WOW, I am so blown away. I never make it into the top 10% for anything, let alone within the top 20. I made The Summoned, a collection of 13 dice games, and I just... wow! I've loved LD for many years now; I used to make flash games but have made analog tabletop games for the last several. I always figured that put me in some weird space that was outside of most LD players, understandably at that: it's so much easier to just play a game in a browser or download and play than to print two pages, find 12 dice, and read a bunch of instructions and stuff.

I cannot tell you how much this means to me, I'm so freaking ecstatic and just OMG OMG OMG.

I'll be celebrating later tonight and tomorrow after I get some stuff done, I just can't believe it!

The post-jam edition is still free on Itch through the weekend too 🥳

Hi! I try to do a postmortem for each of my Ludum Dare creations, but I've been super depressed lately so this took longer than intended.

Despite that, the piece was really powerful for me, and I came to learn a lot about my priorities as a designer. I hope you can learn from it too, even though it's coming from an analog tabletop creator's point of view.

You can read the post here - it's a Patreon post but our Patreon posts are free :D

Hi! My partner, Angel, and I typically make tabletop and solo journaling games. So I put that spin on my two suggestions :D

Also, we'll be going through Theme Slaughter live on our Discord server, and rating games on video/voice chat too! We're an LGBTQ-friendly, (mostly) positive group there, with not so many people that it feels overwhelming (I TOTALLY relate to that lol). Check us out over at https://discord.gg/2fb6tFnUTh

[major Alan Wake 2 and Control spoilers here]

So I played Alan Wake 2 pretty recently and LOVED it. I've been devouring lore videos about the Remedyverse and listening to the 13-minute version of Herald of Darkness basically nonstop. And with that, this set of themes is speaking to me...

* Planting the Seed? Try the coffee... * Decay? Oh, you mean entropy, the thing that Ahti constantly battles and you help with in Control as his assistant? * Recharge? Those big energy blocks that power everything, anyone? * Depths? How about you go into the depths of the ashtray maze... * Salvage? You've got to salvage the story to escape the dark place! * Doors? MR. DOOR, anyone??? * Send Signals? Do you mean like The Board, or how Saga and Alan Wake speak with one another, or how the clicker sends signals from art to the world? * Keep It Together? That's all Alan tries to do! * Out of Order? Like Coffee World, or like exploring in Time Breaker? There's probably an out of order sign object of power somewhere, too... * Wild Magic? Speaking of all of those objects of power, they're all pretty wild... Oh, and "this is the ritual to lead you on" says hello. * Side Effects? Seriously, try the coffee. Or jump in a lake that's actually an ocean, see what that does to ya... * Garden? Okay yeah I'm not sure how this connects, other than the grand scheme of things where you reap what you sow, certainly easy to connect to creating art in the dark place, or what happened to the Marmonts in The Lake House... * Trade? You trade between Saga and Alan, sure, but Alan also traded himself for Alice * Waves? What do you think the lake that's an ocean does, just sit there? * Bottomless? That spiral could be bottomless... As is the hopelessness that the darkness has for people. Or just the bottomless darkness itself. Or that bottomless cup of coffee that you should try, really... And poor Pat Main whose memory loss becomes bottomless... * Companion? You mean how Alex Casey is a companion to both Alan and Saga? Or how Control and both Alan Wake games have an awesome Old Gods of Asgard song to accompany them (or more than one)? * Layers? Oh come on, these games are layers upon layers upon layers of meaning throughout all of this. * Anchor? You literally battle the anchor in Control!

Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees that all of this has actually been done by Alan Wake, written into existence to help him escape his spiral in the dark place.

Here's my "I'm in!" post, but with a twist: my partner (Angel) and I are analog tabletop creators. We've made tabletop stuff, solo journaling stuff, and tabletop stuff with optional journaling prompts.

It's always fun to consider all of the potential themes as both video games and analog games. For example, a few jams ago, "every 10 seconds" won. I was so upset: with video games, you can automatically have a timer count down and make things happen. With tabletop, it meant getting people to set a timer for 10 seconds and then obeying that timer. But I'm really happy with what we made: a push-your-luck real-time game of racing along different tracks. It's not something I would've even considered making before that, and it was a great growth opportunity!

Both digital and analog have negatives and positives: we get you rolling physical dice and playing with cards, which just FEELS cool! But it requires more setup (you can't just click around and figure the game out), reading (you have to LEARN how to manage and play the game), and potentially even other players (we do everything we can to ensure that isn't the case). But with making analog games, there are no coding bugs, we can make a prototype in minutes, and development takes FAR less time.

Anyway, I just wanted to give a little insight into my development point of view and say hello! 🙋‍♀️ I'm excited to see what everyone comes up with, no matter what the theme is (unless it's side effects lol).

Okay so we have a game, and a mechanic. It needs prompts, though, so we have to come up with those and see how it feels, then iterate from there. This is a card game you play with a standard deck of cards, on a physical table :D

Right now you're in a cave, exploring. Each area of the cave has better rewards, but also worse risks. The four suits represent what you find/deal with: * Diamonds = money * Clubs = exhaustion * Hearts = restorative stuff (can remove equal or lesser clubs, or be saved for the next dive) * Spades = wear and tear to your equipment

A run ends immediately if you go over a maximum amount for either clubs or spades, and you can stop anytime. Whenever you stop, the last card drawn is looked up on a prompt table and something happens. Diamonds are worth extra or whatever, clubs wear you down, spades damage your gear so you have to replace it, hearts do something special for the next run or are worth money too?

The idea is that you take the A-7 cards, plus one joker, and shuffle them, then place them into a grid (Canva-style). The joker is face-up, and you start there, and can take cards in any direction from an empty space in the grid.

After each run, you can get better gear to progress further in the cave. Each further area removes the smallest cards of each suit and adds the next up. * The first area is A-7 * The second area is 2-8 * The third is 3-9 * etc

You have 7 days (rounds) to earn a certain amount of money, and you can buy upgrades to yourself. Although I might just get rid of the upgrades to make the game simpler, we'll see which works better with some playtesting.

Since we have a solid foundation of an idea this early in the jam for once, I'm excited to get to polish it a lot more and add a lot more narrative. I'm excited for what we can do with the story here.

I figured we'd make a card game, and Angel (my partner and codesigner) came up with the idea, sharing it with me Saturday morning. Since then, I played with cards and came up with an idea for the game, then playtested it a bunch. We both came up with added details and such, and then I spent the next like 24 hours (well, the 24 hours I spent working on the game lol) writing.

The writing took me on a lot of twists and turns, and this will be the most narrative-driven game I've made thus far. It's clearly inspired by Alan Wake (the darkness, the struggle against the self, giving into our darker instincts, reshaping reality, light vs darkness...), but I'm proud of how separate and unique it is too.

This first draft is rough as heck, and a simple Google Doc. So I still need to: * Convert it to Canva and make the game itself easier to play * Rewrite it to make it more cohesive, bring out the threads of the narrative, add more light stuff on top of that * Playtest and proof with any remaining time

Either way, this is yet another Ludum Dare where I'm very proud of what I did. It amazes me that, outside of Ludum Dare, I question my ability to make mechanic-driven games. I mostly stick to solo journaling stuff. But almost every Ludum Dare, we create something mechanically driven in a single weekend! Why do I think I'm incapable when I have far more time? 😅

So, thanks for the jam! This time I'll keep this in mind and stop telling myself I can't do this outside of the jam 🧡

Hey, is there still a submission hour? I'm barely gonna finish in time, let alone get it uploaded in 19 minutes lol

We got our game in at the last minute, geez, literally FOUR MINUTES before the timer ended.

This is the proudest I've ever been of a creation. Like... I never considered I could do that, period, let alone in a weekend. This is a FORTY-PAGE campaign card game (using a standard deck) that's inspired by LotR and Alan Wake 2; it has more artistic work than I ever put into anything (I use Canva assets so I don't make the art, but I edited, combined, and placed); and I LOVE the story I wrote into this.

That stuff still needs work, don't get me wrong. I didn't have enough time to do more than proof the story, and I already see where it needs work (one of the two alternate endings especially, since the story is now going in a different direction). I didn't have time to make this a zine at all. Or sneak more of the darker aspects into the art. Or even playtest the entire thing...

I'll be putting out a postmortem later, but goodness... If I could bottle this pride and just take a whiff whenever impostor syndrome hits, I would be SO happy! Again, this is far from perfect and not even quite done, but I proved a lot to myself in creating this.

PS: I think it's hilarious we were the SIXTH entry called "Into the Depths" 🤣🤣🤣

I wrote about 5,500 words about inspiration for our game, how the weekend went, future plans, lessons learned, and more. You can read about it on my blog here.

I'd just paste the whole thing here but it breaks every time I try 😭

Hi there! 🙋‍♀️

Last year, we ran our first Ludum Praxi jam. The jam exists for two reasons: 1. To be practice for Ludum Dare (hence the name, which means "Game Practice" if the translation worked right lol) 2. To inspire other analog creators to do Ludum Dare in the future!

This is a jam that's entirely for analog creators. As the vast majority of people here are already doing Ludum Dare jams AND not analog creators, this is instead a call for you to try something new. Try making a game without any code at all! Just words! Make a card game, a board game, a journaling game, whatever inspires you. I typically aim to make something using standard dice and/or a deck of cards, so people don't have to print anything or use components they're less likely to have... but then generally my Ludum Dare games get into ridiculous territory and you need to print stuff or have lots of dice or something 😅

• You can join the jam here
• You can suggest themes here

Although it's likely incredibly obvious, this is NOT officially related to Ludum Dare in any way, it's just something I do for fun to try to get more of my analog-game-making friends and "family" into joining Ludum Dare, or at least appreciating the rush of making a game in 72 hours. Ludum Dare is what got me into making video games over a decade ago, and each jam is always amongst my favorite events of each year (even when I'm not proud of what I made lol).

While Ludum Praxi doesn't have this robust, incredible community, nor does it have the awesome systems for rating games and getting themes, it's still a cozy lil event that does its best 🧡

Ludum Dare jams are my favorite times of the year! 🧡 I was so severely depressed last jam that I can't even remember making the game 😅 But I'm doing better now... and knocking on all of the wood to hope it stays that way.

I wrote a big ol' blog post about prepping for the jam, which includes taking this weekend off because we (my partner and I) worked all last weekend to release a big game. And today is grocery day, which means some easy-to-make dinners and lunches, and some special snacks and drinks! 🙌

Here's the blog post.

I guess I should do one of these too. Why not. I have other work to do that I'm procrastinating, so this is perfect! 😅

My partner (Angel) and I are tabletop creators! Not, like, digital board games. We make printable games you play on a table, as well as TTRPGs! We generally make solo, beginner-friendly stuff anyway, but we usually simplify stuff even more for Ludum Dare since we know most people don't have printers, or a hundred dice of all different sizes, etc. But we've entered nine Ludum Dares previously as tabletop creators, and everyone has been so welcoming and encouraging! 🧡

We use Canva (NOT the AI tools though, eww, no AI for us) to make stuff, and an HP Smart Tank printer. We subscribe to HP Instant Ink, so we get like 300 prints a month and never have to buy ink (because we pay monthly, but as expensive as ink gets, that still feels like a good deal).

Anyway, we're typically uplifting, encouraging creators who like to focus on identity, individualism, choices, and our struggles (I've got bipolar, Angel has severe allergies and illness issues). Our last game, Oceans and Spirals, was an Alan Wake fangame and it was awesome getting to explore a much darker space. It fit my bipolar PERFECTLY.

It's lovely to meet all of you. Here's to an amazing Ludum Dare! 🙌