But look, it does look decent, even though I'm barely alive. Did way more progress solo, than last jam, when I bothered to gather a small team. Really enjoying the result.

Really pleased with this game, I think, it's my best LD game (that's not saying much, LD38 was really bad for me). Just need to add sounds and the game is pretty much feature-complete. Looks like, I'll even have time to polish it this time. Hope you guys will like it as well

EDIT: I'M AN IDIOT AND FORGOT TO LINK THE GAME https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/space-robot-on-a-space-ship HERE, PLAY IT, IT'S NOT THAT BAD

Wow, this Ludum Dare was a ride. This was my third LD and after mismanaged and unsuccessful for me LD38, where I assembled a small team, which produced nothing but bad code and misery. Hell, I was writing text description of a final boss battle (instead of making an actual battle) one hour before Jam deadline to put something in there. So, I was ready to learn from my mistakes and make a good game this time.

LD38 game's biggest problem was the scope. We decided to make a metroidvania with multiple dungeons and an open world. So, this time, I decided to make something small and focused. So I made an open world space game. Apparently, I will never learn.

Idea As soon as I looked at the theme, I came up with three ideas. First one, a robot on a spaceship and both running out of electrical charge as you go. Second is written in my sketchbook as "your phone is running out of power", but I couldn't make an interesting gameplay out of this idea. And third is "your character's power is slowly deteriorating". As in, your character loses skills and abilities as you go. So, the game pretty was a combination of first and third idea -- you would be playing as a robot in a ship with limited charge, but can disable parts of it to preserve power.

Prototype I feel, like I did everything In the wrong order. First thing I did was a sketch of a ship.

Looking at what happened after I scribbled on a paper for a bit I decided, that it was good enough, and so the ship would have 4 systems. First two were pretty simple -- Shield Room (because, every spaceship has a magic shield) and a UI Room (because I thought it would be fun). That left me with two rooms to go, so I decided to make a Radar Room to detect enemies (because, of course, there would be enemies, how can you even make a game without murder?) and a Steering Room (thought process behind that was something like "Oh, I don't know, I'll make a room that controls the ship or something, whatever").

After that, you would assume, I made me some enemies or obstacles to shoot. Well, not really. I made a tutorial. In fact, a failure state was one of the last thing, I added to the game. But in the end, my tutorial has bitten me in the ass, as players understood the ship controls, but not ship systems or upgrade mechanics, which I added later. But, as level was finalized and I didn't have time to redesign it, stuff like energy consumption ended up without proper tutorial.

Then, there were obstacles. I was really pleased, that I managed to squeeze a two types of enemies, asteroids and a boss from, basically, the same code, just with minor alterations in variables' values.

Level design I'm pleased with I went for a more organic approach to the tutorial and level design. I didn't want to just open the game with "How to Play" screen. Instead, I wanted to lead players down a particular path through collectibles and passable obstacle placement that would tech them game mechanics and provide structure, while still remaining an open world game. But that lead to some players "not getting" the game and getting frustrated at controls and unclear mechanics.

This is the screenshot from the first day of LD, that shows example of this approach.

You can see two lines of scrap, that you need to collect to upgrade your ship and an enemy (I'm lazy to open my game and take a newer screenshot, so just assume there is a big "Press R to shoot" in front of the spiky Thingy). As you kill an enemy, you would want to collect scrap, and at the end of the line, you would get a tutorial on upgrading your ship. However, even if you collect all of them, you would be a couple of scrap bits short of the next level up, so you would want to collect the bits you saw behind some asteroids. A nice idea in theory, but I failed to tell players, that scrap is important, before trying to lead them through this path.

Other stuff I'm pleased with Oh, and asteroid belt was pretty nice. Looks like, Unity devs has seriously upgraded their physics engine, as it managed to draw that many physics objects without dropping frames.

Oh, and this epic shooting mechanic everybody liked. At first, I decided to limit player's shooting speed and make bullets disappear on collision (in fact, enemies' guns work just like that), but then I thought the chaos that a pile balls spawning every frame created was too funny to fix. Yeah, a bug that ended up as a most compelling feature.

Sounds ended up okay as well. I wanted to write some simple background music, but it wasn't good enough.

Other stuff that's bad Ship controls. I even jokingly mention it in a description, but it's still should have been redone to WSAD movement. The intention was to create a physics-driven ship controls, so you had to compensate the speed of the ship, by applying force to one of the two directions. But, if you wanted an easy way to stop the ship, regardless of speed and direction it's going, you could've press Space to stop, while taking a big hit to energy. But, in the end, ship was too clunky to control, and I became so good at the game, so I wouldn't notice. I had my doubts about controls, and I should've changed them. Oh well, yet another lesson to learn.

