Okay, that was awesome.
It’s my first Ludum Dare, i hope i won’t get disqualified because of something i forgot, it’s 4 am and i need some sleep.
Huge thanks to the LD team. Guys, keep being cool.

Okay I’ll have one more round of brainstorming, but I have a feeling I will have to go with this unbelievably original concept.

It was super fun LD, and after a bit of rest I’ve decided to keep going.
I think Shapeless Escape can be a decent platformer material, may be not quite competitive on the market, but at least it will be great for training purposes.

Thank you all for great comments and valuable feedback. As a first step towards greater game, I’ve made a post-LD version with patched 3rd level and ability to drag the boxes. No more rage over the box that stuck in the corner!

Also, here’s a small sketch for one of the boss fights. Do you like interesting and unusual boss fights? I surely do.

- Put me down, Dave
- I'll put you down for good, you rusty bucket of bolts!

Our cool blog posts guy is sleeping, so no cool blog posts for you till tomorrow. <3

One of the Galvanica developers - Graal is celebrating today!

Happy Birthday! Let the chair be with you.

Exploring dark corridors? Red shirts will do it. Checking for the weird metal clanking noises? Red shirt job. [NOPE] horribly for the rest of the team? Red shirts!

Want to get yourself some [NOPE] experience? here you go: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/nope

I'm going through some of the danger zone games and have a question to people who are trying to gather up 20 ratings in the last day AND with less than 20 ratings given:
Why did it happen? Was it that you were not aware about the rating system? Hoped to slip? Never got enough time? Couldn't force yourself play and rate 20-25 games? I don't want to offend anybody, just sincerely interested.

This time Volcanic Giraffe team goes solo for triple weirdness. I hope y'all don't plan to make quarantine / isolation / epidemic related games? 😀 Changing the mood for once would be sick.

Meanwhile in my Unity Research department:

Flags are meant to be hoisted high, to represent core values and one's inner philosophy and strength. So this:

Good luck everyone!

Not sure it would be worth it in a long run. On the other side, it really helps to pinpoint the essential scope of the game and hold on to it - which works really good if you are a feature creep junkie like me.

4 hours past my internal deadline I finally have something resembling playable prototype. It doesn't look much, but there's a horrendous amount of framework code inside, most of which for features I might not even be able to do. I did have a lot of fun with it though.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/unit-21

This time, 1 hour ahead of schedule. That's the gist, people, aim for the compo and you will finish a hour before the jam ends.

The game itself isn't something much. Your usual throw-features-together-until-no-one-notices-core-loop-is-bad kind of thing. Turns out, I'm not nearly that good at simple mechanics as my friends @icxon and @graal.

I do love my intros though.

Now, as LD46 is over and most of the people managed to get at least some sleep, let's see what we all did and rate each other.

Volcanic Giraffe usually participated as the team of three people, but this time we decided to go solo. I think it's really interesting to see this de-composited result and understand what every one of us brought in our previous jam games.

@icxon, who usually was all about "Let's make shooters with blood, gibs and bullets" made a beautiful, serene and almost meditative game about keeping your fish from freezing. He managed to do that with only standard unity primitives, which amazes me to no end. He also managed to do it while slacking for a good portion of jam time, which makes me a bit angry.

Play: Until we freeze

@graal made a great (if sad) piece, which tells the story of finding hope and help in your way out of the heart of darkness and how some hard choices had to be made once light is getting closer. He isn't very fond of his sprite work, but I secretly admire coherence and simplicity in his designs, that manage to tell the tale with just a few pixels. Even if he started from generic programmer's art, he's now developed it into his own unique and functional style.

Play: Abandoned

And me? Well, I suppose in this team I am responsible for overcomplication, being a try-hard and heavily crunching. And questionable bloated game loops. And, of course, alluring covers and animated intros. In terms of cohesion and completeness, my game seems to be weakest in the set, due to me planning much more that I could possibly handle. But despite all the bitter realizations, I was happy to work on something I liked. Even though few people will be able to get into it due to quirky unpolished mechanics and scary messy UI.

Play: Unit 21

Once again, congratulations to everyone who participated! And have a happy rate month!

(still cannot believe it's 21 day till the results, goddamit Mike it looks like a cheap hack)

Help Mike Save the Jam [HTML5]

Try yourself in a boots (feathers?) of @pov. Controls - WASD/Arrows/Space bar.
Pictures are loaded from Ludum Dare page through my little server, so please be gentle :)

Made it yesterday, not a Ludum Dare entry! But you are free to check and rate our team's games for LD46:

Until we freeze by @icxon
Abandoned by @graal
Unit 21 by me

Just finished another pass on Mike vs LD site and got a free evening, so if you need some more rates hop into that comment section! If you also wish to get some honest feedback and (questionable) advice from the (somewhat) seasoned game developer, just add that in the comment. "Shut up and rate" is also a valid option.

Oh, and if you like over-engineered non-intuitive tactical games, you can go and play my entry. Just don't skip the tutorial if you want to live =)

Unit 21

Volcanic Giraffe team is back together again. @graal, @icxon, glad to work again with you guys!

Some warmup sketches:

Time to make some memes.
They humiliated me at the start of the loop, but now I have a minigun!

If you, like me, went through ton of other excellent games, compare it to yours and feel sad about it, don't be.

I love all of the games I've seen. I've tried to give an honest feedback because I'd like to keep the event fair, but I'd give everyone all 5s, because making something is great. Making something that works is absolutely fantastic. You had one less game in your portfolio past weekend. Now it's one more.

P.S. Congratulations everyone!

Finishing touches on menu and sounds, and mr. Sausage will be ready to roll!