Hey guys! Just wanted to thank everyone on behalf of the Finterior Decorator team. We were 5 people, and this was the first LD for all of us. We're so appreciative of all the feedback we got, and also the ratings! It was an absolute blast making this game, and it seems like quite a bit of people enjoyed it too.
Again, thank you and see you all next LD!
The Ludum Dare 46 is finally over and the votes are counted. Let's see how I did:
Overall: 899th (3.622 average from 43 ratings)
Fun: 749th (3.561 average from 43 ratings)
Innovation: 877th (3.451 average from 43 ratings)
Theme: 319th (4.11 average from 43 ratings)
Graphics: 1458th (3.451 average from 43 ratings)
Audio: 391st (3.768 average from 43 ratings)
Humor: 581st (3.423 average from 41 ratings)
Mood: 915th (3.553 average from 40 ratings)
Let's put that in perspective of past Ludum Dares. Since there were about 2 times as many participants this time around (mostly thanks to COVID-19), comparing places between events has become meaningless, so I'll be looking at a relative place in an event instead (calculated by simply dividing the place by the number of participants, lower number is of course better):
Looking at number of stars is another valid comparison between events:
Unsurprisingly the charts look like upside-down copies of each other.
Overall, graphics, audio, humor and mood are constantly improving. These categories are IMHO indicative of the raw game making skills, which of course improve with experience, so are completely expected to improve with each event.
Theme and innovation are going up and down like crazy and are more indicative of the inspiration that comes in the first hours of each event - when deciding what to create and how. It's also harder to guess what people will consider proper use of the theme and what they will think of as an innovation. Harder to judge too.
Humor is the most fickle of the categories being the most subjective one. This depends heavily on what kind of game you decide to actually make, but can rise with inspiration throughout the event. Some of the humor can even be a result of inexperience, like making art that is so ugly that it's funny and creating game mechanics that fail in a more or less spectacular way.
I won't speculate on what will happen if this trends continue, but I think I can be optimistic. Patience is the key here.
One more thing: since the number of participants varies heavily between events the actual place isn't as important as the stars you get, it would IMHO be better for most people to put the average star rating in bold and not the place, unless of course you're in the top 100 somewhere.
Yay, results are in! I'm super overwhelmed by the amount of ratings, feedback and comments. I was expecting worse results, but I'm quite happy with them! This is my third compo and I feel I've been improving in every Ludum. I feel bad about not being able to rate a lot of other games, I didn't have so much spare time with my current job.
Thanks everyone for playing and rating!
I’ve decided to keep working on this game. I want to work on a new version, heavily improved, and with more content. I like the concept and others do too, and I know I can do a better version of it with some more time, so I want to give it a try!
Feel free to join this Discord server if you want to keep updated about this new version:
I forgot to check the results for a few days, and now I come back to find my entry in 10th place for Humor! I remember being happy about a category top 100 for my first ever Ludum Dare. Sadly that entry is no longer present on the new site though. Big thanks to everyone who rated and commented!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been considering rebuilding Me And My Horse into a full game, using Godot perhaps, but I'm also interested in trying to build my own engine for learning reasons.
Since this was made rather sloppily to meet the time constraint, I chose to implement features as simply as possible. I imagine a Yoshi's Island style throwing mechanic would have worked better, for example! And someone mentioned wanting to ride the horse, which I would definitely add. (In the most humorous way possible, of course.) And I have several ideas for more mechanics, powerups, and story. Also much better art. The current man and horse were pretty much slightly touched up, quickly drawn placeholder graphics, as you can imagine.
I'm busy with my personal life currently, and the project would be on my free time over a long period no doubt, contesting with other more important projects. I'll definitely make a post here if or whenever I get started and have something to show! Or if anyone wants to keep an eye on my twitter (same username), but it's pretty dead at the moment.
wallOfText.end();
THANKS EVERYONE SO MUCH FOR PLAYING MY GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<3
LD COMMUNITY IS THE BEST THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD:)
Thank you all for playing, rating and commenting on my game! And to all participants and organizers of Ludum Dare. This was my first Ludum Dare. I had so much fun! Also I'm really happy with the positive feedback from all of you. This means a lot to me! I can't wait for the next time. And one more time, thanks for keeping Vlad alive ;)
My first ludum dare, and my abomination got first place in humor and fun.
Looks like I've already reached my peak, things can only go downhill from here
Thanks to all the great feedback from friends and other jammers, I decided that I will make a post-jam version out of it, and release it as a tiny game! :fireworks:
If you have some spare time, try it, because feedback is still pretty useful to me :slight_smile:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/boiling-planet
Thanks in advance!
