through the design lens - asking to make things clearer, brighter, more spaced out - small tweaks to add up to something that, if I did it right, you don't notice at all.
That's not to say it's perfect - who doesn't end up with a laundry list of stretch goals by the end of a jam? We can pre-empt some flaws, but the rest...
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/grim-depths
You know what I want you to do.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blood-sweat-and-money ;)
https://sir-syko.itch.io/blob-world
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blob-world
check it out: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/kill-the-money
Play 60 Second Supermarket Sweep right now in your browser
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/underbreak
Peter got acquainted with War When he walked the land of the living,
But trust me. Hell doesn’t even come close!
There may be a way out, But you’ll have to treat with demons!
Underbreak is an Action/Shooter game with rogue-like mechanics, where you have to deal with demons on each level to improve your character (but at a cost : - )). More than 28 different runs !
Thank you for the overwhelming positive feedback and constructive critics. We love to hear your thoughts. Of course there were a few critical bugs found and since we want to provide you with the best possible experience we have allowed ourselves to fix them. See the change log on our Ludum Dare page:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/demonpact
Screen lapse of the crazy process of making a game in a timespan of 8 hours.
https://youtu.be/2PWO-cM96mI
Things to notice
No messing around
About 4 minutes spent on graphics
A single 30 minute break taken
15 minutes to spare at the end
I just took a look at the Day 1 analytics of our game and noticed, that the number of ratings we received is significantly higher than the download number on our itch.io page (2x). There are no team-external clones of the Github-Repo.
I assume that this means, that there are people, who rate games without even trying to download them. We don't have any comments or other hints that would indicate that something with our downloadpage is wrong.
I'm really shocked by the proportions of this (50% meaningful ratings). Did I overlook something or is this really an issue? Do you guys have any statistics on that from your last LD games? Sure, 11 ratings is not really a sufficient sample size and I will monitor this further, but at that percentage I suspect, that I will still see a large number of baseless ratings in the end.
If you want to take a look at the game yourself, feel free to check it out: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/man-sized-disposal
The final version of MoneyBag is up! The game now has a menu, a distance score (for those who can't get to the end), and a tile-tearing bug has been fixed. The Compo version (v1.0) is still available however. This was an easier project to make compared to my last Jam, and hopefully the next one will be as easy.
Try it here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/moneybag
I'm really proud I could participate for the second time in Ludum Dare! My game has a simple premise, find the gate, while having enough blood to buy new weapons and push forward! But it's not as easy as it may seem.
The levels are procedurally generated and you get a new message each level (can you find them all?)
I really hope you guys play it and let me know know what you think of it :smiley:
Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blood-caverns
Do not forget to test our latest game for what they have not done yet !! As a reminder, you play as a small piggy bank that must arrive at the end of puzzles in a limited number of travel.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/piggy-bank-1
I am super happy. The game has finally passed 20 ratings.
I want to thank everyone who voted, you are the best :heart:
.
If you want to try out my game, please do I still want to hear more amazing feedback
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/temple-of-sacrifice
I am looking forward to playing many submissions.
Everyone who finished a game for the jam or the compo did an amazing job, YOU FINISHED A GAME!
And if you tried and couldn't finish a game, fear not you can always make a game, have fun that is what is important.
This is my second time in Ludum Dare, and my first one didn't even get enough ratings to get voted.
Love the feedback that I am getting. I will definitely keep working on For the capten.For the ship. after the jam.
If you can help by giving some criticism, I will be very grateful. br the game
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
This was a great game jam for me (even if it did have some stress) and i would just like to thank everyone that reviewed our game. We hit exactly 20 ratings which is phenomenal to me. Thanks again!!! :smile:
I couldn't do anything about lag, but noticed that the first mission was very difficult and prevented people from playing the second. I have removed a couple enemies and posted a Post-LD version. Nothing added.
You can play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/dollarbot-ludum-dare-44-first-time
For the first time I take part in such a jam and I am just happy :smile: It's nice to see so much talent in one place. For my part I did the concept and let the guys do the hard part :grin:
So please follow @360 and @KrakyCro for more. Thank you! :heart:
Check out our game and leave us a comment. It is a raw version of the story about a mouse thrown into the bell tower of a cathedral by a bird. On its way to freedom, it is hunted by the hungry cat, the priests and the crowd.
Downloads and Links
Unzip in a folder or run from zip:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XFSbhKocyvwqDW0tOq1j41F7w9XhiHjo
Hello fellow jammers!
We are super happy to share with you our take for this 44th Ludum Dare edition!
You can enjoy our submission here:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/dead-frog-tell-no-tales
We greatly appreciate any feedback you wish to give us! Thanks!
*Thanks! :grin: *
WELCOME TO THE NETHER! You have 10 days to prove your worth as the new Currency Exchange officer for the Nether-realm of Demon Lord Marcrox.
