A trend for many of my LD games is that I use lowpoly art and I guess the obvious benefit is that it's fast to make so I suppose the bonus is that it's fun to make and also that it is a bit of a style on its own.

I have now created 24 cars and 4 levels for my LD42 remake of "Parking Spaces". Here's a fresh level with a tram that makes it a bit harder to plan your parking =)

I am now on my 5th week making the new version of the game and the beta is available on Google Play. I think I should have about 8 levels before I do the public release and I also need to make a tutorial and some more options. For example, you need to be able to mute unlockable cars because when I unlock the ice cream truck and family van it's driving me crazy :)

I am happy to announce that I released Parking Spaces for Android on Google Play today!

Parking Spaces is a remake of my Ludum Dare 42 game and it's actually my very first release on Google Play. The LD42 version of the game scored quite well in the competition and it received some very positive feedback which fueled me to remake and polish the game for a public release on mobile. I see it as a great opportunity to get experience in actually publishing a game so I can practice the necessary skill for a larger game release.

I hope you enjoy playing Parking Spaces =)

Check out the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLJK3E94rYI

I'm currently polishing the iOS version so it will be released shortly in the App Store too.

Finally, I'll also publish a post mortem of my journey, both making the original LD42 entry and remaking it into this game.

Not long ago I wrote an answer to a post on Quora how to become more efficient making games in Unity and one of the key advice I decided to give was to participate in Ludum Dare. This applies to making games in any engine, and from scratch, it just happened to be a response to a Unity question this time.

I want to share the parts of what I find so powerful, useful, and fun with Ludum Dare in specific. This is aimed at the compo part of Ludum Dare but most points are valid for the Jam as well.

Time framing - You only have 48 hours to do everything so you can only spend so much time on each task.

Avoid Scope Creep - You won’t be able to let the scope creep where you spend a lot of time on details you didn’t have in mind to begin with - this lets you focus on making a complete game.

Multi-Disciplines - Since you have to do everything yourself you spend time on all elements that make up a game. This allows you to improve your skills in each area but you also learn what takes time and what it entails to create and implement mechanics, graphics, and sound.

Repetition - If you participate in multiple events over the year it lets you repeat this process of making a game over and over again. Implementing game states, game loops, and game logic helps you to cement the knowledge and figure out what works well and what does not.

Post-Mortems - When I have made a game in Ludum Dare, I write a post-mortem about the experience and go through what went well and what went wrong. I also read other post mortems (since there are 2–3000 other people making a game the same weekend) and you can learn a lot from that too.

Finish(!) something - It’s all too easy to prototype games and then dive into a project with great ambition which may take years to complete. You can easily lose yourself in such projects which both affects your motivation and your ability to follow through to a finished product.

Learn what takes time - By doing game jams you will find out that when you have what may feel like a “nearly complete game” and you estimate you are about 80% finished, you are more like 20% finished in reality. In the prototype you may have implemented the core mechanics, but transitioning between game states, resetting levels and objects, implementing the menu system, creating enough levels and figuring out good level progression (or story), implementing tutorials, doing play testing, and polishing the final product takes a lot more time than you may think.

I have participated in the 7 most recent Ludum Dares and when I got started I haven't been able to stop. It's just too much fun and too powerful of a tool to learn. My games so far have been:

LD42 - Parking Spaces

LD41 - Golf N' Grenades

Narrated "making of" Timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_DmQ1kcYHM

LD40 - Robby & Coppy

Narrated "making of" timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXS9gZ671sY

LD39 - Robot Power

Narrated "making of" timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSCYn3dQX_4

LD38 - Planetary Remains

"Making of" Timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc0YHI3KqMc

LD37 - Space Junk

"Making of" Timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUAVqYFoueg

LD36 - Ancient Tech to Return

"Making of" Timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VNQiAZPdvE

You can play these games and download the projects on my itch.io page: https://imphenzia.itch.io/

Hope you manage to find the time and motivation to participate in Ludum Dare 43. Take care everyone and make sure to practice your main tools a few days/weeks before the event begins :)

LD43 is closing in and I'm in for a 8th consecutive compo. Can't believe it's been that many already. I remember when I participated in LD36 I thought, "great, that was a lot of fun, glad I participated once but probably won't find the time to do it again". Yeah right =)

I'm just checking my tools now to ensure everything is running. Made a low poly character in Blender that I am rigging and animating (that part is super importance to practice prior to LD for me as it saves a lot of time remembering everything on game day otherwise). I am also making a track in Cubase to ensure all works as planned there as well and no surprises with the software when it matters.

I'm often in Unity anyway so that seems to be a stable environment too.

