Hey, Jamers!

This Ludum Dare, I took part in the compo format for the first time since my regular teammate decided not to participate. It was a throwback to the same emotions I felt at my first jam, which was super exciting!

Despite working with Unreal Engine over the past few years, I chose to go back to my old favorite, Construct 2, for the compo. I started my game development journey with it, but it’s been acting up lately, freezing inexplicably now and then.

I made a last-minute decision to enter the compo on Friday and realized I’d have to create my own music. After asking around for composers, I settled on using MilkyTracker. I spent of evening learning it and believed I could whip up a simple chiptune—though, unsurprisingly, I ran out of time to make it during the jam.

I was slightly disappointed by the chosen theme, although it was clear it would win. I find the themes of recent jams too straightforward and uninspiring, pushing everyone towards the same ideas. Boring! So, I aimed to approach it from what I believed was a unique angle. Here's what I brainstormed:

Ideas: - Arranging runes in different orders to see who gets summoned. - Accumulating the willpower to act, or what I call "Summoning the Courage." - Rearranging thoughts in one’s mind to interact and generate new abilities, similar to shapes in Tetris or inventory management in Resident Evil. - A brain simulator that filters information and retains only some in a limited memory space, inspired by an article about sleep mechanics. - Functioning like a memory card save editor, not by the number of saves, but choosing what to keep. - Willpower that determines how well your character follows commands. - Playing as a nerdy character gathering the courage to go outside. - Thoughts have shapes like Tetris pieces; if they connect, the shape becomes larger and more complex. - The goal might be to assemble a particular shape to perform an action. - Sentences are assembled like in Baba Is You.

Gameplay Base: - To get the hero to act, players need to create thoughts and mobilize his willpower. - The brain is a field of square cells spawning thoughts and willpower. - The player’s task is to merge thoughts into sentences and add willpower where needed. - Thoughts are of several types with modifiers, each type having its unique Tetris-like shape. - Willpower centers around the word "WANT," gathering synergy to activate.

Things I didn't have time for, but really wanted to: - Thoughts can be all rearranged and rotated, except the locked ones. - Negative thoughts participate in synergy, often accidentally, causing the hero to do bad things.

I ended up improvising a lot based on this foundation. Spent a lot of time on the character's interaction with the world. Generating an idea sentence for a character is only half the battle, I had to make it so that it was interesting to look at the result.

I ended up spending a lot of time on things that didn't even make it into the game, or made it into the game, but were of no use. For example, I made a little dungeon generator that isn't needed. Or make walking animations for characters.

music and sounds-- well

I really liked what I got and I see potential in it, I hope to continue this game but I'm not sure if I can.

play here

Well, grading time has come to an end. I realized that evaluating games is much more difficult than making them ahahaha Because you need not only to run, but also to delve into, understand, play, and then try to structure and give feedback, which seems to me much more difficult than making a few pixels to do on the screen wzhuh.

So I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has played and appreciated my game, I really appreciate it! I didn't have any particular expectations about the scores, but ranking 9th in innovation really got me thinking and excited!

I seem to want to really want to develop this idea into something finished, so expect updates! I'm finalizing some new features and plan to update the graphics a bit and add sound, stay tuned!

Hello, Ludum Dare!

This is my fourth time participating in the jam, and I have to admit, it was a bit more challenging than usual. Honestly, I was expecting a different theme. I already had an idea for a game, which I was planning to adapt to any theme, but, as often happens in life, plans don’t go as expected, haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr3FVtEKIMA

So I spent the whole of Saturday thinking, trying to come up with a new idea. I know a lot of people recommend not spending more than a couple of hours on brainstorming and just going with the first idea that comes to mind. But that’s not my case. It seems to me that the first ideas that come up are often too cliché and uninspiring. I’d rather do nothing than work on something I don't believe in or find interesting. If I don’t believe in an idea myself, it’s unlikely that the players will, either. I’m just not one of those who do something for the sake of doing it.

Almost immediately after the theme was announced, I got an idea about gnomes—garden gnomes, to be precise. Here’s what my short list of ideas looked like:

1. A stealth action game about a gnome stealing penises (part of internet folklore, haha).
2. A game about an isekai protagonist reincarnated as a tiny creature.
3. A horror game where you need to appease a little house spirit living in the hero’s house. The main feature would be a second-person camera (from the house spirit’s perspective). But I quickly realized it would be hard to make this game genuinely scary.
4. A game where dwarves break into a wizard’s house and start digging right in the apartment.

