Did I read somewhere that 600x600 is desired layout size?

Okay, everything that happened the last two hours, we'll just call that practice...

You need to create a game from scratch in 72 hours, but every time you write three lines of code, you have to delete one line.

One of my objects is named "UselessPipeHor"

1/5th of the way through...

that's 1/5th of the way through the game... i realize that doesn't compute to finishing on time, but it'll work out.

I honestly don't know what to think about the monstrosity I've created... either people are gonna love it, hate it, or think I'm batshit crazy...

So, I played one, and it proved to me why I don't like the theme. There wasn't anything wrong with the game - it stuck to the theme very well... and that was the game's downfall.

Pay attention to it. You stink!

In the throes of a seemingly non-stop game-build it can be possible to forsake hygiene, but please don't. Be clean. Take a shower, or at least go wipe that poop off your face.

PSA brought to you be the Coalition for Hygiene During LudumDare40 (#CHDLD40 for short).

It's all here, I click publish and it continues to say "Unpublished"

This is my first LDJam. Is there something I have not done properly? Any help appreciated.

WOOHOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have a game. Please enjoy. If something's broken, please tell me; this is my first ludum dare. :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/$55587

P.S. For future reference, never title your game simply "Theme" - it won't publish. Shout out to @remco for helping me figure that out.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/theme-the-game

You completed a game in 72 hours. Well done. Give yourself a pat on the back. Maybe you're still uploading - that's cool - don't stress, you got time. Maybe you didn't finish, but you tried. Things happen, you'll get 'em next time. Plus, you tried. We all tried. And lots of games were made. Mistakes were made, sure. Who didn't make mistakes. But, look at all the games! Congratulations everyone! You made a game! Or, you'll use this experience to make a game next time. WOOHOO! GAMES!

This is a post endorsing someone else's game. I do not personally know the creator. I merely am providing a public service announcement, because you should check out Unicorn Fart Jam:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/unicorn-fart-jam

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/theme-the-game

Some players of my game have requested clues, hints or even a walk-through of my gameplay, and I'm willing to oblige. But first, I want people to have the chance to experience and play my game without any clues. So, have at it, but only if you have a sense of humor. Thanks. Enjoy. :)

P.S. No downloads required.

Please stop spamming your game links on other people's games' comment threads. It's disrespectful, discourteous and rude. We all know how to find games to play; and there's tons of them. No one needs people constantly spamming their game links on other people's game comment threads. Some people want to use the comment thread for actual feedback.

Frankly, my game isn't about graphics - I'm full opt-out on that category, as well as audio. More importantly, I didn't want to give anything away - no spoilers. Some people only make it a third of the way through my game. Some less. I've gotten requests for clues and hints, and this is fully understandable. I've gone back and forth about how much to divulge, and when to do it. If you read my game comment thread, some clues have been doled out. But, not a lot. Even so, a fair number of people have beaten my game.

My game is a one-time experience. It's not meant to be re-played many times (though, I suppose you could if you wanted to). If you see someone else play my game, you can't ever experience it yourself with freshness. It needs to be experienced with fresh, naive eyes. That's the purpose of my game. To be experienced one time. That's it. You play it once, you finish, you don't ever play it again. It's something that you must experience for yourself; Pics, GIFS and/or videos can hinder that.

I'm not saying my game's awesome. It's just different. It's hardly even a game, except it is. I guess I'll just tell you what other people said about my game:

"the font in the game isn’t like what is in the screenshots"

I didn't even get that right. But, I still have a functioning "game." Here's more quotes:

"confused"

At least six people used this adjective to describe their game-play experience. Another person was "not sure what was happening". Yet another person was "frustrated". One player was "angered". Someone else described an aspect of the game as "a little annoying".

"surprised"

At least two players were surprised.

"laughed"

At least three players laughed. One person "giggled". Another person was "tickled".

"interesting"

Five players deemed their experience interesting.

"unique"

At least four people found the experience to be unique.

"crazy and/or wacky"

Two people claimed my game fell into this realm. I agreed.

"trippy"

Three people called it trippy, including the person who made, "I took too many drugs."

"its [sic] something that I could pull off in way lesser [sic] time."

Yeah, someone said that too.

I agree with 95% of the comments I received, and I'd like to hear more, but I don't need your ratings; I have plenty of ratings. I also don't need feedback for future versions; there will be no future versions.

If you want to rate a game, check out one of the games in danger of not receiving enough ratings (20) to be judged:

https://ldjam.com/games/danger/all

But, if you want, you can still play my game - if you'd even call it that.