PLAY NOW in your browser: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/tensilver
What folks are saying about the game:
"A game with Cashier-simulator vibes, tons of silliness, and AWARD-WINNING WRITING." -- ESTEEMED REVIEWER
"My brain feels stimulated." -- My mom
"This is 1st-grade math. At best." -- Best friend
"Can we go for a walk now?" -- Dog
Is it possible to add bug fixes after my game is released because a system that should work and the code is just fine seems to be saying no and does not work in my game Shadow Seekers and it is now unplayable. I assumed you couldn't but my level designer thought I should ask.
I'm a bit late to make a post on here, but this was our first time doing the ludum dare jam, and our game is uploaded!!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/dressed-in-red
it's a light-hearted (lighter-hearted than it looks...?) interactive fiction game about loan-shark vampires, where you barter for people's blood and run protection money schemes against other vampires in town.
thanks everyone that's had a look at it and/or given it a rating, it's been awesome to take part and we're looking forwards to the next one!! <3
Take a look at it! Playtesting is king for feedback! :D
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/lifleline-warriors
Zoltan has been updated!
I'll be back tomorrow with more Ludum Dare games!
Submit your games here: https://forms.gle/eRbVTVDBh53J3r4M8 Stream is here: https://www.twitch.tv/nayakidraws
I'll ping you on twitch when your game is being streamed. Please support the channel by donating ko-fi or commissioning me!
Play here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/the-7-cents-deal
Check out if you can find any cars here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/cats-without-cars
I've been seeing some really high-quality entries once again from all of you! Good job to everyone who submitted or at least made an attempt :P
Unfortunately for me, some lingering mental health issues really dampened my motivation and creativity (on top of the theme sucking as always), and I ended up just taking the weekend off to rest. I made very positive steps on Sunday and felt a lot better but I didn't have time to throw together a product I was happy with.
That said I've got the whole summer free to get hyped and practice for LD45, so I hope to see you all there! Even though I can't give ratings, I'll still be playing some of your games and giving feedback, so if you've got a game you'd like me to try, submit it here.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/face-to-death
Face for Death is a 2D runner platformer videogame developed for the April 2019 Lumdum Jam.
You play a double faced coin that have to scape from a city plenty of evil rich dudes.
Dont let ‘em catch you and enjoy it!
Into the Breech! Post Mortem for LD 44 By a spastic artist
Hi I'm Dan, I make art, music, and video games. Basically I like to make cool stuff. I'm not a programmer, so apart from the help of my teammates Jordan and DJ all I can do is make cool stuff; I can't make it do anything cool.
This was our 11th Ludum Dare entry that I had fully participated in, but it was the first time I had ever touched anything in 3D. Prior to this we had done 2d platformer, 2d sidescrollers, 2d twin-stick shooters, and even a 2d button masher. This time though, we took on the third dimension.
The journey to LD 44 began about a week prior to the event when Jordan asked me if I wanted to try to do anything with 3D this time around. I said sure, give me a week to learn how to learn some basic modeling and such and we can give it a shot. So we found an easy to use program called "Dust 3D" and I started playing around with it. Unfortunately I found it too klunky for my tastes and decided to ditch the software for one that had frustrated me in the past; Blender 3D. The best thing about Blender is that its free, so it was a natural choice, otherwise I would have gone for Maya something comparable. I may be biased though.
When LD 44 began, we got the theme, collectively groaned as usual (the theme is never what we want, except for one time when it was.) and got to "mindphooning" which you might call brainstorming. We found our idea relatively quickly and then we got to work. We would play as a magical coin that would slowly grow in size as it continued to pick up more and more things. Think Katamari, but with coins. Coinamari if you will. From about the 3rd hour, the problems started to emmerge.
So its not hard to create an object in Blender. Its not hard to import something into Unity for that matter either. It can be a little tricky though when you are trying to output assets from Blender into Unity in a way that your programmer's can use to do things. For instance, you need to be sure that the pivot point for the object is at the 0,0,0 origin point. You need to be sure that the model pieces are all fused into only the pieces that the programmer's need are exported. You need to be sure that the SCALE was set to the proper size (alt+p then u then ctrl+a aka "The cheat code") otherwise scaling the object in Unity will do horrible things, TERRIBLE things (Move it's location instead of just changing size) and since we were working in huge numbers due to the coinamari aspect, we ended up literally losing the assets into the distance aether in the Unity Scene. While it can be fixed, it can more easily just be avoided. Long story short, we had to muddle through a lot of these differences before we could even use the assets that I was making. By the end of the project, most of what I had made I had also exported 2-5 times. As a side note, in Blender the Z axis is the up and down axis, but in Unity its actually the Y axis. I also learned on Monday that shift+k would allow you to autopaint the entire model with a color, ya know, so that you don't have unpainted vertexes on your model that you don't find until hours before the game is to be done.
One of the major things that I learned was the importance of considering the purpose of what I was making and not just what it was. For example, I made a bone that looked great, like a low-poly bone. Problem was it was in no way designed with traversal in mind, and so the ultimate result was a slippery bone that was no fun at all to use when the game was later converted to a platformer due to technical restictions. Just as with music and sfx, you need to think about the context that its being used in prior to just creating an asset that "looks right".
