Thanks everyone for playing my game ! I'm really glad I'v reached 20 votes.

If you haven't played it, I'd be happy that you check it ! You can play it online here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/alone-1

This is my second LD and I've got to say the thing that LD teaches you the most is time management. In my first LD I didn't spend enough time on tutorial so I wanted to change that with this game, but ironically the tutorials in this game lack vital parts of information like building effects making them no as useful as I hoped they would be, leading me to the main problem. I didn’t spend enough time to game test, many easy to fix issues would be fixed if I only spend enough time on game testing. So this is my main takeaway for next LD, definitely spend at least 3 hours before getting to shipping on just game testing.

But it was not all bad. I am proud of how the game looks, i had a great time recording sounds, I really like the idea. Also i leard how to use (somewhat) sculpting tool in blender.

But there are lots of simple improvement/changes, lost of them aren't in just because of the lack of testing: Highlight the path that enemies take ( that i feel is the worst problem with the game, there is just really hard to see arrow that sometimes it can be offscreen and not visible at all, this also breaks the decision making process for placing towers which should be the main enjoyment points). Make all crystals bigger. Show health bar even when not zoomed out. Add panning when zoomed out and adjustable zoom with scroll wheel. Add death animation to enemies and make them more visible.

There are some interesting techniques i tried with this game. I used texture for the map generation, then in engine i extracted a RGB value of each cube and used it as basic types of land(path, grass, rocks),
Then I added lerp for each color to give the correct material layer for each type (something similar is usually done for landscapes, except using vertex color instead of texture ). This also then gives my ability to use this data for path finding of enemies which is recursive function that precalculates possible paths until it hits the center and throws all other branches away.

All and all i’m glad i made it even though its flawed :gem:.
you can try it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/carillon

I'm looking for some more last-minute ratings and comments. The game is playable in a browser!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/blackout

Just a friendly reminder that: - there are 2 days left till the end of Ludum Dare - according to the latest stats, over 40% of games haven't yet reached the 20 ratings mark - there is this lifesaving search feature called "Danger" in the games browser, which shows the games below 20 ratings, starting from these that are the least votes away from crossing the threshold

So if you aren't yet jammed out, please save these souls and play and rate these. I'm sure they'd appreciate it. (there are some enjoyable games below the 20 ratings mark, too)

Thank your for playing and ranking my game! I hope everyone enjoyed it, all the games I played were great, so good luck with all your games too!

So I've decided to spend few more hours on my entry and I've added save and load (which makes getting most of the achievements rather easy).

And now I have to decide if I'll use it as a prototype for a bigger game or if should pick something else from my pile of ideas and older prototypes :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/new-start-at-n-o-t-h-i-n-g-ltd

I've made a kinda puzzly game about making a game for a gamejam inspired by the Cultist Simulator videogame.

I'd love to know what do you think of the game and see if someone can get a 10 out of 10 game. Leave a screencap in the comments if you did!

You can try the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/jam-cultist-simulator

This is it! Tech Valley Game Space will be live-streaming ourselves playing Ludum Dare games in just 20 minutes (October 27th, 3 - 6 PM EST) on twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace and youtube.com/c/techvalleygamespace. This is the last stream we'll be running before the end of the LDJAM judging period.

To have your game in consideration for playing and judging, you can sign up on this form: forms.gle/kbUdacxVfnVaGrq17. As the form states, we do enforce a Code of Conduct in our live-streams. As such, we do reserve the right to cancel streaming and rating a game for any reason.

If you missed the last few streams, they're available below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqqRoOOl-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkzhmrjM28

Finally, come check out the games created from our real-world meeting. The first two in particular needs rescuing!

Primodial

Primordial is an interactive tale of creation in the Greek cosmology.

This is the very first game I have ever built alone! This is an interactive tale more than it is a game, but I had such a great time building Primordial that I have definite plans to continue developing it. I hope you enjoy this little game I’ve built and that you’ll follow me on Itch.io for further developments!

Eleven Days

The Calendar Act of 1751 declared that eleven days in the following year would not exist.

Kawhatzithon

In Kawhatzithon, you start with absolutely nothing. So clearly you should run around collecting things you don’t have.

And of course our very own...

