I've been learning Godot (and GDScript) for a few days, looking forward to starting the development of my first Godot game ever. I had been mostly using Unity before, it was time to learn new engines. The sample projects are quite educating.

I'll probably make a 2D game with pixel-art for WebGL platform. The primary reason why I didn't choose UE5.

I had started learning Godot by its 4.x version, but found out that 3.x is much more suitable for WebGL games. Web game not working in macOS is a dealbreaker for me.

Well, apparently attempting to make a Compo game isn't such a bright idea when you are just at the beginner phase of the engine you use. No way I can finish the game in my mind tonight, especially if I have to do the art, too. I'll use pre-made assets and focus on coding and designing the game (and of course will opt-out the related categories).

My idea is

"You witness the epic battle between the fearless heroes and relentless undead in this game about greed. Except that you are no hero, but a rogue who loots the dungeon during the battle. The weight you carry has a limit, so you need to pay attention to the value and weight of the loot. Oh, and don't die, because a rogue lives only once.

You can increase your weight limit and buy thief kits. It's also possible to gain from fallen heroes if you feel greed too much, but you'll also gain the wrath of their siblings-in-arms."

My plan for this Ludum Dare was to learn Godot 3.5 for this and future jams, leaving the engine I had been using 10+ years. I thought I could complete something for Compo. It seems that learning a new engine makes sense when you have a teammate experienced with that engine and your game is not overscoped. I couldn't reach the point I desired even after deciding to use pre-made assets and aiming for the Jam's deadline, rather than Compo.

I found myself struggling with some technical problems I'd solve in minutes if I were using Unity. The point where I decided to give up was the difficulty about finding the paths of my custom resources in the WebGL build. I was no longer having any fun in the jam, so there were no point to go on.

And I noticed my idea was overscoped, considering the fact that I found this idea late (in the middle of Saturday) and I am working solo in a new engine.

“You witness the epic battle between the fearless heroes and relentless undead in this game about greed. Except that you are no hero, but a rogue who loots the dungeon during the battle. You can carry only a few items. Oh, and don’t die, because a rogue lives only once.

You can increase your weight limit and buy thief kits. It’s also possible to gain from fallen heroes if you feel greed too much, but you’ll also gain the wrath of their siblings-in-arms.”

An idea I might revisit in the future.

You witness the epic battle between the fearless heroes and relentless fiends in this game about greed. Except that you are no hero, but a rogue who loots the dungeon during the battle.

You can carry only 5 items. Oh, and don’t die, because a rogue lives only once!

Buy upgrades for your health and luck. Luck upgrade increases the chance of finding valuable loots.

Game truly ends when you retire. Hi-score is saved only when you retire.

https://aslangames.itch.io/greedy-rogue (WebGL)

Development story

Greedy Rogue was my idea for Ludum Dare 54 I came up for the "Limited Space" theme. It was supposed to be the game I'll be learning Godot while making it, because I wanted to give up Unity. I failed to complete the game in 72 days even though I was using pre-made assets, my time was spent mostly struggling with learning this new game engine. But it was an idea I was so fond of.

Then I joined Secret Santa Jam 2023, a jam where each participants make a game for a random participant. My giftee said they like bullet hells, roguelites, D&D. This Greedy Rogue idea would be a perfect gift here.

Art

I didn't want to draw the art for this game, but neither wanted to work with someone else. So I used free and paid pixel art assets. A pack of in-game sprites and a pack of icons were combined for this project. The challenge here was the inconsistent color palettes of each packs. So https://github.com/Gord10/PaletteConverterCSharp that changes the colors of images according to a pre-set palette obtained from a reference image.

I can't compose, but also wanted to work alone. So yes, pre-made music used here.

Unity?

I feel guilty for turning back to Unity after all the fuss. A "sell-out", maybe? But to be honest, I don't feel relieved while struggling with basic parts like restarting the level, while I make jam games for that relief.

Reception

Mostly positive. Its Reddit thread has some great advices for its game design. I might get back to this game for simple improvements like assigning a different key for the exit.

Less is more

A short, but polishedly fun game experience is better than a long game that's unpleasant to play. Players might quit the game at an early stage if they are bored/frustrated, without ever seeing the next levels you put your hard work on.

