I’m going to participate in LD for the first time, using
Phaser.js
Photoshop
Tiled (maybe)
Let’s do this!

This was my first LD (and 4th GameJam, actually), I made a game named Jet Team in two days of pretty lazy coding/drawing/e.t.c. Basically, themes of LD were not very suitable for me, I thought, so I lacked both a good game idea and a will to finish something big.
So I came with pretty simple concept: lazy side-scroller arcade where your goal is to fight incoming enemies with your squad of tiny spaceships and eventually assemble squad of 10 ships (so, here comes “Growing” theme). At first, I wanted to make “W” and “S” buttons to control the vertical position of squad. It did not seem very comfortable and also required to make different callbacks for different situations (these buttons also must be the ones which you press to start/restart/skip intro/e.t.c.). So a truly simple solution – use mouse position to define desired vertical position of squad. It was easy to implement, and also it went more natural than actual button controls. I made squad ships shoot on left mouse button press, but grew tired of constant clicking pretty soon. I decided ships should be smart enough to shoot enemy automatically as they approach on close Y-positions. And lo! this is how I got this concept for “Zero-button arcade”, the game where it’s pretty much enough to move your mouse up and down, and nothing more.
Remaining time I had spend on creation of different AI types, to make some challenge for player (actually, I went too far with game’s difficulty). Here’s my LD:Compo entry:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=59837
In my honest opinion, it went surprisingly well for such amount of work. People liked this mechanic and  (suddenly!) my weird pixel art. So, after two weeks of judging, I decided to make some adjustments. So I present you Jet Team: Deluxe Edition. Some graphics improvements, difficulty changes and bugfixes were made, and game became much more playable. I hope you’ll enjoy this:
http://firellon.ru/jetteam_deluxe
Have fun!

Hi everyone,

My team tried to Jam this weekend, and… failed miserably. We are late for a submission hour, struggling to make working production build of our game, and time had finally run out, at last. So I have no choice but to submit it here and finally show you why we’re late for submission.
This game is quite big and is worth of three-days of ~14h team work each, and features 10 000 procedurally generated star sectors with procedurally generated enemies. Have fun exploring it, I shall say

Play The Star Sector in Itch.io

This weekend was tense. OWGames (aka me and my friend) tried to make a big game in a three days. We worked 14-16 hours per day, and on the final day we spent a whacking 24 hours without sleep (ugh, that’s rough) to complete NESm just as deadline stroke,  and there are still bugs and underdeveloped gameplay details everywhere, much to our regret. Nonetheless, what is done, is done. Let’s analyze!

What went well

We’ve managed to make actually infinite space, with smooth scrolling and a total illusion of space traveling. This technique was pretty hard to make and debug, as each enemy and object in the game should move relatively to the player’s ship without breaking the illusion of endless cosmos. Now you can see, this world is really big and takes a reasonably small amount of memory to render.

In fact, the world exists only around the player and parts of it are destroyed when player’s ship goes far enough (oh, poor aliens… they exist almost only when you look at them! So do not close your eyes, please ). This is great for performance and optimization, also it’s way easier to make really big galaxies, but is also a bit cartoonish and unfair. Given we do not name our aliens, it plays out well, but what if you could develop some form of relations with one particular alien? Hm…

Also, we’ve managed to make the world filled with asteroids and planets and ships at random in the way it’s not too boring. We’d like to make you feel tenser by making aliens send hunters after you, and some random events happen time to time. It should be a spacemare, after all! Space amoebas, galaxy devourers, and even more creepy stuff

We found some compromise between high-res pixel art and short time of jam. I’d love to draw something gorgeous, but I had to write complex game logic and plot, too… So I’m glad we chose the retro-style for player console and most objects in the game consist of a few colors differentiated only by brightness. It still looks nice, and I’ve drawn it fast enough to generate sounds, write a story plot and code.

What went wrong

This game is winnable… theoretically. Actually, space is too damn big and the Beacons are too far away from each other. You still can buy this data from a nearby planet, but this gives you some obscure pointer which is not always as right, as it seems. So you probably never get to read the full story and reveal what the Ancient race is going to do with a protagonist.

