The Design

For LD44 I was determined to make a fun game, even if it wasn't the most creative interpretation of the theme, rather than struggle and fail to think of a brilliant idea. For the theme "your life is currency", I came up with the idea of an RTS where the life force that powered your units could be exchanged for different units or various buildings and upgrades. Since a full RTS was totally out of scope, I decided to focus on just the building aspect and let the player drop units directly into the slots for different tasks, like in a worker-placement board game.

Because the game is about waiting for workers to generate resources so you can build structures, it resembles an idle game, but I wanted to keep the experience snappy and engaging because LD voters have a lot of games to get through. I tried to tune it so that there’s value in keeping a close eye on things and actively shifting resources around, but you can also play at a more relaxed pace. Another part of keeping the game "short and sweet" was creating a clear victory condition so that the game has a satisfying ending.

The Tech

The game is written in TypeScript, HTML, and CSS. At the beginning of the weekend, I tried to set up the UI using Angular, which I was interested to try out. It looked good at first but I ran into trouble trying to figure out the "Angular way" to handle the dragging and interaction. Saturday afternoon I scrapped the Angular components and went back to manipulating the DOM directly. I should have heeded the advice not to try out a new technology during a jam!

As far as the code itself, it turned out very simple. There are only 3 types of objects in the game: Structures, like the Sawmill or Quarry, have Slots which can hold Stacks of resources, including wood, stone, and workers. Each Stack only knows its resource type and count, and can be dragged by the mouse. Each Slot accepts exactly one type of resource and handles a new Stack being dropped by merging it with its existing Stack. Each Structure manages its various lists of Slots: it can be built or upgraded only when its upgrade slots are full; it starts production only when its worker slots and input slots are full; and during production, it creates new resource stacks in its output slots.

This system has very few special cases and almost no dependency between objects other than the Structure > Slot > Stack relationship. Thanks to this, I probably spent the least time debugging of any game jam I’ve done ever - which helped make up for the time I wasted on Angular!

Other than a few sprites, the visuals are all done with CSS, and mostly kept separate from the functionality. This jam really opened my eyes to the power of CSS for decorating game elements in a modular way. For example, each div that contains slots is tagged with the appropriate class, like 'input' or 'output'. In the CSS, slots in an ‘input’ div are given a different appearance than those in an ‘output’ div - and the slot itself never needs to know whether its an input or output slot!

The Future

I'm happy with the game design and code of Soul Builder. The aspect that I most wish I could have improved is the overall look of the game, since the gray boxes don’t make the game look very appealing in screenshots. If I have time, I’d love to make a new version with a more colorful board-game-inspired look. I’m also working on fixing some of the messiest parts of the code so I can share that.

Some commentors have mentioned that they’d like to play a longer version, which is always great to hear, but I’m not sure what I would add to the gameplay if I did continue to work on it. If you played the game and have ideas, let me know! If not, you can play and rate it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/soul-builder

Hey everyone! We are getting very close to the end of that results countdown, very exciting times! I am very keen to tell everyone that I will be working on a proper full release of ChronoCorp over the next few months, and into the future indefinitely. If you like it, chuck me a follow on GameJolt, and like the game there (I will release more free builds before the final one there). :D

GameJolt link: https://gamejolt.com/games/chronocorp/411258

Currently I am working on a level editor to allow me to quickly iterate over different designs easily, and maybe to release as part of a build in the future.

I also want any of you to let me know if you beat a score of 400, that's the golden number which means you have found a near perfect run.

I hope you all enjoy ChronoCorp, leave comments with your games and i'll give them a play if you still need ratings. :D Good luck in everyone's ratings! :D

The game is here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/chronocorp

Hi people! I’m Pedro Fuentes game designer, and with Sergio Martinez (programmer) we made the game “Meds of Honor”.

Visuals

In this game we didn't have an artist, so we made simple graphics based on Minecraft and voxel art.

There are a lot of references about the old FPS games in our game (we wanted to remember and pay tribute to the old FPS games that have entertained us for so many hours, as Doom, Half Life and Quake, among others…). Here you can see our art based on the old FPS games:

Health Charger based on Half Life

Medkit based on Duke Nukem 3D

Zombieman enemy based on Doom

Lost Soul enemy based on Doom

End Stage Trigger based on Doom

In the next days we will explain in another posts the tools and another details that we used in the game.

If you’re interested, check it out here. The game is available for web browser, Windows and MacOSX. Enjoy! (I can play and rate some other games too). https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/meds-of-honor

Thanks for playing!

*One coin, two faces and a crowd of evil rich dudes *

Face for Death is a 2D runner platformer videogame developed for the April 2019 Lumdum Jam, in where you play a two-faced coin with personality disorders who has to scape from a city plenty of evil and greedy rich dudes.

What's new?

We keep working on a modular level generation protoype and some of the mood we want to give it. Most of core mechanics are working on now, some music and sounds were implemented and it would be scaled soon. In next step we will be bussy in level modules design and probably we will introduce at least a pickeable item and auto-ranking, in order to give it some playability.

Now you can taste it in HTML5

Havent played yet? Come and show us how long can you reach!.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/face-to-death

Don't let them catch you and rate, feed is allways wellcome

At last, I got around to completing my timelapse video for NECROMARKET, our crafting and trading adventure game. Unlike my LD43 video, this one is not narrated. That simply required too much time and thinking. :dizzy_face: I hope it brings some insight to those of you who might be interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roxihAjI8O0

Issues with the embedded video? Direct link here, and you can check out the timelapse videos of our previous LD games at my YouTube channel.

Been meaning to post this for a while but I was traveling. If you haven't tried our game out yet you can play online here!

Your Life Is Currency

When the Ludem Dare theme was first announced (your life is currency), my initial thoughts were to create a game that took place in a futuristic or dystopian setting. Maybe something to do with lifetime limits (due to overpopulation or genetic engineering) or people's memories being uploaded to the cloud and sold on the black market for currency (Yikes!). Either that or maybe I just secretly wanted an excuse to compose some cyberpunk music, who knows. Since the jam started I've seen a lot of games like this so far, some of them executed better than others.

Another idea my partner (developer and lead designer) had was to do something involving robots and battery life, which I've seen a lot of as well (My favorite so far is Coin-Op Kid, which features a coin operated robot...even better!). Anyway, after some thought we decided to take a more humorous approach. I suggested we do an "Officespace" like scenario where a disgruntled employee (who spends his whole life working in exchange for currency) starts relieving some built-up stress by breaking everything in sight...desks, chairs, computers, printers etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9wsjroVlu8

After smashing up the place, eventually our character takes an elevator to the top floor to defeat the "Boss". The original concept was to have multiple "levels" and "bosses" (referencing both the world of videogames and office environments) that the player would have to reach and defeat via elevator. Hence the title "Elevator Pitch". Unfortunately we only had time to create one level/boss, but I'm hoping we can expand on it further and apply some of the great feedback/ideas we've gotten thus far.

Another key inspiration was Howard Beale's infamous speech in the 1976 film "The Network": "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" We even quoted it in the game during the opening cutscene.

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

For the game's background lore, I had an idea to make the main character an employee at a large AAA game studio (conveniently called "Viral Videogames Inc.", just to be super meta). I also thought this was a good opportunity to provide some much needed commentary on the videogame industry in general and the "crunch" culture that many of the big AAA game companies use to make their employees stay late/work overtime without pay..

Main Theme

While composing the soundtrack for “Elevator Pitch”, I wanted to create a quirky, retro aesthetic while also applying some of the techniques I’ve been reading about in the book A Composer’s Guide to Game Music by Winifred Phillips (composer for Assassins Creed, God of War, LittleBigPlanet, The Sims, etc).

One of the things Phillips talks about in her book is the importance of theme. A well written theme can not only enhance the storytelling of a game but also become a unique part of it’s core identity. With “Elevator Pitch”, I attempted to achieve this by establishing a musical theme (or melody) that reappears in many shapes and forms throughout the game.