Music and SFX/VO was really simple. I mean, for me its just old hat to write an ingame loop for the game. The real accomplishment for this game was that the music was at the right volume and didn't overpower the player experience. A nice simple theme that sorta floated in the background, creating mood and giving you something to bob your head to without drawing your attention away from the game. The voice over happened out of a need to create a quick cutscene to explain the plot. "Hey Dan, I need you to basically say that the wizard needs money and so he's enchanting his coin, however you want to do that." Sure thing, easy peezy.
One of my vocal lines took FOREVER to record. I probably said "that should do it" 50 times before I got a take that was suitable. "That should do it" became a joke with the team after that.
Finally, I took my first stab at level design to try and help get more of the game area planned out. Turns out level design is difficult. Its really easy to make stuf difficult, but to make things fun for the player experience, there is a certain finess that, like any skill, takes time and practice to develop. If you see the daggers around the potion bottle, that was me at t-10 minutes to push, and I'm sorry for that.
Despite changing our plan halfway through, I think we did pretty well overall. We didn't do everything perfectly, but we managed to deliver a feature complete game that can be beaten (if you have the skillz) and flaws and all, is a good time.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It cannot be stated enough the important of communicating with your team. With everyone engrossed in what they are doing, you can end up stepping on each other's toes or deleting their progress by pushing changes when they are not ready for you to do so. At one point, I deleted all of the game assets in order to reupload them, causing Jordan and DJ to wait on me to get them replaced. There was no reason to do that. It was rather careless and cost us a lot of time.
The best thing about learning that you were doing something wrong is that you get the opportunity to do it correctly afterwards. As they say, always be learning always be failing. I would add always be creating and enjoying what you are doing. That's why I love LD so much, you can just focus on creating something cool with people you enjoy working with and share that with everyone else. As a game designer, I'm a performer and love to entertain.
Thanks for reading!
Daniel
Marvin has been sent to a demon infested dungeon and the only way to fight back is with pressurized streams of his own blood!
This is my 16th Ludum Dare and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to participate, but I'm glad I did. Come checkout the game I made: Blood Pressure.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blood-pressure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNaELuM-_dI
We're enjoying a lot of the games we're playing right now, everyone did an amazing job with this theme. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/sheep-it
Originally, I was going to participate in the jam with a team, but everyone had so much school stuff to do, so it wasn't certain if the team would get formed. In the end, the team was not to be, so I decided to tackle the jam by myself. I didn't go for the Compo, because I knew from experience that I'd need all the time I could get to finish a visual novel alone.
When the theme came out, I wasn't too pleased. "Your life is currency" didn't sound like an easy theme for a visual novel, but I started anyway.
I scrapped the first two ideas just because I thought someone else might do something similar: 1. The player can buy cybernetic body enhancements, but he'll pay for it by getting older. 2. The player can buy cybernetic body enhancements, but he'll pay for it by exchanging his remaining years, making him die younger.
I settled on the third idea, which was the most interesting to me:
I started thinking of how to represent the plot in a visual novel. I thought of writing it in a diary/blog format, so I wouldn't have to use character sprites. I wanted it to have a similar feeling as in Digital: A Love Story, where the player operates an old windows-like system with messages and all.
To make selling the memories morally difficult for the player, they would somehow have to be significant to the player. There were a few solutions to this:
There was a problem though: they were too difficult for me to implement by myself. They were too time consuming for both the player and for me, so I scrapped the whole idea. I had wasted a few hours already, so I thought I should pick an easy story idea (like "life of a slave") and stick with it. I soon realized I wouldn't have enough time to write a story from scratch, so I looked for some public domain stories for inspiration. I also scrolled LDjam's front page for ideas from what others were doing. I think I saw something about selling your body parts, which inspired me. (heh)
I remembered an old children's story I had once illustrated. It was H.C. Andersen's "Story of a Mother". In a nutshell, Death comes and steals away a baby from his crib, and the mom goes after Death to save him. On her way she asks various people where Death has gone, and they ask something from her in exchange, and she ends up giving her eyes and hair for information. It fit the Dare's theme, so I settled on it and decided to make a futuristic version of it.
I used Twine (online version) for outlining and sketching out the game's branching storyline. I've used it before, and found that it helps my workflow. It's easier to see visually how your branching goes, and what you need to write next.
I spent the rest of the day outlining the story in Twine, and planning a simple branching structure for it. I split the story by the NPCs, and made it so the player could choose which one to go to. Now that I think of it, I didn't spend enough attention to the detailed branching I needed, because the end product got a complicated branching structure in the first half of the game. If I had tested it out in Twine, I would've noticed it earlier.
I took a risk and decided to spend the second day making art. I started with what I thought was the "easy and quick" part of the art, which was background images. I counted that I needed about seven background images, and that the easiest way to make them was using free photos with filters. I had recently played with G'MIC-Qt-filter plugin in Gimp, so I was pretty sure what kind of effects I wanted. I used Pixabay to search for free photos that would fit my game, and got some help from a friend in the searching. I got carried away with the images, and ended up downloading a whopping 125 photos. I used CoolText.com to make the game logo.