More races, more ships, special abilities for the ships, and ships upgrades – all those improvements would make this game look more complete, but the actual disadvantage is that planet communications are too flat and boring, without any variance and possible quests (we planned them all along, but we’re not able to make them in time). The story is about man trying to find himself in the dark void of space. You can go for beacons, of course, but I initially planned to make multiple endings, including picking some pretty planet to live there happily ever after.

The room, the ship feel a little bit empty, though I imagined it as a big set of various interactive elements, such as water dispenser, bed, radar, airlock, planet battle and excavation panels and more. I’d love to make this all around the ship, so the player will have even more activities to attend to while flying somewhere. Autopilot to some coordinates should be included, too.

I’d love to write chiptune music for this game instead of using auto-generated by Jukedeck, and probably should use an actual retro palette to get the style right.

And there’s a big list of features and improvements that would make this underdeveloped prototype a real game, but I’m still indecisive whether I should continue development or not.

Conclusion

I’m overall happy with the results of this weekend, I’d improved my drawing and coding skills a lot, and I’ve found so much positive feedback that I can’t really thank you enough, guys.

As that is not my first LD, I must admit, jamming gives generally better and polished games, but denies of any exact realization of the author’s idea, as you’ll need to harmonize your intentions with your teammates. Speaking about that, I’d like to find a decent composer for our team and a couple of programmers and/or designers/artists. More manpower is required to complete a game in such a short span of time, I believe.

We will surely participate in the next LD, and try to concentrate on gameplay even more. It works out well, gives you a lot of feedback and limitless possibilities to learn how to make games fun.

Play Never-ending Spacemare

Ahoy guys!

Those were quite long and busy three days, and here we are, finally presenting you our newest game called LokoRush https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/$83632

This is a crazy combo of Racing / Tower Defense game, where you drive little locomotives as quickly as possible in order to achieve the finish first.

But your opponents, apparently, have a headstart, so there is no way to beat them unless you build some towers in the slots around the map.

The trick is, the towers you're gonna build do not differentiate between you and other locomotives. Since, apparently, you are all locomotives.

Have fun with figuring out how to beat this game!

Your Nebulate.me team - Firellon, Kutase and React.

Itch.io

https://firellon.itch.io/lokorush

Google Drive

Windows

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FFb5GLka5DV80Ca9ppahobsm-07FmTR4/view?usp=sharing

MacOS

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AOyuJxwGzegIduY6xVgsS9oF6IADdib6/view?usp=sharing

Hey guys, check it out: we have managed to release an epic sandbox platformer about one man's struggle versus the system in a smartly generated nigh endless upwards-facing dungeon! Space Ltd. the huge megacorporation has taken over minds of normal people and YOU are the only one who can possibly bring it down!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/break-the-system

• Test your wits trying to find a way to outsmart the system and free your friends from being possessed by it.
• Find a way to climb up the Space Ltd. office building and confront the guards and turrets.
• Break your usual environment, escape the limits of reality and overcome the hard drive space the server that hosts this cruel game.

However, this is not an easy task: the first floor of the office building has restricted access to the upper floors, so you will have to find a way to get this access, perhaps, by committing a crime. For the greater good!

You can pick up items, throw stuff, shoot people, carry around the company's papers and mostly do whatever your imagination allows in order to achieve the goal. Try out everything, and DO NOT GIVE UP! We believe in you!

Good luck ^_^ (you're gonna need it)

Hey guys, We consider this LD42 not quite as successful as we'd like it. The game we have released was, unfortunately, raw, unforgiving and quirky (while the idea to break the game was interesting, it was hard to see through). Bad planning and estimations, distracting on redundant features and deviating a lot from player experience while not really giving it enough testing - all of that led us to the game called "Break the System":

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/break-the-system

We did not fall, though. Instead, last weekend we decided to try and redo the jam in just two days with the same theme, so to learn from our mistakes and manage our resources and priorities properly. And that was harsh, indeed. We had to drop a lot. We had to spend quite a few hours just thinking and writing things down, describing almost every single detail. But, surprisingly, it worked out! We have managed to produce a small game called LandeRaid, and you can play it here:

https://firellon.itch.io/landeraid

What we would really like to get is your feedback, since we are oblivious to some of the game's flaws. And as this game is not really part of LD42, please, be as objective as possible - this is not going to backfire at you :)

Sincerely yours, Nebulate.me team

Hi people!