Uballto

Welcome to Uballto, a Linux distribution for…distributing balls. That’s right, in this desktop environment, dialog windows are used to guide balls to their target flags. Do you have the technical wits to master this distro?

Made by one individual (and a lot of royalty-free assets).

Gonna try an remedy that! rating a whole bunch of games today and tomorrow hoping to get my game rated, sorry it took so long!

you can find the submission here! >> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/diebarians

My game Bob the Brawler is now popular on Newgrounds! In addition to that, we've finally hit 100 ratings!

Thanks everyone! :smile:

"Thank You!" very much to everyone, who have played, rated, and gave the valuable comments on our game! And a "Warm Welcome" to everyone else for playtesting! We are really loking forward for your feedback on your gaming experience, and we would be glad to hear your suggestions for future game improvments.

Game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/kolendor

Hi folks!

I juat had time to start playing your games this weekend but I think that there is not mamy other people here anymore... :(

So I only have about 8 ratings. Please, don't feel obligated to help me, but if you do,feel free to be honest in your feedback, I'll not be mad. Thank you! :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/the-chronicles-of-stenio

The Kidnapping needs your ratings, we're just a few short of the 20 needed and would like to thank everyone for playing!

If you haven't, please check out our short game. Thanks!

You control Jason in this very short horror-adventure. He wakes up in a basement, not being able to remember what happened to him and how he got there. Now, he needs to get out of there. Can he make it out?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/the-kidnapping

The Kidnapping needs your ratings, we're just a few short of the 20 needed and would like to thank everyone for playing!

If you haven't, please check out our short game. Thanks!

You control Jason in this very short horror-adventure. He wakes up in a basement, not being able to remember what happened to him and how he got there. Now, he needs to get out of there. Can he make it out?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/the-kidnapping

My game reached that magical milestone, 50 votes and 35 comments, which is pretty awesome!

I did my duty and rated over 60 games.

Now it's time to rate some more games in the DANGER zone.

It would really suck if these guys miss the 20 ratings needed by 1 or 2 lets get as many rated as we can..

Game Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/small-mouse-big-shoes

i have learned nothing

please play our game

Hi Everyone! We’d like to share a bit of the managing process developing our Ludum Dare submission; バクラウ Bloodless. Check out the game on the link below;

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/bloodless

PRE-GAMEJAM | Avengers assemble

Our team consists of 8 people from different backgrounds, not everyone knew each other before jam but the vast majority had already worked together on gamejam projects or game companies in our region. This number of participants in a jam is a big risk, as it takes a while to get all areas in line with the game's vision, but if everyone is communicative and confident in the team the chance of a good and cohesive game is high.

Our first definition of what we would do at LD45 came from my will to work again with my friend Daniel Clarc, who lives over 2,000km away from the rest of the team. Clarc is an amazing pixel artist and animator, so I gave the idea to my colleagues; "What if we made a pixel art game for LD45?".

Our second definition is a principle of work and existence; that everyone on the team should feel comfortable throughout the process to come up with their ideas, disagree without fear and build the game and process together with the team. We have been through a lot of problems regarding intolerant people or individualists in gamejams, so we needed to make sure everyone was aware of how our team usually works.

Top: Tonho, Caio, Clarc and Danilo. Bottom: Delio, Diego, Filipe and Renato.

Despite the clear division of areas between our team; Tonho and Délio are programmers, Clarc and Diego are game-artists, Filipe is a sound designer, Renato and Caio are game designers and I (Danilo) am a designer and producer. You can't be sure how each will contribute during the jam, because the multidisciplinarity of our areas makes us acquire diverse skills throughout our lives as game developers.

PRE-GAMEJAM | Setting things up

A few weeks before LD45 we created a Discord server to start talking about jam. It was great to unite the team and gain confidence before the jam. Discord is a team communication tool that lets you categorize channel conversations and make audio calls, which was great for our team because we didn't have all members in the same place.

Another great thing to do before jam starts is to install the tools that will be used to produce the game; define the version of Unity that will be used (or another gameengine), create a repository and a shared folder in Google Drive. That way we save some time from not having to do it all during jam.

Finally, we have defined a few project milestones by setting the deadlines that each project stage should be completed. This helps us know how late we are and how much time we can invest with each step of the process.