I picked and edited around 23 backgrounds, of which I thought I'd use about 18 in the end. I had spent ~7 hours making the backgrounds, and I still had the character sprites left to make. I was worried, that the characters would take way too much time. Luckily, my part-time job requires me to draw and color stuff quickly, so I just utilized the same technique to make the sprites, and they all took about 5-6 hours to make, with versions for two of the characters. To make the characters easier to implement, I saved them all the same size, and oriented them in the direction I thought they would be in the game. It saved a lot of time in TyranoBuilder. Still, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to finish the game with just one day left and no coding and dialogue done.
The last day consisted of coding, implementing and writing dialogue. I wasn't too worried about coding, since I thought I had simple branching. I was more worried about writing dialogue, because I have had trouble with it in my past projects. I started writing, and the more I wrote, the easier the dialogue poured out! It turned out that the outline I did in Twine really helped to keep the story strong. I did have to add and change a few parts, which turned problematic when I started coding in the branching. Especially the two main routes in the first half of the game turned into a nightmare code-wise. I wanted the player to be able to see both main route options, before they decided where to go. That required a lot of backtracking and flagging visited branches.
Even though the dialogue was surprisingly easy to write, I had no time to properly test the backtracking and if-tags. I had to trust that it would work somehow, even if the code for branching looked like spaghetti. I tested some of the main branches, and hoped that the small ones would work. A friend helped out with finding some free music for the game, though I doubted that I'd have time to implement them during the jam.
The rest of the jam was spent writing the dialogue and implementing the art. I finished writing the last ending a minute before deadline, and spent the next 40 minutes trying to fix the bugs in the endings, but to no avail. I had to submit the game, bugs and all, but it was still playable in the way that you could get to two of the four endings.
In the end, I finished the game just in time before the jam ended. I managed to write in all four endings I had planned, but unfortunately I couldn't get the code for them working. I had hoped that I could make the UI prettier and replace the TyranoBuilder art with my own, but there just wasn't enough time. It's a buggy mess, but it's out there. I should've started coding and writing the dialogue earlier, and made the backgrounds as they were needed. It would've saved a lot of time.
I'm planning on fixing bugs when I've recovered from the jam, and I will also add music in the game when the rating has ended.
What went well: - Character sprites were all used and fast to make - Photo filters for background art was easy to use - Story dialogue was easier to write than I thought - I got enough sleep during the jam - Using Twine for story outline was important - Brainstorming and help from friends (thanks, Berit!) - Focusing on the jam (didn't get distracted much)
What didn't: - Amount of time spend on backgrounds - Time wasted on a too difficult idea in the beginning - Had to leave out one route of the game (no time) - Endings don't work - No time for ui art - No time for implementing music - Didn't prep food for the jam beforehand :/ - Cleaning the code (it's still spaghetti)
Art planned: - 7 backround images - 7 character sprites with 3+2 versions (total: 12) - 2 UI backgrounds - 2 special backgrounds
Art made before coding: - 23 background images - 7 character sprites with 4+2 versions (total: 13) - 1 UI background - 1 special background - game logo - 29 public domain songs
Art used in game: - 19 background images (of which some originals were scrapped and 5 new were made during coding phase because needed) - 7 character sprites with 4+2 versions (total: 13) - 1 UI background - 1 special background
Unused/Wasted art: - 7 backgrounds - 1 logo element - 29 songs
Our game has already reached 40 overall, we feel particularly privileged and proud of your reception. We believe that the Ludum Dare was, for this project, the beginning of a great adventure. We will continue to develop and polish our game as much as possible so that you can eventually have a really fun and memorable experience with your friends. Thank you for continuing to vote for us and for all the other participants who have put their heart in this game jam.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/les-pattesthe-legs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEaYybE82KU
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Description
Deep Space Prospector is a mining/survival/exploration/space shooter with a nice mood to it (I hope). Roam the vast space of the cMonkeys Empire for precious energy. Upgrade your ship during your adventure to survive scavengers and be able to pay the Empire's energy tax. Punishment for not paying your tax is death!
Oh, there is a handy webgl version for those people who don't like to download desktop builds!
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We are in 13/20 in need of more 7 feedbacks! Now we are online playing and rating the games! Just leave a comment in our game page telling us what you thinking about our game and we can do it with your as well!
Thanks guys!
Don't worry, there is only one level where this happens, and it's totally not a bug in the game.
Been playing a lot of other participants' games. Taking a break to write how the weekend went.
So this was my first attempt at Ludum Dare. I've dabbled in game-making since high school and I wanted to see if: * I could actually finish a project for once. * Publish it so others can play it.
I like to think that I accomplished both of those goals. While I did have to cut some nice-to-haves, I did create a game from start to finish using RPG Maker MV. There's quite a bit of content in the game for a 72 hour project (according to people who have played Temerarious), so I'm really proud of that. As of this post, I've met the 20 review mark so I should get a score at the end of the Play+Rate period.
