We weren't quite able to deliver the scope of design that we'd envisioned with Freg, Fregg and Freggy - so I wanted to do a short post explaining some of the intended mechanics.

The Path Ahead, the tiles displayed on the right side of the screen was intended to be an abstraction of your adventurers choosing their path whilst out on adventure. We wanted to have a mechanic where you earn cards and can play them to alter your path. This was to tie in with the lantern / darkness mechanic, as you'd only be able to see N tiles ahead based on your lantern strength. We had ideas such as:

• highly dangerous cards that you'd want to detour around to avoid, giving you a reason to play any environment card
• playing a card of environment type X next to another tile of environment type would end up upgrading that environment. This would spawn more difficult enemies / mini bosses that would drop special items.
• a card that modified the environment, for example a "curse" card that would change woods into the "cursed woods" which make for a wider variety of environments.
• the ability to place cards anywhere on the path ahead that is currently lit, instead of the one position that we currently allow.

In our jam game, we had to really simplify things due to scope. We ended up making it so that you'd get a quest to go and kill N enemies in X environment, and that would lure out the boss of that environment. That worked well for our scope, but also it meant that the environment card mechanic was really basic. Essentially the only use of them was to: - if you are on the quest to kill enemies in swamp, you can play the swamp card to visit there. - you may want to play some easy environments in order to kill enemies and fish for some good cards.

A side effect of this meant that the unwanted environment cards end up playing an additional role: clogging up your hand. It does sort of add an interesting mechanic to the game, where you need to manage your hand (since your oldest card will be lost when you reach your hand limit, and you can't rearrange your hand). You have the choice between delaying your route to the area you're trying to get to to (by playing undesired environment cards), or risk have them bloat your hand and leave you burning away combat cards you were trying to hold on to.

I think it'd add a whole extra depth to the game if we had the time to implement the environment system we'd planned, though certainly it would add to the complexity of the game too. Thanks for reading 🎷🐸 🥁🐸 🎸🐸

As with previous years, I'll be streaming LD games and giving feedback on stream over at:

https://www.twitch.tv/honestdangames for about 3 hours today.

I only play entries if the developer is in chat. If a game is called but no developer is in chat to respond within 60 seconds, the game is removed from queue. This may sound harsh but it rewards those who are actually present, and ensures I get through games pretty quick. It also means those waiting in line do not need to worry about people who missed their game coming back later and jumping back in line ahead of them.

• The !submit command will link the form to submit your game
• The !queue command will link the spreadsheet with the current queue along with my rules

Old Man Toadadiah, a wonderful character from our entry Freg, Fregg & Freggy, hopes to see you there!

For likely the final time, this morning I'll be streaming LD games and giving feedback on stream over at:

https://www.twitch.tv/honestdangames for about 4 hours today.

Rules: I only play entries if the developer is in chat. If a game is called but no developer is in chat to respond within 60 seconds, the game is removed from queue. This may sound harsh but it rewards those who are actually present, and ensures I get through games pretty quick. It also means those waiting in line do not need to worry about people who missed their game coming back later and jumping back in line ahead of them.

• The !submit command will link the form to submit your game
• The !queue command will link the spreadsheet with the current queue along with my rules

Freg, Fregg & Freggy hope to see you there!

PS: there is no need to comment on this post with a link to your game. Use the !submit system in stream.

Hey Freggy Friends!

Freg, Fregg and Freggy are currently celebrating! Their careless devs finally found a garbage collection issue that was likely causing the most common crash! Hurrah!

Thanks to everyone who's played and commented already on the game, especially those who stayed positive despite the crashes. If you do choose to play our game - please let us know what you think and especially if you get Fatal Error crashes mid game.

Existing bugs: - Game occasionally doesn't take you back to main menu if all three frogs die: Status: Still present 🐛 - Quitting via options menu causing crash: Can happen pretty consistently. Status: Still present 🐛

The day of LD48 results is near!

Tomorrow, I'll be playing a select handful of games of friends, and then playing games that are in the danger zone (just under 20 votes) in the few hours leading up to the results. We'll be focusing on games that are accessible via web browsers in hope we get through more games.

There is no queue, no submission, though if you are on 17-19 votes and have a web build - feel free to let me know in chat :)

I'll be live tomorrow (Tuesday) 18:00 UK / 13:00 EST. You can find me on twitch on the link below:

https://www.twitch.tv/honestdangames

If the results don't take 4 hours to process, we'll stay live until the results and check out the winning games ♥

The day of LD48 results is here!

I'll be playing a select handful of games of friends, and then playing games that are in the danger zone (just under 20 votes) in the few hours leading up to the results. We'll be focusing on games that are accessible via web browsers in hope we get through more games.

There is no queue, no submission, though if you are on 17-19 votes and have a web build - feel free to let me know in chat :)

You can find the stream live now at:

https://www.twitch.tv/honestdangames

If the results don't take 4 hours to process, we'll stay live until the results and check out the winning games ♥

Congrats all on taking part in another Ludum Dare! I hope you all feel a sense of achievement for what you've created ♥ One of the things I love about jams is the ideas that come from them. Too many times I've ended up wanting to continue working on the jam game after the Jam has finished! I know if it wasn't for the jam, I'd have not tried to come up with a new game idea.

I stream game dev regularly on Twitch in my spare time. Every other Monday I host Honest Feedback - a stream dedicated to giving feedback to games that are actively being developed. The idea is to give feedback to games that are still in the development process that can feed into the games continued development. It isn't a "live" queue system like LD streams, but instead I select 3-4 games to give feedback on from the queue before each stream. I email the developer before hand too, in hope they can attend the stream as we give feedback.

Got a game you're currently developing that you want feedback on?

For more information and to submit your game, visit the Submission Form!

Congrats all on taking part in another Ludum Dare! I hope you all feel a sense of achievement for what you've created ♥ One of the things I love about jams is the ideas that come from them. Too many times I've ended up wanting to continue working on the jam game after the Jam has finished! I know if it wasn't for the jam, I'd have not tried to come up with a new game idea.

I stream game dev regularly on Twitch in my spare time. Every other Monday I host Honest Feedback - a stream dedicated to giving feedback to games that are actively being developed. The idea is to give feedback to games that are still in the development process that can feed into the games continued development. It isn't a "live" queue system like LD streams, but instead I select 3-4 games to give feedback on from the queue before each stream. I email the developer before hand too, in hope they can attend the stream as we give feedback.

Got a game you're currently developing that you want feedback on?

For more information and to submit your game, visit the Submission Form!

Got a game you're currently developing that you want feedback on?

I stream game dev regularly on Twitch in my spare time. Every other Monday I host Honest Feedback - a stream dedicated to giving feedback to games that are actively being developed. The idea is to give feedback to games that are still in the development process that can feed into the games continued development. It isn't a "live" queue system like LD streams, but instead I select 3-4 games to give feedback on from the queue before each stream. I email the developer before hand too, in hope they can attend the stream as we give feedback.

For more information and to submit your game, visit the Submission Form!

Hey all, it is that time of year again! I hope we all come up with ideas that we can get excited about - and that we manage to bring those ideas to life over the 48-72 hours!

It's rare it goes to plan... it's rare to avoid feature creep... but whatever happens: don't lose sight of why you take part! Be proud of yourselves and flex those creative muscles 💪🧠

If you're streaming your jam development over the weekend, feel free to drop a link to your twitch channel in the comments; I'll need LD peeps to raid over the weekend when I head to bed 😄

As per tradition, I'll be doing some "play your game" sessions the week following the jam - it'll be great to see some familiar names and awesome games then! Enjoy the game jam!

Hex Map Generation from a texture! Never done this before so really pleased with it ♥

Streaming over on Twitch if anyone wants to hang out

We've brought in some of the 2d assets to add a bit of life to the hex map:

I've also spent more time that I'd like to admit working on a hideous table to display stats about your fellows:

Fatal error!

Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTIONACCESSVIOLATION reading address 0x0000000000000000

0x00007ff6d0c93dd5 LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!AHexGridManager::BeginPlay() [D:\Dev\Unreal\ld49\Source\LD49\Private\Gameplay\Hex\HexGridManager.cpp:277] 0x00007ff6d40a4b97 LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!AActor::DispatchBeginPlay() [] 0x00007ff6d4fdee91 LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!AWorldSettings::NotifyBeginPlay() [] 0x00007ff6d45fc671 LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!AGameStateBase::HandleBeginPlay() [] 0x00007ff6d0cfd483 LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!AJamGameMode::StartPlay() [D:\Dev\Unreal\ld49\Source\LD49\Private\GameFramework\JamGameMode.cpp:11] 0x00007ff6d4f9227e LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!UWorld::BeginPlay() [] 0x00007ff6d4ec7df9 LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!UEngine::LoadMap() [] 0x00007ff6d4e795a2 LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!UEngine::Browse() [] 0x00007ff6d4ee7268 LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!UEngine::TickWorldTravel() [] 0x00007ff6d45c95cd LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!UGameEngine::Tick() [] 0x00007ff6cfdb6665 LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!FEngineLoop::Tick() [] 0x00007ff6cfdcb56c LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!GuardedMain() [] 0x00007ff6cfdcb62a LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!GuardedMainWrapper() [] 0x00007ff6cfdde760 LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!WinMain() [] 0x00007ff6d5fbaa5e LD49-Win64-DebugGame.exe!_scrtcommonmainseh() [d:01_work\s\srcctools

The idea behind Fellowship Manager was to combine medieval combat with the classic football manager franchise formula. We wanted to focus on developing a game where the battles were simulated, but you would be responsible for managing your fellows (soldiers) between battles and deciding on strategic formations for battles.

From the real time stats during a battle and coloured blocks of text commentary highlighting the action - we attempted to pay homage to a formula that's been around for 20+ years!

Not quite as much of a "spreadsheet" as football manager, but plenty of stats to manage to help you micro-manage your fellowship (making a table in Unreal Engine was not my most fun use of time during the weekend!).

The scope of the game meant that "fun", "balance" and "user-friendly" weren't terms that were considered enough! 😁 However, we'd still love for you to check it out and let us know what you think: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/fellowship-manager/ - especially if you've ever enjoyed a Championship / Football Manager game once upon a time! (for me, it was Championship Manager 96/97)

I recently did a playthrough of our entry Fellowship Manager 1021: a game where you manage a fellowship - keeping them alive out of combat and choosing strategies for their simulated battles! The game is a management sim that pays tribute to Football Manager, a game where its about looking at the stats, micro managing, and watching the results in a simulation with text commentary detailing the action.

https://youtu.be/MrjQuZ9B2WU

We ran out of time, so the game lacks balance and has some bugs, so hopefully this video can help give you an idea of how the game can be played. If you want to try it yourself, visit here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/fellowship-manager/. Thanks!

Brainoid did an amazing job adding the ability to configure formations and strategies for the simulated battles in FM21! You can assign your individual fellows to a battle block (B1-B6), choose a formation for all battle blocks, then give each battle block their own tactic.

You can play around with the battle system yourself here!

Good day all

Congrats to everyone who took part, there looks to have been some great ideas and fun little games come out of LD49! I'll be doing my usual LD feedback stream tonight (Friday) at 18:00 BST (that's 13:00 EST).

I'll be prioritising some regular viewers/subscribers, but otherwise I'll be using the raffle bot I'd made for Elysia Griffin to choose who's game to play next.

You are able to submit your game here and you can see the submitted games here.

Fellowship Manager 1021 is a game where you manage a fellowship - keeping them alive out of combat and choosing strategies for their simulated battles! The game is a management sim that pays tribute to Football Manager, a game about looking at the stats, micro managing, and watching the results in a simulation with text commentary detailing the action.

The end result ended up being a bit overwhelming - with no tutorial, a lack of user-friendly tools on the UI, and features that were rushed to get in on time.

However, in this 20 minute play-through, we hope you'll get better idea of how to play and understand more of the mechanics we implemented. Thanks for watching!

https://youtu.be/MrjQuZ9B2WU

We are 🔴 LIVE - Twitch!

I'll be prioritising some regular viewers/subscribers, but otherwise I'll be using the raffle bot I'd made for Elysia Griffin to choose who's game to play next.

You are able to submit your game here and you can see the submitted games here.

I'll be doing my final LD feedback stream tomorrow (Monday) at 18:00 BST (that's 13:00 EST).

I'll be prioritising regular viewers/subscribers, but otherwise I'll be using the raffle bot I'd made for Elysia Griffin to choose who's game to play next.

You are able to submit your game here and you can see the submitted games here.

You can see the 15 awesome games I played through last time here:

https://youtu.be/xt5J2Cq9wVw