- As you can see, the notes/melodies are essentially the same but the structure, BPM, and rhythms are varied.

Going Up?

The first track I created was the "menu music". In many video games, the menu music also serves as “main theme” of the game/franchise. It’s usually something very triumphant sounding (to get players excited/amped up) or something very peaceful (to induce a state of calmness). For this game however, I didn’t want to subscribe to either of those conventions. Instead, I wanted to create a sense of anxiety, waiting, frustration, etc. After all, that’s what the whole game is about, is it not?

https://youtu.be/7TvleE0UrUc

With this in mind, I decided the first thing I would use would be the sound of a clock ticking (which would also establish the overall rhythm/BPM). After experimenting with several different tempos, I finally settled on one that’s around 80 beats per minute. After that, I added a simple bassline that was almost meant to imitate the ticking sound that a clock makes. The bassline alternates between three notes, back and forth, creating a clock-like rhythm and the sense of boredom and repetition one might feel at an office-like environment.

Next, I added the main melody. I was trying to create something that was simple yet complex enough to function as an effective theme, and could be utilized in various time signatures, keys, tempos, etc. At the same time I was just trying to go with the flow and play the notes that felt right at the time. My process is usually a balancing act between these two states...having a specific goal in mind and still being open to new ideas. The instrument sound chosen for this melody is also meant to allude to a bell or chime sound a modern elevator makes when it arrives.

Another Day At The Office

During the initial development stages, I had originally envisioned the "main level" music to be something a little more “angry”. I imagined the player destroying the office, flipping tables, breaking computers etc., and I felt the soundtrack should evoke that same type of energy (I was thinking hard rock, electronic beats or some combination of both). However, once I got the first build and saw the gameplay, I immediately began to notice the visual rhythm of the game.

Once I played it , the game felt a lot more “bouncy” and fun than it did “angry”. Then I started thinking about how the player’s character might be feeling at this point, casually breaking office supplies as if it were a relaxing sport (instead of a psychotic rage). I thought to myself "maybe now that the character has broken free from his capitalistic hamster wheel he can finally relax!", which is what inspired the jazzy groove I eventually ended up with.

https://youtu.be/-aggvCUaOVg

I was also thinking about the “Grand Theft Auto” series, and how it usually involves the player causing some kind of mayhem while a funky pop tune or classical music blares out from the car radio. I wanted to create that same sort of effect of irony within the game. For this track however, I went for something a little more jazzy, and I was inspired by older games like Earthbound, Donkey Kong, Paperboy, etc. Retro games that either take place in a modern setting or have an inherently silly vibe to them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doio2m4cgnE

After this newfound epiphany, I started getting to work. First I programmed a jazzy brush loop (or a downsampled SNES/SPC sounding version of it). Then I created the walking upright bassline that does exactly what it's title implies. After that I added some funky organ stabs and a MIDI horn riff to act as a “call and response” counterpoint melody. Last but not least I threw in some oldschool orchestra hits and some DJ scratch FX for the extra hip-hop flavor.

• I feel like a lot of game soundtracks in the 90’s were often referencing hip-hop in some kind of way (as the genre was just taking off at the time), and as a hip-hop producer the influence tends to make it's way into everything that I do. That's why I also included the bonus beats and scratch FX on the soundtrack, something commonly found on 12-inch vinyl singles and breakbeat LPs.

Elevator Music

If you hadn't noticed by now, every aspect of the game is intentionally designed to frustrate the player (just as the character is frustrated in the game). It is designed that way in order to build up the anxiety and rage needed to defeat the final "Boss". The intro cutscene and the elevator sequence (which is basically just an extended "loading screen") are no exceptions. For the "elevator music" I went with a typical bossa groove one might hear in an elevator (except using videogame sounds instead of real instruments).

https://youtu.be/BXmeoUK6Ty8

I originally started out with a live bossa nova percussion loop just to get the rhythm down, but quickly exchanged it for an 808 driven loop instead. This gave it a much more synthetic sound that I was looking for. After that I added a latin upright bassline, staccato piano stabs (which were originally guitar plucks, but that's another story) and a synth lead to carry the melody. The lead is a squarewave synth, meant to emulate the sound of an old NES console. The entire song was also partly inspired "Costa del Sol", the theme music for a small beach town in one of my favorite games, Final Fantasy VII.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM1xAeErgf0

You’re Fired!

For the "boss battle" music, I decided to incorporate elements from the main menu aka the “main theme”. I used the same clock ticking sound to establish the rhythm, but sped it up to a much faster tempo. I played the same bassline but replaced it with a more aggressive sounding instrument.

https://youtu.be/P-BX-tyxd7s

I also added some organ to build tension and some arpeggiated synths to give it that “videogame” vibe. Last but not least I added the same melody from the beginning music, played by another synth lead. Once again I was also inspired by FFVII, particularly Jenova's Theme, one of the final bosses encountered in the game.

• As you can probably tell, Nobuo Uematsu (composer for Final Fantasy games) has been a huge inspiration for me and is one of the reasons I got into music production (along with artists like J Dilla, Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, etc). I used spend hours trying to recreate his compositions on the MTV Music Generator game for PS1, long before I had a proper DAW setup or knew how to record/mix.

Payday

The last track I created was the “victory music”, aka the music that plays when you defeat the Boss/beat the game. Again, I incorporated elements of the main theme in order to highlight the completion of the player’s journey. Originally, I wanted this to be faster tempo, but I eventually slowed it down to half-time to give it more of a marching band feel. I also knew that I wanted to use major chords this time, and I was listening to a lot of the winning music on games like Sonic and Super Smash Bros. for inspiration.

https://youtu.be/9lJWaGAiK5I

After laying the chord structure down and adding some faux MIDI horns, I played the main melody (the main theme) once again in the form of a synth lead. This is another retro lead reminiscent of NES games like Mario, Megaman etc. Most of these NES style lead synths have been from the Super Audio Cart sample pack, a highly recommended purchase for videogame composers and music producers alike. The other sounds are mostly just Reason Factory Soundbank and various soundfonts I’ve collected over the years.

Tools of the Trade

• My current weapon of choice: Novation Launchkey 25. Also the Arturia Minilab (smaller and more portable).

• Recommended VST: Super Audio Cart. Also the Koji VST plugin, which is a little more affordable for beginners.

Sound Design

In addition to music, I created over 60+ original sound effects for “Elevator Pitch". Some of the other sounds you hear in the game came from royalty free sample packs that I tweaked and edited to serve our game's specific needs.

https://youtu.be/jfZUtKwLxPE

One of the sounds I had a lot of fun creating from scratch was the coin SFX (for when the Boss explodes into a big pile of coins at the end, spoiler alert). I recorded samples of coins from several different countries including US, Croatia, Brazil, and Turkey, which gave each take a unique flavor. I also recorded a lot of sounds with my mouth, including throwing SFX and grunts for when the player or Boss gets hurt.

Another section I enjoyed working on was the beginning cutscene, where the character begins to have his breakdown. For this scene I wanted to emphasize the anxiety our character is feeling in his office prison. I started with a looped recording of typing noise as a foundation and kept adding to it until I had created a “symphony” of office noises (printers, fax machines, air conditioning, phones ringing etc). I purposely spaced the phone ringing apart further and further so that just when you think it’s stopped completely, it starts ringing again...

https://youtu.be/TN0kw-qtrpE

The last thing I did was record myself saying phrases like “Viral Videogames, can you hold please? Just a moment..” and then pitched it up to sound like a receptionist at our fictional game studio. Combined together all this creates the overall ambience and tension needed to move on to the next part of the game: breaking stuff!