None of these ideas really grabbed me, but after combining the best elements from all of them, I ended up with what I have now. Since I’m not much of a 3D artist or animator, I also had to work within the limits of the assets I had available. Here was the idea:

The main character accidentally signs a micro-contract, and micro-businessmen invade his home and start taking his belongings. However, there was still the issue of defining victory and defeat. What was the player supposed to do beyond just retrieving their things? So, Saturday was entirely spent thinking about the core idea.

On Sunday, I finally started working on the core mechanics. As it often happens with Unreal Engine, you spend more time tweaking settings and trying to optimize performance than actually working on gameplay, haha. The whole day was spent setting up AI for the gnomes and trying to add IK so they would amusingly raise their hands when carrying objects (sure, I could have just done a simple animation, but why do that?!).

I left the most exciting part—retrieving items and the main character’s “work” mechanic—for Monday. Initially, I wanted the player to constantly focus on the computer while tiny businessmen would slowly steal his belongings when he wasn’t looking. The businessmen wouldn’t steal while you’re watching them, but the boss on the Zoom call would constantly demand your attention.

However, time was running out, and I still hadn’t worked out the win/loss conditions. Then it hit me: the tiny businessmen are collectors! And the main character is a debtor who took out a micro-loan (a loan for a small sum with huge interest rates). This MICRO-loan fit the jam’s theme “Tiny Creatures” perfectly. It’s just a small loan, but the consequences are enormous—tiny businessmen invade the hero’s life like an army of mini-collectors and start taking everything they can. To pay off the debt, the hero has to complete tasks on his computer. He’s living in a tiny windowless apartment because he’s hiding from the “micro” collectors. It all came together!

The thing I liked the most was the computer mechanic. It was my first time implementing text input, and it was really fun. I wanted to add more absurd tasks, but time was running short, so I had to stick with similar ones, though I did try to make them as varied as possible.

The sounds and effects, as usual, were added at the last minute, which is why they feel a bit rough. Sorry about that!

In the end, I’m very happy with how it turned out. Big thanks to everyone participating in Ludum Dare! It’s always a blast with you!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/smol-biznass

Hi jam folks!

I didn’t even wait for the theme announcement — I just went to sleep like an old man. In the morning I saw the theme, got a bit sad because I already had another idea prepared, and originally wanted to make the game in Construct because I already spend enough time in Unreal at work lol.

My early ideas included: - a signal from space, - Doomguy jumping into the Earth’s core, - Morse code during war, - office signals, - forest Wi-Fi horror, - and neural signals in the body.

I actually started the forest horror version, then suddenly decided: no, let’s suffer properly and make it in Unreal, solo, in compo spirit, despite the fact that I absolutely do not know how to do 3D.

While I was in the shower, the idea finally clicked: signal distortion.
First it was some robot carrying a signal from point A to point B. Then I remembered an old idea I had back in 2012 about a physical backpack, where information could fall out and get mixed up. Then I remembered the “last brain cell” meme.

And that’s how the final idea was born:

you play as the last brain cell of a shy guy on a date, carrying Thoughts through his brain to the speech apparatus so he doesn’t say complete nonsense.

I opened Blender for the first time in 5 years, made a sphere with little arms and legs, watched a 6-minute rigging tutorial, imported it into Unreal, and somehow ended up with a dumb little neuron guy. Animation tutorials were no longer 6 minutes long, so I gave up on that and used Unreal’s built-in procedural animation instead. Because my export was broken, the rig was cursed, and IK didn’t behave, I ended up with floppy physics arms — which honestly looked funnier anyway.

I also tried to add jumping and moving platforms, but they felt terrible, so there is no jump in the game lol.

Then I spent half a day fighting a shader because I copied one from a stylization talk and it looked уныло, so I had to make my own weird fleshy version instead ahaha

By day two I finally had: - a weird brain-cell character, - a backpack, - fleshy brain terrain, - a Megabrain that spits out Thoughts in the correct order, - and the core loop.

The core loop is simple: - the Megabrain spits out Thoughts in the right order, - you memorize them, - you carry them through the level, - and throw them into the speech hole in that same order.

If you do it right, the guy says something normal and the Mood goes up.
If not, well… the date goes badly.

I wanted to add way more: - 3 stages of the date, - voice acting, - wind in the head, - shaking from nervousness, - scrambled Thoughts, - visual reactions from the girl.

But even without all that, I’m still really happy that I managed to finish the core gameplay loop — and make the whole thing 100% by myself.

If you want to help this poor guy survive his date, you can play it here:

Last Brain Cell

Thanks for reading, you’re awesome.