Ideation (first 15 hours) - In the last jam we spent a lot of time brainstorming the game, so this time we made it clear that this step could not exceed the first 15 hours of jam (we started 4 hours late and slept in the middle of this process).

Design, sketches, architecture and documentation (approximately 6 hours) - After defining which concept we will work on is the time to talk deeply about the experience we want to give the player. This includes sketches, definitions of mechanics, art style, narrative, etc.

Backlog creation and task organization (invest approximately 2 hours) - Listing, description and prioritization of all features discussed.

Production - Cyclical process that lasts the entire jam, it is difficult to estimate time, but it is good to have control of when to generate new versions of the game.

Game page setup (not to do in the last hours). - Although this is something easy to do we end up always leaving it for the last minute, so this time we put it as a milestone just to not forget to leave some time for it.

We started jamming about 4 hours late as some of us were attending a gamedesign roundtable to help our local developer community. Here in Recife-PE (Brazil) we have a very strong community and thanks to it we can grow as professionals. We do not see as 4 hours lost, but as 4 hours invested! Maybe next Ludum Dare we can make more people in our city participate with other teams.

JAM | Ideation

After a full day of work (developing mobile games) and organizing a gamedev event for the community (game design roundtable) finally our team got together late in the evening to start LUDUM DARE 45. As it was too late and we wanted to sleep well on the first day we started the ideation process knowing that it would not be finished until the next day.

Our idea generation dynamics are simple, we created a spreadsheet in Google Drive and started listing ideas. With each new insertion in the spreadsheet we try to talk about it to give it more strength and a multidisciplinary look at it. As we found the theme of the LD45 quite difficult (start with nothing), since almost every game you start with nothing to get a sense of progress through the experience, we were not satisfied with much of our ideas. Some people went to sleep, but part of the team spent about 4 hours talking about ideas until we realized we were tired enough to continue productively. A description of the idea chosen was already among those listed that night.

On Saturday morning with the full team we started voting to choose the idea that would become our game. Each team member distributed 3 votes in the ideas sheet, which in total had about 22 insights where 10 were more concrete ideas and the rest were more abstract. The most voted idea became the Bloodless game over the weekend, the only difference between the final game and the concept being that it consisted of 2 separate mechanics; dash (to deflect) and block (to disarm opponents).

With the definition of the idea that we were going to work, we made sure that the whole team was comfortable working on it and we went ahead with the production!

JAM | Concepts

This step was mostly discussions about what the game would be; what are the main mechanics, who is the character, what’s the backstory, in which period the game takes place, what’s the artstyle, how would we do the animations, how the jam’s theme fits… That’s a lot of questions at the same time and all of them directly impact the work in every area, so this is the step where the team must align. We were 7 team members at Tonho and Caio’s (wonderful roommates who allowed us to use their home as our HQ) and Clarc was always online at the discord voice chat, so all of us were always participating in the discussions about the direction the game would take.

Some of the first things our team agreed on were about the game’s art; We would use an art style that represents 2-bits; using mainly black and white, but highlighting some elements in red. We also decided that, though the character can move freely, we would only animate them on the horizontal axis and flip it. With these things defined, Diego and Clarc started making the first sketches of the game. They made a blog post on our art and animation process (links on the bottom of this post).

With the visual style taking place, our sound designer Filipe was defining the mood of the game along with the team; deciding the setting of the game and the sensations we would like to give the player… with those things decided and with the first sketches of the game he was ready to begin gathering sound references for the music. By the way, Filipe wrote a blog post talking about his process (links on the bottom of this post).

While we all discussed some elements of the game to plan the production, Tonho and Délio were discussing and arranging the basic code structure of the project and selecting some systems to be used during the process.

We spent half a day discussing what the narrative and main mechanics of the game would be like; what would be the behavior of the enemies, how to diversify them... It seems to be a long time wasted on one simple thing, but when it comes to a large team of 8 people from different areas it is important that everyone is on the same page before starting to develop game content. Once anything was decided, it was registered in a spreadsheet, that in the end became some sort of Game Design Document.

JAM | Development & Putting things together

The entire conception process lasted about 8 hours, with a little rest during that time. It is not possible to separate the conception stage from the development stage during jam because of course the production of some contents starts along the concepts. During this step we have raised enough content to have the scope of the game is described and organized through tasks of all development areas in our production management tool; Trello.

