Heya, just posting to say that I’m in. Or rather, we’re in. This will be my first entry, so I’m joining to do The Jam with a friend of mine. We’re relatively knew to game development (we have about a year and two completed games under our belts) and we changed tools in the last six months from Game Maker Studio to Stencyl. I do the art with a variety of tools, but my most reliable is an old, trusty copy of Photo Impact. Sure, we might not be ‘traditional,’ but we’re ambitious as all get out and can’t wait to get started. I’m going to try and livestream a good portion of the development process so that should be fun for all.

Team:

• Me (Budaniel)
• Floata

Tools:

• Stencyl (development)
• Photo Impact (most of the art)
• Bfxr (sound effects)
• Tile Studio (supplemental art)
• LMMS (music)
• Audacity (sound editing)

With less than a day left before judging ends, I figured I’d share the timelapse recap I made of the livestream of my friend and I making Melody’s Long Ladder Home using Stencyl. It’s just the entire 12-plus hour livestream (done over three days), condensed into less than 23 minutes.

If you still want to try our game, you can try it here.

Tags: jam, LD30, postmortem, stencyl, timelapse

My team and I are back for our third Ludum Dare. Here is a look inside of our toolbox.

• Engine
  • Stencyl
• Visuals
  • Photo Impact
  • Tile Studio
  • Sculptris
  • Manga Studio
  • Wacom Tablet
• Audio
  • LMMS
  • Audacity
• Livestream
  • Twitch
  • OBS
  • Yeti Blue Mic

We will, as with our past entries, live stream our progress on my Twitch channel, so follow and watch to be entertained and potentially educated in some way – especially if you have an interest in Stencyl.

We have added a new WebGL version of Needle in a Neighborhood here. It’s not our recommended version (that would be the Windows one) but it works well enough. If you play it, please remember to give it a score and a comment on our Ludum Dare page! Thanks!

I'm working as part of AAGH Games again, and this Ludum Dare has gone well so far in one sense, and not so great in another.

On the good side, our game is coming along OK. We have rabbits, and freezer doors, and some other stuff. We like where it is right now.

On the other side, we fought that dumb freezer door for way, way too long, the rabbit has a hole in it (that shouldn't be there) and our live streams keep getting derailed by a combination of random banter between my friend (and co-developer) and I, unforeseen distractions, and poop jokes. Oh so many poop jokes.

All in all, I think we're in decent-to-good shape, but we'll be holding off streaming again until tomorrow. Hopefully our next live stream won't be as... crappy as the last few.

EDIT: I'll end with a picture of the rabbit during its design.

Things are rather slow going for us right now, but with all of the basic concepts in place, it's down to finishing the actual gameplay. We don't have a name yet, but the goal of our protagonist is to make the world around him smaller.

Here's a preview of the star of our game waiting for the world around him to come into fruition.

Our largest issue at the moment is that our main mechanic - which we had working yesterday - has broken on us, which is not something you want to be saying almost 36 hours into a 72 hour challenge.

With a little under 13 hours to go, our game still doesn't have a name, and it still has work that needs done, but here are a few pics of our progress thus far.

With any luck, we'll have this done by the end of the jam.

Our game is almost completed. Graphics are done, gameplay features all work, we have a narrative finally, and all we're waiting on is to finish the audio. We can't let the bunny down now!!

Play Breakout Bunny

We did it! We got our game, Breakout Bunny, done yesterday and submitted before the server strain that kicked in around 8 PM, and we're pretty happy with it. In Breakout Bunny, you play as a rabbit in a small cage awaiting feeding time for your favorite snack, Growth Pellets. Your owner, though, has a habit of over-feeding you (despite being warned not to) and soon enough you've outgrown your home, at which point the game proper begins.

Breakout Bunny is a sidescrolling platformer at heart, but with mild some adventure game elements. It's also really short due to the time constraints of Ludum Dare. We'd like to continue this character's adventure someday but that's a conversation for another time and place.

We'd love it if you'd give Breakout Bunny a try and let us know what you think. It's a short, fun, light-hearted game and can be played via keyboard or with a controller, so hopefully everyone can enjoy it.

Yes! It's time to start scoring and rating games and I'm looking forward to a good day of playing everyone's stuff in the morning. I'm always one to rate games as Ludum Dare entries first, games second. I tend to opt for a more constructive approach in my ratings here than I do when reviewing mainsteam games because, to me, this is as much about learning and helping each other improve as anything else. To each his/her own, though - everybody's got their own style.

As for me, I've got some-bunny who'd love some ratings. Try my team's game, Breakout Bunny and see if you can help a rapidly growing rabbit escape his house. We've had some people get badly stuck in the 2nd room, so let me know if this is a problem and if enough people get stuck I'll put a short walk-through for that part on the game page.

Good luck to everyone!

I'm curious is there's a way to know how many ratings we've received on our game, Breakout Bunny. We only have two comments so far, but between our game's downloads and playtime (via Unity Analytics) it seems like we probably have more ratings than that. My friend (and co-developer) and I have been rating games ourselves, and once in a while we play a game that doesn't compel us to leave a comment (usually one that's technically sound, but not remarkable in any particular way).

With that in mind, is there a way to know if we have a decent number of ratings without counting comments? I remember the old site had a counter for your game's total ratings (as well as your 'coolness') on the front page, but there doesn't seem to be such a feature here.

Heya, everyone! The new metrics are awesome, but they also let me know that my team is a good bit short on ratings for our game, Breakout Bunny.

In that light, I'm making a late push/plea here for ratings. I'm also rating a heap of games tonight, too, so if you're also a bit short, leave your game here and I'll give it a shot. Thanks, and good luck to everyone!

With this being our 10th Ludum Dare - and 3rd anniversary of the first one we entered - we're excited for another fun, creative weekend. As usual, I'll be on visuals and programming and @floata-1 will handle some of the creative design and the audio.

We'll be working with our normal tools - Unity, Blender, Photo Impact X3, Clip Studio, Audacity and Anvil Studio. We will also be live streaming our progress (and typical non-stop banter) on our Twitch channel.

Here's to another good Ludum Dare!

The game we - AAGH Games - are making is coming along fine, since we're going with simpler goals than we usually do. Rather than an ambitious, creative game we're making something basic, fun and silly. As a result, we're having a blast. Our livestreams have been pretty fun, as well. We seem to have the most fun when thing's aren't going as we had hoped. Here's a quick clip of a few things that didn't go the ways we expected, and the fun we had with it. From spinning poles to barrel rolls and even open holes, we like to have fun with Ludum Dare (and our livestreams in general).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5tjb06GqBU&feature=youtu.be

Play Shoulda, Coulda but Didn't

Our game is done! We took damn near every second of our available time to do so - finding issues 5 minutes before submission time is never good - but now you can help two crappy drivers - Will (the co-developer) and I - get to the store in their cheap, rickety electric car.

You can pick which of us is driving, and our in-car banter changes depending on who's behind the wheel. You drive through a valley full of hills, mountain, palm trees, a frozen lake and even a volcano on your way to Aaghshop, ramming power poles for electricity and grabbing up repair kits when the car gets too banged up.

The road is pretty straight forward, and careful, steady drivers can make it to the end almost without any extra electricity at all. However, there is a large amount of off-road space, and aside from the main mountain ridge on the far perimeter, you're free to explore it all, finding hidden power-ups and more. Of course, the car isn't made for much off-roading, and you're going to burn through more electricity exploring, so you have to be careful not to get stuck, wrecked or out of power before reaching the store.

It's a fairly short game, but we'd recommend playing it twice - once with each driver - just for the dialog. As a side note, the game's name is Shoulda, Coulda but Didn't, but I was so tired last night when we finally exported and uploaded it that I called it Coulda, Shoulda but Didn't when I first uploaded it to Itch, when I submitted it here, and when I named the the game itself in Unity before export - and I didn't notice any of that until this morning. Sleep is your friend, people!

Heya everyone! We'll be live on Twitch for at least the next hour or two rating your games, so please feel free to stop on by, say hi, and let us know if you'd like us to take a look at your game.

If you're just in a game-rating mood yourself, check out our game, Shoulda, Coulda but Didn't. You can help Will and I drive to the Aaghshop in a run-down electric car along a windy road with a number of off-road distractions.

Heya all, we're live on Twitch.tv, rating games and having fun. Stop by and say hi!

I finally got the timelapse of our livestream from making Shoulda, Coulda but Didn't completed and uploaded, and I'm happy to now share it with all of you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXxRiVqf8bo

The video covers our entire livestream - foibles and all - so you'll see us writing the dialog for the game's popular voice overs, our ongoing struggles with car control, me developing the volcano that is almost never visible, the arrival of the Franken-Pizza, our way-too-late bug testing, and the time that I forgot my screen was the one we were currently showing, so I started absentmindedly doodling random stuff while Will (@floata-1) told a very long and somewhat confusing story.

For everyone who has rated and commented on our game already, thank you! If you're still interested in trying it, we would really appreciate it and you can do so right here.

My team may miss our first Ludum Dare since our first (LD30) due to other game development responsibilities, but if we can get free it'd be great to enter again. I was going through the theme slaughter and came across what may be my new favorite theme: "worst game ever." There's something about the inherent possibilities that come to mind with that theme that gets me fired up. The potential for humor, frustration, and sheer WTF-moments while rating dozens of "worst game ever" entries also makes me nervously smile. However, the number of intentionally (or unintentionally) broken, unplayable entries ("it fits the theme!") does temper my enthusiasm somewhat.

In the end, I hope that theme it doesn't make it any further than it already has, because in reality it would undoubtedly be a lot less entertaining and more frustrating than it is in my head. Some fantasies are better off left to the imagination.

Heya, everyone; I'm Budaniel on behalf of AAGH Games, and we're definitely in for Ludum Dare 41. We had to skip LD40 while working on our new game (which we still don't have ready to reveal yet, but dammit, that's going to happen sometime soon, I swear), but we're taking the time off to partake in one of our favorite events.

As per usual, I'll be heading up the programming and graphics while @floata-1 manages the audio and level design. We'll also be streaming our development on our Twitch channel.

Here's to another fun, entertaining, and educational Ludum Dare!