To sum up the three days:
Friday - I spent perhaps the first hour or so setting up my environment. Then it was into setting up the core mechanic - my battle system. I wanted the fights in my game to be the highlight and so I went into figuring out how to incorporate the theme into it. I was very attached to one idea and while it was feasible, I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to make it work over the course of the weekend. How could I balance it? How could I expand on it? I burned quite some time stewing over this before swallowing my pride and simply going with the next idea I had. People watching me gave me good ideas and feedback, so that was very helpful.
Saturday - With the core battle system down, I went right into creating my playable characters and my first cutscene. I didn't want to neglect making a story so I sort of thought of one as I made up an opening cutscene. Once a prototype was done, I went straight into making maps. They are always the most time consuming part for me. I knew I had to limit my scope so I only did two bosses' worth of maps. I'm glad I didn't get too ambitious - I was starting to burn out HARD by the time the maps were designed.
After adding in any missing core events (like teleporting), it was time to set up the database. Cleaning up stats a bit, adding stuff like items, skills, etc. Then start putting the pieces together, such as adding treasure, random encounters, balance, etc. I was able to build out the "happy path" - getting the player to the first boss. The night ended with some name generation and testing.
Sunday - I started the day admittedly a little overconfident. I was able to upload the "MVP of MVPs" onto itch.io. I was almost done, right?
Nope.
I spent the day refactoring my "fast travel" system as well as adding in "small" things that I had put on hold. On top of all that, I created the next dungeon, playable character, and boss. Adding in these small things + the refactor really took a toll on me. Balancing my second boss was also a nightmare. But after Game of Thrones, I was able to get the second path down. Things were looking up!
Monday The day I wanted to devote to testing. I told myself "no new features" and while I didn't add anything major I still added in small things. Heck, I would add things and then take it out after realizing how much refactoring or testing was needed (a good example was having the player give up some of Juniper's max LF to gain stronger skills. The mechanics around it would have involved messing with my fast travel component).
Then balancing came back up again. It's a numbers game, but it's also just feeling out how fair the game is. I changed formulas, ran calculations, etc. It got to a point that I completely messed up my battle system! I was done for!
...or not. Thankfully, I had been maintaining my code using Git, so a simple revert command was all that was needed to undo my mess.
The final few hours were testing, adding in final, final touches (like credits, and autosave - the latter came back to haunt me). By around 7-8PM, I was done! Game was submitted. Within two hours I got my first review. Positive feedback. Hooray!
Lessons Learned:
Don't be so attached to ideas. - I was being very stubborn on Friday and thus burned valuable time trying to make an incompatiable idea work. I really liked my first concept, but it just wasn't going to work.
Maintainability. - I was able to refactor my hub/fast-travel concept but in doing so, I made it near impossible to add new features to it. I had a pretty big miss here because one of the features I had planned had to get cut.
Code Freeze. - I was adding new features a few short hours before the deadline to submit! That is asking for trouble! My worst fear did come true - a streamer was playing my game and the game crashed LIVE because of an edge case I did not think off because I simply threw in a plugin and called it a day. How embarassing!
Don't neglect the game page - Minor, but I had lots of typos and other small issues on my submission page. Not good if I want streamers and such to play my game!
Things that went well:
I made a game, damnit! - Despite my self-critisms, I did it! I made a game and published it!
High Level - Avoided Scope Creep. - While I did add small features towards the end, at a high level I did eventually tell myself to shut up and stop adding big new features. Instead I focused on polishing what I had and it seems from feedback that it paid off.
Avoided Burnout - While it can be a bit annoying for viewers, I did take small, semi-frequent breaks. I tried to get some fresh air, do something that didn't involve thinking, etc. While I did get close a few times, I avoided burning myself out and thus am able to play other peoples' games...and prep for going back to work tomorrow!
Provided feedback to other games - I played many of the participants' games over the past 24 hours. It was neat to see what people came up with, but it also helped promote their games as well. A neat side-effect: my game got promoted as well! :)
Goals for next time
Make my own assets. I leaned a bit too much on out of the box assets for RPG Maker MV. I got (rightfully) called out for it. If people didn't see screenshots/gameplay footage, they'd just ignore my game for not using custom assets. Next time, I might try to create my own sprites, or even my own music. This way, I can get ratings for those categories too!
Be more attentive while streaming. There were times I got in the zone and neglated the stream. I'd like to get better at streaming in general.
Until next time.
The Roman Roman goddess Discordya, also known as Eris in Greek mythology, was the goddess of discord. Daughter of the kings of Olympus, she had been despised by her mother Juno for not having much beauty.
In Glad - Gladiators! she dictates the rule and those who do not obey her receive harsh punishments during the battle.
Page of game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/glad-gladiators
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni-FyaCd2MM
First day, Pico Pico Cafe(Kichijoji,Tokyo) held the place for LD44 so I went and developed there on the first day. Thank you very much!