Even though we have an overview of everything we would like to do we always maintain a dynamic scope that fits in with what we were able to integrate in time, this allowed us to always have versions of the game that could be published, even though it was not complete when it came to the initial scope. For that we made a document with all the features of the game and in which version (build) we plan to integrate them.

The production goes into a more self-contained cycle, where each team member knows what they have to do and how much time they can take in each activity. As the project progressed we made builds to feel the controls of the game, see how it looked, balance the mechanics… Just as the whole development process this step was very iterative, with each addition made in the game we validate with the team and made decisions together that guided each member's next steps.

Renato and me (Danilo) designed some room layouts with positioning of different sizes and props. We have also planned spawn points for use in enemy waves. We tried to synthesize the design process through a blog post of level design very well summarized (links on the bottom of this post).

Tonho and Délio were able to use some libraries that helped us a lot during this stage. Some modules also needed to be built from scratch during Jam's time. They also made a really cool Reusable Code Blog Post! Very worth checking out (links on the bottom of this post).

Caio did a great job of staying ahead of the game's narrative and overall experience, thinking about the protagonist's backstory, the game's completion… He was also responsible for leading our process of building the game's LOGO, which was handled by our 3 designers until it reaches its final form. During this process we took the opportunity to set some images and text for the game page.

The entire process after concept definitions until the completion of our development during jam lasted about 30 hours, with a few hours of sleep in between.

JAM | The result

In total we used about 54 hours of jam to close our game, from ideation to build publication on the Ludum page. Within those 54 hours we also stop for sleep (less than we should), feed on every meal of the day (sometimes a little late) and have fun. We played video games, talked about nonsense stuff, filmed and took pictures of the process... For me the most important of the jam is to enjoy the whole process TOGETHER.

The game came out with approximately 85% of what we had originally planned. We thought of having introductory cutscenes and secondary mechanics that would change the tone of the game and make the protagonist collect a sword during gameplay (which would help us highlight the theme of starting out with nothing and collecting a weapon throughout the gameplay). But we ended up giving our last effort to polish the version we had at that time, better a smaller polished version than a larger version with problems.

Unfortunately we could not use the remaining 18 hours as we urgently needed to get some sleep to go to our regular jobs. But as we were able to have a version with a start, a good progression in the middle and a conclusion, we feel that our project was well done and had a closed experience. We allow ourselves to take off Monday to rest our minds and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment.

POST-JAM | Only love <3

After the publishing of the game we stayed in touch via discord. We know that many talented people participated in this jam and we were eager to see what they've done, so we started playing some of their games, then we created a channel in our discord server to share, talk about and rate our favorite games.

Fortunately, the comments started pouring in our game page. Each comment made us really happy (seriously, thanks guys <3) and a lot of them provided valuable feedback, so within the next weekend we gathered again and discussed some of the feedback to start tweaking the game. We invested 2 hours to fix some bugs that were crashing players, tweaking the character control parameters and updating our web build on itch.io. You can check the full adjustments in our changelog in the description of the Ludum Dare game page.

Our production process was so enriching for our team that over the post-jam weeks we organized to describe each area's process so we could share it with the community. I think this time spent writing about the process is too enriching to remember and reflect on what went right and what went wrong. Check out other blog posts about our processes;

BLOG POSTS - Level Design Process - Sound Design Process - Reusable Code - Art Process

Finally, I would like to thank everyone who played, rated our game and left us feedback or support messages. Because of you Bloodless is now in fifth place between jam and compo submissions and first in the jam category when it comes to the amount of votes. This is amazing for the team and we owe it to all of you! THANK YOU, we ended this jam as much more mature game developers. If you need help, if you want any tips, understand more about our processes, chat, feedback on your personal (or jams) projects, feel free to talk to us. (My email is danilocesareu@gmail.com)

And that´s the end (for now!). Thanks from the バクラウ Bloodless Team!

I've made ANTiVIRuS for Linux.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/antivirus

So here is what we were waiting for! The update is here! In this update, i have added a new 3rd map and the hitboxes are now a little bit smaller than before! (You can play my game in you browser!)

If you haven’t played our game yet, try it out now! - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/prison-escape

(Play my game in your browser!)