(My entry is titled "Theme - The Game" because I initially tried to submit it under the title, "Theme" which, apparently, conflicted with some other page on this site. :P )

You can also check out the post right below me.

An astonishing number of games don't mention the controls used anywhere within the game.

This might sound like a strange observation coming from someone whose entry was vague about controls, but part of the PURPOSE of my game was for the player to have to decipher what to do. And, even so, I still directed the player to "click" and told them to use "Space" with a piece of text that spanned half the vertical length of the screen. Aside from those, arrow keys are the only other controls used in my game. So, even for a game whose INTENT is for a player to FIGURE IT OUT, I still told players 66% of the controls. So many people didn't mention them at all - it's astonishing. And, if you tell me, "it's on the LD page," I'll respond by saying, "You gave me an entire folder of stuff to download and not once in that folder are any controls mentioned?"

Here's a fun fact: I had a power outage during the review process. Guess what I could play during that power outage - previously downloaded games that told me the controls. I couldn't go on some site and learn the controls, nor would I want to.

You have to convince me (or anyone) to play your game.

The second I can't play your game in a browser or without downloading something, you've given yourself an extra job of needing to convince me to proceed. When I began the jam review, I only played in-browser games. After all, with thousands of game options, why would I download some random game that might be junk? That being said, I remember the very first game I downloaded from this jam. And, you know why I downloaded it? I was intrigued. By the title. And by a picture. By a post. That game was "Unicorn Fart Jam."

You're intrigued too, aren't you? I also remember the second game I downloaded; I think I was convinced by all the glowing comments. Maybe some pictures too. That game was Nabi. Both of those games were worth downloading, for very different reasons. By the way, when the power went out, I played Nabi again. Ironically, to my first point, this game doesn't explicitly tell you the directions, but they are intuitive, and, by that point, I was probably already hooked by the look and feel (and the comments), anyway.

Both those games convinced me (in different ways) to download them. And they set a high bar for future downloads. If your game page says, "this is something I threw together in 6 hours" and you're asking me to download something - I'm not doing it. I'm not wasting my time, if you can't put the effort in.

That being said, I can be convinced in different ways. One game, I was convinced to download because they received a lot of harsh comments in their game feed. In my own game feed, I had someone tell me "its something that I could pull off in way lesser time" so I could sympathize with receiving harsh comments, and I checked out their game.

Some people are d!ck5

That's all I have to say about that.

The Theme should be used WELL (or just don't use it, idc)

I got no problem with the LD40 theme, in spite of my game and its title. But, a ton of people were not very innovative about it, in my opinion. I think this can be factually proven - just look around at all the games that used the theme in the same way. The ones that stood apart were innovative about it. In other words, if your game merely did one of the following:

• the more enemies you have, the harder it gets
• the longer you live, the harder it gets
• the more you collect, the harder it gets

Then, thematically, it wasn't innovative. Also, if your game merely did the above, thematically, then your game probably became difficult quickly, which brings me to my next point:

There were a lot of difficult games

I think a lot of people fell into the theme trap implicit to the theme, "The more you have, the worse it is" and their games became difficult to unplayably difficult, which often became not fun, or worse. In my estimation, the games that elevated themselves in their use of theme did one of these things:

While they may have included an element that made things get worse (more coins, more food, etc) they also provided a way of getting rid of (dumping) said element.

The simple game, "Brick Racer" comes to mind. I played this game early on, and remember the comments claiming it was too easy. The objective of the game is simple - get from point A to point B. And, yeah, that is simple, if you're going as slow as humanly possible. But, this game has a timed online leader-board. So, the goal is to go fast. The "gas pedal" is essentially a pressure relief valve, or a choice, as it were - you choose your speed, and, therefore, your difficulty level (which brings me to my next point).

AND/OR

"Factory Panic" comes to mind. You can play it one way and have the game progress to a certain difficulty, but, then, because of the various choices available, no matter how difficult it gets, you can always think to yourself, "well, what if I played it this way instead." It might not actually ever become easy, but it can encourage the player to play again, because they're trying something new - a new strategy, approach.

AND/OR

Early on was easy, so that anyone and everyone could at least play their game for awhile. On the flip side, for the skilled players, the game eventually became rather difficult.

Ludum Dare was fun.

And I plan to participate again.

That's all for now, though there's probably other things I learned. If you have any take-aways that we can all utilize in LD41 (I plan to participate), feel free to post them in the comments. :)

This world cloud is derived directly from all the words present within my game. :)

Since my cover pic is merely a word, and my "gameplay screenshot" is merely words, I thought this would be fitting. Plus, it might be a clue, who knows?