Marketing is a part of the jam

An appealing cover art is important to get the other jammers to play your game. So is the game's description. Keep in mind that you should save time for these too, not only for the build of your game.

A player is highly unlikely to play your game if it lacks a description or any visuals in its page. Especially if the game is an executable to be downloaded.

I believe a good game description should tell the genre (if it fits any), objective and controls. (Or maybe a vague, yet intriguing description? It might work when you want to make players curiuos.)

Communication

It should be clear what's the game's objective and how to play. If you didn't have time to place text instructions in-game, the instructions should be in the description at the game page, at least.

I don't believe text instructions are that important in game jams for common controls like WASD movement. But at least game must communicate about when and how to interact with game objects, for example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC_IL2hMBvs

The result of the first day of my solo Ludum Dare 55 challenge, With a Little Help From My Fiends. I'll draw the art and add sound tomorrow.

You collect crystals to summon fiends to fight alongside you. But you find out fiends are not your friend, like every warlock finds out.

Every fiend has their own personality. Wrathful one attacks anyone on his way. Greedy one steals the crystals. I couldn't find good combat personality for Lust and Pride yet. I'm open for suggestions.

A hot fix for issues that can be considered as bugs in Fiend-Zone.

The most common critique was its unforgivingly large hitboxes. It's fixed now. There is an on-going pixel bleeding issue for tiles. It's still not completely fixed, but there are improvements.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/fiend-zone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwrQ1pzFAK4

You are a warlock that summons fiends to fight alongside you. Your objective is to summon all the 7 fiends by collecting crystals. Each fiend has their own personality, like a greedy one who is after the crystals you need to collect.

You'll find out fiends aren't your friend, like every warlock does.

Ludum Dare page

Updates

• Hitboxes are smaller
• Sound effects have a lower volume
• Lust chases the closest mob to you, instead of the closest mob to him. And he doesn't go to the exit door at the final stage, he does something else.
• EXIT sign. (Yeah, it doesn't make sense an ancient cave have an EXIT sign, but neither most of what happens in the game.)
• Visual improvements

Post-jam is available as Windows and Mac (Silicon/Intel) downloads

Game

"You are a warlock that summons fiends to fight alongside you. Your objective is to summon all the 7 fiends by collecting crystals. Each fiend has their own personality, like a greedy one who is after the crystals you need to collect.

You’ll find out fiends aren’t your friend, like every warlock does.

Mobs drop crystals like in survivors-like games. You cannot attack anyone, instead you collect the crystals from mobs killed by fiends."

Idea

All the 7 Fiends symbolize a deadly sin, which is reflected on their unique behaviours.

My initial idea was the warlock would summon the Fiends to help him in a survivors-like battle. The Fiends would be more like "inconvenience", but I noticed they act much more like enemies while coding the game. "With A Little Help From My Fiends" was its initial name, but it was too funny and it didn't reflect the game as good as "Fiend-Zone".

Players cannot attack, the zombies are killed by the Fiends. All player does is move around and collect stuff.

What went right?

* People liked the originality of the idea. * Game objective and gameplay was clear. I knew players would try to cast an attack with mouse button, but the game has none, so I put a "You cannot attack in this game" message on mouse click. * I had limited time to draw the sprites, so I made a base Fiend sprite with white color and then tinted the sprite for each Fiends (excluding Pride, he has a variation of player sprite).

What went wrong?

These are all the consequences of the game not being tested by someone else before submission.

* Deadliest sin of this game was the large colliders, like the one on left. Game became much better when colliders became like right, but this happened in post-jam version. Large colliders made the game much harder and disrupted the flow of the movement. * It was too loud, because I was too tired and forgot to test the game with my headphones. Not only I reduced the volumes in post-jam, but also added volume rolloff to fire projectiles, so the distant explosions would have low/no sound. * I didn't have energy left to add polishes like screenshake or projectile animation upon submission. I dislike the zombie sprites, but at least they do the work. * Pixelbleeding on the tilemap. Still unresolved in the post-jam.

Here is the Ludum Dare page

As this is a Compo game, source code is available.

What makes a theme good? There are many factors, I believe one of them is being interpretable for either a background story or mechanics. Like Summoning allows a game where we literally summon fiends to assist in the game, or a game we are a skater trying to reach the court we are summoned.

This interpretability allows both bottom-up and top-down game design. I think the reason why most recent Ludum Dare themes are like this, they satisfy both designers with bottom-up and tow-down approach.

• Build early and often. So that it's much unlikely that you struggle with build errors right before the deadline.
• Test early, if you can. If you can bring the game to a state testable by other people earlier the submission, you're more likely to notice issues you overlooked. My biggest mistake in previous LD was neglecting having my game tested by my friends or any game dev communitites, which caused me to overlook issues that harmed the game like oversized colliders and loud SFX.
• Game should be easily restartable after failure. It's not fun if player needs to reload their tab or restart the executable each time they fail, especially if it's a difficult game. It's also not fun to be forced to watch a 5 second sequence each time the level restarts.
• Game should show instructions for objective and how to play (unless they are very intuitive, maybe). My approach is showing instructions as a text with concise words at the beginning, then make them disappear once the player might have understood them (like the player has used the controls for 2 seconds). Showing them in the game's LD or Itch page is an alternative in case you couldn't have time for in-game instructions.
• My personal opinion: Audio shouldn't be added last, because SFX and music significantly affect the game's experience. It's good to be able to see earlier how well they fit in game.
• Creating the game's presentation is a part of the jam. Other jammers tend to play games with a good description and cover art rather to games with blank descriptions.

I wasn't expecting our tiny game Play With Me would get this much attention only in 2 days, thanks everyone!

I also wanted to say Discord got banned in my country (Turkey), which cut my whole communication with my team friend and the unofficial Discord community here, so excuse me if I couldn't reply anything 🥲

Game

It's a Tamagotchi with 3 monsters you can play with and feed. They each have their own minigames.

(Spoiler) !> One of the monster is jealous of others and kills and replaces them when you are playing with them.

So this game has horror elements.

Development story

I'd normally participate Ludum Dares as a solo dev. I wanted this to be different than my usual, I started a "looking for artists" thread in the unofficial Ludum Dare Discord server and met @Merulon there, whose artworks I admired.

She had the idea of a Tamagotchi with multiple monsters and maybe like (spoiler) !> Doki Doki Literature Club.

We developed this idea further. And a game much more successful than my solo entries was created during LD 56.

What went right?

Most of it :)

• Game was well scoped. There are a few things that can be added or fixed, but in the end it was "good enough" when I reached exhaustion on Monday.
• It attracted great attention for a jam game. We have over +5K plays right now, it even got featured in Itch's blog page. Players got surprised by its twist and they liked it. There is a "Warning: Horror Elements" text at the beginning, I'm glad that our twist still worked despite the warning. Such a warning is completely necessary for a cute game like this by the way, it's a matter of player consent.
• The "jumpscare" was liked as well. I especially worked on avoiding the jumpscare playing instant and loud. Instead, the volume and sprite alpha fades in. I personally despise loud and sudden jumpscares, they are cheap.

What went wrong?

Only a few things.

• The story ended abruptly and vague.
• The game can be controlled either with ZXC keys or simply pressing Tamagotchi's keys. I thought the entrance Tamagotchi screen was prompting ZXC (intended controls) good enough. As far as we watched people play, nobody used ZXC at the start, and almost nobody noticed game could be played with keyboard.
• Not everything could be finished. We had the idea of robotic speech in the style of FAITH (who can ever forget "MORTIS"?) in certain parts. I learned it can be made with "SAM Software Automatic Mouth" easily later.

What's next?

We have some ideas for the post-jam version of Play With Me.

Play With Me is available for WebGL and Windows

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/play-with-me

Post-jam version of @meru and my Ludum Dare 56 entry, Play With Me is live!

• In addition to the original ending, there are 2 new endings waiting to be discovered.
• Some SFX are replaced and there are some new sounds that might surprise you.
• Some bugs are fixed, including the notes in Repeat After Me mini-game.

We hope you like the post-jam and wishing you all a Happy New Year!

Game

Play with 3 virtual pets living inside a forgotten toy you've just found. Each creature has their own minigames they are dying for playing with you! And don't forget to feed these cute and totally innocent creatures.

https://aslangames.itch.io/play-with-me