I made a quick video about the game, if you'd like to see where this goes, just subscribe to my YouTube channel :smiley:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGbjUZA6zBI
Thank you to everyone that tried out my game and for leaving feedback :) This was a really fun experience and I can't wait to enter the next Ludum Dare ahh https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-plant-shop
Advice for game developers from a book by William Hogarth:
Of Intricacy.
...Pursuing is the business of our lives; and even abstracted from any other view, gives pleasure. Every arising difficulty, that for a while attends and interrupts the pursuit, gives a sort of spring to the mind, enhances the pleasure, and makes what would else be toil and labour, become sport and recreation."
"Wherein would consist the joys of hunting, shooting, fishing, and many other favourite diversions, without the frequent turns and difficulties, and disappointments, that are daily met with in the pursuit?—how joyless does the sportsman return when the hare has not had fair play?
From: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/51459/51459-h/51459-h.htm#CHAPTER_V
There are "turns and difficulties" in MOURNING, a spawn of LD46, though it usually takes <10 minutes to play:
Play it here (HTML): http://www.pub22.net/mourning/
Credits:
Sounds:
Stek59 https://freesound.org/people/dimbark1/sounds/316797/ Bradovic https://freesound.org/people/Bradovic/sounds/171992/ dimbark1 https://freesound.org/people/dimbark1/sounds/316797/ camel7695 https://freesound.org/people/camel7695/sounds/437475/
Images:
Seline: Graphic Design: A Library of Old and New Masters in the Graphic Arts p. 133 (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009078797)
Baskets: A Study of the Textile Art in its Relation to the Development of Form and Ornament (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17730/17730-h/17730-h.htm)
Stone walls: Architecture Classic and Early Christian (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29759/29759-h/29759-h.htm)
West Castle: Pagan and Christian Rome p. 187 (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22153/22153-h/22153-h.htm)
Egyptian Elements: History of Architecture p. 12 (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26319/26319-h/arch1.html), The New Gresham Encyclopedia Volume 4, Part 2 (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35844/35844-h/35844-h.htm)
I just wanted to say i am very grateful that i participated in the jam and everybody who rated and appreciated my first jam game, honestly :) I never expected anything near to the score i received now so when I saw it I was ecstatic and fulfilled as a developer and as a human being. A lot of lessons have been learned this jam and one of them is time management, since i was developing games for a hobby and hopefully becomes my full-time work. Time is of the essence that is why dividing time is the first i did for the different parts/areas of development (programming, audio, UI, testing and gameplay). Again thank you for game jams like this for it is keeping the indie game industry alive, see you in the next jam guys. Peace
Thank you all for the rates and comments in my game!
I got one of the best results in all my LD games.
This chart is generated by http://www.ldstats.info/
I have not submitted an app to the App Store before, so this is just a personal goal/landmark. This isn't an amazing game or anything - I just wanted to go through the process and get something up there to learn from the experience. Plus, it feels pretty cool!
...though, I expect to get killed in the reviews on the App Store :cry: lol
Here is a link to that: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fish-motel/id1511033023?ls=1
Here is a QR code to scan (just open your camera) if you are reading this on a computer:
Note: I'm planning on testing out uploading to Google Play store this weekend, or soon. Just wanted to do one at a time since it is all new to me
Other news, I am very happy with the results!
Holy Moly! 6th place?!
I mean, it isn't completely out of the blue since people's comments were great, but I definitely did not expect to get that high!
The other scores were good too, or at least I mean I'm happy with them! I'm a bit surprised that music/audio is that high since it is my first time making music, but I kept it simple.
Anyway, thank you all that have played, voted and commented!
Also, when reading everyone's comments, including on other games as I like to read other comments before I post mine, I noticed overwhelming positivity. I don't just mean there were no jerks - but people were either outright positive or when giving feedback it was actually 1) helpful and 2) sincere, and 3) a lot of times sandwiched between compliments. It is just great to see that kind of community!
Oh, and here are some links and screenshots of my game for reference: - Ludum Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/fish-motel - Itch Page (play in-browser): https://loubagel.itch.io/fish-motel - Personal Website: https://www.loubagel.com/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/LouBagelCombo5
LD46 was one of my favorite LudumDares. I had the house to myself, and outside of food preparation and a couple of hours of sleep, I just made a game. I scoped small, and cut a bunch of stuff out of that, and ended up with a game that had a start and an ending, and some gameplay in the middle.
