Hi everybody!

This game jam has been eye-opening for me. I had a lot of fun and I learned a lot of stuff in the meantime. Stuff about what went right and what went wrong. Below a summary:

Have one or two 'Blackboxtesters' Yes, that's a real term for testers who don't know anything about the product they are testing. I did not have any of those. My wonderful girlfriend has been test playing all weekend long and I also had friends helping out tremendously. However, they knew the concept of the game. So small details that could be mistaken for bugs were perfectly logical for them. For instance: after submitting the game a lot of you thought that the autumn level had a bug where the player would shift to the left or right. My 'test team' knew about the wind-feature in that level and so did not even think once that it could have been mistaken as a bug.

Polish polish polish Another thing I realized is that a game is more fun to play if there is a catchy jingle playing in the background and if there are more fun background graphics to look at. These things did not have priority for LD47. A lot of the feedback given by the community is that there is a lack of music/background graphics.

Plan time to implement given feedback I got a lot of awesome feedback from all of you. However, I don't really have time to make a second version of the game implementing all the feedback. Next time I'll plan a day in the weekend after submission to implement all the feedback :-)

Getting the game mechanics right soon By spending the majority of the first day fine tuning the characters' movement I did not have to think about that the rest of the time. Ok, the jumping in my game feels a bit strange in hindsight, but i'm very happy with it. And I'm happy spending the first part of the jam doing that task. It resulted in reaching my milestone on schedule: getting a working prototype within 8 hours after staring development.

More than one season of playtime At a party my girlfriend and I have been thinking about the time it would take to play CRYSOPHOLIST all the way through. In theory all the levels are infinate, but I set a hard limit to 1024 screens per level for performance reasons. We calculated it like this:

Every screen takes approximately 5 seconds to play we thought. Every time you end a level, the next level gains a screen to play. So the first time playing a level you will have one screen, the second time two screens, etc.

The formula for this is: (1024 * (1024+1)) / 2 = 524800 screens per level to play

Every screen takes approx. 5 seconds: 524800 * 5 = 2624000 seconds

There are 4 levels: 2624000 * 4 = 10496000 seconds

Seconds to minutes: 10496000 / 60 = 174933

Minutes to hours: 174933 / 60 = 2915

Hours to days: 2915 / 24 = 121

Days to weeks: 121 / 7 = 17

Days to months: 121 / 30 = >3 months!

After those 3 months you can still play infinitely, but the levels won't get bigger anymore. If you have not played it yet and want to take it for a spin you can visit it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/crysophilist

After buying your favorite cabinet from the old Arcade you used to visit in your childhood, somehow you were trapped into playing the same level over and over to get to the final boss.

Bright colors, crunchy sound and arcade like controls.

Appreciate your time trying my second LD entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/loopertary

Let me know if I should rate your game and if you have some good game i should not miss.

My game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/spaceman

A game you shouldn't miss: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/dude-ranch

Please add your game if you have an HTML5 build. (I have a slow internet so I can't download each game :( )

also if you like to check my game: UnderLoop

Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/underloop

Hey everyone! Thought I'd share my process for creating 3D characters, which is probably quite different from the norm. Mainly I use these tools for speed and I find there's a natural wonkiness that adds to the vibe.

Modelling

First off I create the models on my phone using a free app 3DC.io. It keeps it simple and of course it's fun to make things on your phone.

Texture

A lot of people don't know this but you can work in 3D within Photoshop; I love Photoshop for this because I have access to my custom brushes and palettes. Here I'll paint the models using a tablet and export a texture.

Result

Finally it's rigged and animated using Mixamo and then business as usual in Unity!

See it all in action over here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/group-chat

Spaced reference? No?

Anyway, was the first time I've ever tried to compose any music, so I figured I'd go ahead and post a video of the end-boss fight for my entry, which is where the song appears.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEKQ4yXt48w

Forgive me cheesing the boss midway through. Psi (who is my real-life cat companion, BTW) is very easy to cheese, not really a challenging fight.

I hope to do a full playthrough video this weekend.

If you want to try the game out for yourself: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/do-while-for

Hey there!

Thought I'd give a quick breakdown of one of our cooler VFX in Loop Lock Malfunction in case anyone finds it interesting/cool/helpful. The glitch effect happens when you take damage and looks like this:

Glitchy!

This effect looks really complicated, but is actually quite simple! Let's break it down.

Start with a sphere

Technically we could draw this effect with a single plane that covers the player, but then we need to ensure it always renders on top of the player and faces the camera which is just extra work for slightly better performance. Considering this was a jam game, dev time was way more valuable to us so we just used a sphere. This also allows us to take some other shortcuts in the shader (more on that in a bit).

_Yup, that's a sphere.

Now we need a shader

I used Amplify Shader Editor to speed up the creation of the shader, but this can be done with some pretty straightforward HLSL code too. If you need help with one of the nodes, it's pretty likely you can just google it and find someone who has implemented it manually. Oh, and I should mention this is being done in the Unity Built-in Pipeline, not one of the SRPs. This relies on GrabPass which is not supported in HDRP (and possibly not in URP either, but don't quote me on that one), though there are ways to code in equivalent functionality with more effort.

_Oh... that's pretty simple.

