https://youtu.be/KNcVdcwI-6I

Here it is: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/dead-stars

It's about surviving the end of the universe by draining stars that are dead for energy.

For anyone interested, I put together a guide on how to play Dead Stars and how its mechanics work, since it's so complicated. https://immanentdeath.itch.io/dead-stars/devlog/366096/i-am-inevitable

The scope of this game turned out to be too much for me to do in a weekend. It won't take much longer to finish, I'd just rather spend some more time than try to rush things.

Anyway, here's fireballs (featuring placeholder explosion animation).

https://youtu.be/XmqRRWN0IaE

https://youtu.be/XXi_W-mglm8

https://youtu.be/2ri1wjDGaO0

Here's the Ludum Dare page.

This is an opportunity to make an idea I've had for a long time.

https://youtu.be/hkz3T-sDJbY

I just barely managed to get this game in a playable state in time for the jam submission deadline, which I did not think I'd be able to do. Emphasis on "playable." This game about bugs is unsurprisingly quite buggy, but I don't have time to fix them right now because I have to go to work. Have fun with it while I'm gone!

Here's the game page.

Well I didn’t think I could pull it off this time with how busy I’ve been lately, but I managed to make a Ludum Dare game for the jam. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a really hard and fast-paced hack ‘n’ slash called Reaper, where you fight creepers that can replicate similar copies of themselves, and drop health and power-ups.

Its release was down to the wire, with less than an hour before the deadline before I submitted it. And it was a rough start. Creepers were so buggy, they wouldn’t even replicate themselves at all like they were supposed to. I had also just grabbed the code for displaying score from another game, but I forgot to code pretty much everything else for it. And a lot of power-ups weren’t working correctly or at all.

Version 1.0.2 fixes all the major bugs I could find. Also, since 1.0.2, your high score is saved after a game over, but it’s not displayed anywhere so I still need to add that. I had just run out of time and couldn’t get to it.

Honestly, though, I really like this game. It was the perfect chance for me to put together some vague ideas that have been bouncing around my brain for years, and it’s also just really fun for me. It’s ridiculously hard. I really don’t try to make super hard games all the time, it just kinda happens. It was even harder at first because the player’s invincibility frames didn’t work, and I had to fix that. If anybody wants an easy mode, I could make one.

This was also a chance for me to make a remix of a theme that I’ve been wanting to develop further. Way back when I made Spaceblast, I wrote a song called Robot Alien Invasion, and it was one of those songs that was accidentally actually pretty good. It’s perfect for Reaper’s theme, but it only had one verse, just repeating itself throughout the song, and while I think that does work for it, it still wasn’t a complete song. I’m amazed that I managed to make what I feel is a big improvement in just a weekend.

Other than displaying high scores, Reaper is pretty much done. Now with Pixel Day less than two weeks away, I better get cracking on my next game because I just can’t help myself. This idea is just too good.

You can play the new update here.

I want to make a game that has existed for years in my head and in my notes as an ambiguous, ever-changing concept until recently, when I came up with a plan for how I could make it in just a few weeks for Ludum Dare.

This means I’ll be submitting it in the Extra category (honestly I might not even make that deadline because life is happening). I may try to release a demo or “part 1” of sorts so I can play and rate some other games.

And even though Extra doesn’t use ratings yet, I’m still opting out of some categories anyway because some of the assets I’ll make will be similar to assets I’ve made before. I still want to make new and original things, derivatives and iterations. I just want to keep it fair. (there is one graphic from my first Ludum Dare game that I’m just gonna put in this game as it is, because there’s no reason to make a new version of it)

As for the theme, depending on what it will be, it might already fit my game, or I could add something that uses the theme, or I might just ignore it and opt out of that category, too. It would be neat if I could make it fit, but I already know what game I want to make.

I’ll be sure to explain all this in the game’s description, too, so everyone knows I am not causing problems on purpose. But I wouldn’t be doing all this if it wasn’t to make a really cool thing. I just have way too much visceral creativity bottled up inside. It's not always useful, especially with big projects I’m supposed to be working on instead, like that one game I'm making.