Here's the low poly guy I am making:

And you can listen to a draft of the music I am making here: https://soundcloud.com/imphenzia/imphenzia-astro-draft (This time it happens to be trance which I haven't made in about 2-3 years for one reason or another)

This is what I do the week before LD starts. I can highly recommend playing around in the software that you plan to use during LD.

Wishing everyone best of luck and a great event!

Put a couple of more hours of practice in Blender to rig and animate. It's past 2am and I have work tomorrow, and alarm clock will go off in less than 4 hours. Why am I still up? And why did I even make a video like this when I have no idea how to keyframe dance moves? :) Happy prepping!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHXZBiD3igI

Excited that LD43 is about to kick off. LD36 was going to be my one and only LD and here I am, overly excited to participate in my 8th consecutive event =)

Remember to always keep pushing forward during the weekend, try to not get hung up on something. I share my astronaut from LD37 to demonstrate:

I'm happy to have finished submitting my game Blót for Ludum Dare 43. I probably won't score too well in originality but the ideas didn't come so I decided to focus on practicing graphics and animations for the most part.

• 3D modeling and animations made in Blender
• Music made in Cubase
• Game made in Unity3D
• Sound Effects made with Sony PCM M10 Recorder and edited in Sound Forge

Effective time used, approx 20-25 hours I estimate. My timelapse will tell =)

I was happy to see the first Let's Play video of my LD43 entry Blót =)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJTwL-snrKk

Since I didn't get to play through the game before submitting I am happy with the way the timing and flow (and the fact that it's "completable") =)

You can play Blót here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/blot-1

Tonight I will add a WebGL version - there seems to be a problem as it removes some particle systems which I rely on in the game - hopefully it's just a quality settings issue.

Meanwhile, here's the run animation in Blender, 21 frames:

And a small preview of the ragdoll in game:

The Windows Download version of Blót is available here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/blot-1

I'm happy to share the timelapse that I recorded while making my lowpoly platformer Blót. I've added narration to the video so I speak a little about my thought pattern, priorities, time management, problems, and techniques.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqzLrMMmrr4

You can play Blót here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/blot-1

I've added a WebGL version of Blót: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/blot-1

But now... time to sleep... I am sending my hero from Blót to bed too.

I will be hosting a speedrun competition for my game Blót where you can win a prize. Rules to be announced soon. Here is my personal best run so far, but there is still a lot of time that can be found where I wasn't very smooth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9lhaQrPcN0

Hint: As with speedrun competition you can find bugs and use them to your advantage to shave off time :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6UgxL6JdGw

I'm continuing to work on LD43 entry Blót. This version isn't released yet - I will release it after the rating period of LD43 has ended so it doesn't get confusing. In this video, I have added vertex shader animation for trees when they are struck (Fortnite-like bobbing =) and the tiles shake when you land on them and when lightning strikes. I have also changed the sound to some of the thunder sounds that you can get from my Universal Sound FX pack.

As I continue to do a post-compo version of Blót, I am creating a video tutorial series that I'll be posting on YouTube when I make this enemy character for the game.

The video series is about 30 episodes long and broken into 3-15 minute videos that go through everything about modelling, detailing, coloring, rigging, skinning, and animating the character. You can follow my YouTube channel or Twitter if you are interested to see when the videos appear.

Hi everyone,

I am making some more enemies for my game Blót and this time around I thought I'd create a tutorial since I am not under the normal Ludum Dare time pressure =)

If you want to follow along, I am making the episodes very detailed to describe every step so it'll be about 20 episodes to create, color, create armature, weight paint, and animate this character. The first two episodes are available on YouTube and I'll be uploading one every day until the entire series is up:

* Part 1 *

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

* Part 2 *

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVl4tPGOzK0

I'm happy to announce that the speedrun competition is now open!

Prizes include $50, $25 and $10 Gift Cards at Amazon or Steam.

Check out all the details here, including rules: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShieefdTYqA

Livestreaming your attempts is always welcome too =)

Good luck everyone (and I hope I didn't miss out any important details =)

This is turning out to be so much more fun and rewarding than I ever expected.

* Inspiration*

A few weeks ago I watched a video analyzing Super Mario world record run Super Mario World Record Explained and I was amazed at the level of hardcore frame timing and how important it was to leverage bugs and glitches in the game to achieve fast runs. That video game me an idea. When I created my LD43 platformer Blót, I knew it would contain some bugs - which Ludum Dare game does not? =)

Inspired by the Mario World Record runs I made one level in Blót but I broke it up into 6 stages (you could call it 6 mini-levels). Since most play+rate period game playing probably lasts in the region of 2-10 minutes (my own uneducated guess) I aimed towards a playtime of around 5-10 minutes to complete the game. I figured that I can add more levels and content post jam if the game seems to generate some interest.