First of all, I'd like to thank you for taking part in LD #43 with us, posting all those pictures and motivational messages that helped us to keep our cool and make it to the end!

I'm happy to present you HumanScape, the result of learning from several failed LDs, creating unfinished games time after time after time:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/humanscape

The thing is, we are quite ambitious people. Whenever the new theme appeared, we thought like:

"Cool! Let's create a game with the huge universe and interesting setting, with multiple sub-mechanics and potential for a replayability, too!"

Now we learned hard way, it's basically never a good idea.

Starting with the fact that you are more than likely to meet quite some complications on your way.

Besides that, you have to leave at least half your time for bug fixing and gameplay testing/tuning.

The game should always stay enjoyable, after all.

This time we finally managed to get rid of this juvenile dream of creating another Heroes of Might and Magic or StarBound or Stardew Valley or Gods Will Be Watching (oh, wait...) over a course of 3 days.

While it's not impossible to get all those little cool things in your game, however, it is impossible to make them work well.

So... Our game is a strategic arcade about humanity running away from some evil aliens.

While your main role is to take care of the ship filled with sleeping people, there are a lot of trouble around.

At some point, you have to wake up at least someone so you could deal with those pesky asteroids or the chasing fleet of your foes.

And then, after the job is done... well, watch this little guy age and die eventually, as he can't go back into cryogenic sleep.

Or perhaps, you prefer them to die in battle?

The choice is yours!

You only have to survive for 90 years (of game time), so brace yourself!

Sincerely yours, Nebulate.me team

This time we decided to go for something way, WAY simpler than we usually do.

So, three days past we've got our little and adorable game called Kicky Blimp!

In this game, you will help a kid to pilot the little air ballon throw the skies.

Yet you can only do one single action in this game, it shall be more than enough.

Would you kick hard enough to get the lad into the space?

Would you be worthy to see the stars with the little boy?

Alright, then! Sky is the limit!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/kicky-blimp

Hey guys,

Thank you for all this feedback we've got!

We worked a lot on our LD entry during the last 2 weeks and made a lot of changes compared to the initial version, including proper port to Android!

Now looking forward to your comments and feelings about it! Would you help us to make it better?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nebulate.kickyblimp&hl=en

In exchange, we will gladly rate your games, so please leave comments too!

P.S. If you'd like to check out our game, but don't have Android, here's the link:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/kicky-blimp

Meanwhile, here's our game of Keep the Keep!

To be sure it's worth your time, let me ask you a few questions:

1. Do you like to feel smart?

2. Do you like thinking strategically?

3. Do you like towers and castles?

4. And finally, do you despise abused typical tower defense genre like we do?

If any or all of the answers above are "Yes", then yeah, you should definitely check it out!

We would absolutely love to hear your feedback!

Have fun!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-the-keep

Cheers guys,

It's been a fantastic week, as we've got so many great people to play Keep the Keep!

Thank you for being mighty supportive, helping us improve the game a lot!

Over the last week we've prepared a small yet meaningful quality update for you to check out:

• The turn will be automatically over as you place a building, no more useless clicks
• You can also skip the turn by pressing Space
• The finish turn button is moved to the bottom centre to be a bit more accessible whenever needed
• Tower buttons have icons now, making discerning them easy
• Towers connected to the Reactor are now shown by an actual connecting wire with the energy flowing through
• Fitting background music added as well

All of these little features have been requested by you, guys, and we are super happy to listen to our players.

It's just so incredibly inspiring to read all the feedback you've given us!

