Hello everyone, we hope that you're having a blast playing some of the games that came out during this Ludum Dare.

Our team has been hard at work with our post-jam patch! Here's a little changelog of some of the most prominent changes.

Additions:

• Potions and Signs. Yes, we're rewarding exploration with the ability to find hidden potions to restore health and a game tips.
• Signs spread throughout the main area will provide information about areas and mechanics
• We've also added a small bit of tutorialization to the combat mechanics.

Improvements:

• Water shader has been improved.
• Some depth related issues have been fixed.
• Other party members can now properly be recruited.
• Camera Improvements.
• The game UI has had some improvements and fixes.
• Map changes are now more obvious.

Bugfixes:

• Combat and game progression should be more stable now as we fixed a bunch of issues related to crashing and freezing. Note that there's still a few bugs around that we haven't been able to fix yet, but the general experience should be relatively stable, and the game should be completable.
• Level swapping now properly saves your state, progress and position.
• UI related fixes. A small patch will likely follow later in which we tackle a few more battle related crashes.

Known Issues: - Ludum Dare Embed is too large, use Itch or Full-screen for now. - Depth sorting on some sprites. - Combat related freezes and certain areas / scenarios. (Feel free to report these!) - Quest Stacking in the UI - Not Healing after Losing Combat - Some small UI bugs. - We're aware of the Z issue relating to the first sign and the freeze that happens at the base later on. We're currently - working on patching these issues.

Here's a preview of the shader after finally having resolved the position offset bug!

https://youtu.be/UaTJz9VvQco

Feel free to check it out here!

So, here's a mini blog about how I did the tiles for our game "Warden of the Woods".

Our game basically is a 2d top-down pixel art game about a little fairy warden who has to protect and take care of the nearby woods.

I was in charge of most of the environment art.

My goal for this environment art was simple : I wanted to make something that's simple to make, reusable but still organic.

I had heard of splat textures before in Pixel Art, but I never got to use them.

Splat tiles are basically sprites that are larger than normal grid tiles, but have varying shapes near the edges, creating a more organic look!

I decided to use splat tiles on the Unity Tilemap, with a custom shader that gives the tiles a little bit of offset based on a 'Gradient Noise" node within Shader Graph. Normally this would deform the pixels, but we made sure to use the Upscale Render Texture feature on the Pixel Perfect Camera inside the Universal Rendering Pipeline.

Using this shader and these sprites in a custom rule tile for the Unity Tilemap allowed us to create varied grass and paths with only a few simple textures.

I'd love to share more thoughts about Pixel-Tech Art topics like this in the future on my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@RunicPixels/, so stay tuned.

Play our game here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/warden-of-the-woods

Made a little itch background that blends with the water shader I wrote.

Next to that, I also made the 4 color palette we made for our game publicly available here! https://lospec.com/palette-list/hexpress4 When I started out, I was thinking about using existing palettes like Minty Fresh or Dustbyte.

In the end I decided on creating my own palette, taking inspiration from both palettes.

It was a good time to test a palette limitting shader for Unity too! As consistency is key!

Overall we created quite a large map, I'm happy how it turned out!

And creating a lot of wands was a lot of fun, trying to make sure they all felt unique!

But yes, without further adieu, play our game here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/hexpress

https://runicpixels.itch.io/hexpress/devlog/528357/a-hexpressive-post-mortum-with-a-tease-of-whats-to-come

I wrote an elaborate post-mortem about our game!

Here's a little tease about an update for our game that will come out sometime after voting closes!

It was a lot of fun to work on Bean & Brew.

Using summons as a way to navigate a platformer really takes an genre that's well explored and gives it a bit of new life, by twisting the way common actions like 'jumping' and 'dashing' are used. By making 'jumping' and 'dashing' an actual entity with a delay, and attached behaviour the platforming not just about timing after you jump or dash, but also how timing works before you jump or dash. It was a fun concept to explore and I had a lot of fun!

Make sure to play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/bean-and-brew

Can you become the G.O.A.T. and defeat the current fastest 0:57:70 speedrun?

One of best part of working on our little game 'Bean and Brew' was doing style practice in various styles.

Mixing pixel art and 3D has always been a goal of mine, and jams are always a great ways to quickly put things to practice.

Here's a tree I made in Blockbench where I combined pixel art textures with a low-poly mesh.

Here's some UI icons, that are more traditionally pixel art.

Combined with the other art that @eveee-cx made that I used to design this level, it creates a nice overall picture that uses mixed media in a harmonious fashion (a bugfix for missing UI is coming soon, including with support for the leaderboards we made.)

We made a tiny patch to round out some bugs the game had and to give people a fair chance to compete in 100% or any% runs.

Version 1.0.1 - Board & Balance - Added Online Leaderboard for those with the quickest time, in any% or 100% categories. - Improved Controls - Improved UI - Minor tweaks to make certain levels 100%-able.

Thanks for all the support for our game.

We'll certainly look into more levels and content once the rating period is over. For now we'll hope you all enjoy our game.

Thanks all for the incredible support. We added a few more slight tweaks to round out some tiny bugs that were left to squash and to improve the flow of the experience a little bit more by allowing the 'M' key in the web builds to allow a better menu flow for speed run attempts. On that note, we've also added a little goat icon to the current record holders on the leaderboard. I hope you all will have a lot of fun playing what's likely our final bug-fixing/polish patch for the rating period.

We are currently discussing plans for our post-jam content. We really appreciate all of your support, and it really encourages us to move forward with this project.

Version 1.0.2 - Locked & Loaded - Added alternative key [M] for getting back to the menu. - Added icon to the windows build. - Implemented C-side music and resolved audio-related bugs." - Prevented menu-ception by removing the opportunity to spam menu and reset keys in the menu and loading screen. - Updated credits list. (:frog:) - Nr. 1 entries on the leaderboard now are the Goat. :goat:

Version 1.0.2.1 - Goat Fix - Goat sprite has horns now.

Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/bean-and-brew

Do you have what it takes to top the scoreboard?

I've dethroned the reigning champion again. I challenge any speedrunners to beat my time to become the 🐐.

Go play our game here: Bean and Brew

I know the rating period isn't over yet, but I wanted to give a quick thank you for everyone who rated our game so far!

We are 5 ratings away from reaching 100 ratings. This is the most ratings we've ever had on a jam entry and for that we're just super duper grateful!

You all are the absolute goats!

If you haven't already you can play our game here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/bean-and-brew

Or watch some gameplay footage here, as I go in depth a little bit about our game and it's creation process here: https://youtu.be/c26FER2AicM

I can't believe our game tallied 95 ratings in this period! Absolutely insane.

One final stretch would be to gain 5 more ratings in this 5 hour period.

That'd be wicked. It'd bring us to a HUNDRED ratings total. Which is beyond our wildest expectations.

Regardless, thank you all so much for all the support!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/bean-and-brew

We're super duper grateful for all the support on our entry 'Bean and Brew' the support has been unbelievable!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/bean-and-brew