Conclusion

This is the first game soundtrack I have ever produced, and I still have a lot to learn. If I could go back, I would probably embellish the songs more, creating longer and less repetitive loops. That said, I think it went quite well considering we only had 72 hours to create the whole game. The amount feedback we have gotten so far on both the game itself and the audio portion has been overwhelmingly helpful/positive, so for that I’m thankful. I'm also hoping we can update it at some point in the future, adding more levels, bosses, security, etc. In the meantime, I look forward to learning more about the world of game audio and collaborating on more game soundtracks as well.

• Play the game online here: https://hugimugi7.itch.io/elevator-pitch

• Download the OST here: https://amerigo.bandcamp.com/album/elevator-pitch-original-game-soundtrack

Still looking to build my game audio portfolio so if you would like to collaborate or need music/SFX for a post-jam version of your game I'd be happy to collaborate. You can reach me via emaill at amerigomusic@gmail.com or on Discord (AmerigoGazaway#4558).

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

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

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

We've got five days remaining in the competition! I'm grateful for everyone who has played, rated, and commented on Mint Sprint. We surpassed the minimum 20 ratings a good while back, and I've been rating everyone who's commented on our game in return. However, there are still a lot of games that are under the average 20 ratings that they need by the end of Ludum Dare 44. Without an average of 20 ratings across their categories, they won't get a score. Everyone's worked hard on their projects, so let's give these devs a chance to get scored too!

Click here to see games that almost have 20 ratings!

These devs are almost there. Let's push them over the top!

Click here to see games that have no ratings!

These devs need the most help of all. Remind them to play and rate other games too, because it will make their games more visible!

DEADline :keyboard:, the typing game meets platforming craziness, does indeed have upgrades. I've spent a decent amount of time of the jam working on that particular system. Finding out from streams, the comments and from friends that most people don't take advantage of the upgrades makes me a bit sad. (I'm not saying all of them are good, some are though :smile:).

I'm planning on revamping the upgrade system (I'm thinking more along the lines of Nuclear Throne) in the postjam version. In the meantime I'd grateful for critical feedback. If you were so kind to play it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the upgrades/shops.

You can spend all your hard-earned ₩(ords) on great-to-questionable upgrades in DEADline :keyboard:

We decided to make a post-jam version of Yodin Defense approximately a week after the initial release. Life did kinda kick in so progress is slower, but oh boy it's fun to see the ideas we didn't manage to implement in time actually become parts of the game!

Core is watching you now:

The Swarm is following you as well!

Feel free to try the game here: Yodin Defense

Hey all - Just after the LD event I went abroad for a short vacation and when I got back I was overloaded with work. But now, I'm finally able to play and rate some games.

I'm working on a tweaked version of the game to balance the game play a bit and I'm also considering hosting a competition like I did with my last entry, Blót.

I hope you get a chance to play and rate Blood Money, it's available in Web/HTML5 - what score can you get? I'll play and rate your game if you post a comment after trying the game - feedback is most welcome and appreciated =)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blood-money-3

I just added a farming & gardening mecanism to the post-jam version of the game :D

Sorry for the GIF potato quality, here is a better resolution

The post-jam version should be released this weekend :)

Play & Rate here!

Post-Jam Updates & web

Play My Game:https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/demon-apprentice

Help Devs near 20:https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/games/danger/compo

Hey All,

Rocktavious from Red Owl Games here - We had a fun LD44, didn't get as much done with our game as we would have liked (and we had travel plans post LD and then the whole family got sick so we didn't get much time to play other LD games) but it was a huge learning experience for us as a team. Since LD44 finished up we've been looking at what's next for Red Owl Games and we've finally decided on a direction.

We posted in a subreddit /r/gameideas looking for a coop game idea from the community. I'm here today to let you know we've chosen an idea and you can read more about it in our blog post https://redowlgames.com/blog/project-three and join our discord https://discord.gg/7TKhQXg to chat and eventually help us beta test it!

The game idea is (drum-roll please): "A Defender-style side-scrolling shmup, but the top half of the screen is the sky and the bottom half is underwater. One player flies a plane up top, the other pilots a submarine on the bottom."

Tentative Title: Operation Cartwheel

Time Frame: Approximately five months

Working Cycles: 2-3 two week sprints per cycle, for a total of about 4 cycles

Start Date: May 12, 2019

End Date: September 30, 2019

Cheers!

Our entry "With All My Heart" still needs more ratings. We're busy reviewing games as well, but we'd appreciate if anyone was interested in trying it out, giving it a rating and providing any feedback.

Our game is a Tower Defense game where your currency to buy and upgrade towers is the same as your health pool the enemies damage if they reach you.

Please consider giving it a try: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/with-all-my-heart/

*One coin, two faces and a crowd of evil rich dudes *

Face for Death is a 2D runner platformer videogame developed for the April 2019 Lumdum Jam, in where you play a two-faced coin with personality disorders who has to scape from a city plenty of evil and greedy rich dudes.

What's new?

We keep working on a modular level generation protoype and some of the mood we want to give it. Most of core mechanics are working on now, some music and sounds were implemented and it would be scaled soon. In next step we will be bussy in level modules design and probably we will introduce at least a pickeable item and auto-ranking, in order to give it some playability.

Now you can taste it in HTML5

Havent played yet? Come and show us how long can you reach!.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/face-to-death

Don't let them catch you and rate, feed is allways wellcome

Hi all,

I started a little video dev blog for the post-LD progress of my LD44 entry. If anyone is interested, you can watch it below.

Also if you haven't played/rated my game, I'd love you for literal minutes if you did; https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/dea-7h

https://youtu.be/rKDsa9nkhXs

So I made a little 'MMO' for this Ludum Dare. It's simple, but pretty fun? I showed it to some people at work and noticed there were some pretty high people in the high-score tables. "Troy Harper" and "Polly Boyd" had managed to become... multi-trillionaires?? That's a lot higher than I thought anyone would get!

We decided to work together and dethrone them...

I believe the term is multi-quadrillionaire :stuckouttonguewinkingeye: I'm Madge Grant, and the other top 3 players are my friends.

If you feel like trying to usurp me, go for it!

And I'll reveal the secret trick to making so much money: When you win a battle, you get half someone's money, but they don't lose any money. If you're working with a friend that's a powerful combination if you keep battling each other :P

There is still time to rank/feedback some games! For example, here is a list of all games that describe themselves as multiplayer:

http://ludumdata.openfu.com/event/75?q=multiplayer

I wrote this tool to make it easier to find games made for certain platforms and genres, may this be useful to you!

Please leave some feedback on my game: Hell's Garden https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/hells-garden

There are only four days left... I think I started asking for ratings a little late this time around :laughing:

Bruh i swear the time keeps going faster every LD (and as high school progresses) holyyyyyy

I remember that during LD38 at some point people started to post their comments word clouds.

I felt nostalgic and curious about what would come out for Zoltan's Idea. So here it is.

If you want to spam us with words not yet included, come and play Zoltan ;)

If you want to be GOOD, go SAVE THESE GAMES NOW

You play and rate my game, and I'll play and rate yours too ^^ https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/necroblood

With Ludum Dare 44 winding down, it's time to reflect on how things went for me. Firstly, as always, a massive "Thank you!" to everyone who's played 15 Minutes to Live, and especially those who left comments and feedback. While I won't go into details here, my self-confidence has taken a battering recently, and I honestly needed the pick-me-up that LD44 provided.

So, as always: what went well with 15 Minutes to Live, what didn't, and where do I go from here?

What Went Well

• 15 Minutes to Live has, by far and away, the most content I've ever crammed into a Ludum Dare entry. The dialogue alone is larger than the entire code base of any of my previous entries. The playable area is about the combined size of The Gods Are Angry's four levels, but with much more variety and content. And of course...
• Music! Every Ludum Dare I've said, "This time it'll have music", and every Ludum Dare I ran out of time. But with the last hour or so I had left, I was able to get to grips with TIC-80's music tracker and compose a simple 16-second loop with a thumping heartbeat rhythm. It's short and repetitive, but it works... and it's there.
• I've been writing for much longer than I've been coding, and finally I was able to properly exercise my writing ability, without being constrained by the PICO-8's tiny screen size. I think 15 Minutes to Live has the best writing and dialogue of any of my published games so far.

