every LD I make a stupid splash screen while working on the project template, and this one is no exception! I had a couple of weird ideas but I've decided to settle with this one, problem is that I'm not sure where to go from here:

https://youtu.be/YzqdIbae85g

I was thinking I'd have the other godot logos react to the farter by saying things like "come on man" etc.. or the crown doing the "booo" thing or just something completely random :laughing: but I'm not feeling very creative today, any ideas?

here's the splash screen of last LD for reference:

https://youtu.be/NI11whU5zV8

This LD splash scene for my entry, because why the heck not? I love LD I can release my inner child and be as free as I can it's truly beautiful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISGIFP1Iff0

Another LD baby, it's time to forget about all life's problems for 3 days and just do what I love to do!

Engine: Godot 4.1

Art: Aseprite

Sounds: Audacity, samples from free sources plus my recordings

Music: Fl Studio

wish you all the best!

I don't know it it's just me, but usually there are a few themes that tend to be a center of controversy (Folklore for example) where most of us either strongly want it to win or strongly don't, from all the posts and comments of people talking about those controversial themes and debating them you'd think that one group would overcome the others in votes and bring that theme to the table.

But what we overlook is the other.. I guess less controversial themes, which are too simplistic or don't get enough attention to be the center of the controversies.

What I'm trying to say here, is that those themes that are the center of our attention get picked by a group of people but also get downvoted by others who for example are bothered by how much people talk about them so we end up (in theory) with 50-50 upvote to downvote ratio. while the other themes that don't get the spotlights end up with higher upvotes because a lot of people don't.. I guess hate them enough to downvote so they are more likely to be either upvoted or neutral.

So in an indirect way the themes we talk about the most and give the spotlight to, are harmed by that attention as it creates separation between voters, and increase its chances to be downvoted.

Hope this mess makes sense, sorry I just woke up and you know when you wake up with a busy mind? and you find yourself thinking about all sorts of things on your way to the bathroom lol, welp that's where this all came from. I have no statistics or data to back this up so it's just a theory. but at least for me it feels like almost every LD an unexpected theme end up winning. maybe this is just one factor amongst many other psychological ones that I'm too brain-farty to even begin to understand, but oh well, thank you for listening to my TED talk fellas.

I feel incredibly sad posting this and I know I'll feel even sadder after I wake up tomorrow and feel even more empty. I don't know what happened to me this LD, I always join the event and make something no matter how difficult the theme is or how pressured my time is, I even joined once 2 days before some important final exams like it was no problem. and I sure don't discriminate between themes nor would I ever quit because I didn't like a theme, I don't mind a challenge and I certainly didn't this time.

but.. just like everyone else I came up with a bunch of ideas at the start and I like one about "no space in the brain for your last 2 brain cells", a silly game made out of minigames of your last 2 braincells where you play as one of them trying to beat the other in minigames like sword fight, racing, gunfight etc all with a silly touch to them, it sounded genius in paper, and I really liked the whole thing, but once I got to work I realized that I have, for the first time since I started participating in LD bit more than I can chew..

you see, I usually spend all 3 days none stop (up to 15 hours of work per day) working on my games, it's usually a tedious and stressful process for one person to make everything from coding to design, art, music and sounds, but I always manage to power through and make it just in time. this time however I implemented a bunch of interconnected minigames which were not difficult to code on day 1, but on day 2 which is usually the art/sounds day. I realized that there is no way I can finish everything in time, I had to visit my grandma for half the day which is something I do pretty much every sunday, and have done in other jams, but this time was just different.. when I came back, I realized I have no time to finish the checklist for today, and given that I still have more coding and bug fixing to do I just decided on the hard reality that I have screwed myself from the start, I can't even remove minigames since they are in a sense connected not to mention all the coding work that I've already done.

in the end I'm not sad about quitting, it's ok to make mistakes as long as I learn something, and I totally learned things about scoping and finally got caught after getting away with big scoped games for too long, sure I accept that. what I'm sad about is my friends.. every LD event I like to check on some of my friends where we play each others games and get to hang out a little bit, and also some twitch streamers that I visit from event to event, we usually just greet each other affirming that it's been a while and I get the joy of seeing them firsthand exploring ld games including my game and falling for my funky design lol even finding bugs and exploits that I never knew existed. it's so much freaking fun! and I love it a lot, but I feel like without a game it won't really be the same, I can still hang out with friends and play their games but it feels.. empty.. I don't know it just doesn't feel right. truth be told I haven't had a single real life friend in the past 3 years and I can use all the social stimuli I can get lol, it sounds like the most pathetic excuse to be sad about missing out, but here we are ffs. I feel like shit, maybe it's just sleep deprivation or staged of grief or whatever, I'm going to bed.

