The madness begins once again...
At 7pm PST, The Keyboard Cowboys will be going live to play your Ludum Dare games! If you'd like us to play your game on stream, be sure to submit your entry using this form! We will only be playing games of people who are in chat (while alternative between a few regular VIPs) so please keep that in mind!
We can't promise we'll be entertaining, or good at games, or funny. But it WILL be...content.
We've been having such a blast watching and hearing about folks slowly becoming professional table skaters in our game, and we're absolutely thrilled to be getting such warm feedback!
As usual, we'll be paying back the kindness in full by rating and commenting on everyone's game in our comment section. :slight_smile:
If you'd like to learn the ways of the table-board as well, come check out Pop Shove-It and see what kind of gnarly moves you can pull off (with a little practice)!
'Til next time! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
The Keyboard Cowboys are live playing your games again! (This time with a working link!)
Have a game you want to see us mess around with your game? Drop a link in this form and make sure you're around to chat and we'll try to make that happen!
Hope to see you there! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxgUJLhX2_g
I was planning to write an extensive postmortem on our game, Pop Shove-It, but by convenient coincidence, my regulars in my stream chat got me to brain dump in the middle of a game of Tetris Effect (thanks @rhoka, @itsboats, and @arthurds).
What ended up coming out was most of my thoughts about our latest game, where it could be improved, and perhaps our plans with it for the future. It was by no means everything I wanted to say about the game, but I somehow managed to cover a lot of the highlights while staring unblinkingly into the Tetris void...
Unfortunately, my time is incredibly limited to write a full-blow postmortem, so I'll just have to settle with this for now. :pray:
tl;dw: Pop Shove-It is (in my opinion) the game that shows the most promise out of our entire catalog. There are some undeniable weak points that should be addressed (mainly with tutorializing the player and simplifying the controls), but overall I feel that the game has a solid foundation.
You'll notice that I'm mostly critical throughout the discussion, but I only get like that when I'm really passionate about something, and see potential in it. If I ever find the time in my crazy schedule, I'd love to polish this up into a much more accessible game!
So if you're interested, feel free to put me on in the background and listen to me spill my thoughts out in an incoherent fashion. A lot of it probably won't make too much sense unless you've played Pop Shove-It though, so if you haven't already, you can check it out here!
'Til next time! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
The Keyboard Cowboys back for one more weekend of shenanigans, playing your LD games!
Generally at this point in LD rating season, submissions are pretty slow, so we anticipate our queue will be fairly light, if you wanna get in on our lunacy. You can submit your game at this google form, and we'll play it (provided you're in chat for us to talk to)!
(...and sorry in advance...) :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
It's that time of year again! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
We're getting back in the saddle for another weekend of shenanigans, and as usual, we'll be streaming our whole process over at https://www.twitch.tv/coleslawski! Come stop by if you ever need a break from the chaos.
May the theme gods bless you! :pray:
(with echoes...)
This one's a bit outside of our usual fair, but we're all very proud of it! Check out our latest game, Aloft!
Yet another Ludum Dare in the bag, hope to see y'all around this rating season! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
The leaderboards for Aloft are filling up!
Take control of a balloon and navigate through hostile pointy environments by methodically releasing air to propel yourself forwards (or backwards, or upside-down, depending on how well you maintain your balloon-y physics).
Think you have what it takes to be the best balloon in the biz? Try it for yourself here!
'Til next time! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
We're a bit late to this "thank you," since the gang and I are away attending a wedding this weekend, but we were so happy with the warm reception that Aloft was receiving, we just had to take at least a little bit of time to express our gratitude! :heart: :balloon:
We've been watching the intense competition on the leaderboards with great interest, and have been thrilled to see players discover new strategies and routes to optimize the game in ways that we never could have imagined. To everyone who has taken the time to get a handle on our quirky control scheme, we wanted express our sincerest of thank yous! Seeing players go from initially confused to balloon piloting masters has been one of the most rewarding things to see for us!
Although we unfortunately won't be able to stream this weekend, we have plans to return in full force next weekend for our usual chaotic playtesting shenanigans. If you'd like to see your game played live by a bunch of goofballs, feel free to give us a follow at https://www.twitch.tv/coleslawski so you'll know exactly when to tune in!
We also plan to play and rate the games of everyone who was kind enough to do the same for us on our page, as our way of saying thanks. :pray: We haven't had a lot of time to play games due to aforementioned wedding shenanigans, but we plan to remedy that very soon!
Until then, if you'd like to try your hand at our tricky little balloon piloting game, you can check out Aloft here! :balloon:
We hope to see you on the leaderboards!
'Til next time! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buOMxvWLGrE
It has been a blast watching people play our tricky balloon piloting game Aloft!
In particular, it has been SUPER cool to see so many players start off initially confused, only to quickly become masters of the air jets by the end of their play session. We knew that the game was going to be tricky with its odd control scheme, but we still wanted the game to be learnable and masterable, rather than just another typical "rage game."