What Went Badly

• I overscoped. There is so much more I wanted to include, but didn't or couldn't. I didn't even get to program Vance's walk cycle, he just glides around like he's already dead. That's not a stylistic choice, I literally just ran out of time before I could get round to it. The end result is a game with a 15-minute time limit and (going by most of the comments) 5 minutes of content.
• Collision detection, my eternal nemesis. When you press Z, the game draws a hitbox, and checks to see if any NPCs are inside it. The hitbox is obviously a bit wonky, and if you're directly beneath an NPC, it doesn't always find them. When there are three NPCs standing behind counters - and you have to speak to two of them to complete the game - this causes a bit of a problem. You can also apparently glitch through solid objects sometimes. I have no idea how that's possible. All I know is I'm really starting to miss Unity's collider system.
• As proud as I am of the dialogue, the actual storyline kinda falls apart if you stop to think about it. Why didn't anyone just lend Vance some time? Even just a week? Is everyone really so stingy and heartless in the year 20XX?

What Comes Next

For the first time, I'm coming out of Ludum Dare with something I feel I can really expand on. After the voting period ends, I intend to go back and develop an enhanced version: more interactivity, more buildings to explore, more detail in some of the buildings, more music tracks. I don't know whether I can expand the core concept out into a full-size, multi-hour game, but I might try my hand at it.

In other news, I'm currently (albeit veeeeeery slooooowly) working on a story-driven roguelike, developed in the same TIC-80 engine as 15 Minutes to Live, and which will hopefully be my first full-size, commercial project. You can find sporadic development updates on my Twitter page.

I wish everyone the best when the ratings come out next week!

I spent most of the day yesterday making these covers, ranging from our first ever creation for LD32 to our latest entry for LD44, Library of Madness. Our graphics have definitely improved over time, but I still managed to compose something with the older assets.

We really have made a lot of games now; I never could have done so much without the motivation of Ludum Dare.

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

We are actualy working on a new game using this ludum dare work as prototype. Your feedbacks are welcome and thank you to rate it, it's just the begining of a great adventure for us! We hope you will enjoy when the game will come out!

Hey everyone, 4 days and a few hours before the and of Play+Rate!

I still have to go through a bunch of games I added to my collection but if you're low on ratings and would like an extra review for this final stretch please leave a link to your game in the comments!

And if you have a bit of time for a short and humoristic stealth game...

Come try out game! Hammed Robbery !

Taking a note from @tommyflower and making the traditional word-cloud of all comments that we got on our entry.

Thank you to everyone who took their time and played "Path of Redemption"

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/life-time-1

*One coin, two faces and a crowd of evil rich dudes *

Face for Death is a 2D runner platformer videogame developed for the April 2019 Lumdum Jam, in where you play a two-faced coin with personality disorders who has to scape from a city plenty of evil and greedy rich dudes.

What's new?

We keep working on a modular level generation protoype and some of the mood we want to give it. Most of core mechanics are working on now, some music and sounds were implemented and it would be scaled soon. In next step we will be bussy in level modules design and probably we will introduce at least a pickeable item and auto-ranking, in order to give it some playability.

Now you can taste it in HTML5

Havent played yet? Come and show us how long can you reach!.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/face-to-death

Don't let them catch you and rate, feed is allways wellcome

New version of my lil entry. Some add and some changes, will you be ready for it ?

updated version (win): https://tinyurl.com/y6od8emz

updated version (mac): https://tinyurl.com/y3nr5p8e

I'm only starting to rate others games now as I lacked time these last weeks and I would definitely appreciate if some of you could help me to get to the 20 ratings :)

In Hell's Reef, you must navigate through Hell to bring back a close one. It's mostly about autodestruction and melancholy (it's also incomplete but that's how jams work haha).

I was playing with shaders this morning and thought: what if the game was released on the nintendo 64 or the playstation one? Video in higher resolution

Play & Rate here!

Post-Jam Updates & web

I got really sick after the jam, so I wasn't able to come advertise my game until now. So I present: Watt Balance!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/watt-balance/

Comment if you play my game and I'll come play yours in return!

In Death Making a Living you play as Dave, a grim reaper trying to get the coolest office there ever was.

Has WebGL build ;)

Leave a comment after playing and I'll play your game back!

Link to Death Making a Living

original version

When the Compo deadline came up it was about 4 AM here in Finland and I went to my day job without any sleep. After that weird work day where I wasn't quite sure if something trivial my co-worker said was hilarious or not and a solid 14 hours of hitting the hay I started to polish off what I'd started. You can see some of those results from the gif below.

updated version

In the upcoming days I reworked all the models, textures and tried to add all of the bells and whistles of a normal game, like say a pause screen, intro cinematic sequence to layout the scene for the player, UI-text on interactions what the player is about to do and a Game Over music.

I think I spent 2/3 of the time overall after the compo deadline figuring things out and improving the short experience that is Jailocorp. Overall I consider this a very successful participation, since I learned a lot and had fun learning it.

Now that I think I'm done with this game (unless It's too hard, incase I might add a hint system). It's your turn to tell me if it sucks or not. I'll be taking the whole weekend off to listen to your feedback, to play so many games you have made and of course reviewing them.

If you'd like to test this game and the updated version for Windows and at the same time get me to review your game, you can click here

I'd like to thank Ludum Dare and everyone involved on making this such a nice game jam. It has made me push beyond my abilities and I'm still on that road.

Have a great weekend! Cheers!

Hey everyone!

I've made a little review/shoutout to some of the best games I've played this LD. Most of them don't have too many ratings and if you have some free time this weekend, you should definitely check them out.

Here is a link to my post with all the links and everything.

Obviously there are way more terrific games out there, but for now, these are my best picks. I'll still be testing some this weekend, a new list could be uploaded to promote other great games but idk.

Also, you can, if you don't know already, check this filter to find games that need a few more ratings to score.

Play our game, rate it (Don't forget to leave a feedback) And we are going to play everyone's game who do it to our game too :D https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/necroblood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az9FrbsPhh4

I took my livestream VODs from LD44 and made them into a timelapse of my development process for Bartleby in Space! 26 hours of development time compressed into one 6-minute montage of coding, drawing, and touching my face way too much.

Check out the finished product here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/bartleby-in-space

HTML5: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/life-is-not-currency

@cheesepencil pointed out in my previous post about my favourite games that they all are jam entries, so without any further ado, here are my compo picks:

• Shop till you drop DEAD by @icylava - neat arcady action
• invertebrae by @jjjjason - really cool text-based adventure
• MoneyBag by @lexyvil - physics-based platformer in which you control a super adorable moneybag

I do like other compo entries a lot as well, but their rating balance is terrible, so that's why I'm not mentioning those.

Coincidentally, author of the third game, @lexyvil, still dominates the leaderboard of my game. If you are good at typing AND platforming you can give him a run for his bag of money at DEADline here.

I'm being a bit cheeky as my game is a jam entry - if you are a compo-elitist, then skip it :smiling_imp:

Sorry for flood. I can't figure out how to delete post.

Hey! Do you want to play some jam games and have fun?

Have you tried our jam game?

Deep Space is a story about an astronaut who is trying to find out what's going on in the planet after she landed on it!

It has a satisfying story and good space feeling with some visual effects.

You should definitely check it out if you don't.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/deep-space

*One coin, two faces and a crowd of evil rich dudes *

Face for Death is a 2D runner platformer videogame developed for the April 2019 Lumdum Jam, in where you play a two-faced coin with personality disorders who has to scape from a city plenty of evil and greedy rich dudes.

What's new?

We keep working on a modular level generation protoype and some of the mood we want to give it. Most of core mechanics are working on now, some music and sounds were implemented and it would be scaled soon. In next step we will be bussy in level modules design and probably we will introduce at least a pickeable item and auto-ranking, in order to give it some playability.

Now you can taste it in HTML5

Havent played yet? Come and show us how long can you reach!.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/face-to-death

Don't let them catch you and rate, feed is allways wellcome

Uploading a video now, since a lot of people never even saw my game. Hope you'll like it!

EPILEPSY WARNING https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz9ZMSZy7Ik

If you like what you see, it's a lot better to play for yourslef, don't spoil the fun, stop watching and play it instead: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/knifelife

I'm all for competition, share your completion time in the comments!

I'm in the process of making a post-compo version of my entry Blood Money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzmxBCh0Fn0

I'm quite happy with the progress so far. But the player ship is just a tad overpowered during progression (understatement =) and I reached integer overflow on the scoring...

The video shows some shorts clip over from a half hour session. I am aiming for a sub-10 minute play time per round with the final version.

I am thrilled beyond belief

I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started this gamejam. I always had been afraid of larger gamejams and only had participated in 2 smaller gamejams prior to this. I was told ludum dare is one of the best game jams because of the amount of feedback you get.

Well that person wasn't lying b/c I have never gotten so much feedback and so much press. I really wasn't expecting people to go out of their way to talk about my game. It was an incredibly shocking feeling. I am so honored and thrilled that people would do that about something I made.

Places the Game was shared/shown

I asked 2 people on twitch to play the game, everyone else this was their own doing

Twitch Streamer #1 Z_Doctor

This was one of the few times I've ever watched anyone play a game I've made and it was an absolute delight

https://youtu.be/IEYaHDZijNM

Twitch Streamer #2 elysiagriffin

This one didn't go as smoothly but due to the controls and random nature I can understand why. It was still great to watch

https://youtu.be/C2TcRrY9cbo

Youtube Channel Randomise User (11:50 timestamp)

A friend of mine told me that my game was feature on this channel and I loved watching this video. His commentary was just great

https://youtu.be/_N-SbFtoqBE

The Demodisk Podcast

I was alerted by a friend actually the composer who did the music for the game, that our game was featured on a podcast. I listened and they even said they would like to see the game as a full game which really made me smile. Maybe I will do that one day

https://demodisk.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-24-ludum-dare-44-edition

Blog post for Top Ludum Dare 44 games

I was really pleased to see my game was listed under top games for innovation and they really liked the music as well

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/life-corp/test-1

A common issue I have in Ludum Dare jams is running out of time at the end. I tend to be ambitious with my projects and it often ends up with me having a really solid core and then not much content to actually play with.

For my game, Watt Balance, I wanted to have an actual plot in the game. I'll be the first to admit I needed more variety in enemies and objectives, and I had plans for them, but I squeezed in the last code commit for the recharge mechanic 45 seconds before the deadline because that was something I could get done in time. I wanted to have dynamic lighting, so that when you went below the surface you had to spend battery power on running a flashlight if you hadn't repaired the power in the area. But I had actually worked out a plot I wanted to use, and that's the part I'm most sad that I wasn't able to include.

Imagine the feeling of having collected all of the powerups. You've spent all but one of your batteries repairing the power stations. You've explored the world, and there's the last power station... but no more batteries. There's nothing to do but spend your last one on the repair. The station springs to life, and then the screen goes dark, just like it did so many times when you ran out of power -- looks like it's game over. What did you miss?

"My battery is low, and it's getting dark..."

That message never showed up before. And then when you would have expected the title screen to come up so you can have another chance to play, the music shifts, and the lights come back on. The inhabitants of the city have reactivated because you fixed the power system, and to thank you they repaired you and gave you a new battery. They throw a celebration for you, and the game ends with a picture of your character sipping a can of oil while lounging on a huge pile of batteries.

If you give my game a try, I hope you can imagine what the finished version would have been like. And if you share what you would have done, I'll happily check your game out with the same idea in mind.

We are really happy and very much appreciate the ratings and feedback we have gotten for our game Lifeforms In Space... where your lifeforms are currency! We have also gotten some fantastic reviews from some streamers on Twitch. Check it out! There are only 3 more days left to try and get as many ratings as possible.

WebGL and Win Play Lifeforms In Space

Thanks to everybody who played and left a review! We've gotten a ton of great feedback, and can't wait to take it forward.

Here's another snapshot of a main character, Hefty Betsy!

If you want to be a sentient furnace for a bit, check out the game! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/where-theres-smoke

Hello everyone! Have you tried my game and wondered what would multiplayer be like?

Well, now you can check it out! Still a work in progress, but it is already playable on http://lifeshot.io.

Bugreports and feature requests are welcome on the issue tracker.

Since there are no bots in the multiplayer version, you'll need people to play with. Come join the Discord server to find someone.

Was meant to do this update weeks ago! My LD44 JAM game Autumn Shores got a hotfix right after the LD finished that sorted out some game breaking bugs and made it more playable. I also spent some time taking better pictures of the game itself!

So if you like sailing (more like rowing atm) and exploring distant islands, this could be a game to check out!

Not much to say other than that, I'll do a post mortem soon and was thinking of doing a technical post about an element of the game I really enjoyed, but for now heres the link to the game page:

Im well under 20 votes atm so I appreciate anyone whos got the time to play! HTML browser version available for quick access.

(Im going to play a bunch more games over this weekend to get that coolness rating up as well!)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/autumn-shores

Here is our wordcloud like other games out there have already done.

It's actually fun to see what words come up :)

Thank you everyone who has played L.I.F.E. Corp. You can try it here!

I finally got a web-based version up and running (after much frustration). You can check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/failing-human

Hello!

This is Coder! 3 days left until the end of the competition! And I want my game Life Engineer to hit at least the top 100. I'm 12 years old and this is my first Ludum Dare and first game on Unity;

I wasn't expecting, when I was making this game that it would end up with a sad note...

Tardar Sauce aka Grumpy Cat passed away on May the 14th following a urinary infection, she was only 7 years old 😿. Impossible for me not to write about this since it's my Player 2 character, it's going to be weird that her "life is currency" in this game, but let's keep a good memory of that good cat !

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/cats-get-9-bets

Here is the speedrun of our game HackZ Memories from Ludum Dare 44 We stopped at rebelion gem The record is 7:49 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj0nsT2XkPA

HTML 5 with E/Z controls: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/life-is-not-currency

It also needs some more ratings... So please give it some more!

Hello there! I'm finally able to stop and play and rate games. I still need quite a few ratings on my game. If you feel like playing something different, please take a minute, it lasts for like 4 minutes and it's not what you're expecting, I promise you that!

Link here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/a-lifes-work

Hi All. I'm no longer shackled by my duties so I'm planning to go into reviewing mode tomorrow and play and rate another ~20-25 games. If you’re interested in this game, do leave a rating and feedback and I will happily rate yours ASAP!

Here's a re-post from 2 weeks ago: "Sleep-deprived and running on caffeine, I went brain dead and just played my game for more than 40 minutes straight. I did the same thing over and over, buying upgrades whenever I had the chance. This is the result. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/martian-scrapper

Top speed, acceleration, projectile velocity, explosion size, and reload speed upgrades!"

There is only a few days left - and I only need a few more ratings. If you would like to play my game about being an organ-harvesting fish, you can find it here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/the-preying-salmon

If you want, take a look at my entry STR!PES - a procedural game ++

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

Some players are really good - more skilled than me :)

Hi everyone!! Will you please play and rate my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/the-last-bank I am still missing some ratings and I will really appreciate if youll rate my game. In exchange comment on my game and ask me to rate your game and Ill rate it. Thank you!!