Have fun!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-the-keep

P.S. If you'd like us to play your game and get some quality feedback (like we had from you), please leave the link in the comments - we will surely play it very, very soon! :wink:

Hi wonderful people,

We, the Nebulate.me team have recently released our first game to Steam Early Access! It's a strategic multiplayer puzzle about quick planning, pacing, bluff and towers. Lots of towers, in fact, the only way you wage war in this game is by building really aggressively! And it's really important to keep the one you're sitting in, too, so that's why it's called Keep the Keep!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1126110/KeeptheKeep/

Since publishing the game and getting it running is a hard business, we are looking for: - Publicity - Feedback and bug reports - Hate and love - Better graphics and more features - Advice on the game design - General support And in exchange, we offer is a unique opportunity to directly participate in this game's development to its final state, talking to us the developers and getting your names on the Credits page (which will be added soon to be sure 😃 ).

Simply join this cosy Discord server and we shall give you free keys to check out the game and all the attention and impact you'd never get as a player in AAA titles!

https://discord.gg/Cd6mzubbfP

keepthekeep #indiegamedev #madewithunity #earlyaccess

Hey people, we've made a game for this jam literally called Mecha&Aliens, and boy oh boy, we have BUGS in it (and not the ones of software kind)

Now, we might see what you're gonna say: "Meh, that's yet another top down shooter, played that, been there" - but don't you be hasty with assumptions. For you see, in this game, you are not exactly playing the Mecha... You are playing the bugs!

Will you be able to stave off the inevitable alien defeat at the hands of this chunky oversized battlesuit? Will you be cheering for the "defender of humanity" instead and do your best to protect him? Are you actually then one in control of the game at all?

Well, up to you to find out!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/mech-aliens

Whoa, those were two really loaded days...

I've got a working game idea and made it from scratch, both graphics and code alike, but didn't get the SFX out, neither did I manage to implement better juice mechanics.

Guess I'm going for another jamming day, then. See ya all tomorrow!

Wow, that was an intense weekend!

Three days of sitting at home and making everything work together in a deceptively simple-looking interactive human-cat system. Quite a few bugs found out, new programming patterns for Unity discovered and overall skill raised, loads of tea drunk - and all of this so I could finally, finally share this link with you:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/catreams

It's my very first Cat game, and I'm very happy with how that turned out to be.

You can... sleep, eat and jump around. And purr in a chiptuney tones. And that big smelly human of yours gets to do stuff for you (they think it's up to them to decide what to do, ha-ha, nope). Just.. watch over them, alright? Humans are kinda fragile and don't have 9 lives, and have to be fed too... Damn, that's too many things to consider, need to sleep for a bit. (purring on the bed)

Genuinely hoping you'll enjoy it, as long as you've got the patience to take it slow and relax while your human tries to be better at being a pet.

As should I, probably, since it's 00:21 now here and a full working day next morning.

So, will check your wonderful games tomorrow :smile:

Night night!

For example, we have just delivered an update to the WebGL version of our game Airborne Adventures: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/airborne-adventures

There, a brave young rocket boot courier gets to deliver letters, newspapers, flowers... and more! Sounds kinda boring, right?

Well... it's a lot about how it's delivered and what is the meaning behind your actions. Perhaps, there's something more?

Perhaps, not everything people say is as it is? Would you be able to find out?

We bet that you won't see the pompous guy above on your first walkthrough :) would you prove us wrong?

TLDR: If you like platformers with a moderate challenge level, Airborne Adventures is also right up your valley. Make sure to check it out!

Hey everyone!

We’re excited to share some new updates for our game, Turn of Taurtarus!

Since the original submission, we’ve made some quality of life improvements. Here’s what’s new:

• Character Animations: Both forms of Humans and, of course, the Minotaur now have animations to make them just a little bit more alive.

• Lighting: We’ve introduced a new lighting system to make the maze even more atmospheric. The shadows and flickering torches are mostly for visual purposes only, but we believe, add quite a bit of vibe to the maze crawl.

• Score Popups: To make your scores easier to understand, we've added the popup clarification of the point formula, helping you understand how to get better outcomes!

If you haven’t played Turn of Taurtarus yet, now’s the perfect time! We’d love to hear your feedback!

Nebulate.me