* Hosting my own Speedrun Competition *

A couple of weeks following the LD weekend when the dust started to settle, I decided to host a speedrun competition for Blót. When I play-tested before release, I completed the game in about 5 minutes. Before posting the official launch of the competition I recorded my own speedrun as a demo and the time I achieved was 3:28:279.

I have implemented a timer in the game so one can get an accurate score and the idea of the competition is that you have to record your screen to prove your run and post it to YouTube.

* What can you win, and why am I doing this? *

My main driver for this was to just do it for fun and maybe get some more eyes on the game. I thought I would add some motivation by offering some prizes to the winner ($50), runner up ($25), and third place ($10) in the shape of Amazon or Steam gift cards as a token of appreciation for taking the time to participate. I was a bit concerned if this would be considered unethical in terms of LD since it's all about having fun, training, sharing your game and code for free, and so forth - but at the same time, I figured that if people decided to possibly pour hours into playing the game for the competition there should be some type of reward so I made the decision to give it a try at least.

* Let the speedrunning begin *

The first day, nothing really happened. Then I got a notice that a Twitch streamer, Hagge (check out his stream: https://www.twitch.tv/ahagge). I noticed he was really trying to set a fast pace and he was starting to identify glitches in the game to exploit. For example, I had a keystroke in the game to test the ragdoll during the development which I forgot to remove before I released the game. That keystroke can be used when you reach a runestone to kill the character which saves you a couple of seconds for each runestone as the Viking would otherwise do a little celebration gesture. I also noticed that the resource count did not reduce if you quit to the menu and restarted the game, which means that you can save precious time by not chopping down trees as originally intended when designing the game.

* Today, two new world records were set *

One by Hagge with a time of 1:39:974:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlH9Jb5-zNg

And within the hour, a new one by HexaBit with a time of 1:33:882

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__Hj7unJ2h8

These are amazing times already. Only 3 days into the competition. And I see in the videos above that there is still plenty of time to shave off which makes me wonder what the final time will be when the competition ends on midnight of New Year's Eve!

* What's fun and what's rewarding? *

So, I started this post by mentioning that it is turning out to be more fun and rewarding than I expected.

The fun (and rewarding for that matter) part is seeing people playing the game. I do worry a bit that it will become a bit obsessive though. I noticed myself trying to set a score that adrenaline and nerves kick in and frustration sets in when you throw away what started as a good attempt.

The rewarding part is that the game is receiving extremely thorough play testing and I even get detailed glitch reports (such as this one Blót Glitch Explained how to reproduce bugs. When I make the post-LD version of Blót, I have very valuable information when it comes to reducing and eliminating bugs.

* It's not a bug... *

Finally, I am enjoying the glitches and the bugs. Even though I strive to eliminate them during the development process, it's funny to see them become tactics in the game when trying to set the fastest possible time to get from start to finish. I suppose, in this sense, I can really say "It's not a bug, it's a feature" and really mean it =)

* Want to play? *

If you want to participate, there is still plenty of time. Check out the announcement video with the rules and prizes here:

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

* Have a great Christmas! *

For now, I wish you all a nice Christmas holiday - take care and have fun making games!

I performed worse in most categories with this game - and ironically enough it seems that the less time I spend on a game during LD the better it scores =)

The speedrun competition finished at the same time as the LD43 voting and it was a very useful approach for bug testing. Four players in particular played between 100 - 400 runs each to set the fastest time during the past 3 weeks and when they found a multi-jump glitch they cut the time down to do sub-minute runs. This was the winning speedrun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P971qaGI3tc

This winning run made use of the multi-jump glitch, the suicide glitch (press R to go rag-doll, that I used during development for testing), the resource reset glitch (I forgot to reset resources to zero if you pressed "quit" instead of "continue".

Thanks to everyone for playing and rating Blót!

I was away for the first 36 hours of this Ludum Dare celebrating my wife's birthday. I didn't think I'd manage to put together much considering there was 12 hours until deadline when I started about 3pm Swedish time on the Sunday. With this being my 9th consecutive Ludum Dare, I wanted to at least throw together something so I wouldn't break the streak =)

I'm happy with the result though. I won't score well on Innovation I'm sure because I made a top down shoot em up =) I had to stick to something safe considering the time.

Hey all - Just after the LD event I went abroad for a short vacation and when I got back I was overloaded with work. But now, I'm finally able to play and rate some games.

I'm working on a tweaked version of the game to balance the game play a bit and I'm also considering hosting a competition like I did with my last entry, Blót.

I hope you get a chance to play and rate Blood Money, it's available in Web/HTML5 - what score can you get? I'll play and rate your game if you post a comment after trying the game - feedback is most welcome and appreciated =)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blood-money-3