Seeing that happen in real-time on various streams has been a HUGE treat for us, and we wanted to thank everyone who gave our tiny little game a chance.
If you haven't already, go check these streamers out!
https://www.twitch.tv/oddlyspecificgames
https://www.twitch.tv/itsboats
https://www.twitch.tv/funbasealpha
https://www.twitch.tv/kuviman
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
https://www.twitch.tv/honestdangames
https://www.twitch.tv/pomothedog
https://www.twitch.tv/jitspoe
'Til next time! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
The Keyboard Cowboys are finally streaming LD games! Come join the madness here!
The Keyboard Cowboys are back for one more stream, playing your Ludum Dare games! This time we're starting earlier in the day (for us!), so if you're able to make it, we'd love to have ya! https://www.twitch.tv/coleslawski :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
*Quality content not guaranteed
We're less than 16 hours away from the end of rating season! Sounds like the perfect time to put together a post of our favorite games of the jam! :upside_down:
We've been ecstatic with the amount of love that our game, Aloft, has been getting. As is tradition, we'd like to take this opportunity to spread that love!
The following are ordered from fewest ratings to most ratings, so keep that in mind! While none of these are in the danger zone, we think a lot of these games could do with some extra lovin'. :heart:
This is a nicely polished, fun little platformer with adorable art and a challenging, survival-style premise. We are also very, very bad at it...
A hilarious, visually-polished experience that has you doing puzzle-piece fitting with increasing speed and complexity. Don't forget to invest in a gracious dive!
What if a game about ramming cars had Mario Galaxy physics? This is a fun little game that answers exactly that question. Never has a slowly pursuing enemy truck been more intimidating...
This is just one super polished action-platformer, with an engaging gameplay premise. Shoot arrows at enemies to protect your light source. Shooting THROUGH the light source will power up your shots!
You'll be hard pressed to find a game with as much personality as this one! With a fun, unique premise, a wonderful art style, and hilarious sound effects, this one is an easy recommendation.
A wicked-stylish 2D brawler game where you play as a ninja cat with time travel powers on a train. What more could you want?
Just an excellent game all around. Wonderful visuals, crispy audio, and a refreshingly unique mechanic that is daunting at first, but incredibly satisfying to learn (Author's Note: This is my pick for most underrated game of the jam)!
A strategy-puzzle game with a simple, chess-based premise. The depth of the game is immediately brought to light the moment you complete the tutorial, and it only gets more impressive from there!
One of the more unique idle games we've played in a while. Vibe along to what the developers describe as an "incremental music video, and discover all of the fun visual surprises that this game has to offer!
...And that's all we have for today! Normally we like to do a few of these every jam (and go more in-depth on each one), but we've all been insanely busy these past few weeks! :pray: We hope you've all had as wonderful of a jam as we have, and we can't wait to see how things shake out during the results later today. See you all on the other side!
'Til next time! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
It's that time of year again...
We're all so excited to be taking part yet again in another weekend of tomfoolery!
It's always nice to come back and see so many familiar faces (and plenty of new ones too!) :slight_smile:
Good luck, and may you not hate the theme too much! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
Thank god we finally managed to settle on an idea.
Progress is coming along nicely...
...Literally. Like...That's all we did.
Please check it out so we know our suffering was worth it.
Hope y'all had a much less painful jam than we did! Can't wait to try out other folks' games!
As usual, we'll be streaming LD game playing this weekend at https://www.twitch.tv/coleslawski. Hope ta see ya there! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
The Keyboard Cowboys are streaming your games right now at https://www.twitch.tv/coleslawski!
If you'd like to get your game played, fill out our submission form at https://forms.gle/MLmgAVZB6kHSBzxY8
You will need to be present in chat to get your game played, otherwise we will move on to the next entry!
Hope to see y'all there! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
This one's for you EU folks!
The Keyboard Cowboys are streaming your games right now at https://www.twitch.tv/coleslawski!
If you'd like to get your game played, fill out our submission form at https://forms.gle/MLmgAVZB6kHSBzxY8
You will need to be present in chat to get your game played, otherwise we will move on to the next entry!
Hope to see y'all there! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright:
It's about that time! The boys and I are going to be going live at https://www.twitch.tv/coleslawski at 6pm PST for one last romp through some Ludum Dare games!
This is around the time when ratings hype tends to die down, so we don't anticipate having enough submissions to fill our usual 4-hour block of time (our queue is actually empty right now!). Once we run out of submissions, we will likely be transitioning over to our usual (non-LD related) content for the rest of the evening, and submissions will be closed for the rest of the weekend! :pray:
If you would like to get your game played, fill out this submission form to get put on the list! You must be in chat when we get to your game, otherwise, we'll have to skip you! If you do get skipped but happen to come back later (while we are still playing games), we'd be happy to slot you right back into the queue!
Hope to see y'all there for one last hurrah! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright: