Hello! I’m in for Ludum Dare 54 giving my first attempt at a game jam ever!

I’m a bit of an amateur when it comes to programming and only have one game under my belt, but the idea of the challenge just seemed appealing. I’m not certain if I’ll actually come out of this with a finished product, but I’m going to give it my all in the 72 hr jam.

Also going to use this as my swan song for Unity before moving on to Godot. Now seems like a great time to see what else is out there in the universe.

Really excited to see what comes from it and I look forward to trying out all of your games in the ratings!

Hello everyone!

Just wanted to check in and say I've been playing a lot of games and you're all doing a great job! Hope you are all proud of what you have accomplished.

This was my second Ludum Dare and my third ever completed game.

It was my first time working in the Godot engine after prepping for about a week and a half and my first time ever using Aseprite to make pixel art.

I had a great time pushing myself on the jam and hope to participate in more down the road.

While I wasn't fully happy with the results of my game, I am still very proud of setting a goal and exceeding it while learning so much valuable information along the way.

I'm not posting here to ask for ratings since I've already hit the threshold but just wanted to drop a message letting everyone know they did a great job! Keep creating and growing! Such a wide variety of techniques and styles it's very inspiring seeing what others are doing.

Thanks to everyone that has provided feedback and words of encouragement. Even though I still feel I haven't come close to reaching my potential in game creation, I have really been enjoying the road along the way as I slowly improve my skillset. I really appreciate those with the courage to provide critical feedback as it truly does help me find and/or reinforce any weaknesses I still need to work on.

Thank you everyone for giving it your all this past week!

See you next jam!

Hello Jammers!

Congrats on a successful jam. I've been playing all your games, and they're fantastic!

As the reviewing process for me begins winding down, I just wanted to give a few of my thoughts on my game and the things I learned about myself and the jam. Successes and problems. Maybe you can learn from them or have a laugh. Either is fine.

The concept of Dante's Mini-Golf was that you are hitting the ball up the various circles of Hell.

Getting the ball in to the hole makes it launch upwards to the next circle.

And falling in a pitfall makes you fall down a circle ....or worse.

I was really proud of this mechanic. By layering the different holes on top of each other in interesting ways, it allowed me to make for some really frustrating moments. Herein lies the problem...

I made a rage game for Ludum Dare.

I knew when I sketched out the idea that it would not be ideal for a Ludum Dare audience, but I continued anyway because I'm stubborn and I wanted to! On average, most Ludum Dare players will likely play the game for around five minutes. I do not recommend making a rage game for Ludum Dare unless you are aware that most of the players will not see the majority of the work you've put in. It makes getting feedback difficult because if I'm lucky players will make it to the third or fourth level before taking a big tumble and giving up forever.

I accepted these conditions going in.

This is my third time participating in Ludum Dare and this year was the first time I took a big risk by basing one my primary game mechanics around something I hate... PHYSICS!

I was terrible at math and science as a child and I'm no smarter as an adult, who would have guessed? For the most part, the physics work. Sometimes they do baffling and strange things. I would have loved to do more custom code to make the game feel better, but you can only do so much in 72 hours when you're also learning new concepts. Balancing the speed of the ball is also challenging and one of the main pieces of feedback I've heard. The ball is too slow on the early levels and doesn't have enough control on the later ones. There is no happy medium and if I did the project again I think I would have added some sort of shot mechanic that lets you change the speed with a button press - almost like a low or high gear in a racing game. I'm still trying to figure out all of the drag and acceleration stuff. We're all capable of learning.

Another thing I really wanted to try to implement in this jam was dynamic music. I'm not a composer and the music to most people sounds like just a nonsense collection of beeps and boops. Taking inspiration from the old Grant Kirkhope N64 Rare soundtracks or something more recent like Balatro's music transitions (yes we're all guilty of loving Balatro), I aimed to make a system that seamlessly adds and removes instrumental tracks on each level. It's the same song, but with eight different versions. The game figures out the position, loads in the new track, applies it to the new level, and vice versa when you fall. It's really slick...

...in the Windows build.

HTML5 broke this feature entirely and I ended up having to recode it for a browser. While the effect is partially there, it no longer goes from one track to another seamlessly - it has to start over every time the stage transitions. A bit frustrating, but a better compromise than no music. Remember to test for your primary build. HTML5 does not always work the same way if you're making browser builds!

I got a bit overzealous picking a concept with nine different levels each with a unique tileset, especially because I haven't really worked with tilesets prior to this. I spent probably 60% of my dev time just on artwork and implementation. I am not an artist. It should be very obvious looking at the game. If you aren't an artist, that's okay. I leaned in to it. Made everything look a little jankier. I noticed the game had a 90s DOS/Windows 95 shovelware kind of feel and I embraced that. I added weird looking text that was reminiscent of the scrawled writing I saw on the walls of Lemmings when I played that as a kid. I added a bright and funky pattern in one of the later levels that looked back to the days of sitting on the floor playing ToeJam and Earl. Take inspiration from everything! EMBRACE PROGRAMMER ART!