Hi everyone!! Will you please play and rate my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/the-last-bank I am still missing some ratings and I will really appreciate if youll rate my game. In exchange comment on my game and ask me to rate your game and Ill rate it. Thank you and sorry for the double post my internet glitched out

HTML 5 with E/Z controls: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/life-is-not-currency

Hi people! I’m Pedro Fuentes game designer, and with Sergio Martinez (programmer) we made the game Meds of Honor.

In the last post I explained the visuals of the game (you can see the previous post here –> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/meds-of-honor/making-of-meds-of-honor-part-i). In this post I will explain the tools that we used in the game and the evolution of the game.

The Tools

We used Unity to make the game. In this game we didn’t have an artist, so we made simple graphics based on Minecraft and voxel art... All the characters, the environment, etc. are in 3D. To make the enemies and props in 3D we used MagicaVoxel.

Unity and our dispensers.

MagicaVoxel our tool to create the enemies and props.

The Evolution of the game

It is important to focus on the core game and the main mechanics at the beginning, and later, iterate step by step, here you can see the evolution of the game:

First Prototype (focus on the core game: throw medkits and health charger)

Prototype v2 (focus on use the dispensers to get medkits)

Prototype v3 (focus on medkits interaction with the enemies -health overdose-)

Prototype v4 (focus on health charger interaction with the enemies -health overdose area-)

Early version of the game (focus on the enemy ranged with his voxel mesh).

Actual version of the game

If you’re interested, check it out here. The game is available for web browser, Windows and MacOSX. Enjoy! (I can play and rate some other games too). https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/meds-of-honor

Thanks for playing!

*One coin, two faces and a crowd of evil rich dudes *

Face for Death is a 2D runner platformer videogame developed for the April 2019 Lumdum Jam, in where you play a two-faced coin with personality disorders who has to scape from a city plenty of evil and greedy rich dudes.

What's new?

We keep working on a modular level generation protoype and some of the mood we want to give it. Most of core mechanics are working on now, some music and sounds were implemented and it would be scaled soon. In next step we will be bussy in level modules design and probably we will introduce at least a pickeable item and auto-ranking, in order to give it some playability.

Now you can taste it in HTML5

Havent played yet? Come and show us how long can you reach!.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/face-to-death

Don't let them catch you and rate, feed is allways wellcome

Hey! With just a few days left until ratings end I just wanted to promote our game one last time! You play as a chicken!!

Even though the game is really simple, we felt it was our most fleshed out one yet, and we really liked how it turned out.

Hope you get a chance to check it out!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/fowl-goods

I don't have any excuses for why I'm only just starting play/rate at the very end. School got out, and all I wanted to do was relax and sleep in, especially after doing a game jam and then finals a few days later! But I'm really glad I remembered this before the deadline! I guess I'll do what everyone else is - you rate my game, I'll rate yours.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/debtors-arena

Haven't promoted my game here till now, hoping for some more reviews even though I have enough for the leaderboard

here is the game - NEOLITE

and some screenshots

Thank you for the warm response to my voice-controlled game. For everyone who asked, I'm writing a tutorial to show how I did the sound detection

I also have exciting news, all your lovely comments made me decide to develop it into a full-fledged arcade shooter.

For anyone who hasn't played, you can try it here

I've been working super hard on the post-jam version of my shooter game, "Darkling," and am beyond excited to show it to you guys! The biggest feature I'm pumped about is the ONLINE LEADERBOARD! I would love to see some friends competing with each other to see how many waves they can survive and how many kills they can get.

Other features include new background music, a UI overhaul, better lighting effects, balanced difficulty curve, improved upgrades, and a whole lot more.

THANKS SO MUCH to everyone who's played and rated my game so far!

Please play and rate HERE if you haven't yet!

Thanks so much everyone! Please stay tuned late tonight for the Post-Jam version! I look forward to seeing your usernames on the leaderboard soon!

Weather system

I added a weather system to the game with complete forecast. You can now use the villagers Farmer Almanac (Long Range Weather Forecast ;) ) to plan your farming activities more efficiently :)

16-bits console shader

I'm quite fond of that SNES-esque effect, it reminds me the Donkey Kong Country look and feel of the 90's. I think I will let it in the game as an unlockable option/easter egg feature.

Vote please :)

I'm still under the minimum votes for rating so if you want to help, feel free to Play & Rate here!

Post-Jam Updates & web

Hi LD jammers!

Do you have ancient projects, discarded prototypes, or experiments you grew distant from?

We want to celebrate those with you!

Come join Fragment Jam (June 1-30) and release your unfinished games to the world! 🕊️🛸🆓🌏

What is Fragment Jam?

Fragment Jam is a game jam focused on admiring and sharing unfinished games (fragments). Maybe you want to revisit these projects someday, maybe you want closure and to move on, perhaps you want to make a fragment for the jam. Fragment Jam is here to help sort it out and to provide a platform for celebrating and sharing our fragments.

Other cool things:

• ~$200 in Game Prizes awarded randomly to participants!
• YouTubers and Streamers organised to play your entries and give feedback!

▶ Join Fragment Jam!

▶ Follow FragmentJam

▶ Join the Game Jammers Discord community

Hope to see you there!

It's been great seeing all of your games, and I would really appreciate if you'd give mine some feedback before all the rating and reviewing stuff is wrapped up.

(1) Super Psychic

My Game's called "Super Psychic". In it, you act as a gypsy that listens to people small talk, and you have to try to figure out various things about their loved one that has recently passed. The more accurate you are with guessing, the higher your customer will pay out in the end. If you give it a review, I will try to provide some feed back to your game as soon as possible.

Here's the link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/super-psychic

(2) Blockson

Blockson is a game made by a group of four that is pretty low on ratings, and that I really enjoyed. You play as a cryptocurrency who has to increase your thought capacity to become more powerful. You do this by building circuit setup's to mine bitcoin and etherium (etherium seems to be what really boosts your thought capacity). I've only played a few levels, but it was pretty intuitive, and very fun.

Here's the link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blockson-my-life-as-a-cryptocurrency

If you'd leave a comment on my game, i'd appreciate a ton, and I'm sure the devs of the other game would appreciate some feedback too. Thanks for reading the post!

We are really happy and very much appreciate the ratings and feedback we have gotten for our game Lifeforms In Space... where your lifeforms are currency! We have also gotten some fantastic reviews from some streamers on Twitch. Check it out!

WebGL and Win Play Lifeforms In Space

Play this to find out!

Come and join the eighth Geta Game Jam!

• Make a game in three days, either alone or in a team.
• Participate in theme voting to help decide the theme and hardmode challenge!
• Become a part of our Discord community!
• Share your progress with others!
• Geta Game Jam goes from July 6th to July 9th!

--> Interested? Come and join here!

I want to thank all the people who have given me feedback on my game. I never knew that listening to other peoples opinion on my game would give me so much insight and direction. This is my first LD and the community has surprised me in a positive way.

One of the things that surprised me most was how different feedback can be. It's hard to choose a direction for further development when some love a specific feature and others hate it :) I guess this is a common dilemma for game developers.

I've been working hard on the game for the last 2 weeks and made many improvements based on your input. I've tried to alleviate the problems that seemed to be the worst.

CAMERA MOVEMENT

A lot of you loved the camera movement, whilst many felt the camera was inhibiting the view when trying to spot enemies etc. I've now implemented a "zoom" feature which makes it easier to check your surroundings while not losing any details.

PREDICTABLE ENERGY CONSUMPTION

Although it was a part of the puzzle, many struggled with the uncertainty of how much energy a certain machine needed. I have now made this easier to discern. It's clearly visible on the size of the "tank". Also, many machines will now not start until you have given it the right amount.