You can play the game here
https://junt74.itch.io/wefx
The page I submitted on the official LDJAM
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/wefx-fx
Well, the theme for LD44 is "you life is currency"
So I first decided to make * player character go somewhere and sacrifice itself, to get closer to the final goal.*
As always, and maybe as everyone else does, I took some decisions by I get it the final game form.
Player Character's death doesn't make the game endRealizing the idea that player character go somewhere and sacrifice itself, to get closer to the final goal, I needed to make the game progress not terminated just because the PC dies.
So, This game's rule got to be to earn high score in time limit.
... In my case, I madae many games with this rule on a lot of game jams!
I'm assuming that they will die out at the last moment of the time limit, but it might be so in 5 seconds from game starts.
Even if you can do nothing when the game world goes on, it won't be bad though.
you can 1up at any time, all player characters appear on the fieldbecause I'm so inspired from "baba is you", which I was playing recently, and the idea got to be matched for the theme "your life is currency",I made it all of player characters appear on the screen. After making it I got remembered nostalgic Lemmings. oh, no!
Create a top down shooterI'm writing here in chronological order when I decided, that means that I didn't decide what genre of the game I will make at this time.
I want make this game The game genre what player have been playerd, with the GAMEPLAY what player haven't seen before, so I decided to create a top down shooter or platformer action.
But well, if you want to make it from scratch platformer action is not easy to implement (it's a real feeling when I joined before, hehe...) and when you move more than one character with the platformer, it gonna be a bit more stressful chaos, I decided to make a shooter.
In fact, I was a little confused about whether to use a twin stick shooter.
However, I was thinking that player could shoot multiple types of bullets at this time (it was actually implemented and then botsed), so I used one stick & button to operate.
The twin stick method must be implemented differently for game pad and mouse & keyboard ... energy saving ... hehehe
Life is a currency: sell life to the enemy, so enemy can 1up tooThere is such a thing "Money comes and goes" and .It's fine the system that just 1up and sacrifices it to get higher score, but I wanted to express my own twist and more life-is-currency-ism, so I thought about some additional elements.
Create a place to be sacrificed other than the place to be scored, which is where monsters spawn.
This will makes a sense on gameplay.
And Implementing the money transfer system into the enemy's nest, I will need using C# interface as well as I felt some sort of advanced programming. great!
Life is currency: floating exchange rate systemOf course, as you know, the total amount of currency to be exchanged does not change with just the idea above. It's not good to sell life to the enemy, but not sell it to the high score.
So I decided to borrow the financial world system. It is a floating exchange rate system. Buy cheap and sell high! Thank you Wall Street! We don't need sacrifice our real money it's just the game!
In order to achieve this, I will need to implement the system that has nothing to do with shooting games. It is a mechanism that allows you to get the price along the time axis by giving the movement of the price in the List beforehand.
I thought it was tough, but it was quite a bit. Thank you for the Lerp function. Rather, it was a danger-swamp because it was possible to tweak the balance of the price movement as much ...
This time I did not use any third-party's assets. It's unusually, and of course I made all the pictures and sounds myself as well as coding.
The pictures and sounds that have recently been affected are completely present. Baba is you and lo-fi hip hop. In lo-fi hip hop composing, I useed a sample pack for a drum loop.
It was not compo and it was not 48 hours for jam.
There is also an impression that I have already received in the review phase, I might make the objects smaller. I might feel it like a galcon, arcade-strategy game. We'll have more feeling of cultivating monsters.
The game time limit of 60 seconds may have been 120 seconds. Since in LDJAM we will play many games in the review phase, I tried to make everyone plays my game for short time.
But when I play other people's games it would take about three minutes, so it would have been nice to hear about 120 seconds for my game. I think that the creation of the chart fluctuation will change greatly if there are 120 seconds.
After I've been completed, I thought it would be nice to player character's shape as a heart shape metaphor.
I think that I was able to realize a rare game system and completed with my own uniqueness this time. I would like to make something more and give it to steam as a free game :)
Yes, I'm proud of myself. The difficulty curve is actually on fleek, and you can survive for more than thirty seconds (which is a win for me and my generally unbalanced games). I also tried to do a heap of innovation, and I tried to create a mechanic that I haven't seen any where else;
The only form of input is drawings.
You draw on the screen, and the game casts a spell based on the scribble you made^. The purple drawing above was translated as a freeze spell, and there a bunch of other spells to obtain. It's kinda like a tech demo, but it's actually rather fun :smile:
If you'd like to give it a try, you can play it directly here and rate it over here. I hope you enjoy my creation!
Hey jammers! You might know that I am running a second YouTube channel (https://youtube.com/c/phil-motionvideo ) where I play a bunch of LD jam games and share my feedback on video. If that sounds interesting to you, please submit your game via this form: ► https://forms.gle/QkLGcpCpvre8qWFK9 Cheers!
Hey Everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful jam!
I'll be streaming Ludum Dare games in one hour! (7PM PST)
I like to stream as many games as I can. Last ludum dare I streamed over 140 games! If you submit your game it will be streamed eventually! I do sometimes spend a long time on individual games, so I can't make any promises on when they will be streamed :)
If you want to submit your game to be streamed here's a form: https://tinyurl.com/ursaLD44
Also, if you want to play my submission it's here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/grim-adventures
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/face-to-death
Face for Death is a 2D runner platformer videogame developed for the April 2019 Lumdum Jam.
You play a double faced coin that have to scape from a city plenty of evil rich dudes.
Dont let ‘em catch you and enjoy it!
Here is our entry! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/fateshift
please rate and leave a comment so we can do the same on your game! Thanks!
I managed to borrow an OSX box to build a Mac port of my jam game, since someone called it out as a need.
Mac users, try it and lemme know if there's issues! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/coin-operative
Web coming later!
Wrote up a post log (artist's POV) on the process of making our game, Limited Blood Works.
https://00shunao.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/ludum-dare-44-dev-log/
You can also play our game here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/limited-blood-works
Thanks for reading!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/underbreak
Dying is a thing. Escaping from hell is another.
Underbreak is an Action/Shooter game with rogue-like mechanics, where you have to deal with demons on each level to improve your character (but at a cost : - )). More than 28 different runs !
As a newcomer in hell, you'll try your way out of the underworld. Shoot the imps and get the keys to go higher and closer to the surface. But freedom has a price, and some pacts with demons will need to be signed…
Will you spend your life wisely enough to get through the circles of doom? Or die trying?
Our team will be reviewing all your games during the next 72 hours, : )
Finally!! The Jam is finally over! I actually managed to submit my game just barely in time! I can sleep again! I've been participating in Ludum Dare since 37 or 38, but I'd only gotten two playable in time.
This time, I was able to push out a build that was able to make it through from beginning to end, and a tiny bit of middle too. I admit that I did go about ten minutes over time, doing last minute bug fixes before I got that build I mentioned. - Submission: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/dissuasion - Game site: https://gamejolt.com/games/dissuasion/411417
This Ludum Dare was a new experience for me, as I did the Jam instead of the Compo, and had my Dad and a couple of siblings helping out. @royallion composed the music, and made it sound great! This wouldn't have had music otherwise, and this without music is kind of a drag.
So, I've been thinking that everyone in Ludum Dare should explain (in more depth than just what engine they used) about where exactly they started the jam from. The thing is, everyone is starting with a different set of tools, and it's a bit difficult, just looking at their game, to tell how far they actually came in the little time they had.
For example, let's say @andrew is using RPG Maker this time. He makes some sprites, and some simple gameplay, and ends up with a pretty good game. Now, @sarah is a pretty talented web programmer, and she decides to make an rpg from scratch; just gimp and a text editor. She ends up with an okay game, just several monsters and items behind @andrew, and scores quite a bit lower than him because the player gets stuck on corners.
Now obviously, with no real objective to Ludum Dare other than to have fun, it's not really a big deal, but it would be cool if everyone knew where @sarah and @andrew had started from. Perhaps they would have rated a bit more fairly?
Okay, enough of that. My hands are getting tired from programming all day, so I'll just wait until tomorrow to finish this.
Alright, I'm back.
So, I'll start with what I had Friday at the time the theme was announced.
Whatever the theme may have been, I wasn't expecting Your Life Is Currency, and we had a difficult time coming up with ideas. We basically just decided on "a scifi game where you're up against a tyrannical government that just sees its subjects as tools, and their lives as currency," and then said "okay, see-ya-tamara" and went to bed.
I woke up bright and early, and had more brainstorming, and decided that you play as a secret agent infiltrating the offices of the Organizations that manage the Sectors that the world is divided into.
I was going to try to make three levels at least, with interesting monologues in-between each, and differing network speeds, timer durations, and personel susceptibility, depending on the office, and how you did on previous levels. If I had another day, I could have done this much at least, but that's what a game jam is all about; getting as much as you can out of not enough time.
Well, I didn't have the time to build a good music manager, so I just threw the songs @royallion made into an audiosource on the main camera of each scene, and put them on loop. The best song was meant for the credits and title screen, but I didn't have the time to make those, and it now lives on the Gamejolt page. Be sure to give it a listen, I played viola on it (please don't laugh! =P) and my sister played the melodica.
Anyway, I just barely managed to get the game done, and I submitted the game with one build, and around five minutes to spare.
Aand to wrap it up, I asked the three members of our team if they would want to jam again, and got three answers. - No. I could do the art, but I don't like the computer stuff. - Well, I really enjoyed working on the music, but I didn't like having to commit to the full weekend. - Probably not, managing the team was pretty difficult, and I felt like, as the only experienced game maker in the group, that I was the only one actually making the game.
That said, if I can find a talented programmer and level designer, I'd love to participate in another Jam!
So... Yeah. I guess that's about it. Now it's time to buckle down and play every ld44 game I can fit into my free time for the next 20 days!
And everybody can take a look at all the sprites I use and my terrible organization and coding skills. Hooray!
