Play a WIP build here: graemeborland.com/gamecontent/ludumdare

My game is coming along! The premise is that every 10 seconds you get a new weapon and a new wave of enemies spawns. If you can clear those enemies with your new weapon before the 10 seconds is up, the leftover “bonus” time gets put towards restoring your HP. I’m pretty happy with how it’s coming along so far, still lots of work to do though (mostly sound) ! Please let me know what you think, any feedback is appreciated

New WIP build is here: http://graemeborland.com/gamecontent/ludumdare/

The major changes since the last build are:

• Music / SFX! (the song is called Xperia by DIM.M, via jamendo.com
• Increased the size of the play area
• Player ship moves faster now
• Changed colours of enemy death effect so they won’t be mistaken for bullets
• Gameover/title screens

Let me know what you think, I’m going to try to add more varieties of enemies and maybe even some more weapons to make things more interesting. I think the biggest weak point right now is that the waves of enemies are all very similar.

New WIP build is here: http://graemeborland.com/gamecontent/ludumdare27/

New stuff in this build:

• More weapons / enemies
• Local highscore counter
• 1 second invincibility grace period at the start of each round
• Slow moving / static bullets (like from the Fatty) are cleared each round
• A lot of bugfixes!

I still plan to add more enemy types / formations at the very least, but the bulk of the time I have this weekend to work on the game is now gone. I’ll be able to put in a few more hours later tonight, and maybe an hour or two tomorrow before the jam deadline. For now it’s time to give my brain a quick rest and have some supper!

Here’s my latest build: http://graemeborland.com/gamecontent/ludumdare27/

I’m going to sleep on it and then do a quick playtest in the morning. If I still like this build, and nobody has found any bugs that need fixing, then I’ll do an official submission to the jam with this build and write up a quick post-mortem. Whew!

Minor changes in this build, the biggest one being that you can now get a score/HP reward for going a whole round without getting hit, and for going a whole round without ever firing your weapon. This is so that if you get a weapon you don’t like, you can spend the 10 seconds focusing on dodging shots, and potentially grab both of these bonuses at the end of the round.

My game is done and submitted!

Here’s a quick post-mortem/summary on how things went. I’ll probably post some more detailed thoughts about how things went and what I learned later on my blog, but I’m posting here first to sign off on my submission and wrap things up.

The good:

• Feel – I’m really happy with how the visuals and the feel of moving the ship around and shooting turned out.
• Pacing – On Friday when the theme was announced, I spent 3-4 hours roughing out a concept. I slept on it, and then hammered away at it for about 10 hours on Saturday. A few more hours on Sunday (mostly audio work), and an hour’s worth of bug-fixing and polish today. This spread of hours across the weekend felt the most successful of any jam I’ve done before. I was never too tired/unfocused to work on the game, but I never felt overwhelmed with tasks. I guess I’m getting better at this part!
• Playtesting – This was the first time I posted WIP builds online during a jam, and the feedback I got from doing so really took the game to a higher level and kept me motivated. I did in-person playtesting as well, but getting feedback from different sources really helped keep things feeling fresh.

The bad:

• Difficulty Curve – Since all the weapons/enemies are random, difficulty doesn’t ramp up the longer you play. The result of this is new players sometimes feel overwhelmed, and experienced players get bored. This problem comes up in a lot of games I make, I’ll have to practice dealing with this specifically.
• Sound Effects – I fell back on using SFXR for the sounds, which is fine, but I’m going to make it a goal to get a bit more creative with audio than just bleeps and bloops next time.
• Unoriginality – At a glance, the game bears a lot of similarity to games like Geometry Wars, and the aesthetic is even pretty similar to a game I made previously called Return. I think I put enough unique elements into this game to make it worthwhile, but I still felt like I was using existing games as a crutch to prevent myself from having to make too many tough design choices. Next time I’ll challenge myself to deviate more freely from existing gameplay tropes/visual styles.

Now to give it a bit of time and think about what I’ve learned from doing this jam. Overall it was a very positive experience! Time to go rate some games

Woo, so I managed to finish my game, “I am a mole” (play it/rate here). Thanks for any rating/comments, feedback is much appreciated.

I only had time to devote part of my weekend to the jam, so this is the result of maybe 15 hours of work. Regardless, I figured I’d put up a quick post-mortem of how things went.

What went well

• I got the “growth” mechanic down pretty early in the process, which allowed me to spend time making the environment more interesting and adding the intro/outro.
• Was able to find a song that fit the mood I was going for quite easily. I’m pleased overall with how the audio turned out. (Sound effects were made with my voice and jangling my keys. The digging sound effect is the sound of my keys being scrunched together, muffled by a blanket. Audio is fun!)
• Managed to complete a game that is something of a cohesive package. My main goal this LD was just to have the experience of finishing something, as I’m currently working on some long-term projects, so I succeeded at that.

What didn’t go well

• Pacing of the game falls apart near the end. I’m happy with how things work at the beginning, but once you gain the ability to eat slugs, I feel like the pacing kind of goes out the window. I’m at least happy it has a distinct beginning and end, which my last LD game didn’t.
• Wasn’t able to make my own music. This is something I always feel bad about, but I rarely have the time to make my own music during jams. It just takes me too long to make anything I’m happy with.
• Gameplay concept is pretty derivative (katamari, flow, early stages of spore). This is something I struggle with during jams. I often focus on creating a solid/polished game rather than spending my time trying to dig out genuinely unique mechanics. Will have to push myself more to think about the gameplay ideas rather than the presentation.
• I wasn’t very open during development. Didn’t post WIP builds or anything to get feedback. This was mostly due to the fact that I was sidetracked by other things this weekend. Definitely noticed that not being vocal about development and getting feedback made it harder to stay focused/motivated!

Click here to play a WIP build, I would love to get some feedback on it!

Woohoo! It’s been about 24 hours and I’ve just put up my first playable build. If you feel like taking a break from working on your own game, give this a spin and let me know what you think of it so far

Controls are simple, mouse only. Click+drag to pan, scroll to zoom. Click stuff to do stuff.

Your objective (as stated in the game) is to find and collect 4 artifacts, without running out of energy or shields.

Things I think that are definitely still needed:

• Audio/music, derp
• Nicer win/lose states (win/lose conditions totally work right now, they’re just functional and ugly)
• A little more visual clarity?
• Better ingame instructions/player teaching?
• Variation in content – different solar systems and planets are quite similar to each other

Play/Rate the game here!

In general I’m really happy with how APOLLO turned out, and I’ve gotten some great feedback on it already Just thought I’d do a quick summary of how things went this time around, how I improved over previous LDs and hope to improve in the future.

What went well / improvements made:

• Aesthetic – I was able to nail the feeling I was going for with this game, through the look, sound, and how it plays. One of the things I’ve noticed in the past is how I stay deep in my comfort zone when it comes to visuals for my jam games, but I think I did an ok job of pushing things a bit further this time around.
• Sound – Though I didn’t compose original music for the game (it uses a track called “Past the Edge” from incompetech.com), I’m proud of what I did with the sfx. In the past I’ve fallen back on basic SFXR noises, and though I did use SFXR in my workflow, I think I did a much better job this time of creating sfx that fit into the mood I was attempting to create.
• Gameplay and originality – My 2 previous LD games suffered from a lack of originality imo, they each ended up being somewhat similar to gameplay mechanics that already exist. I feel like with APOLLO I was able to create a game that was entirely about my idea, and didn’t need to borrow gameplay concepts to round out the experience. I’m sure there are games out there it’s similar to, there almost always are, but I think I created a much more unique game than my previous LD entries.

What didn’t go well / areas to improve:

• Perceived complexity / learning curve – I wouldn’t say APOLLO is an especially complicated game, but due to the UI and presentation it can come off that way. The main problem is that a new player is bombarded with a lot of information, and for some people this is pretty hard to process. I didn’t want to make a straight up tutorial, as I wanted part of the game to actually be about learning how to navigate the world and use the actions available to you, but some easing the player into the world would probably have helped a lot.
• Visual clutter – Mainly, too much text. Kind of ties in with the previous point, there is just a lot of text onscreen at any given time. I personally like the aesthetic that this gives to the game, but to a player it can certainly be overwhelming. A goal I’ll set for the future is to try and do better at only showing the player what they need to know, and create better focal points on the screen.
• Pacing – I actually really like how slow-paced the game ended up being, but I’m marking it as an area to improve because I think it’s important for a jam game to be really easy to jump in and start playing right away (something that I think really helped NXTWPN10). I think it would have been possible to do this with APOLLO without sacrificing the slow, looming feel, by doing more to grab the player’s attention right at the start and not forcing them to hold up and analyze a quite dense screen’s worth of information before making their first move.

That’s basically what I’ve been thinking about regarding APOLLO since the jam finished! Making it was a really fun experience, and of course getting to see people’s reactions to it was even more fun. Many thanks to everyone who gave it a try!

Tags: postmortem

Click here to try it out – instructions on the page

Well, I introduced some new unit types and made a ton of balance changes which I think make the game a lot more enjoyable. I’ve only got a couple of hours left to work on it today even though I’m just entering the jam, so I’ll try to polish it a bit more, but the main thing I’m missing right now is a name for it!

Click here to play/rate!

After another round of polish and balancing, I’ve submitted my one-screen mini-RTS, Tower Trasher! Despite being busy and distracted with other happenings this weekend, I had fun attempting to work in a genre I’m not used to, and I think the result is decently fun for the amount of work I was able to put in. As always, just feels great to finish something and put it out so quickly

I’m really looking forward to rating plenty of games this time around, the entries look super diverse and interesting.

New Unity webplayer build of Miroir du Mort is up, click here to play!

You play as a vampire holding a mirror. You can reflect beams of sunlight to use as a weapon, but watch your back! Controls are fairly simple, they’re stated in the game.

This is going to be a jam entry (we’re a team of 2, and used some of Kevin Macleod’s music) – but we’re getting really close! There are 16 decent levels, which I’d like to improve on, and there are a couple other bits of polish to do, including a title screen. Overall I’m really proud of this so far!

We did it, our game has been submitted! Click here for the entry page.

Click here for the entry page!

A Crown of My Own has been submitted 😀 This was a super fun game to make, and Bogdan’s music really made it feel just right. This was probably my smoothest jam experience ever, things went nicely all the way through, and I’m quite proud of the end result. Hooray! I’ll return later tonight to start doing some rating

Mirror Mortis was born as “Miroir du Mort” in Ludum Dare 32. The jam version got a lot of great feedback from the Ludum Dare community and there was more we wanted to explore with the concept, so since then, @amymja and I have been working on an expanded version. We’re happy to say it’s coming along well, and in the spooky spirit of Halloween we’ll be releasing the full version on itch.io on October 30th! This’ll also be our submission to the October challenge.

Aside from being a fully rounded-out game experience, Mirror Mortis includes lots of puzzles and new enemies to fight (including boss battles!), and an explorable world with several unique areas.

We’ll be posting more throughout the month as we get closer to launch, so follow myself and @amymja for updates. Thanks for supporting the original jam version – without your feedback we wouldn’t have been able to take this game as far as we have!

We had a local meetup for Ludum Dare 34 in Winnipeg, MB, Canada, so I thought I’d share a roundup of the games our group put together!

• @jakecarewick‘s first jam was a success with MapleCopter.
• @hyperscope and Abdi Abidov put together a cool two player game called Tug-o-War.
• @MattWoelk and @uberben came up with an area control game aptly named fungus fungus fungus.
• @TheSteveIAm and @DogmeatDota provided a taste of magical combat with A Subtle Dispute.
• @AntonUklein made his first entry to a jam as well, with Combat Hell.
• And lastly, my own entry made with @amymja and @bogdan_rybak – Sort the Court!

That’s quite a few devs from Winnipeg! There were even more cool folks present at the meetup working on other projects not specifically for LD, too. Our local jamming community has been growing (:P) every time an event comes around, so I wanted to say good work, folks!

Click here to play SUNWARD!

My entry this time around is a solo effort, I was aiming for something really atmospheric and moody. SUNWARD is a game about performing the ritual of the hunt. Use your ancient spear to sacrifice animals, and guide their spirits home.

Decade is a quick Twine experiment I threw together. I was travelling for most of the weekend, so the bulk of this game was made during a super long layover in the Toronto airport. I wanted to do a bit of a refresher for myself on how Twine works, and the result is basically an exercise in seeing what interesting mechanics I could come up with using this engine. It’s not all that well designed or balanced, but I’m glad I managed to put together something, even though I was super short on time this LD. Even though I’m not that proud of the game itself, it was fun to make something different!

Tags: Twine

This time around, I think I managed to achieve a decent blend of gameplay and aesthetics. Usually my art-heavy games don't have much going on mechanically, so one of my goals here was to try and change that. I can still do better, and will push much harder in that direction in the future, but I think this project helped me understand a mental approach I can take to marrying the art with gameplay.

I worked alone on this one, but used a bunch of tools that I find helpful for jamming. I work in Unity, using SourceTree for git and Photoshop for art. I made pretty heavy use of 2 new features in Unity 2017 - Cinemachine and Timeline, both of which enabled the cinematic feel in Saturnalia. Both are things I want to take a deeper dive into and learn more about now that I've wrapped my head around the basics. Beyond that, I also had my usual group of Unity assets: GoKit, TextMeshPro, ProBuilder, and Unity's post processing stack.

Another new element was that I decided to make my own music. I used an iOS app called Auxy to compose the BGM, which I think turned out pretty well. Auxy is a fantastic tool for making jam music, it's easy to use and since it's on mobile it helped me step away from the computer and do something different for a quick mental break. I'll definitely be using it more in the future!

The concept for this game went from a travel/adventure game, to a motorcycle driving game, to something about train networks, then designing a power grid for a procedural city, then I finally landed on this space-y puzzler. Luckily, all this iteration just occurred on paper over the course of a couple of hours rather than soaking up my dev time. I started out on Friday feeling pretty hopeless about not having a good idea, but after sleeping on it and coming back I ended up with a direction that became one of my favourite LD results.