Heya, go give our game a try, we had a great time making it, the idea we came up with is really sad and touches a little on the topic of suicide and overworking yourself.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/lifeloop

Josh the thief who tried to rob a house full of gold didn't know that the house if full of ghosts. Try to save Josh as much as you can by using energy balls and teleportation. Note - Josh teleportation has a huge disadvantage, his power can hurt as much as help because this superpower can land him to a completely randomize place on the screen may be far from the ghost but maybe directly to the ghosts' hands.

Go Help Josh!!!! - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/ghost-from-jail

If you like rogue-like games and turn based combat, give a try to our game!

We are tweaking the balancing right now.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/knight-of-the-holy-loop Thanks for the reviews! :thumbsup:

Why does everyone want to get 20 votes minimum?

Can some kind soul please explain what happens once you get to 20 votes?

Checked the rules but couldn't find out.

Thanks!

Tom

STUCK IN A TIMELINE.

While, if you can reverse the timeline?

No,no no. Don't misunderstand.

You can not reverse timeline of your character.

The only thing you can do, is Reverse timeline of the environment.

If you comment on my game and rate it I will play your game too! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/loop-land

I really had fun modelling this guy. So I had to give him a little intro sequence.

Check out our game RoboBlast to see him doing what he does best. Exterminating alien pest!

PLAY https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/$223391

bleep bloop

I stumble upon a youtube video today and I thought it was worth sharing about it because it could have been a fun direction to look for for this last jam's theme. What do you think ?

Here is the video (by CodeParade) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY9GAyJtuJ0

Oh and by the way, test our game if you didn't have yet :p : I Reboot

This is my first jam :smile: and honestly it's a lot of fun to participate in that game jam, even if my unity experience is still at the beginning :v: I'm working daily on my unity knowledge and hopefully on the next ludum dare you'll see a better project :laughing:

If someone of you wanna check out the game of a full unity beginner you can do that HERE

Leave a comment and i'll rate your game too :heart:

I found it it right now, and its is amazing!!!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/dungeon-repeat

I found this game right now, and its is amazing!!!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/dungeon-repeat

Summary

Among Stars and Robots is our third Ludum Dare-entry together but we have been working on games together for almost a decade now. We decided from the start that we wanted to target a WebGL build that would work on as many devices as possible, which meant we had to go low poly and simple materials only. This would also let us bang out a lot of varied content in a short time.

As usual we spent the days leading up to the start brainstorming ideas for the various themes that were up for voting in the last round, only to scrap all of them the moment the final theme was revealed. We quickly settled on the idea of programming a robot with a looping set of instructions. After dividing out some tasks we both went to bed to get to work early the next morning. If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years is to eat, sleep and shower for a more enjoyable and productive game jam experience.

What went well?

We are very happy with the end result of this jam. The development process went smoothly without either team member feeling blocked by the other at any time. The first thing we made was a custom level editor inside of Unity. Any waiting time could then be spent brainstorming new levels or iterating on existing ones using this editor.

The biggest contributor to the end result was probably our planning process the first night where we mapped out a Minimum Viable Product and having a strongly established art style to adhere to which really helped us stay focused and keep the scope of the game down.

The code this time around was relatively simple, there are no animations other than simple tweens and no (significant) custom shader magic going on. Instead we focused on making the core mechanic interesting and the presentation really juicy. This is why we put a lot of focus on the level transitions for extra visual flair which from the feedback we got has been one of the most appreciated aspects of the game.

Trying to learn our lesson from our last attempt at Ludum Dare (Pull the Levers from LD46) where a lot of people struggled due to the lack of a tutorial, this time we tried to add better tutorialization in the form of three introduction levels and a simple animation in the first level to explain the controls, as well as an infographic on the itch page. But, as it turns out, this still wasn’t enough.

What went bad?

As mentioned above, the tutorials didn’t manage to help players all the way to success. The first problem was the detector command which is introduced in the third tutorial level. This command is significantly different from other two commands previously introduced (turn and move forward) which are both very simple to understand. Players initially tended to dismiss the detector command as something that would not be needed to complete the level. The level was then solved either by trial and error or by consulting the included infographic. In conclusion, this command definitely required much stronger in-game tutorialization.

The second problem was our difficulty curve. Once players got past the tutorial they were introduced to the hub world. The idea was that the initial position and view direction of the player would guide them to the easier levels but this didn’t work because first and foremost, we messed up the actual ordering of the levels. Second, players did not seem to care and just went to whatever level caught their interest. Many did not even realize they were in a level select world. Luckily we implemented a home button that would let players return to the level select without completing the level so if they got stuck they could try another one instead. The level select definitely needs some kind of indicator for how hard each level is so players can progress in a more logical manner without getting frustrated.

The third problem was some simple but very important UX features we failed to implement. Between levels there is a variable amount of commands allowed in the player’s loop but there is no indicator of that, so many players thought it was the same for all levels and got stuck on the ones that required more commands than normal. The other problem is that you can change the loop while it is running, but changes do not apply until you click stop and start again. Many players tried to change the loop and got confused why the robot kept repeating old commands. Both of these are easily solved and with hindsight it’s obvious that we should have prioritized it a bit more. Fixing these problems solves a lot of headache for the players.

Another mistake we made was including too many patrolling police robots in our levels. Just like the player, the police bots execute commands of their own, but there is no real way of telling which commands they execute. As a result their behavior is very hard to predict and forces the player to resort to trial and error in order to beat the level, which is not something you want in a puzzle game.

What next?

So what’s next for Among Stars and Robots and what lessons should we take with us? There’s definitely a point to be made that we need to work even more on our sense for difficulty scaling and progression. There’s a clear improvement just looking at our Ludum entries where our latest game is by far the best in terms of difficulty and tutorialization but there’s still a lot left to do.

Had we done more testing with someone outside the team before release we probably would have been able to catch those few UX problems and prioritize them so that’s definitely something we will look at in the future. As for what else lies in store in the future we will see. We are both overwhelmed with the positive response we have gotten so far and the game feels like it could turn into a really fun full game so it’s definitely on the table to make a full production game out of it.

We hope you enjoyed reading this post-mortem about some of our experiences from this jam, if you want to try our game check it out below and let us know in the comments of some of your own ups and downs from this event!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/among-stars-and-robots

Check out my defying gravity puzzle-platformer here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/skycrawler

https://bernard-bumblebutt.itch.io/lily-pad-drifters

I'm stuck waiting in the bus, anyone knows a mobile game entry I can play? :sweat_smile:

Thanks!

Today I finished the post-compo version of my submission, Another

I remade the title screen, made a few changes to the rhythm of the game so it would feel more natural, and revamped the UI. Also “the deep ambient noise” that people said they liked was actually a music track that wasn’t finished properly, and was quite silent in the game. So I did some work on the music as well. I hope you’ll like the new and improved Another.

Check it out here if you feel like it :heart:

Come discover the wonderful world of Looper

With puzzles and challenges that will be sure to keep you on your toes!

:star2: Play in Browser Now! :star2:

wow

Quite a few people have played the game now. We're really happy with all the feedback and nice comments we're getting. Thank you all.

PLAY FRACTULINEAR HERE

More?

Since I ran out of time during the Jam, i'm thinking I should design a few more puzzles for a post-compo version. What do you think?

Action Shots

PLAY FRACTULINEAR HERE

I want to check out submissions in my browser right now, but I don't think you can filter them. If your submission can be played in browser please post it in the comments so I can check them out!

Hi, I have some question that need answering because this is my first ludum dare game jam

1: What is different from last time's game jam from this time, Because this my first time.

2: Is the coolness points only based on if you rated somebody? Because someone can just leave others half a star (Lowering their rating) and still get a coolness point. (I won't do that because that is unethical)

3: Is adding a new control considered a new feature? Because I forgot to add WASD to my game and I want to add it now. because I don't want to go against the rules

4: Is there a problem with the ludum dare site? Because the site somtimes does not let me do anything like upload a post a blog, play a game, comment or check my messages and the buttons do not respond, and when I try to reload it just starts reloading forever and will be like this for a while.It happened even when I was writing this. Is it a problem from my side, if it is please let me know what to do. if it is a site problem please fix it because it is annoying me. here is an image