Very excited for my first LD ever! My last uni exam is literally right before the jam so I will be ready!

Wow!

It has been both humbling and amazing to play other peoples games, and get feedback on my own! For my first ever Ludum Dare entry my fiance and I made a game about collecting resources and hacking other planets as the endgame/unconventional weapon. While we didn’t get to implement the endgame we had a lot going on this weekend and are proud of what we got done in the time we had.  I’m thankful for all of the awesome open art (thanks Kenny!) and the cool audio generation tools out there! It really adds a nice bit of polish to a game. Thanks for reading/playing/making games! You all are amazing

What went well:

• Idea/concept
• Art/music
• Mining Resources

What didn’t go well:

• Compiling the game(weird bugs revolving around Unity’s new UI)
• Not enough time (sometimes real life takes precedence)

You can check out the entry here.

Thanks! Can’t wait for the next LD!

Jam Page
Play now (HTML5)

This one was tons of fun and I learned a lot. I built a Single Player Top Down RPG Battle Royale League (say that 10 times fast). I have a ton more ideas for this one and plan to keep going, so let me know what you think and any ideas you have. Thanks for playing!

Follow me on Twitter

Today was a good day :) Its starting to feel like a real game now! I'm excited to wrap it up tomorrow and get to rating some games

Well that was a fun jam :) I can't wait to get to rating some games over the next few weeks. I made a tower defense like game where you use cards to battle the waves of enemies. I'm quite proud of the result and looking forward to some feedback!

Jam Submission
Play now (html webgl)

Feeling quite proud of this jam and excited how it turned out! Been playing some interesting entries and looking forward to more :smile: Comment here and I will rate your game

Here is a video showing a match of my game "Islands of Chess". A networked multiplayer game inspired by chess, with multiple board layers and pieces dropping thru when the tiles break.

Jam Entry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_iqA0FIVnY

I had a lot of fun this jam and have seen so many phenomenal games already! If you are in need of ratings drop one on mine (and comment) and I will rate yours back \o/ Web builds preferable

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/cabbage-defense

A few things I've noticed this jam that has frustrated me (and likely made me go rate someone else)

1. Don't compress with a tool that isn't built into operating systems (7zip, winrar, etc). EVERY operating system can decompress .zip files by default, use that instead
2. Make a web build! The amount of Unity/Godot games I see that don't make a web build is sad. Those engines make it incredibly easy to do so (and you'll get way more people playing/rating by doing so)
3. If your game does need to be downloaded, take care to clean up your project so the compressed build isn't half a gigabyte. Also consider posting a video/screenshots for those who aren't able to download

Looking forward to playing some more games! If you are in need of ratings leave a comment and I can try and get to yours :smile:

There are so many great looking entries this time, but sadly I (and many others) won't play your game if you don't have a web build. If you have a web build and are looking for ratings, leave a comment and I'll get to it!

Wow, what a great jam! I've seen and played so many phenomenal entries, it's inspiring to see all the jammers who come together for this :smile:

All the feedback We've gotten has only motivated me further to continue with my game, as such I decided to post a few thoughts on my game, and potentially solicit feedback for a further release.

I started the jam with wanting to take an existing board game, and add some kind of twist to it. When the theme of summoning was announced we gravitated towards chess and roguelike using cards as your "summons". I don't think it necessarily fit the theme the best, but I did think its a fun concept.

The first focus of the game was getting the board generating onto the tilemap, as well as having them placed properly with each new wave

The next big focus was being able to place pieces from the cards on the board. It was decided early on that there would be a fog of war to prevent you from seeing your opponent pieces while placing yours. There has been feedback from ratings that this isn't always intuitive, so it's now an option in the full game :smile:

After that the focus was on being able to "merge" the pieces to form the next one. This could be done either from card -> piece, or card -> card

Then was the overall game flow, including moves, simple (dumb) enemy AI

The last big focus of the core mechanic was getting the wave transitions working

The final day was spent largely on game polish, adding effects, and the AI. While the AI wasn't perfect it was a vast improvement from the initial version (pick a random available move). The final AI in the jam went something like this:

• if there is a move to kill the king, take it
• if there is a move to kill a piece, pick one at random
• else pick a random available move

It's not perfect and I've already thought of a few improvements, but this is definitely an area of focus for the full game. Unfortunately many chess engines like stockfish won't work because they depend on standard chess boards and rules. Also many of them are GPL which make it impossible to do a full release without releasing your source code. If someone knows of a chess engine that could work with non standard boards/rules I may consider adding an "interface" with it so players can download it separately and optionally.

The other cool thing (I thought) with the game was effect cards. Cards that would somehow change the board or pieces. Unfortunately we were only able to get two different types in (x gets y’s moves, increase move length) so there wasn't much variety and your pieces got VERY overpowered :sweat_smile: This is an area of focus for the full release. If you have a cool idea for an effect card (somehow changes the board, rules, or pieces) I'd be happy to hear and potentially incorporate them!

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading! If you've played and rated the game thank you so much! If you have feedback, suggestions, or would like to get updates about this project, I'd love to hear from you in the comments :smile:

If you are interested you can play the jam version on itch here

Some wrap up thoughts:

• Godot is a solid engine that makes it VERY quick to get things implemented
• Getting a full nights sleep is very important for maximum productivity
• Leaving the final day to polish was a really smart thing we haven't achieved in many jams before :joy:
• Focusing on the core mechanics first meant more time for bugfixes and polish
• Wrapped up at 1556 lines of gdscript (754 being in the Game (main) file :joy:)

What a fun jam. I think this was the smallest and most focused jam I've done in a while. My favorite was the first tiny game. If you have a web build rate/comment my game and I will get back to yours!

• https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/creepy-crawly-mansion

it seems to work on mobile browsers; the second tiny game requires you to drag, it's designed for mouse movement though

It's been well over a year and I am happy to announce a full release of my LD55 entry on January 13, 2026. This community is one of my favourite things and I've been glad to be apart of it over the years and all the great games I've played, thank you! If a small chesslike roguelike game interests you a wishlist would be appreciated!

Wishlist now

It’s now been almost 2 years and the FULL STEAM RELEASE of Waves of Chess is Available NOW! This started as an entry to LD55 and has since grown into a full game.

I love this community and it has inspired me to game jam over and over across the years! @Sarah and I worked on this over the last two years and we can’t wait to share it with you all!

It’s a chess rougelike game, so if that interests you, check it out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4100740/WavesofChess

Here is the original jam entry if you’re interested to see it! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/waves-of-chess Thanks a lot, and remember that you can do anything if you set your mind to it!