Finished my first jam collab game with @chrissx2. Extremely tired and about twice as proud!
Check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/fishout 馃
Alright, we made it!
Second time submitting a game in the Jam category, this one is about running a pawn shop where one can buy as many nukes as they desire(TOO MANY nukes).
It's a mix of post-apocalypse and funky physics powered by an infinite item dispenser. Try it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/little-shop-of-junk
PS. I actually did not put any limit on the spawner. Try to break it for fun?
There were some bumps along the way, but we finished on time.
The game: Bounce off little blocks of jelly or stack them on top of your head to carry around. Get Stars. Don't die.
The theme had our drawing board full of ideas where you sacrifice various living beings for dubious benefits, and yet we ended up making a cute little puzzle-platformer instead. Huh.
Jokes aside, there's a good bit of jumping, some things to figure out and at least one secret in there. Let us know what you think if you try it out!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/jellyway
Sharing some gifs of our game, really like how they turned out. Check us out if you like tricky boxes and have good reflexes. And post your game in the comments here for us to play too. Let's gooo!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/boombox
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/behold
Here are some gifs to behold, presenting a game containing Beholders in a hold, that's also called Behold. We're sorry, please try our game, I promise there are no other puns in it. :D
Just wanted to share some progress gifs from our demake of classic Tony Hawk games. I think it's cool to compare where we got to how it started!
First experiments with 3Cs - making a third person camera and the controller was the scariest thing, so it was the focus for the majority of the first night, while the rest of the team was asleep after brainstorming.
Early attempts at making grinding work. I've gained massive respect for THPS devs doing this. Very tricky to get right, and even then there seems to be an unending supply of edge cases. The final version still has at least a couple of known bugs we couldn't fix in time...
Getting a non-placeholder model usually means it's time to play around with anims. I tend to do several passes throughout the jam, but it's good to establish the general feel of all actions and timings.
Pictured: kill animation was made to be played immediately after any collision with an NPC. From experiments it was clear it'll have to be fast and good for frequent resets - something I kept in mind when animating the final clip later. Both placeholder and the final version start part-way through the swing for that reason!
The coolest moment for the jam is when several big parts come together. We're a little bit past half-time here, and several core elements are in place: the 3Cs, level blockout and the combo system. Getting to a point where a minimal version of the game you wanted to make is playable always feels really good - it's proof that you were on to something with the idea!
From this point the main focus was fleshing out quality(animation, audio and FX, graphics) and fixing tons of bugs. Also spending a lot of time playing the game, which is never a waste! You get a better idea of what is truly important to do next that way.
Just one more from a little later on, because I really like how the scythe-driven blood gush VFX has turned out. If you're interested in seeing more, I recommend playing t the game. :D It should play nicely in the browser, so it's quick to check out!
Story of a jam in 3 acts:
I love Egg Mammoths :D
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/paleo-pickup
We made a janky physics game about stacking items on a small moving platform. Here are some progress gifs!
Humble beginnings are very good for gif sizes. I need to make a game with just flat colors one day...
Graphics + the Watermelon placeholder. I'm very glad it actually made it into the final game.
Lots and lots of playtesting of throw controls. Honestly it still feels it could use some tweaking, but it works now!
Explosions, a tried and tested way to improve your game.
Or your main menu!
Click here to explode the authors yourself: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/little-cart-of-junk :D
Our good friend @exxilur joined us to jam for the first time and really came through with the art. I wanted give a shout out!
Here we have a posse of mushroom guys(you summon those in game), a wizard, red dragon, hungry cat-goblin and a dwarf wearing a bucket.
The funny faces were promptly put to good use in game!
Also very proud of how the dragon turned out. The animation is just a few frames and the subtlest squash and stretch with the pivot placed below the image.
And this is what we all looked like trying to fix all the bugs on time(partial success...).
Click here if you'd like to try out our little game about silly and not annoying mushrooms. :D https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/mushroom-conundrum
Favorite post jam activity: looking through progress gifs and realizing you really finished a whole game from scratch. Best feeling :D
The game is somehow a fast paced piece about digging into a tower using match3 mechanics(and bombs obviously). Check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/archeologic
Happy Cleaning Co is a humorous game where the character fights the good fight to keep the world clean - from radioactive sewers through a deep ocean to penguin-infested snowy plains of... Manitoba??
We started with an idea for a super-powered vacuum cleaner(to collect everything efficiently!) and a made a few janky prototypes out of boxes. Tileset art in the gif was made by https://kronbits.itch.io/inca-game-assets; we used one of the samples in the LDtk editor while figuring out how to make levels!
From there we decided to center everything around a directional push and pull mechanic that also changes player movement. The objects can be "eaten" by the vacuum and ejected to deposit in receptacles placed around the level. The goal for each stage ended up being simple, just find and dispose of all trash to win!
Around that time the artist was about done coming up with a style for the game. We landed on very simple pixel art with 16x16 tiles and a zx spectrum palette. Really loved this choice, almost everyone on the team contributed some sprites at one point or another.
We were also experimenting with Dirt as a special type of entity that could be sucked into the vacuum. To make this work at runtime we mirrored the tiling rules from LDtk with stock tools in Unity. Much more janky to work with, but it was worth it in the end.
Gameplay application of the system. Snow tiles have collision and can trap objects. On one of the later levels we even have the player come under a barrage of snow-spawning snowballs. :)
One last picture to show off the game. Sorry for the big wall of gifs but this jam has been heaps of fun and I'm quite proud of the result! If you'd like to check out the game, you can find it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/happy-cleaning-co
We made a game about entering TVs, kinda:
First we had this idea about tuning the signal to find fun stations to explore.
Then we turned it into a bunch of improvised ads for items of very questionable quality, like this ladder:
We ended up making various items with a theme of janky physics. Sometimes too janky, this balloon glider briefly had a version that just turned off gravity altogether.
It was fun to experiment trying to give feedback to the player that is trying to tune the tv to a channel. 5 things animate here with signal strength: antennas, the sparkle, audio levels(noise down, tv up) and static noise on the screen.
Finally a cool stunt I am fond of!
If you enjoy battles to the death with the physics engine(or improv comedy, shout out to my super talented friends!), maybe check out the game here :D