Good evening! (or good

After three hours (one for the idea, one for basic assets & gameplay, one for the enemy mechanic), I have a minimal ""game"".

(the healthbar above the lighthouse is pretty crappy considering a plain rectangle could do the job, but eh)

Just published my compo submission, a bit earlier than expected. And now to endlessly hesitate between adding new features and finding bugs. (or add some more juice to the game?)

Maybe I could add accessibility features e.g. the game could be played with a gamepad in addition to the mouse.

After hours of polishing and debugging, I'm calling my game done! Some of the other games look amazing, I'm looking forward to testing and rating them.

Now it's time to sleep through a well-deserved good night. (I mean personally, you may still have time depending on your local hour and sleep habits)

I don't want to flood the main feed so the long version is on itch.io.

Despite this not being my first game jam, I learned a lot. This was far from my favourite theme. Game ideas from the day before theme announcement were instantly dropped.

Meanwhile I learned from my previous game jams and was able to pull up a nice game that still has an eternal problem of difficulty balance.

I just found 2 non-game-breaking bugs in the released versions. The score prompt is broken and one of the enemies can't shoot bullets. Is that OK if I fix them well past the deadline?

So they say a game is really fun to play if juicy enough, so in the post-jam version you can drink a lot of it!

Disclaimer: this is not an alcoholic beverage (at least not yet, a side effect on the gameplay is planned, along with maximum health points)

You can play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/ace-of-rope

This will be my second LD! Looking forward to playing your games too. I'll be using Godot Engine again.

Here are my theme suggestions. This is kinda hard to get good themes that fit most game genres and can be used both in terms of game mechanics and mood/story elements. Yeah I'm not really into sentence-long themes like "Press Every Button to Jump" or "You Are the Villain's Grandparent". On second thought maybe they are too short.

I woke up two hours ago, basic movement is done. This isn't the best time to learn rope physics but Godot is cooperative today.

The main idea is that you play as a Far West criminal sentenced to death, but the hanging rope breaks. The "stuck in the loop" part is that you still have the rope around your neck and you can't remove it. So you use it as a weapon.

Now you can use a weapon tied at the end of the rope. What could go wrong?

I'm very happy with the result, with just the right scope this time and a bit more innovative compared to last LD. Now it's time for dinner before testing your games!

"Postmortem" means "after death" so here is Death, the final boss, and the post is after this picture so that's a literal postmortem I think?

This is a quick summary of what I learned from all of this. A longer version is on itch.io.

In the previous jam, I put my game ideas in a text file before theme announcement. Right after I woke up to a big "Keep It Alive" on the front page (not among my favourites), this file was completely discarded. That turned out to be a good decision.

Here, "Stuck in a Loop" was the kind of theme I was quietly hoping for, not because it is easy, but because it is hard! I mean, because the idea in the text file was relatively unconventional. That also turned out to be a good decision.

Morale of the story: there is no superior creative process? It depends not only on you, but also on the theme.

Apart from that, I used Godot Engine, Aseprite and LMMS (with the sfxr tool) for audio. Same thing as before, except I moved from Krita back to Aseprite. The impact on the art style isn't really noticeable.

The game is very well received, with some minor flaws I'm working on. Next release will be right after rating ends, just in time for Halloween!

Hello!

First of all, thank you so much for the enormous amount of feedback during the last weeks. What's even more encouraging is that Ace of Rope scored 5th overall, with most categories having a very high score as well!

As a result, it wouldn't be very fun to end this game at the jam version, so I spent the last weeks expanding it. You'll find even more colorful characters, wacky dialogues, and nice landscapes as you confront the dangers of the West.

Just in time for Halloween, here's also a quick update that adds a third zone to the game. Embark to the icy north, get lost in a dark forest, challenge the host of an odd mansion, and find the truth about your origins.

More info on the itch.io page. Have a nice end of October!

So I made a western action game in which you can control the gallows' rope you're stuck in. Given the large feedback and good ratings, I spent the last two months adding stuff to turn it into a complete game.

After more than 8 years of game development, I've never managed to finish a game of this scope before, so it's very satisfying! The year 2020 has kind of been the Year of Finishing Games for me, and game jams helped a lot. So thank you, whether you host jams, review or even just play games!

You can play the game here.

A bit too early to really confirm, but I plan to make a new wacky creation in the context of the next, legendary-numbered compo.

For now, my theme suggestions are: - Unconventional transportation - Around the clock - Chicken

I'm not sure about any of them though. Best not to think too much about it. I did consider suggesting a theme similar to LD46's "A cat named Jeff who is also a lawyer" but that might be a tiny bit too obscure. Maybe the world needs obscure themes. Try not to get too bland in your suggestions!

I'm looking forward to playing your games, as well as giving and getting good feedback, but my performance is unlikely to get better than my 5th ranking overall from last time. Who knows where your game will end up going? Remember to have fun!

This incredibly specific theme can still lead to diverse interpretations: Do you collect tax via negotiation, stealth in their home, or good old combat? Is the tax collection organism the actual villain? Is magic illegal? Are we talking about installation wizards instead?

I really like unique themes like that (not just specific, looking at you frogs). A bit like "A cat named Jeff who's also a lawyer" from LD46. This is just refreshing, between the villain reveals and hovering landmasses in the air. Those might be the worst kind of themes for all games to be different though.

You control a beaver in a submarine. Will you find your keys you dropped at the bottom of the lake?

This game took ~10 hours to make in total, about a third of the time of my previous entry. That's why it's way shorter and a bit more broken. It doesn't help that it's warm and sunny outside, I have a family, and sometimes you just want to relax, you know?

I'm very pleased with it as an experiment, because I tried to put systems I don't usually use, like full-rigidbody physics and a soft light system.

Despite this Ludum Dare being the least successful I've ever done, I'm still happy with the results because I participated in a much more relaxed way. The theme was harder to handle (and pretty shitty in my opinion), but this still allowed for an original story and atmosphere.

As always, I learned many things during those two days, notably how to make a physics-heavy platformer, and how to pimp a light system.

I did a more complete postmortem as an itch.io devlog if you want.

Thanks for the feedback, sorry for the physics and the foreground that looks like a wall, and have a good day!

Good evening, jammers and gentlejammers!

My totally definitive themes that I will not change at all when I find new better ones tomorrow are:

• Failure
• Long time no see
• Chicken

Permitting either gameplay-breaking, double-meaning, or just wacky ideas.

I have statistically bigger scopes in October jam games than in April, despite my free time steadily decreasing, so let's hope for the best!

You control an old man's dog and you try to go for a walk without your owner falling down. He's a nuclear warhead after all.

Now I'm trying to do the physics regarding the leash, this isn't the kind of instability I was expecting but I'm getting there.

The physics engine is cooperative once again. Next to do is actually losing (in a spectacular way) when the bar is full, as well as enemies that shoot kinetic bullets.