SLOW AND LOUD EXIT DOORS

No more irritation, no more slow and loud doors :)

ENEMY BEHAVIOUR

The precense of enemies have been a headache. The majority of the people who gave feedback on this seemed to be split down the middle. Some really loved the implementation of enemies whilst other cincerely hated them. I'm now working on totally changing the enemy mechanics in the game. They no longer shoot and are now a part of the puzzle. You lure them into traps, and it will be possible to drain their energy.

Dropping bait:

Enemy following bait trail to it's doom:

RESTART REQUIRED?

The level design and mechanics have been changed so you no longer will be stuck, (not having enough power without knowing it), and need to restart.

Again, thanks to all of you for getting me this far. I'm really exited for the future of this project.

If you haven't tried my game yet, you can find it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/battery-life

Are you a few votes short to make the 20 vote threshold? I know I am! But fear not, join our discord and drop your game in the Ludum channel! Vote for games and get live feedback from other members! Join our discord https://discord.gg/RcpwD64

Did you find it? :D

In a kingdom whose currency is the chicken, you must lead a brave chicken in his journey to take over humans.

I'm quite happy with my 2nd Ludum Dare, even though it has some glitches (be warned).

Play Chickenarchy! (web)

And rate here.

Play Chickenarchy! (web)

And rate here.

Please try out the new version of Darkling Here

Hey everyone! I finally got the leaderboard functionality working for my shooter game, "Darkling." I achieved this with the help of an amazing free service called DreamLo. Definitely look into that if you want an easy way to implement an online high score or leaderboard for your game!

That being said, I only have a downloadable PC version available right now, because saving/loading usernames in a WebGL application has proven to be a bit more complicated (that's coming soon, though).

In the meantime, please consider trying out the game and seeing how far you can get on the leaderboards! This is my first time building an online leaderboard, so please play it and give me any feedback whatsoever! Thanks guys!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfw5cycJ9u0

See How Far You Can Get

My game has received about 18 votes, so please vote it!

I am happy of how this jam has gone. I like most of the games i tried.

Vote my game HERE

There... at last, the Post Mortem for Necromarket. Where to begin...

Necromarket: A Chronology

Hailing from The Netherlands and England, Ludum Dare begins at 3:00am and 2:00am for us, respectively. We defy this and just sleep whatever sleep we would normally be sleeping. For this jam, this meant we didn't get together on our Discord until 11:00am.

Day #1

At this point, the first day had started and we began brainstorming. Many ideas passed by, including: * You Are a Piñata and Have To Survive Beatings From Children, with your candy innards being a form of currency that you could spend on upgrades. * A Papers Please style game where you are St. Peter at the pearly gates and you have to judge incoming souls. * A Trolley Problem game where you have to decide which group of people to run over with your little tram, capturing their souls and being paid out and penalized at the end of a level.

Eventually, we decided on a crafting/trading game where you would imbue magical items with your own life force in order to sell them to adventurers. And thus, Necromarket was born.

I am the artist of our crew, so I started on figuring out what the perspective our our game would be. The location was to be a store with some kind of magical altar where the player would craft their items. I blocked out some basic ideas to start from.

We would be putting together the game space using Tiled so my goal was to make a spritesheet with 32x32 pixel tiles to put together the background with. For inspiration and ideas, I had a look at games like Moonlighter and Graveyard Keeper, as well as a memory of a previous jam game by @ellian called Good Impressions. I used the AAP-64 palette by Adigun Polack, and at the end of this first day, I had basic background tiles, non-animated and forward-facing player and customer sprites, and a bunch of items.

The items were an odd problem to tackle. I was making them as if they were inventory icons, but they would be used in the game world instead. This makes them a bit more abstract rather than having them be held naturally by the player, but since we have large objects like unicorns and imps, as well as small objects like potions and boots (compared to the size of the player's feet, the boot sprites are huge) it makes sense to keep them more conceptual rather than accurately scaled to the player character.

Day #2

This is where the "fun" began. It was animation time. Mistake número uno: I should really have planned this better, figuring out how many frames I would need in total beforehand, but instead I just started instinctively. First, the downward walk was a six-frame animation that I made without reference and just using previous experience. It came out a little janky, so I looked up a tutorial by Bandygrass that I had used as reference before for the other directions . I made my eight-frame sideways walking animation without questioning whether it was the right idea for this project.

My second mistake was sticking to this eight-framer even when I realized it would take a lot of time. You see, our player can use magic to change from an elderly grampa to a middle-aged man, a young adult and a child. So this multiplied the total frame-count for the player character by four. We wanted to make them look pretty unique, instead of just replacing the head, so each age category required a lot of modification.

Obviously, the best way to do this would've been a basic four frame animation for each direction. The character moves pretty quickly across the screen, and eight frames wasn't necessary. I did only make four frames for the upward animation, but I should have reduced the sideways animations at the same time. All in all I estimate about 75% of my time on day two was spent on animating the player character, resulting in a total of 104 animation frames.

Day #3

I had to go to work on Monday. Luckily, @daanvanyperen managed to wrangle his own work schedule so he could have some extra hours on the game. When I came home, he had thrown a number of temporary sprites onto the spritesheet that I then replaced with the final art. I pretty much directly took his quick sketches as a base for the final art, which sped up the process. After two days of gamejam and a day at work, I didn't feel super creative anymore.

Then came the realization: "Wait, the player needs to have animations where he's holding the items!" Arms up in the air. This means 208 animation frames for the player character. I asked myself, "Is it necessary to have this variation of the player character? We could just have the items hover overhead." I then answered myself, "Yes." I felt it was of sufficient importance to clearly show the items are held and carried by the player this way. I did get a little sloppy with my modifications here and there, but there was leeway there given the movement and pose would camouflage imperfections somewhat.

Then at some point, we had a completed entry. Sufficiently complete, anyway. The jam ended, and we submitted somewhere around the one-hour-left mark.

How 'bout Them Mistakes?

Like I mentioned above, a major pitfall this time was the amount of animation frames I ended up having to do due to not planning and not adapting. This was a big time sink. Because the player character took so much time to animate, I did not make any animations for the other characters in the game. The hag, Sam the postman, and the single customer all just slide onto the screen. It doesn't bother me much, it kind of has a cool vibe to be honest, but it makes things less lively.

Secondly, I neglected a big lesson I learned and even blogged about (see the last paragraph) from Ludum Dare 43. I did not go all-in on the core theme. @daanvanyperen even told me early on, when I only had a single player character sprite done, that the player character didn't look very wizardly. He literally reminded me of this big lesson I had learned, and I sort of brushed it aside because I subjectively liked the idea of him looking more like a craftsman. I did make the older variant look more like a necromancer with his little skull for a belt buckle, but that again was a direct result of Daan suggesting we need more skulls. The game is called Necromarket, after all!

And with that, the shop should look more like a magical dungeon of sorts. I think I let myself be influenced by looking at and Dungeon Keeper a little too much, and the walls just look like a generic medieval house. Where even are the magical bookcases?

If I could go back and pause time, I would... * Reduce player frames to 4 for each direction. * Re-theme the player character to be more of a wizard/necromancer. * Animate the other characters as well (only upward and downward directions necessary). * Have more customer variations, in-theme with the story. * Replace the generic background tiles with a more suitable magical workshop. * Make the enchanting altar more of a focal point and champion/landmark visual asset.

Jeez, Do You Even Like Anything You Made?

I do! Lots! Pretty much everything turned out sufficiently cool-looking and I am proud of my work. Lots of room for improvement doesn't mean that the work I did do was bad. I am even happy that I managed to do the number of animation frames, even if I regret doing so many.

But, looking at the art I did I am quite pleased with the little chicken coop animation. Out of everything, that and the little orb of vitality you can use instead of your own life force for crafting items are somehow the ones I probably enjoyed animating and now enjoy looking at the most. Oh, and the dragon heart. Man I like that dragon heart sprite so much.