Truth be told, I didn't actually think I'd get any working product done at all for this jam since I was dealing with a lot of real life issues during the jam. But I apparently did-except there's was a lot of balancing issues and all and no standalone executable, but eh, a submission's a submission. I just gotta learn how to work faster next time.
I'm actually not sure whether it's going to be playable for other people, but I'll find out soon-probably once I start playing other people's games, haha.
Hope having all the files out like that won't make it too hard to figure out how to start the game up. If you want to open my project, just open it with Godot 3.10.
Now I can't say that there aren't many problems currently with it, but I hope people can at least have some fun messing around with it a bit. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/reaper-resurrection
I might update this thing in the future but considering what happened to all my previous games... Eh. Don't know about that.
Alright, i've had a day to collect myself.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/earn-your-life was my first game for a ludum dare. I went with something fairly simple conceptwise, and focused most of my efforts on making sure that it cleaned up nicely.
I'm looking forwards to playing all the other great games out there! congratulations to everyone who made a finished product and put it out there.
This is my first Ludum Dare and i'm happy with my results.
https://isayneigh.itch.io/slotbot-arena
You can only rapidly type space when you've already been drained of energy. So make sure to rack coins early on, because you can use those whenever you want! (If I could change one thing, it would be this mechanic)
I really wish I could've improved the enemy's movement logic. All they do is home in on you, which is just okay. I would've liked a more intelligent path finding mechanism so they don't all just converge on the same point after a while.
I might need a group next time. Doing everything alone is so stressful!
Game jam's are a great opportunity to learn, and i'll be doing more that's for sure!
I hosted on itch.io, but I think if I want people to experience the game without the performance hit of a free hosting site i'll need to make it available for download.
Please enjoy, and leave feedback on my game!
Happy Ludum Dare 44!
It seems like for a lot of people, none of my text boxes were showing up! This is both funny and sad because that means no one knew what to do. :( Oh well! I think the patched one on the game page works now. This jam was super fun, I hope you all had as good of a time as I did.
Can't wait for Ludum Dare 45! Let's hope for a better theme this time. :P
So going into this, I had no idea what I was going to do with this theme. I jotted down some ideas on a white board and picked the one I hated the least. I like to paper prototype things, so I brought out the sticky notes
I originally was considering having a human main character, but I decided to go for robots instead. While I'm not opposed to gore, I wanted to be able to share this game with my co-workers and thought it was best to keep things....not bloody. Robots seemed like a safe way to play with the idea.
Once I felt good about it, I got started designing the main character. I started pretty generic and had some fun with it
This felt too generic, and not as cute as I would like. I played with the colors and shaped for a while until I came to a design I liked. I then animated 16 versions of this bot based on what parts the user sold. That definitely freaked me out when I realized just how much animation I would need to do to pull this off.
_Here is a little dance I accidentally animated
After that came the merchant and the enemy bots. The little scavenger bots are honestly my favorite and at this point I was super motivated to keep going (Albeit worried as hell that I bit off more than I could chew)
Looking to my original post-it doodles, I created a shop menu that both allowed the player to buy/sell parts for their bot, as well as give immediate feedback on what that choice means (something I struggled with early as a developer)
The combat was the hardest part for me, as I typically avoid making games that rely on combat. But it just felt like the natural direction for the game, and I just loved my little stab-bots so much I knew it would work out in the end
I'm really happy with what I was able to accomplish and I can't wait for the next one!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/wtlZoTAIZv0
Time Thief is a local multiplayer survival game where life is incredibly valuable and fading quickly. Two to four players compete to try and last the longest each round while trying to collect as many life hearts and power-ups as possible. Each power-up contains a special property that can hurt or heal each player. Hearts, drop randomly and add small amounts health to each player, +10 to +20. TNT- creates an explosion that harms multiple players, -35 health. Cardiac arrest steals the health of whoever grabs it, -35. Glue- slows down whoever runs through it. Soul Stealer- Shoots out and whoever gets hit cannot move, damage ranges from -20 to -30 health. Life Boost- Adds a hefty boost of health to whoever grabs it, +25.
You and your cartoon friends are trying to survive as long as you can through various stages of a predicted apocalypse. As this world is dying rapidly, so are you, fight your friends to survive by gathering the last bit of life that is leaking from your world. Do your best to survive the wilderness, the ice age, and the fiery desert. Can you be the only one to survive?
Gam Gam doesn't have much time left. Drastic measures must be taken to ensure she remembers only what you want her to remember...
HUGE thanks to everyone who has played our game and given feedback! It warms are cold, dusty hearts to see everyone enjoying our twisted sense of humor.
If you'd like to take a peek inside our minds, come try out our Jam entry: Knit Worth!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/knit-worth
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/face-to-death
Face for Death is a 2D runner platformer videogame developed for the April 2019 Lumdum Jam.
You play a double faced coin that have to scape from a city plenty of evil rich dudes.
Dont let ‘em catch you and enjoy it!
Hey all, we created a webGL build so now you can play in browser!
Its even easier to play HeartString now!
Check it out!
Itch.io link to play https://nightember.itch.io/heartstring
LD page for votes https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/heartstring