One of the biggest problems I've run into in past jams is coming up with ideas when the theme is announced. I generally like to come to the jam without any preparation, but when the theme is announced I end up completely blank for a long time.
This time, I held idea jams every day during the week or two leading up to the theme announcement. What I did was to pick a random theme, give myself ten minutes to spam as many ideas as possible, and then pick the three best ideas and spend ten minutes each expounding on them. After 40 minutes, I'd have three great ideas with basic plot, core mechanics, and art style/genre already figured out, and could then pick one to move forward on.
It worked really well for the actual theme announcement, and even though one of my least favorite themes was picked, I was able to immediately begin brainstorming, and ended up with several plausible game ideas in less than an hour.
During a pre-jam mechanic testing session, another thing I had never done before, I came up with a physics-based rocket engine that worked really well, and I ended up using the same idea as the core movement mechanic for Rescue Mission.
I spent much more time on art than I have been able to in past jams, which was pretty great. I had borrowed a drawing tablet from a friend, and it worked out well, even though I did decide to crunch the size down drastically since I'm not much of an artist.
For this Ludum Dare, I did interpret the term 'base code' more generously than I have in previous jams, and took the rocket engine code, some pieces of an enemy spawner script, and a tiny music manager script from some of my other projects. While this did cut down the coding time some, it was almost more of a pain trying to get everything to work together than if I had written it all from scratch, so I'll probably refrain from doing this too much in the future.
Audacity and my headset mic were giving me timing issues, and I couldn't get two tracks to sync up even with a click track, so I ended up just recording the different music tracks in single takes. I'll need to get a proper mic and a better DAW next time I do live music.
Anyway, the compo itself was a great time and very enjoyable, but on Tuesday, I came down with a bad cold, and was out for two weeks, so I wasn't able to participate in the play and rate portion of LD46 as much as I'd like, and only barely managed to squeak through with 21 ratings on the last day.
But in the end I made a game in 48 hours, had a lot of fun, and ended up surviving, all thanks to Providence and maybe 30 cups of Mate.
You know LD's over when there's a seven hour gap between blog posts...
It's been an awesome LD, and I'm so happy to have had the chance to join with you all! LD really is my favourite event of the year, and I can't wait for the next one. See yas in October, and best of luck til then! :v:
(Based on data grabbed from the API)
I got 47.9% in theme. Thanks for getting me to the bottom half! :smile:
Hey everyone,
just wanted to let you know that I am extremely satisfied with my Results.
Being in the top 200 in both Fun and Innovation Category feels really awesome.
Also wanted to inform you, that the post-jam version of the game is now available on the google play store.
You can check it via the following link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.brotherbyto.math
I would like to thank everyone who played, commented and rated The Dark Cave. This was my first Ludum Dare and it's been quite the ride!
Here are my results:
Here are the results broken down into percentages:
Overall: 24.93%
Fun: 32%
Innovation: 33.4%
Theme: 63.4%
Graphics: 24.2%
Mood: 2.3%
For my first Ludum Dare, I am very happy to have made the top 30% for most categories, and be within the top 3% for mood. It's a nice feeling!
To my surprise, the game received over 300 ratings making it the 10th most rated game this jam! That's incredible and I can't thank you all enough. I've taken your feedback onboard and I've started a post-jam version of the game.
If you missed my last post, here is a sneak peak at one of the new enemy types you’ll encounter in the post-jam version of my game. The currently unnamed ‘Spiky Ball’ creature telegraphs its attack direction to the player. Once it hears a sound it moves over to that location and sets a new target path, killing whatever creature is in its way. One or two of these can be quite easy to avoid, but things get a lot more complicated and fun when lots are on screen at once.
It’s so nice to be surrounded be such a large group of kind and supportive people who make amazing games! If you would like to follow the post-jam development of my game, or want to share what you're working on post-jam, we should follow each other on Twitter! I can't wait to see what you all make.
I’m Tom, and you can find me on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/DeveloperTom1
Until then, I hope to see you all at the next Ludum Dare!
Thank you to everyone who played our game, and especially to those of you giving feedback. This game jam has been a great experience for us. We learned a lot and weve had a lot of fun playing your games and interacting with you both in the comment secions here and on twitch.
We have been looking through all the feedback weve received in the last few weeks and we decided to make an update to the game, so feel free to check it out. We have also put together a web build and a Mac build including all the changes weve made.
Again, thank you all for playing our game, this wont be my last Ludum Dare for sure!
https://thorgamedev.itch.io/frozen-skies