Finally, a last minute call was adding a tutorial to the game. I've never done that and I recommend everyone to give it a try. It didn't take long to implement and I think it really added to the game experience. Make sure the player knows how to control the game. Unfortunately, many people are not going to read the controls on a page description.

In the end, I am really happy with the end product. I breathed and lived in this game for 43 of the allotted 72 hours. This is not a game for many people. It is a game for me though. I think it's one of the more cohesive things I've made thus far and I learned a lot while doing it. It's not anywhere near perfect, and that is ok!

If you think this game concept sounds interesting to you, consider giving it a try! Don't feel obliged. I'm already at my ratings quota and there's plenty of people out there still trying to hit that 20 threshold. This is a game for a very specific type of gamer and I think if you enjoy difficult games, you might find something to enjoy here. Just be prepared to get angry.

Play Dante's Mini-Golf here!

When I started this jam I wasn't feeling super confident. I hadn't programmed anything since Ludum Dare 57 and the signal theme wasn't really something that had much appeal to me in a traditional way. I'm one of those people that has an interest in all aspects of games but have really mastered no skills. I have a limited programming set and quite frankly the art skills of a programmer.

Yet somehow, I prefer to work these events solo to try to stretch all of my creative muscles simultaneously. I'm a glutton for punishment and I love the 72 hour grind.

When I finished the brainstorming process and started a very minimal prototype night one, I wasn't feeling my game. It was lacking any sort of aspect that set it apart and just felt like a bland nothing. I woke up thinking I needed to find some sort of angle or change up my concept completely. This is where my game McFoley's began. I promise, it had nothing to do with the wrestler. It didn't even click that it could be a pun until 24 hours later.

McFoley's on the surface probably looks like a million games you've seen before from screenshots.

You take orders from customers, you get paid, the day ends, rinse and repeat. Screenshots do not do the vision justice though. McFoley's as a concept is a game where you convert customer orders into sound clips and send them to a robot which then makes the orders. You never even see the food over the course of the game. It's almost a loose take on the Chinese room experiment where you are translating text into sound. Rulesets are very finicky and I wrote a manual that changes each day to introduce more elements.

The only way I can overcome the generic qualities with my limited skillset is by leaning in to something and for this game I decided it would be great to force myself to learn more about audio. I recorded a bunch of audio snippets for the various ingredients, customers, and more. Every single sound effect in the game is recorded with my microphone. Most done without the use of any props. I played around with randomly pitching noises and getting in variation. I went for a bit of an Animal Crossing-esque voice system because I've always wanted to try that.

Once the sounds were implemented, the game as a whole started to feel more like a program that was in line with my style of creation. If there's anything to take from this post it's that you should not fear experimenting with concepts that ultimately don't work or feel generic because you might just find something that makes the vision stand out even more.

The vision of my game went from being dark and sinister into something light hearted and humorous. Once I saw what the game was turning in to, I added in pricing systems for each menu item and each ingredient. I started animating a results screen that added a bit more of a layer of exaggerated commentary. You can work hard, be successful, and will still walk out of a day earning mere dollars - or even worse, in debt. Every mistake you make, the company will charge you for. Getting negative earnings is pretty easy. You can even just spam ingredients on to your submitted creations just to waste the companies money if you so desire. Just know, it's coming out of your own pocket at the end of the day.

I leaned a bit more in to puns and started referring to the character as a foley artist which was a bit of a take on the obvious foley work and "sandwich artist" mixed together. The drinks were turned in to energy drinks with gas themed syrups. The dipping sauces became weird flavors such as the infamous chicken sauce for your order of chicken nuggets. Some of the character templates got extreme deep booming voices while others were greatly sped up. Every decision I made, I tried to have a slightly more absurd spin on it. Lean in to the silliness of it all.

My game is goofy, a bit rough around the edges, but something I can say does wholly represent my creative vision. A lot of features had to be cut as happens with most jam entries. I know I'm not alone in wishing my game had done more, but that's part of the fun of the time crunch. I like being forced to narrow down what core concepts have priority over others. I entered this jam with a checklist of goals and managed to hit them all. I do consider it to be a success even when I'm my own toughest critic.

If you'd like to play it, give it a go. Don't be afraid to give me real and honest feedback because ultimately I use these jams to try to become better at all aspects of game creation. I only do it as a hobby so its always been helpful to see comments about not just the shortcomings I already know but also some comments about things I never even considered.

If you'd like to give it a try please check it out! Means a lot to me that anyone would take time out of their day to play one of my games. Still feels very rewarding even if this is my fourth Ludum Dare experience.

You can check out McFoley's here.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/mcfoleys

Thanks for reading and congratulations for taking part in the jam whether it's your first or thirtieth entry! Happy rating to you all! I look forward to playing your creations as well.