That's A Wrap

I think I more or less ran out of things to say here. I will gladly answer any questions anyone might have, of course. Here in the comments, through Twitter or in the Ludum Dare discord; I am pretty easy to locate. Also, given that this Post Mortem is all about graphics, I will also drop my Pixelart Timelapse video here again, seeing as it's particularly relevant.

If you read all of this, thank you for reading! I hope it's been of some use, or at least provided an entertaining insight. Oh, and if you feel like having a go at the game, here's Necromarket!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roxihAjI8O0 Direct link here

Say somfings...

Play our game.

https://youtu.be/R7BOX3NtoYs

Come hit things HERE:

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

*One coin, two faces and a crowd of evil rich dudes *

Face for Death is a 2D runner platformer videogame developed for the April 2019 Lumdum Jam, in where you play a two-faced coin with personality disorders who has to scape from a city plenty of evil and greedy rich dudes.

What's new?

We keep working on a modular level generation protoype and some of the mood we want to give it. Most of core mechanics are working on now, some music and sounds were implemented and it would be scaled soon. In next step we will be bussy in level modules design and probably we will introduce at least a pickeable item and auto-ranking, in order to give it some playability.

Now you can taste it in HTML5

Havent played yet? Come and show us how long can you reach!.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/face-to-death

Don't let them catch you and rate, feed is allways wellcome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ltSK3fmc5o

Check this game out!

I really should have started on the play+rate cycle a lot earlier, but like I mentioned before, I got sick, and then work got crazy. But I have time to play some games today! If you're a few votes short, hit me up.

Well, didn't finish post-mortem yet, but look at this!

That's right, if you want a crabby (sharky, prawny or even narwhaly) sticker, you can get it on @syudzius's RedBubble page.

See you on the finish line, folks! =)

Slay some "Ghost Spiders" and put your name on the Leaderboard!!

I've got a working WEBGL version up now! If you play this version, your stats will persist on the leaderboard, but you won't be able to use that Player Name again once you quit. For this reason, I recommend the downloadable PC version, where you can continue to play as the same User and try to beat your own score. :)

PLEASE PLAY HERE

I'm down to only needing about two more ratings! If you haven't checked out Debtors' Arena yet, I'd really appreciate a rating. And if I haven't already played your game, I'll be happy to rate you back. Procrastinators unite!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/debtors-arena

One of the main graphical features in our game Library of Madness is a wave effect that is applied to the screen as the main character spends their sanity to gain access to powerups.

Here's an example after the player has lost 5 sanity.

This is accomplished using a fairly simple vertex shader. (omitting colors, texture coords, etc.)

glsl void main() { vec3 newPos = vec3( aVertexPosition.x + waveData.y * sin(waveData.x + aVertexPosition.x + aVertexPosition.y), aVertexPosition.y + waveData.y * cos(waveData.x + aVertexPosition.x + aVertexPosition.y), aVertexPosition.z ); gl_Position = uPMatrix * vec4(newPos, 1.0); }

waveData here is a uniform vec2 where x represents the current time, and y the amplitude of the wave. In our game, this amplitude is a function of the amount of sanity the player has lost equal to 0.5 * pow(insanity, 1.5).

This technique was copied from the water effect in this video, which used to have a tutorial to go with it.

It looks very different in our game because we apply the effect to the screen (i.e. an FBO that the game is initially rendered to) rather than the individual tiles. This results in one continuous twist, without multiples waves visible.

As a final detail to prevent uncovered area, the screen FBO is drawn eight extra times, flipped around the central screen. This isn't typically very noticeable, but could technically result in the player being visible twice on screen, if insanity was high enough and they were close enough to the edge of the map.

That's it! I hope you learned something or found this technique interesting.

Unfortunately, this edition was in sync with the most busy period of the year for me at work. Hopefully I can review some more games in the remaining 2 days. But i also need a bit of luck and help with 6 more reviews to reach the 20 mark. If you have a bit of free time here is my entry(is HTML5): https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/trading-lives I recommend playing it o mobile, seems more fun. :)

I've been doing LD for quite a few years now, but one game per jam was always more than enough. This time though, I really wanted to push myself. The last couple of LDs have been quite relaxed and laid back, so I decided to jam to the max this time around. I jammed at the Kokolores Collective in Ludwigsburg, Germany, together with my friends Kathrin and Kasi, and it was beyond amazing to work with you two! (I live in Berlin, but they had their housewarming party the Thursday before LD and so I went there for the whole week)

We first brainstormed around an hour on the theme and came up with a few interpretations we liked. We chose a mechanics-driven approach for our team game and worked from there (the story is thus a little abstract), but in the back of my mind I always had this narrative idea about cows and meat that I wanted to pursue. If there's time, I said to myself, not really believing it could be possible. So, most of Saturday, we worked together on our game, I did some code and story writing, as well as music and testing on Sunday, and we progressed quite well.

After having watched High School Musical (which was way more entertaining than I had expected ^^) to end this intense day, the other two left, we had a game that was pretty playable already and I started working on my own little entry. It was a very pleasant way of working, since due to the very little time I had for this game, everything was "good enough" pretty fast, so I made some decent progress that night.

After 5 hours of sleep. I spent Sunday working almost exclusively on that little game, which wasn't really planned, but came very naturally, since our team game seemed to also be progressing well without me (like mentioned above, I only did the music and some testing that day). We managed to finish the team game in the evening and it was in more than good enough shape, the other two left and I continued working. Three hours before the deadline (midnight in this part of the world) I was almost finished and doing some polish on the game, but that polish came in a very sad fashion (recording panicked cow sounds, doing sad music, reading facts about animal slaughter) and it really, really got to me. I was so sad that night and almost started crying, being all alone in a big, dimly lit office, deprived of sleep and feeling the weight of so many animals dying everyday to feed humanity. I couldn't go on anymore, but it was okay. I uploaded the final builds and went to sleep. The next morning I woke up, replenished, not terribly sad anymore, more melancholic, but above all proud and satisfied. It was a great weekend.

So, these are our games:
First up, limbostore.heaven, our team effort, that is quite polished, also has a bit of playtime, and that I am super proud of. We are still missing a few ratings to get to the magical 20 on this one, so I'd be forever grateful if you left us some feedback:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/limbostore-heaven

And secondly, my own little compo entry, My precious life, that is very short and not very interactive, but has grown close to my heart:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/my-precious-life

Making two games in 48 hours was intense and exhausting, but totally worth it. We had a lot of fun, learned a few new things and I'm very proud of what we created. Thanks for reading, cheers!
~ Erkberg ~

As we're nearing the results, I thought some rough stats were in order. DEADline :keyboard: was played nearly by 100 players since the online leaderboard was added and more than 1000 games were played.
(Coop sessions and runs with 4 or less finished words are not scored and I'm not sure how many uploads were blocked by firewalls and such).
Anyway, thank you all for playing. Here, have a bouquet for your troubles

Or course it comes in a Mrs. variant as well

If you have never tried a mashup of typing and platforming, you can do so in DEADline.

https://youtu.be/mJD4ixhbOY4

Download GTApp now

Added a new house model created last night :D Quite happy with the result, it fits well with the new weather system!

Vote please :)

I'm still under 20 votes requirement so if you have a minute and want to help, feel free to Play & Rate here!

Post-Jam Updates & web

Hello! In a last-minute decision, Tech Valley Game Space decided to live-stream playing your game one more time! We'll be live shortly (ETA, 4:15 PM EST), and will be playing for at least 2 hours, so come submit your game: forms.gle/UPL87CT1QgQExLCT6

As the form states, we do enforce a Code of Conduct in our live-streams. As such, we do reserve the right to cancel streaming and rating a game for any reason.

We'll be streaming to the following channels:

• twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace
• youtube.com/c/techvalleygamespace
• facebook.com/TechValleyGameSpace

For reference, the recording of our last live-stream is below; expect the same quality commentary this stream as well!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsydYDMYaj4