Hi everyone! I am a programmer that made some game prototypes and my friend is a composer. Currently we are in need for an artist to join us! :art: We were planning on using Unity and the only requirement is to have fun :blush:.
My portfolio: https://nachodlv.github.io/nachodlv/
My Discord: Tuux#8476
(Sorry for the wall of text. I've bolded the important bits if you just want to skim it)
So the pre-Ludum Dare season is upon us once again, and you know what that means! Another slaughter round full of repeated theme ideas, followed by four rounds of elimination and a theme that no one ever seems to like. But how can we make the theme better? Well, I’ve said in the past that we should revamp the whole voting process, but seeing as it’s a little late for that now, I suppose we’ll have to work around the system we have in place by educating people on what makes a theme good or bad. So, just in time for the slaughter round, here is my manifesto on what makes a good Ludum Dare theme!
First, let’s consider why we have a theme in the first place. From the official rule page:
“Ludum Dare is about encouraging you to make something. The theme is something we do to help everyone with the “blank sheet of paper” problem that artists and creators deal with. It’s easier to make something with some direction than none.
[…] while we don’t enforce that your game meets some minimum “themeyness”, the community does see significance in the Theme. So while we wont do anything about it, the community as a whole prefers games that do use the Theme. So as a general suggestion, if you want to score well in Ludum Dare, make sure you do use the theme in some way.
So the whole purpose of the theme is to give everyone a common set of ideas to build off of. It’s to fill your head with all the potential of making a game over the course of a weekend. At the same time, it’s meant to create a set of games with a common underlying theme, each uniquely shaped by our own interpretation based on our skillsets, preferences, and life experiences. So now the question becomes, how do we make a theme that promotes this kind of thinking?
Well, I believe the theme should be vague. When a theme is overly constrained, it leads to fewer interpretations of the theme, which leads to fewer interesting games. This is especially true when the theme implies a certain type of play, or forces participants to adhere to a certain skill set. Take “The power of music”, for example. Naturally, it’s going to imply a rhythm game, right? Or focuses on an amazing soundtrack? Or at least one with a heavy emphasis on musicianship or musical allusions? Well, not everyone is able or willing to make a rhythm game. Not everyone is musically talented to write their own songs. Heck, some people don’t even like listening to music! And there are tons of themes that force jammers to use a certain skillset: “Combine 2D and 3D assets” -not everyone can use a 3D game engine; “Jump is also attack” – not everyone wants to make a platforming game; “Amazing story” – not everyone wants to write a story. My personal litmus test for this stage is, “can I think of a platforming game, a visual novel, a puzzle game, and a first-person shooter using this theme? Can it work with both a multi-person team project and a solo dev with only 12 hours to work?” If yes, we can move onto the next stage.
In contrast to the previous paragraph, I also think the theme shouldn’t be too vague. As the rules outlined, the community enjoys seeing everyone’s interpretation of the same theme. This means the theme should be strong enough that it can penetrate through the entire design of a project. Thus themes like “based on song lyrics” and “anarchy / no theme” are terrible themes since, by definition, there will be absolutely no obvious underlying connecting thread to all the games (and, in the latter's case, doesn't help overcome the 'blank page' problem)
I also believe the theme should add to the design of games in a meaningful way. Superfluous additions or constraints like “2-colour palette” or “female protagonist” could be applied to practically any game, and doesn’t promote idea generation in the prototyping phase. And, combined with what I said before, it should be up to the participant to decide in which format they want to interpret it. Do they want to interpret “Sacrifices need to be made” as a gameplay mechanic, a narrative element, or just a basic platformer with demonic cult graphics? I personally consider the last one to be a cop-out, but I still believe that this cop-out should always exist for the beginners who are unable or unwilling to make anything besides basic platformers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, so we’ve determined what makes a good theme, but what makes a bad theme? Beyond not adhering to the above axioms, a bad theme can be identified with one or more of the following:
-Repeating a theme from a previous Ludum Dare. Many of us are veterans of multiple Ludum Dares, and want to see innovation in the theme selection. Plus, what would be the purpose of choosing a theme in the first place if we’re just going to recycle one from last time?
-The scope is too large. Do you really expect people to create an MMORPG from scratch in 48 hours? Or write their own rendering code to “mix 2D and 3D”? Especially egregious are the ones that specifically ask to include too much stuff – “Feature creep”, for one. Or “The 4th dimension”, where half the jam could be spend just learning what a hypercube is.
-Inappropriate topics. This event is for everyone. We don’t want to alienate any portion of our friends by choosing a topic that is violent, sexual, illegal, controversial, or otherwise inappropriate for this jam. I will add in religion and politics to this list as well, as talking about those topics on the internet is sure to end badly. (Note that I’m not against these themes in your game, I just don’t believe they should be the focus of every game)
-Themes that are too common and are, frankly, pathetic. Some themes are just too weak to generate many truly innovative designs. “You are the weapon”, “Only 2 button controls”, “good thing is now bad”; these themes show up multiple times at each LD, and they never get chosen for a reason. I’ll also add themes that, once you think about it, are just basic video game logic. “Start with nothing” – as opposed to all the games that give all the weapons all at once? Or simple subversions of video game logic. They're cheesy and overdone, guys. “You are the villain”, “You are the princess”, “Player cannot move” – why even specify a ‘player’ when there are puzzle games that don’t, strictly speaking, have one?
-Niche references to other media. Not everyone watches JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, most people won’t know what you’re talking about when you talk about making a game based on enemy Stands. Even if you quickly explain it to them, they’re only going to have a basic idea of what that is, how are they going to generate an amazing cohesive idea from limited knowledge? This is especially true with memes, as they also carry the risk of being outdated by the time the jam actually occurs. In short, if people have to Google your theme, it’s not a good theme.
-The title is too darn long. Generally, the longer the title is, the more it’s going to overdefine the game design and produce similar entries. Looking through the past posts, “Take a feature from a dimension, and remake it in another one” sticks out to me. The fact it mentions dimensions indicates using 2D and 3D, but also that the game should be more technical in nature, when many people just want to make simple platformers. I’ve also seen things like “Limitations (can’t go beyond a certain level)” being submitted, where the unbracketed text is too vague to really generate cool ideas but the bracketed text is overdefining the theme (in this case, “level” suggests arcade stages or RPG leveling). Combined, the theme is unwieldly to say and look at, not to mention making the unbracketed text redundant.
-The title is too darn short. From the opposite perspective, making the theme just a single word is sure to make it too vague to really inspire outside-the-box thinking. How many games require you to “destroy” or “survive” something? And what exactly do you expect me to make an “unlimited” amount of? and for what purpose? And how do other games exclude concepts like “light” or “shadows” such that specifically making a game with them is supposed to make me put on my thinking cap?
-Anything with misspellings or bad grammar. This is kind of petty for me, but when you’re trying to sort through 3000 themes, anything that could help make the selection process easier will be helpful. Correct spelling, proper capitalization, using words instead of numbers for numbers below 20, anything that could be held against a theme should be. Plus, if everyone voted like this, there’d be more cohesion on whether “Only Two Buttons”, “only two buttons”, “only 2 buttons”, “Only 2 buttons”, and “only 2 butons” gets to go past the slaughter.
-You don’t enjoy the theme. Just because something is technically good doesn’t mean you have to like it. If you don’t want to work with a specific theme, simply don’t vote for it. You don’t need to explain yourself. Even if it’s just a gut feeling, it’s okay to throw that theme away. We’ve got 3000, we can manage without it.
So, yeah. That's my personal guide to choosing a good theme. Do you agree with me? Based on some of the other posts I've seen posted in the past couple of days, I certainly know a few of you disagree with me on parts. I'd like to hear your opinions in the comments. Maybe we can finally make the theme selection process tolerable for once!
(...or we can just give up and turn Ludum Dare into "Floating Islands: The Game Jam")
Given the whole precarious situation around the world, I wanted some themes to distract and provide a sense of comfort and normalcy. (Pls no more virus-related themes!)
Oh and #Masks4All and remember to stay safe everyone!
It was my first time ever joining the Ludum Dare Community and I wanted to test my brain to think some good themes suggestions.Here are my Theme Suggestions:
1.Two heads are better than one 2.Living 3.What Matters
I'll try to be as Active in this Community as possible with all the Things I have to do in my life.Good Luck in Ludum Dare 46!
As tradition demands, I decided to put together a simple wallpaper for LD46. I made a clean version and one that includes some of the gamejam tips I wrote before, as well as dark/greyscale variations, all in both HD and 4k.
Let me know if you end up using any of these! :smiley:
Wus going on gamers I don't get it?
Anyway, I thought I'd do what everyone else is doing and make a special wallpaper, so here it is! I hope you like it!
So... we doing this thing? I sure hope we are. It's two weeks away. I'm expecting to see news postings about LD46, the theme slaughter... anything. I seem them not. Is there some way we can help to kick this thing off?
Getting ready for LD46? Pluralsight is opening up their entire course catalog. Skill up for free for the rest of April:
Intro Unity Game Development
Free April
A story: At some point I was talking and I mentioned this thing: a game jam, so loudly that at least two other people heard me. We might have been having lunch.
So was envisioned, the dream team:
The venerated @awelotta, my brother. He didn't really want to participate in a game jam, I think. He has never fully composed a song, much less a jingle. Didgeridoos out for our composer, awelotta.
@bean, my other brother has never made a game. He probably heard me when I mentioned a game jam over... lunch or something? He's played a lot of Team Fortress 2 prior though. Hats off to our programmer, bean.
Also I started learning Unity 3 weeks before the jam. Also I never finish anything. @save-our-sunken-ship
Can we coalesce into a designing, prototyping and compiling loogie in time? No worries, we already did. We even had lunch.
Bonus! Ye ol' @lessen, who is not my brother. He will be joining us as a Unity game dev since I guess a few days ago.
[1-46 2. ...]
For ludum dare 46 I'm creating a team of about 20 people. The team has created a game recently in one week for the weekly game jam. Sadly we didn't make it, because we didn't know the weekly game jam wasn't one week long as the name suggest. You can join us for ludum dare, where we will create a game in 72 hours. We have standards and everyone who want's to join has to pass interview.
I wanted something calm and minimalistic so I created this.
Best quality version
Free to use and download
Hey we've got a lot of mature programmers and some content creators, we desperately need artists, but feel free to join with any background. https://discord.gg/a6EJTd
(Zoom in)
Hey everyone! I'm in for my 8th Ludum Dare! I'd love to partner with an artist this time and do the jam. If you're interested let me know! I have ~7 years professional experience as a programmer and my best LD games got 27th and 31st overall :smile: Hoping to partner with someone who has some experience as well.
Good luck to everyone participating! I can't wait to play all your games!
Will there be theme voting this year? I couldn't find a scheduled date for it. If so, would anyone mind informing me when?
Is it just me or hasn't theme slaughter and theme voting pretty much started by now with the last Ludum Dares? :D
Maybe we'll get different paced system this year, like theme slaughter starting very soon and then the last 4 days would be all the theme voting days. We'll see :)
The final version of my LD45 game "A Brand New World" has been completed and is now available on Itch. It has undergone major changes from the Ludum Dare version that was originally released for the Ludum Dare 45 Compo.
This new version features enhanced gameplay, upgraded graphics and new features. New disaster cards allow you to change the terrain tiles, and the new goals system give you specific tasks to complete for some extra bonus points.
The local and online highscores allow you to see your best score for each map size, as well as compare your top score to that of other players around the world.
Please give it a try and let me know what you think.
The game is released as a free game - although if you wish to donate it is greatly appreciated.
Also...
Getting ready for LD46! It's gonna be fun!
The Blue Girl is game that me and my team make for Ludum Dare 45. Then we make a demake called The Grey Girl. It is simpler, lesser colorful, it has lesser areas to go and lesser variety (небольшое разнообразие). You see here:
The features are:
You play the game here: The Grey Girl
P.S. You mighter also like another spinoff of The Blue Girl, No Holds Barred. It it is more complicated and frustrating, a sereal game that will take you mind into four-color greyness :doughnut:.
According to the rules, the theme voting should start 2 weeks before the event starts, so why did it not started yet?