To future me: never overscope again, the risks don't outweigh the rewards.

My vote is based on me trying to imagine what kind of games I'll be making for that theme and if their fun for me to develop.

Also Rock Papers Scissors? :cry:

The usual suspects:

-Folklore (one day :cry:)

-Connect

-Sanctuary

-Rock, paper, scissors

-Echoes

-Decay

-Shelter

-Mutation

-Signal

So you've slaughtering themes one after the other, showing no mercy and then after a few clicks fog starts to creep into your brain, seeping through the hills and cracks on it, engulfing every neuron and connection. and then you look at a theme, and it just doesn't register with you, so you keep staring for like 5-10 seconds before it registers. kind of like reading a book and at some point you find yourself reading the same line again and again... should I get checked for early amnesia or something?

I'm joining a team for (practically) the first time so I'm not familiar with how it goes. I imagine only 1 team member should setup the page and it will appear in the "Games" page of all teammates, but can teammates other than the person who setup the page edit it? or is it something only the person who setup the page can do?

Gather around folks for I shall commune with the spirits and intercept the votes as they fly into the sky.

The theme is one neither controversial nor talked about a lot. As folks compete to turn our collective opinion towards or away from certain themes, it is the insignificant and the less talked about themes that shall receive blessings by all sides of the spectrum as always, it is the "I suppose it's fine." themes that slip through while poor Folklore suffers.

The spirits say, our theme will be non-other than Doors :crystal_ball:.

If I'm right I'm right, if I'm not, it's a test from the spirits.

I've never thought about this before for some reason, but for this LD I plan on having an online leaderboard that any player can submit their score and name to, I've found https://silentwolf.com which is a free backend for small Godot games (by one goated dev) and spent some time getting familiar with their API.

Since this is my first time doing this I'd appreciate any tips on what makes an engaging leaderboard, I have some questions like: - Should I keep all entries by each player or only keep one entry and replace it whenever the player gets a higher score? - Should I limit the amount of characters in a player name like old arcade games or allow any length? - Should I implement anti-profanity or just manually delete bad words in the database? - How many scores should I display before older entries are ignored? etc...

After the difficulties I had the last few jams I was anxious about not completing this one. I ended up with a very simple concept and built/polished from there which made things so much smoother, I was 80% done but day 2 and today was spent just having fun and adding little details, I should make simple games more often.

You can try it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/a-final-deed

The fate or the spirit and it's loved ones count on you, yes! You personally, the very you. :point_down:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/a-final-deed

One of the most memorable things about Ludum Dare for me is watching people who stream on Twitch play my game and mess around with it while I panic everytime they discover a bug or get stuck :smile:. It's so much fun and I made some awesome friends this way. I remember there was an issue at some point that stopped Ludum Dare from displaying a list of streamers like it used to do. But how can I find them now? is there a certain tag or something to look for? I'm not very familiar with Twitch.

Edit: This is the link that LD used to direct to https://www.twitch.tv/directory/all/tags/LudumDare Thanks @wendel-scardua

I'm doing a jam marathon today, Share your game in a comment and I'll give it a try at some point today!

I'd be nice if there is a web build. Also you don't have to but it would make me happy if you can play my game as well.

Happy Ludum Dare everyone :heart:

Edit: thank you for submitting your games, there are enough games to keep me occupied for a while so I'll stop adding new games to the queue.

If your game is still in the Danger Zone AKA hasn't reached the 20 votes required to get a rating I can lend a hand.

Ideally playing people's games should get you recommended to other players who will play your game but I understand that not everyone can afford the time (and the motivation sometimes) to do so.

It would be nice if you can also play games of other people in the comments or in the danger category I linked.

I've probably played over 40 games so far from the funny to the depressing to the being-on-drugs simulator. I gotta say this jam has some of the most unique ideas I've seen as far as I can remember previous jams.

My favorite game so far is this one: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/mr-moneys-phenomenally-soggy-water-removal-romp

This silly game about draining a freaking lake a little at a time was one of the most addictive games I've ever played in a game jam, I found myself playing for nearly 2 hours and it never got stale, it itches that primal Monke itch very well. Have you ever just wanted to dig a hole at the beach for no reason at all? That's similar to how this game feels and I'm all about that :smile:

I would like to know about your favorite entries and perhaps try them in a marathon of fun games.