Final boss. It's not really bad, it's just too easy an weird. You just fill the room with balls and kill it. It doesn't feel like a boss battle at all. It was, probably, the most difficult area of the game for me. As I was basing it on a common enemy code and putting it in a small room, it kept flying into the wall and killing itself. It was funny, because, I felt the same way as I was fixing this issue after a solid 10 hours of work or so.

Conclusion Yep, the game's alright. Turns out, having a solid plan from the start helps a lot. Probably, shouldn't have overworked, as it hurt the game, but it was a really fun Ludum Dare regardless. And I would like to thank everyone, who played my game and thank even more, those people, who left a feedback. See you on the next Ludum Dare!

Ugh, looks ike I won't have time to make a proper game this time. But if anyone needs a decent programmer and gamedesigner, an alright pixel artist, or a guy, who want to try and write a story/dialogues for the game, I am more than willing to help, so feel free to contact me on Twitter or Telegram (@fshpsmgc) or somewhere here

Also, all I have to do is sounds and polish. All mechanics (of cooking game and a shooter) and images are there. Really happy with the progress. Oh, and a screenshot of the game. Really happy how this one is turning up.

It feels really weird to finish the game with ~1 day left to go. Welp, there's always more polish to be done!

Greenspawn Restaurant HTML5

So yeah, I think I'm done. As polished and bug free as I can make it. So YAY I MADE A DECENT GAME IN TIME FOR ONCE. A bit simplistic but still.

And here's the page

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/greenspawn-restaurant

Wow time flew by since the last Ludum Dare, so I totally forgot it's that time of year again! Shame I can't be at any meetups in my city, but for some reason, my solo LD entries are way better than anything I do with a team, so whatever.

Really hope I can improve my games even further since LD41 with all experience I got from converting Greenspawn Restaurant -- my quite successful LD41 entry -- from a little browser thingy into a full Steam release (that, sadly, nobody bought, so maybe some of you will check it out).

So, here's what I'll use this time:

• Engine: Unity (although, I'm tempted to try RPG Maker, but that'll depend on a theme)
• IDE: Visual Studio
• Visuals: Aseprite for sprites (possibly Blender, if the theme is really tempting to go 3D, but I doubt, I'll be able to make 3D look good in 2 days)
• Audio: Audacity, sfxr and Bosca Ceoil

Pretty common stuff, but hey, if it ain't broke, why fix it? Good luck everyone!

It's been what, 10 hours of work at this point? Can't a man just crash his computer by spawning exponentially increasing number of fridges every frame? I think, I earned this right at this point.

Me, after the nice day of work. See you guys tomorrow

Finally! I was worried a bit, when Unity refused to play my music in-game (and Music Maker to save it), but it all ended up being fine.

So, this, I think, is my most polished and better written games. It ended up being very close to my original pitch (with only one game mechanic not getting into the final build), which is quite surprising to me. I even managed to get my level very close to the one I scribbled in my sketch book at 2 AM. Also, this game has the tutorial, I tried and failed to realize in my LD39 entry.

Has some issues, but Space Shack is easily my favorite game I made for game jams.

And look, I get it, I probably should've spent more time playing other's games, but this is my sixth LD and I've never seen such a low ratio of people rating the game to people leaving comments (at least on any of my games).

So, could any of you check my game out and leave a comment tearing my game apart: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/space-shack

I know, that I won't be able to play any entries in the next 5 hours, so I'll at least throw this post to try and get some last-minute feedback.

Oh, and also, there is a web-version available, so it's not that annoying to try it out https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/space-shack

Well, at the end of day 1 I pretty much have - Gameplay loop (and all other gameplay bits around) - UI - Story and events outline - A couple of buildings

Thank god my idea seems to be working well and I properly scoped it this time (so I wouldn't end up making an entire metroidvania in an evening like LD 38), so I can have an entire day just drawing, animating and making music

I suppose, I could get bonus points for theme because you can clearly see the sacrifices in level design that I had to do, because I fucked up and spent way too much time on an inferior way of making a huge city. But hey, at least it's finished and polished (to a degree, of course, I wish I designed things better, so I could make better UI) and quite. You can check it out here (both Web and Windows versions are available)

Well, I was really busy (and constantly ill) to play other games or do a post-LD version of my game, so a shameless attempt at getting last-minute reviews incoming:

Perfectly Normal Inc. is a comedy management game about stealing people and sacrificing them to the Satan

Yes, I am, actually probably slightly desperate a bit, but still, I do need just a little bit more votes to get a rating this year, so just gonna shamelessly promote:

Perfectly Normal Inc. is a comedy management game about stealing people and sacrificing them to the Satan

Wait, that's not a videogame level, that's just my room.

I should just probably put away the pen and go to sleep

Guess, I'll join, when most of you would already have prototypes :)

Anyway, good luck, everyone!