Let's modulate the UVs

As the above picture shows, the magic really all comes down to what UVs we use to sample the screen colors. Here's the node setup (don't worry, I'll go over what's happening after the picture):

Starting on the left, we need to take the default screen UVs and multiply them by the ratio of the screen width to the screen height. This ensures our texture doesn't look stretched on wider screens. We then multiply that by a GlitchScale parameter and pass that into a Panner node which animates the UVs vertically over time (controlled by the Speed parameter). This goes into a texture sampler that has a displacement map. The one I used looks like this:

As you can see, it's mostly gray. This is because we subtract 0.5 from the value so black will be -0.5 and white will be +0.5. Therefore the gray will have no visible displacement. We then multiply this by the GlitchAmount parameter to control the overall strength of the effect. That gives us something like this:

_Ah, much glitchier!

But wait! Look at those awful hard edges where the sphere just ends (the ones with red arrows pointing at them). We have to do something about that.

Fresnel time!

So you remember that shortcut I mentioned earlier? N-no? (Wow you have a short memory...) WELL ANYWAYS, this is where it comes in handy. Since the sphere has smooth normals, we can use a Fresnel effect to control the intensity of the effect and fade it out towards the edges.

_VERY exaggerated Fresnel effect for illustration

We then multiply the strength by the Fresnel value (which we saturate first to clamp the range from 0-1) which gives us a nice soft falloff.

Meanwhile in CPU land...

At this point, the only thing left to do is set the GlitchAmount value over time whenever you take damage. We use an AnimationCurve that we evaluate in an IEnumerator to gradually decrease the intensity. When you get hit, the glitch sphere is enabled and we start the coroutine (making sure to stop the previous one if one was already playing). When the coroutine finishes, we disable the sphere so that it's not rendering while you aren't taking damage.

And that's it!

That's all there is to it! If you wanna see the effect in action, you can check out Loop Lock Malfunction and get hit by some lasers. Shouldn't be too hard. :stuckouttongue: Hopefully you found this interesting/cool/helpful and I look forward to seeing more VFX like this from your future Ludum Dare projects. :sunglasses:

Oh and here's the full ASE graph for reference. Knock yourself out.

The Keyboard Cowboys are at it again on stream, and we're so, so sorry.

We'll be taking submissions if you want to join in on the lunacy, but if you'd like us to play your game we ask that you be in chat to interact with us as we do!

Otherwise, we'll be using this time to plug away at our growing list of games from people who have already commented on Dude Ranch in an effort to pay back the overflowing kindness we've been receiving lately.

See y'all on the other side! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/roller-riches

Thanks to everyone who has rated our game and provided valuable feedback! We really appreciate each and every comment that is made, and we're grateful for the positive response :smile: Roller Riches is an incremental game where your goal is to build a roller coaster that coaxes poor suckers (your guests) out of their money.

We're going to redesign and rebuild this game from the ground up as a side project, with a focus on adding more traditional incremental game mechanics (prestige, multiple currencies, an actual semblence of balance, etc). If you have any suggestions for how we could develop Roller Riches into a fuller incremental game, let us know!

Please feel free to post your game, and I will check it out! If you're interested and haven't given Roller Riches a try yet, check it out here. Thank you!

HI, Can you play my game if you are free and leave a feedback for the post jam version I am working on. Hope you like it, Thanks

Update of Timesaver is available now!

Check it out here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/time-saver

!

Please just a few more reviews if you have time and I promise there will be an English version as soon as possible !

"Al Filo de la Ludum Dare (Edge of Ludum Dare)" is a conversational adventure that takes place during Ludum Lare in which you will face some typical dilemmas of the event. The current version of the game is in Spanish.

You can play and rate the game here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/al-filo-de-la-ldum-dare-edge-of-ludum-dare

Come say hi and submit! your game :)

https://www.twitch.tv/kuviman

We do know about some polishing to be done. Also we had hard times making some little things like items and Inventory on time. However! This was a challenge for us all. And I truly think we've made our best here in so little time!

Please enjoy our little visual novel and leave a feedback if you want! =)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/cats-delivering-service

play this game

link https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/nailed-it

hey i would really appreciate it if you would try my game this is my first time making a game, and there were still a lot of bugs. i hope you understand the concept and i know it doesn't fit the theme well. i appreciate anyone who tries and rates me and my friends game.

Heyy~ It's Virimine again with a new character animation breakdown from our game, Led Astray~

This time it is...

...the most difficult part of animating a human...

...the horror itself...

...The Walk Cycle... 😱

- hand-drawn frame by frame

Yes, it is a bit jaggy! And yes! I didn't manage to get the exact feeling we wanted... though we are pretty happy with the outcome, especially since it is the first time I get to make a walk cycle. -Speaking of a real challenge-

Once again, I couldn't have made this without @Nefeli's wonderful work on the rest of the game art!

you carried the visuals for this jam :purple_heart:

:warning: We are still open for suggestions for a name for our main character!! Currently we have Vivian (@thiefviolinist ), Aliisa (@witekwitek) and Hope (@peace-of-cake-games)~ (thank you guyys they are beautiful!) :blue_heart:

If you missed our previous posts you can view them here and here :fallen_leaf:

Play Game

A simple 2d puzzle where you have to make the ball go in an endless loop by controlling the paddles!

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

The folks at Z9GAMES NETWORK played the game and here's some in-game footage of the demo of my game Z Rhapsody, where I'm tried making a game using available resources and no team, working on post LD and it's going to open source for anyone to see how different things are integrated together and make own levels, maps, characters using the in-game avatar system and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVkta6o6mfA