I'm super happy with the results, especially with the categories Theme and Mood, where I've focused most of in my game. Humor being in a good place is a bonus for me, because I only inserted one joke in my otherwise dark game :P
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
Very happy with my graphics and music rating but am glad for all of them! See you all next year!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/beatboi
We still can't quite believe it that you rated us into the top 100 for our first Ludum Dare, thank you! We had a blast developing our game and playing all of your games. Until the next time!
Hi!
Thank you for your rating and your feedback.
But can you help us? We are pretty sure we participated in graphics category, but we didn't find the result of our game.
If anyone who rated our game can tell us if you remind you rated our game in the graphics category, it would be nice.
I'm genuinely amazed that my game did so well this time, especially considering it's not even fully finished; an entire level, as well as A LOT of polish was missing from the game, but I still managed to reach 10th in innovation in the Compo. WOW
Thanks to everyone who rated my game, and everyone (with evidently questionable taste in music) scored me highly on audio.
Congratulations to everyone who participated this time around and thanks so much to everyone who played and rated.
This is such a personal victory for me. For long a long time I've struggled with making stuff that looks good. So in this jam I really set out to do two things; to try to make a game with an achievable scope and that looks good. I think I'll do a little write up about this entry in the next couple of days.
I'm thrilled to bits with this result!
We can't all come first in the jam, but so long as we're improving, we're winning. 👍
Thank you so much for your support. It means a lot to me. This was my first Ludum Dare and the results have blown me out of the water. All of you have been so kind and responsive.
Damn, top 11 fun for my first video game Ludum Dare entry. You all are very generous.
Apparently doing a Compo as a first entry is pretty weird?
I guess I could shill my game, but rating's over so y'know what, do whatever.
Thanks y'all. See you next year.
After entering 10 LDJams I have my first rating in top 100, only in humour but I'm okay with that:
A comparison of previous events scores and ratios of placement against number of submissions with the required number of ratings in that jam (only featuring 9 because 36 didn't have ratings):
My first mobile game, House Match, is now available for download on the App Store and Google Play!
I'd like to thank everyone in this community for helping me along this journey. I started competing in Ludum Dare 4 years ago, when I was just 14. I've learned so much from this competition; the feedback I've gotten on my games has been invaluable, and your creations have truly inspired me.
If you want to check out the app, you can download it here
You can also play our entry for LD47, Hula Hype, here
Thank you!
That feels good!
Thanks to those who rated, for a top 100 overall score, two times 12th place and an average score of almost 4 stars :)
For anyone who's reading this: I've managed to do an insane amount of work in the 48 Compo hours; I'm going to explain how I did all that by taking you through my process for everything: from idea, writing, music, modeling, sound recording, scene building to programming:
Join me this Sunday, November 1st, 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET / 19:00 CEST for about 2.5 hours on https://twitch.tv/virtualplaynl
(if you somehow don't want to watch on Twitch, you can also watch via YouTube through https://youtube.com/virtualplay )
Well well well, it seems that the dogs have come back to roost (I know it’s a chicken thing, but just accept the analogy, it’ll make sense in a second)! And now, we can finally rest knowing we’ve got the ratings of Woofice Chair! (told you it’d work)
It’s always good to look back at and compare these, since they’re easy-to-understand metrics to show if we’ve improved or changed in certain aspects of development.
Before we go into ratings, we wanted to say that we’re humbled by the reception we’ve got! We also got to play a ton of fun games, making it an all around fantastic period!
For those not so satisfied with your results, remember that a lot of elements can factor on the ratings and rankings! That includes having few ratings (which reduces the accuracy of the rating your project would actually have), more participants on this jam, and the quality of older participants getting better and better at each jam, between other factors. Were you to submit a game with the same quality on each Ludum Dare, odds are that you’d get different rankings and ratings each time.
Don’t let that discourage you, though! There’s no wrong or right way to enjoy Ludum Dare! Some people here strive for self-improvement in game development, while others are even getting their first taste of it. Some could casually participate in many events or even try to submit the best rated games! Maybe even use the opportunity to meet new people and teammates! Just follow your gut and stay positive! :muscle:
Now that it’s all said and done, let’s see how we performed with Woofice Chair!, shall we?
Ranking-wise, this is the highest we’ve been at Humour, which is fantastic! But here’s some fun statistical data, complete with our over-analysis of the situation. At some point during a previous Ludum Dare, we made a Google Sheet to write down the results we’ve got in the past entries. It even got conditional formatting to give us better visual clues of important numbers! Gold cells represent our best at a jam yet, while red represents our worst:
Rating-wise, this is our best Overall game with 4.15 (up from Wizsnooks’ 4.071). It’s also our best game in Graphics, Humour and Mood. Yet, ranking wise, we’ve got past games that did far better in rankings.
Our “best game” in ratings is scoring lower in rankings likely for things mentioned before. The quality of good, fun games seem to be on the rise, likely as a result of people participating constantly. And that’s great! That only means that jams are getting better and better! There were also way more participants this time around that there were in any of our previous participants, most likely the result of a certain ongoing worldwide unavoidable phenomenon.
Finally, ratings-wise, we wanted to be more calm on this jam for a while, which is why we didn’t rate as much as when we made Jazzy Beats. However, because of the good words we got, we felt like we needed to give back the good vibes and ended up playing a lot more games! A bit too late to catch up, but we still had a blast with your submissions!
For those that are participating for the first time, don’t get discouraged! Keep on participating, whatever your goals are! Participate, get experience, and keep creating the wild ideas that come to your mind!
For the time being, we’re rearranging some stuff as we get back on the commercial game development track, but if you’d like to stay in contact with us, consider following us on Twitter! You’re even invited to join us for a chat at our Discord server! We’re preparing some Halloween goodies, so you should really stop by! :jackolantern:
Thanks again for all the good will this time around! Wish you all the best of luck on the next Ludum Dare! :whale:
PD: We're still preparing a post about adding juice to our games, so look forward to that too!
...and I did much better than I had ever expected to, given that this was my first one! I managed to get top 100 in two categories, and was in the top sixth of entries overall :smile:
I had a great time, and Ludum Dare has successfully convinced me that I am capable of handling the Compo, which I think I'll be doing for the foreseeable future. Good job to everyone, including you reading this right now; there were some really great games! I'll see you all in April :)
PS: if you haven't yet, do consider giving my submission, while(true), a shot (link below)! I've gotten a lot of good criticism, and I'm probably going to give it an update or a few in the future.
https://noahkuhn.itch.io/while-true
Hi everyone!
Congratulations on another successful LDJam!
Even if the results weren't what you hoped for, just remember that you made a game in next to no time and that's something to be super proud of doing!
Before this jam, I made a post looking at my previous three jam results. Off the back of that post, I decided that my focus for this jam would be trying to improve on my graphics, sound and humour in the hope of boosting my overall rating. I wanted to add a bit more animation and some juice to the graphics and input. So I ended up implemented a couple of things like easing for projectile firing and impact shake for explosions etc.
I'm glad to say that I seem to have achieved what I set out to achieve!
The improved ratings didn't translate to much of a shift in my category rankings (apart from humour) although it blew my last game jam entry out of the water. That was to be expected, though. My LD46 entry was a hot mess.
It's worth nothing that my improved results in the areas I focused on are counterbalanced by reduced performance in other areas. I suppose that's to be expected when you have limited time. However, I guess my focus for the next Ludum Dare is to make a well-rounded game and manage my time best towards that end.
So, I guess I'll see you all for the next one!
Pillars of Anguish was rated by 47 of you wonderful people (at LD47, heh). I think we did quite well!
I have always been the odd one out, with an odd sense of humour. I've been slow on the uptake, people didn't understand my jokes, it's always been awkward. Because of that, it feels incredibly validating that our game, where I wrote around half of the dialogue lines, has come out 46th in Humor!
We're happy to have created this game, and really glad you lot have enjoyed it. Thank you all so hecking much :sparkling_heart:
Speaking of enjoyment, we've also ranked fairly high in Fun. This was a bit of a surprise, since many people said "the game was great, but it wasn't fun, it was frustrating" :grin:
Our ranking in most other categories and Overall is equally satisfying. Thank you for recognising our effort, and for all the amazing feedback you've given us :sparkles:
Before LD47 started, I wrote a couple of posts with my thoughts on the themes and theme selection process.
I'm happy to say I wasn't quite right about the quality of "Stuck in a Loop", and I think I've learnt something from what other people have done with it. While I still kind of wish I could have experimented with building an environment based on a prompt, we ended up creating a game around a mechanic idea, and it worked out pretty well. I saw several games that actually surprised me with their interpretation of the theme, and while lots of people had similar ideas, their style and execution still made for quite unique experiences.
So perhaps mechanical themes aren't so bad after all? Regardless, I hope we can take what we've learnt here, and make the best of it at the next Ludum Dare :)
Congratulations to everyone who participated! You made excellent entries, and we had a ton of fun playing them.
Oh, by the way, I'm live right now at twitch.tv/Outfrost, editing a compilation video of people playing our game. Come say hi!
For my LDJAM47 game, I’ve made a 3D platformer with 3D models and animations.
Because I could to it, now you can get the hero of my game as an avatar in VRChat (search for "Beaty" in VRChat).
I recorded my entire sculpting session. In case you want to see the process of sculpting my model here is the video (it took < 20 minutes, read it fast forward if you want because it’s still long).
https://youtu.be/dmShGQGPWeY
wowowo!
I'm super chuffed to have placed first in innovation! The innovation category has been my favourite category for a while, ever since the "Tiny World" theme and the game that took place in the page's favicon. So it's been the main category I've been focusing on when I've been entering Ludum Dare.
I was hoping I'd do well there, but had no idea I'd rank as highly overall too! And very surprised that I also came first for audio, given how many talented musicians there are here.
Here's a little recreation of what I did when I saw the results:
https://youtu.be/w4U2ALaRa0s
The idea for making this game came from going through the process of calling the DMV to renew an expired registration for my car. I remember exploring this phone system and trying to figure out if it was possible to resolve my problem without getting put on hold, and the experience was both ridiculous but also surprisingly entertaining. It just felt perfect for parody.
So I had that potential idea on hold, and then when I saw the theme announcement I realised this would be perfect! So I dropped all my other plans and started figuring out how to make an automated call system. And here we are!
So thanks to everyone who rated it! If you haven't tried it yet, you should jump on soon because there's a limited amount of credit in the account that's running the game, and when that expires the game is going to go down :P
Well, I sure did poorly in the rankings, but whatever! I've been making games for several years now, but this was my first game jam and it was great meeting so many talented developers and artists! Now it's time for.... a recap of how I made my game, Outside The Loop!
(Sorry about not having many mid-development pictures, I'll be sure to take some in April for LD48)
I got on early enough for theme voting and had a fun time with that! It was disappointing some themes, like "Death Is Not The End" and "Only Three Buttons", didn't make it, but at least one I voted for won. So glad it wasn't "Clockwork"! The best I had for that was animate clocks doing construction work.
I knew that whatever happened, I'd host in HTML5 and add gamepad support for optimal multi-platform fun. I wasn't sure what to do other than that, I think it's better to wing it!
A whole lot of planning and designing a title screen, and not much else. One time-consuming task was I decided I wanted to make a unique font for my game to complement the game feel. I spent 20+ minutes writing the English alphabet in a perfect font, writing numbers, and then writing gamepad control symbols. As for developing the world in Day 1, I did... nothing.
...And then I did some world design finally, in Day 2! I made the ground, then the grass, plus the blocks, loops, and endless world looping. And then...
...the character! (Hehehe, who's ready for some awful art?)
The character of Outside The Loop has three looks, two from me and one player-made.
I didn't draw the character until Day 3, so the character looked like this for 24-ish hours.
(HAHAHA!!! I just love placeholder art.)
Too bad I barely had time to do this. I was hoping to make something better looking.
Countless thanks to @moski for this incredible artwork!
After work, I got to work finishing up my project on Day 3. I put in all of the code, including progression, loops, and the controls. I made sure everything was working, then with less than an hour left I distorted a synth to make the only sound effect to make it into the game, and spent 20 to 30 minutes sketching my player. Then I discovered a bug that critically messed up the game, and I spent a while chasing the bug around and eventually squishing it. Then with only a few minutes left I tried to improve the player's look, and uh oh! I had to spend the remaining time on another technical issue! So I finished killing digital bugs with five seconds left, and sadly I missed my chance to improve the graphics and audio. But at least I got my game working!
Despite getting brutally low ratings despite so many people saying it was great, I still consider my game a success! After finishing my upcoming PC/Xbox One game, I'll begin developing Outside The Loop more! I'll be adding features that are classics in platformers, like enemies, power-ups, and bosses, but I'll also be adding some things that are completely unique!
I'll definitely be joining LD48 in April, it was great meeting so many talented developers! Can't wait to see everyone! And hopefully I won't have so much work to do during Ludum Dare....
Don't forget winners, over the next day or two I'll be making celebratory sketches for the winning games!