OJ and a mixed cereal. One cereal has a lot of protein and fiber. The other has a lot of B6, B12, and iron.

My wife suggested the idea of “Evolving Doors”, which I think is brilliant because (1) it suggests a game play mechanic of choosing to go through doors to evolve and (2) it makes for an excellent play on words.

Tags: foodphoto

So I finally have a scrolling background:

It’s that 1600×600 image from my previous post, seamlessly scrolling.

Next up: putting interesting things on it.

Before I went to bed, I started working on getting a skeleton project up and running.

I know. I know. It’s supposed to be one of my pre-compo checklist items: “Is your build environment working? I’m using CMake, and I should probably prepare an LD24 project beforehand so I’m not wasting time trying to get the build scripts to work when I could have a buildable project with a blank window from the start.”

Well, I didn’t. So I spent the first few hours getting a window up. Basically, I took existing scaffolding code (a basic Game class, Command/Event interfaces, stuff like that) and slapped it together as minimally as possible until it could build successfully and leave me with a window that shows a title screen and can exit properly.

The title is…evolving.

But the actual game design? Still only ideas right now.

I figured that a lot of people might try to make a Spore clone. I’ve seen quite a few screenshots with little primordial oozes as playable characters, and presumably you gain abilities, appendages, and interact with other units that might be more or less evolved than you. While I’m excited to play some of these games, I’m not sure Yet-Another-Variation would be interesting to work on.

I like the idea of an evolving landscape. A tile-based world that starts out with only one kind of tile with certain attributes, but as you explore it, you come across evolved tiles which might have new attributes or changes to existing ones that might impact movement, health, sight, sound, etc. And if I do it right, no two play sessions will be the same.

In terms of engineering, experimenting with neural networks might be fun. Maybe let the player pick a trait, and then have the system go through a few iterations to find out how healthy it is compared to others. On the other hand, that sounds like a lot of uncertainty and an unfinished compo entry.

Anyway, I’ll think about it some more over breakfast.

The first lunch of the compo:

That’s a peanut butter, banana, and raisin sandwich. It also has some cinnamon sprinkled inside. And some carrots and broccoli on the side.

As for the project, here’s what I’m planning:

– get the player’s character in the game
– make it controllable
– add obstacles (most likely boulders)
– make collisions between the player and obstacles deadly
– add an enemy
– create a wave of enemies
– create a way to modify the wave of enemies so each enemy evolves in some way

That last bit hopefully doesn’t become too ambitious. There’s a lot that could be decided here. For instance, maybe the attributes of every enemy that makes it past the player or causes the player damage more heavily inspire the evolution of later waves.

But besides that, I should probably figure out exactly the kinds of things that can be evolved. Here’s where I worry about how limited the evolutionary changes can be. There’s only so much procedural work I can leverage. There’s still the decisions I have to make for what that procedural

For instance, enemy health can increase as new waves arrive. What about enemy armor? Should I include it, or is it just the equivalent of more health? Weapons could get stronger and faster, but what about allowing angles? Homing missiles? Spray guns vs lasers vs explosives?

If I decide to include explosives, then the radius could be one of the attributes that changes, but the decision to allow explosives in the first place means that the potential for evolutionary changes is limited by what I can implement on my own, and the procedural stuff is less interesting than merely tweaking some values.

But I’ll worry about it all once I get something playable.

I now have a tank capable of moving up and down and firing bullets.

That footage is based on the random movement I programmed in. It’s not player-controlled yet, but at least I can leave it up to take a break and be sure that the timelapse is a lot more interesting.

My current plan:
- get the player’s character in the game
- make it controllable
- add obstacles (most likely boulders)
- make collisions between the player and obstacles deadly
- add an enemy
- create a wave of enemies
- create a way to modify the wave of enemies so each enemy evolves in some way

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2012 at 12:31 pm and is filed under LD #24. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

My back started to hurt, so I tried resting. I even retired to the bedroom, but I brought a notebook and pen with me.

Pro-tip: pens stop working if you are writing on a notebook you’re holding out above you as you lie in bed.

Anyway, I realized that it was getting late, so I had a quick dinner of leftover mostaccioli:

I have a couple of pages of notes, and I’m aware that I could easily take this “simple” game and evolve it into a monster.

But those notes are details. I’m sticking with my plan, and I still need to make the tank controllable by the player before doing anything else.

Tags: foodphoto

The player can control the tank, including firing bullets. I’ve also added boulders.

They are randomly placed in the environment, and when the player passes them, they are removed from the game. If there are no boulders left, more are generated.

Collision between the player and a boulder is deadly, as demonstrated by the randomly controlled tank in this video:

I had some difficulty with handling bullet collisions with the boulders. Right now, they shoot right through them. I want them to disappear. Boulders are not affected by bullets. I have plans for boulders interacting with enemies and explosives, though. If an enemy hits a boulder, I think it would make for an interesting mechanic if the boulder starts to move towards the player. Explosives should be the only thing that destroys boulders.

My current plan:
– get the player’s character in the game
– make it controllable
– add obstacles (most likely boulders)
– make collisions between the player and obstacles deadly
– make collisions between bullets and boulders result in bullets disappearing
– add an enemy
– create a wave of enemies
– create a way to modify the wave of enemies so each enemy evolves in some way

One thing I was hoping to use was my component system, but so far I’ve represented bullets and boulders as positions, along with constants representing their collision radius. It’s working well enough.

Once I get bullets working right (I’ll need that collision detection working for the enemies anyway), I can finally start working on the first enemy so I can get around to doing some evolving.

I woke up with a sore back. I was lying down on the floor with my legs up on the ottoman since that’s supposed to help your muscles relax if you do it for about 30 minutes. Then I went back to bed, and I didn’t wake up for a few hours. Then it was time to go to church with my wife, and we had lunch:

That’s a Planet Veggie from Planet Sub. It has provolone, cheddar, fresh red peppers, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, and a tangy olive spread. I washed it down with lemonade.

I wish I can say I’ve made progress, but sitting at the computer has been incredibly uncomfortable. But lying on the floor seemed to have helped, so I’ll be back at this project today.

A reminder of what I’m doing:
- get the player’s character in the game
- make it controllable
- add obstacles (most likely boulders)
- make collisions between the player and obstacles deadly
- make collisions between bullets and boulders result in bullets disappearing
- add an enemy
- create a wave of enemies
- create a way to modify the wave of enemies so each enemy evolves in some way

There’s a little over 6 hours left in the compo. I can do this.

Tags: foodphoto

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2012 at 11:53 am and is filed under LD #24. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I managed to get a lot accomplished in a couple of hours.

- get the player’s character in the game
- make it controllable
- add obstacles (most likely boulders)
- make collisions between the player and obstacles deadly
- make collisions between bullets and boulders result in bullets disappearing
- add an enemy
- make collisions between bullets and enemies result in damaged enemies
- make collisions between player and enemies result in killed player
– create a wave of enemies
– create a way to modify the wave of enemies so each enemy evolves in some way

Right now, you can shoot enemies as they approach, and when they die, they become harmless and visibly destroyed. If you crash into an enemy that is still alive, you both die.

Enemies are mindless right now. They simply move forward in a straight line to the left. While I have a bunch of random enemies that looks like a wave, I don’t really have waves as a concept in the game. And with less than four hours left, I don’t think I’ll be adding lots of visibly different enemies and power-ups. We’ll see.

Oh, and my wife was nice enough to bring me something to snack on.

Got any gwapes?

Tags: foodphoto

48 hours of game development has been condensed into a little over a minute and a half of video.

It looks as if a lot of the creating parts happened in small bursts of a few seconds, done around IRC and eating. B-)

Tags: timelapse

The theme has been announced, and it’s An Unconventional Weapon.

I think I’ll start by exploring that theme quite a bit, and I’ll get back to you about what I’ll do. I’ll think about this theme over a quick dinner.

My goal will be to have something playable, or at least controllable, before the first 12 hours are up.

Since I’m not using something like Unity or Unreal Engine, I won’t be able to whip something up in mere moments, but I know I’ll be able to leverage some of my own code as I have in the past. Each Ludum Dare gave me something new to make use of.

My strategy for this Ludum Dare is to doodle a lot whenever I’m not programming. I’m not very good with digital art programs, but I can put pencil to paper decently enough, and I can just digitize it after the fact.

Cross-posted at my website: https://www.gbgames.com/2022/04/01/ld50-the-theme-is-delay-the-inevitable-ldjam/

The Ludum Dare compo has started, and the theme has been announced.

I am trying to remember if "Delay the Inevitable" was a theme I submitted, but I can't seem to determine if that information is available.

My plan is to spend the first hour or so coming up with ideas. During Ludum Dare, there is usually an obvious idea that many people might try to pursue, so digging a little bit deeper should result in something more unique.

I just finished watching West Side Story (2021), so the inevitable violence and death that prevents two lovers from being together is top of mind.

Death is inevitable for all of us, and so delaying death might be one of the obvious ideas, but even so it seems like it could be a rich vein.

Taxes are also inevitable, but meh.

And in some areas people might argue that construction is inevitable. A game about constantly fixing roads? So are you delaying the construction, or is the construction delaying the entropy?

"Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" That line from Firefly is classic, and perhaps a game could be built around the idea of joining forces with an enemy that you know is going to target you once your common foe has been defeated or problem has been solved.

Climate change is feeling inevitable. Perhaps a game about being a representative of a corporation trying to convince people that climate change is a personal responsibility despite that corporation being directly responsible for most of the greenhouse gases.

The expansion of the universe seems unending and ultimately results in heat death. I remember learning that Newton's math, pre-relativity, didn't actually work, as it predicted that the planets would spin out of orbit. Or was it Kepler? Either way, he suggested that it was God's hand that was keeping everything in place. So perhaps a game about keeping celestial bodies in place by manually (and frantically) putting them back when they go where they aren't supposed to. Maybe you start with the Earth-Moon system, then branch out into the solar system, then into the galaxy, etc. Might be a math/physics heavy project. But maybe it will be more enjoyable if the physics was a hand-rolled hack job anyway.

Looking at the time, I see almost an hour has passed. Eep! I want to think a bit more before deciding.

Cross-posted at my website: https://www.gbgames.com/2022/04/01/ld50-a-game-about-urban-decay-ldjam-ld50/

Ok, so after I published my first round of ideas for the theme Delay the Inevitable, I started to really like the idea of a game about urban decay.

A reverse city builder?

I thought about a city block that would slowly get potholes in its streets, broken windows, crumbling building foundations, etc. You need to fix things, and you have to prioritize what gets fixed because there aren't enough resources to go around.

On top of it all, your fixes won't restore things beyond a certain point, so everything gets worse, but you can at least slow it down.

But as I looked up urban decay to see if there was anything I could use to inspire the mechanics or theme, I realized that a lot of urban decay is the direct result of white supremacy, systemic racism, and redlining.

I think it would make for an excellent educational game topic, but I don't think I have the ability to gain enough expertise on this topic to treat it with the justice and sensitivity it deserves in 48 hours.

I tweeted about it, and Jayenkai suggested I could still use the urban decay concept in a non-realistic world:

https://twitter.com/Jayenkai/status/1510081955509022724

So now I am thinking about where else urban decay could apply. An ant hill? A rabbit burrow? A castle dealing with dragons, wizards, and angry villagers? An open office space?

I'm about 2 hours into the compo, and it is getting late. I think I'll draw some concept art and then go to bed.

Cross-posted at my website: https://www.gbgames.com/2022/04/02/ld50-good-morning-yoga-breakfast-and-notes-ldjam-ld50/

Last night I created some concept art for what I am currently calling Disaster City:

When I went to bed, I thought of how the screen might look and what the player might do.

So this morning, despite wanting to exercise and get some breakfast first, I tried to write down some ideas, but Gizmo decided I shouldn't be too hasty getting into game development.

So I did some yoga and other light exercise, which is good because my back was bothering me earlier this week but seems fine now.

Then I made breakfast. I fried up some eggs, toasted some waffles, smeared them with peanut butter, sprinkled some cinnamon, put the eggs on top, and had a messy, drippy breakfast of game development champions.

I learned long ago that orange juice is basically full of sugar, so I no longer have a large glass and now make use of the juice glasses that I thought were ridiculously small when we got them shortly after getting married almost 10 years ago.

Finally, I pulled out my Ludum Dare t-shirt from 2011, when I went to an Ludum Dare gathering at GDC. It's fitting a little tighter around my midsection but otherwise seems to still fit.

I spent more time than I maybe should have reading through other people's posts. We're now past the first 12 hours of the compo, and my goal is to have something playable within the next 12 hours.

So, Disaster City. I think the "Delay the Inevitable" theme seems to push me to make the kinds of games I started out making, in which there is no victory condition, just a game in which you see how long you can last before you lose. I want to resist this tendency, so what's inevitable that isn't also an ending?

Or maybe it is fine for it to be an ending, and the focus is on what you do before then?

Originally, my thought was that Disaster City would constantly be hit with multiple disasters, and you have limited resources to repair and restore what's happening. Your efforts never make it 100% better, so it's more about reducing the impact rather than eliminating it. And eventually it all comes crumbling down.

But now I'm sad. What's the point?

Instead, what if there was a way to achieve victory?

I'm thinking that you are part of the city council. There is a meteor heading towards the planet, and you need to fund R&D and eventually a mission to divert it.

Unfortunately, Disaster City earned its name. You also need to deal with disasters such as monster attacks, floods, fires, etc. These disasters damage and eventually destroy homes, roads, utilities, commercial centers, entertainment options like stadiums, etc. As you lose those things, you lose people, income sources, and your capabilities to prevent and repair the damage.

So it's a balancing act. You have an ultimate big bad thing coming, but you also have the more immediate things to worry about. You need to decide when to let go of the immediate consequences to focus on the long-term without letting the short-term consequences prevent your long-term goal from being achieved. The game ends when you manage to prevent the meteor from hitting the planet, or when it hits the planet, or when your city's population disappears.

It feels overscoped at the moment.

I jotted down some notes and started trying to come up with a screen layout.

I think I still need to do some prototyping on paper to get a feel for how the game will actually work instead of hand-wavy vagueness,m but otherwise, I think this direction might work.

Cross-posted at my website: https://www.gbgames.com/2022/04/02/ld50-more-notes-meals-conversation-but-less-game-dev-ldjam-ld50/

After my last post, I continued writing down ideas and creating sketches.

But then I got an invite to participate in a chat with some of the people from the original LD community, and it was fantastic. I had a great time catching up and/or getting to know people, talking about how far things have come, and also expressing gratitude that all of us were still here.

But it also meant I was not working on game development, so I eventually jumped out of that virtual chat and got back to work.

For lunch, I scarfed down some leftover veggie pizza.

I felt like I needed to catch up, so I put together a paper prototype and tried playing through a bit. I did get some insight and realized I was missing something key, but I don't think I've done nearly enough to explore this design.

My wife had taken the kids out for a trip, and she brought me a veggie croissant sandwich and chips for dinner when she returned.

We chatted a bit, then I jumped back into my office.

So paper prototypes are great, but I definitely wanted to get something playable as quickly as possible, which means I needed to start implementing things in digital form.

I put together the title screen earlier, using the concept art as the background. It felt temporary at the time, but now feels likely to become permanent.

I drew a few icons and sprites, but I implemented the HUD first.

You can see the main stats include your money, your population, how many days until the meteor inevitably hits the planet, and how much anti-meteor R&D you've got left to do to maybe make things not so inevitable.

Then I wanted to draw the city, so I created a tile-based layout. So far, I only have a river tile to start with.

What's not obvious in this still-frame is that the water is animated using a flipped version of the water tile. It's not fancy or time-consuming to make, but it does make it feel more alive as a game.

My intention is for the monster to emerge from the water, as you can see in this mock-up.

There is now less than 24 hours in the compo, and I'm about to lose some of that time to a good night's sleep. I wish I was further along than I was, but I need to focus on getting that game play in more than ever.

Cross-posted at my website: https://www.gbgames.com/2022/04/03/ld50-a-very-long-task-list-only-12-hours-left-and-a-short-pep-talk-for-you-ldjam-ld50/

Last night I realized that other than a bunch of disconnected notes and a few disconnected images I made, I didn't have a rough plan in place, and it made it more difficult to move the project forward.

So I made myself a plan. Normally I use a spreadsheet and track weekly tasks, but I think for a 48-hour compo a simple TODO list in a text file works.

Right away, it felt simultaneously daunting (that was a very big task list, and I know I will discover more work as I go) and manageable (just start from the top and work my way down).

So I set to work, first by creating a city layout. It's simple at the moment, and the most immediate urgency was putting in the river tiles, the ground tiles, and the super secret anti-meteor research and development center. I can put in other buildings (already drawn) later.

But then I thought it would make for a slightly better screenshot if skyscrapers and other buildings were there, too, and I was pleased that the work to add it was almost nothing.

It's not much now, but I hope to make this a more bustling metropolis soon.

I called it a night around midnight (so technically a morning?), even though I still don't have game play in, but that's a bigger lift than I was ready for without sleep.

This morning, I did some light exercise and ate breakfast.

Behold, my peanut butter, cinnamon, raisin, and pickle sandwich.

If you know, you know.

I washed it down with some orange juice (hah, classic Me, amirite?), and since there was only so much left in the bottle, I finished it off.

And my mother-in-law left us some cinnamon rolls, which my wife baked just now.

So before I get back to game development, I did want to give you a pep talk if you need one.

Whether this is your first time participating in Ludum Dare, your first time doing game development, or even if you have been doing game development for a long time, you might look around at what everyone is accomplishing around you and think to yourself, "I don't belong here."

And I'm here to tell you that you do, in fact, belong here.

My first LD was #11 in 2008, but my first game jam was Game in a Day in 2005. I remember early on in the 24 hours I had to make a game that I kind of froze up.

I remember feeling like I simultaneously could do it but also that I should stop. It was a weird mix of fear and confusion. I didn't know why I felt like I should stop other than a vague fear that I shouldn't even bother, that I didn't know what I was doing, etc.

I pushed through somehow, and even though the game I made was a very, very far cry from what I set out to do (24 hours isn't a lot, it turns out), and even though it was buggy, and even though other game developers participating were professionals who made amazing things in those same 24 hours while I was merely an aspiring wannabe, I can say that I participated and I did, in fact, make a game that day.

When I participated in LD #11 a few years later, that same weird fear gripped me shortly after starting, but this time I recognized it. In hindsight, maybe it was Imposter Syndrome? But whatever it was, I successfully ignored it. I managed to successfully make a game and rank relatively highly, too!

And maybe it was because Ludum Dare in 2008 had something like tens of entries rather than thousands, and the community was smaller and more intimate, but there was definitely a home base in that IRC channel of supportive people who made you feel like you belong there just as much as they did. Game in a Day was even smaller, and I wish I could remember the name of the person who gave me advice to cut my scope, but that person also made me feel like I was being taken under his wing, that I was encouraged to be part of that community, too.

We have less than 12 hours to finish a game for the compo. Maybe you're like me and have a large task list in front of you and you worry you might not finish in time. Maybe you don't even have an idea yet, or you gave up on one project already. Maybe you see some of the amazing things that people are posting and think, "I am nowhere near that level!"

But don't compare your efforts and struggles to published, polished efforts of a team of veterans. It is easy to imagine that everyone else knows what they are doing, but you're only seeing the people willing to post their awesome stuff and not seeing the mistakes, dead-ends, and struggles behind the scenes for them and for many others.

Don't compare your efforts except to your own previous experiences. And if you have no previous experiences, then consider this your baseline to compare yourself to next time.

And if you feel like you failed Ludum Dare because you couldn't get it all together in time and publish a game, I'm here to say that after LD 11, I failed to put together a playable game in LD 14 and again in LD 32. There were Mini LDs that I "failed" as well. It was disappointing, but I never felt like I didn't belong and shouldn't have made the attempt.

Now, part of that might be cishet white privilege talking, but part of it was that by that point I was part of the Ludum Dare community.

So I want you to know that you belong and are welcome here, too.

Cross-posted at my website: https://www.gbgames.com/2022/04/04/ld50-didnt-make-the-compo-deadline-switching-to-jam-extra-ldjam-ld50/

So a lot got done in the final 12 hours of Ludum Dare 50 before the compo deadline.

Just not enough of it.

Disaster City already had the super secret anti-meteor R&D base (modeled off of the NASA Langley Research Center) and some skyscraper buildings. There was a river nearby that I intended to cause floods.

I set about creating the core game loop. Each turn would occur in phases.

There would be an report phase, in which you learn about any new disasters as well as how the previous day went. Then there would be a player command phase, in which you can decide to do various repairs or investments. Then the day would resolve based on what you did and what was going on.

Getting these turn phases in meant I could quickly put together an ending in which the inevitable meteor hits and you lose the game.

Then I created the ability to invest in R&D to prevent it.

Once I did so, I could make a happy ending, in which you successfully divert the meteor.

Then, the real game development needed to happen to make it interesting. Basically, I wanted a lot of disasters to befall the well-named city that you needed to spend your time and resources on instead of spamming the Invest button.

And since I didn't have much time, I changed priorities to get the monster attack in sooner because I really wanted to take advantage of the drawing I had made earlier haphazardly and because I thought it would be more interesting than a flood or fire.

Unfortunately, getting the monster to appear, attack a building a bit, and disappear took a very long time. There were weird bugs, like when the monster teleported back into the water and kept coming at the same building turn after turn but never did anything. It was weird, and there was one defect I couldn't figure out but somehow seemed to have resolved, and as I didn't have a lot of time, I had to just hope I truly fixed it.

I changed the scale of the game up since I obviously wasn't going to get to implement other features of the city that I wanted, like parks that could be destroyed (people leave when there isn't greenery nearby), fire departments to handle fires, roads that could get destroyed and need repairing, etc. Luckily, I learned from a previous project to create my art at 1024x1024, then scale it down, which made it easier to scale up without it looking wrong. The game and the monster looks slightly more interesting without all of the blank space.

As for meals, I ate a quick lunch of a hamburger with a veggie patty and some condiments, plus some veggie straws, and later as there were only a few hours left in the compo my wife brought me the pasta and salad dinner she made to my office on a tray.

Anyway, right around the deadline, I finally got buildings to get destroyed when attacked enough, and the population loss (uh, the people had to move because their home was destroyed, obviously) reduces your income, which means it is harder to win.

Except not yet, because all you need to do is spam that invest button still, and you can still win by ignoring the destruction.

You have no other meaningful actions yet, so the main dynamic of figuring out your immediate and long-term priorities isn't in.

About half of my task list got done yesterday, so that's a big accomplishment on its own. I went from having a title screen and some paper prototypes and notes to having a playable experiment to build upon.

I only blocked off this past weekend to work on it, though. I took today off from the day job to recover from LD, and there is a lot of catching up to do from the weekend in terms of the rest of my life and obligations.

The LD 50 Jam deadline is in 9 hours, and practically speaking I won't be able to dedicate the entirety to game development.

But what can I do with a few more hours?

I have a monster that successfully attacks buildings. My intention was to have only one monster, as a monster attack was but one disaster possibility out of many, but I could easily make more instead of trying to make random fires or cause flooding.

So maybe there is a meteor coming, and you have to deal with multiple simultaneous monster attacks? Eh.

Giving you the ability to repair buildings that are damaged is my first priority.

Then I can balance the numbers and see if it might be enough to feel like a compelling game.

Then I'll worry about multiplying monsters.

Oh, I guess I decided I was going to continue working on this game today after all.

Cross-posted at my website: https://www.gbgames.com/2022/04/04/ld50-introducing-disaster-city-submitted-as-a-jam-entry-ldjam-ld50/

I squeezed in a few more hours of development today, and in between picking up kids from school, meetings, dinner, play time with the kids and getting them ready for bed, I managed to get my game to a somewhat finished state, enough that I can call it enough of a game to feel comfortable submitting it.

And then of course I discovered a number of game-breaking bugs with my submission that I managed to fix shortly after.

But I did it. You can learn more about Disaster City at the official Ludum Dare 50 entry page.

I'm going to try to create an Android port next, but for now, I need to rest and prepare for the rest of the week.

Happy 20th birthday, Ludum Dare! I've missed this. B-)

Cross-posted at my website: https://www.gbgames.com/2022/04/07/ld50-disaster-city-ports-and-a-time-lapse-ldjam-ld50/

Disaster City, my Ludum Dare 50 entry in which you must try to R&D your way to averting a seemingly inevitable disaster while dealing with other disasters at the same time, was originally released with a Linux-based build.

I have since ported it to Android in the form of an APK you can sideload.

And now I have a Windows version of the game!

You can find my LD 50 entry page and the download links at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/disaster-city

Thanks for playing!

In the meantime, here's a time lapse of my desktop during the 48 hours of the compo, plus a few more hours as I tried to see how far I could get even when the deadline passed. I didn't record the next day when I finally got the entry in by the Jam deadline, though.

https://youtu.be/3gX4uniNUEA

Cross-posted at my website: https://www.gbgames.com/2022/04/17/ld50-my-favorite-entries-so-far-ldjam-ld50/

Ludum Dare 50 is almost over, with the review/ratings period and the new Extra option continuing until April 21st.

In the roughly two weeks after the Compo and Jam deadlines ended, entrants are expected to play and rate other games, leave feedback, and otherwise enjoy the number of new games created.

An entry needs 20 ratings to receive a score, and I am happy to say that so far my entry Disaster City has 27.875. While I have 28 ratings in each of the other categories, I only have 27 for audio. Weird. Also, someone live streamed playing it, so that was exciting to see!

I've played and rated only 23 games as of writing this post, and my goal is to try to play and rate at least a total of 40 entries before the 21st.

In the meantime, I want to highlight a few of my favorites so far.

Compo Entry: Ready, uNsTeAdY, FIRE!

The genre is familiar, the production values look and sound simple, and yet the mechanics are compelling. You have to move your ship to prevent your gun from firing too early, you have to move to avoid crashing into the Space Beasts, and if you fire your laser but don't manage kill any of the Space Beasts, the power of the laser overloads your ship and you die. The fact that some of the Space Beasts can only be killed by a much more charged up laser blast means that you spend a lot of time trying to watch your meter while moving to both keep the laser charging more and avoid enemies at the same time.

I know it was the creator's voice the entire time, but I found the music catchy (it was stuck in my head while I was washing dishes) and the sound effects effective as well as hilarious. The highest laser beam charge is incredibly satisfying to fire off, too.

Extra Entry: Princess: Unwed

You play a medieval princess trying to use her carrier pigeon to send and receive messages across the land, getting the dirt on potential suitors, all in the name of convincing your mother to call off any arranged marriages.

It's a mystery game, in which you try to gather clues to piece together where the suitor might be, what they might be up to, and what kind of person they are.

And there's a pigeon. What's not to love.

Jam Entry: 22h38

A mystery adventure with a very intimidating end of the world. The art and audio works well together, and the concept kind of reminded me of a few time-based scifi stories I've read or watched.

Jam Entry: Kiwis Can't Fly

This game is emotional, both thanks to the excellent audio design and to the writing. The art is adorable, and as some of the reviewers have mentioned, it is reminiscent of Orisinal. It feels like playing a musical instrument, and it brought a smile to my face. The ending is both sad and beautiful. I loved the entire experience.

It's been years since I last participated, but I am once again loving the variety of concepts that people have implemented in a short period of time. Good work, everyone!

What have been your favorite entries so far?