Hey everyone! I've been following Ludum Dare for years being impressed by all the different entries for each event and have always wanted to participate myself. Every time LD came around I'd always find an excuse not to do it or something would come up, but this year I've taken time off work and I'm more pumped than ever to do it. I use to do game programming for fun with xna/monogame, but I just recently learned Unity and plan to try using it for LD41 (hoping I retained what I learned).

Tools I'm likely to use: - Unity - GIMP - FL Studio - Audacity

Can't wait to do my first LD and see what everyone brings to the table this time! Goodluck everyone!

Well that took a bloody long time. I think we all have some serious OCD... Anyway, I saw a lot of cool themes in there that got my creative juices flowing, hoping at least one of those themes gets picked. If not, I'll make do of course.

Now to do a little more practicing in Unity, Gimp, and FL Studio this week to get ready for my first foray into Ludum Dare. Goodluck everyone!

Well that was a long and tiring, but fun and awesome weekend! Being my first LD I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of what I'd be able to accomplish, but in the end I was pleasantly surprised (I'm just glad that I was able to finish my game). I was running short on time so I didn't get to polish the game to the level I would have liked and I only had 2 hours to create and implement the music and sound effects. But still pleased with what I have.

My game is a combination of a first-person dungeon-crawling RPG and falling block puzzle game. Essentially build the dungeon as you traverse it and collect the three items (white squares), then get to the end (green square) to fight the boss and earn a score (based on the # of blocks left to place and time remaining). To see controls and play the game, check out the links below.

• Game link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/falling-labyrinth
• Download link: https://larryseinfeld.itch.io/falling-labyrinth

I truly loved my time participating in LD and will definitely take part in more in the future! Now to play all your awesome entries!

Omg, making a game, then playing and rating a bunch of others was such a blast! I love this community and how supportive and creative it is. I played a decent number of games I hope are made into full games because they aren't just a gimmick that cleverly used the theme, but are rather truly well thought out, smartly designed games that have a lot of potential.

I also want to thank all the people who have rated and given feedback on my game. I am grateful for all the positive comments and for the constructive feedback that will help me refine this game and any future games I work on. It really means a lot to me.

I will no doubt be participating in future jams and hope to have more time to play even more games and to also make a post-jam version of my own game that is a little more refined based off the early feedback I receive. I tried to do that during LD41, but I just didn't have enough time, unfortunately.

Of course, before I bid adieu I must promote my own game and hope you give it a try (if you want).

So if you want to try a first-person dungeon crawling RPG where you build the dungeon as you go, play Falling Labyrinth: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/falling-labyrinth

Anyway, see you all in the next jam!!

Omg, I was totally expecting to score low 3s in most categories with my game, but to get 41st overall, 14th in theme and 4TH IN INNOVATION!?!? I'm kinda blown away! I never thought I'd do this well, especially for my first LD. I was just happy to finish a game and be proud of it, but the feedback, both positive and constructive, from the wonderful community and getting a chance to see what others created made LD just a whole other level of cool! Now seeing these results? I'm ecstatic! This was a wonderful ride and I can't wait to do it again in August!

Thanks to all who gave me feedback and congrats to everyone for all the cool entries!

I've known I was going to be doing this Ludum Dare since the last one, but never got around to making a post about it (probably 'cause I'm lazy). It just wouldn't feel right if I didn't make at least one post before the jam begins! So here it is: I'm in! Like last time, the tools I plan to use are:

• Programming/Game Design - Unity/Visual Studio
• Art - GIMP/Paint (ended up only needing paint last time, surprisingly)
• Music/Sound Effects - Audacity/FL Studio

This is only my second time participating, but if it's even half as fun as the first time then it's going to be a blast! Goodluck everyone!

Oh boy, this weekend! I was a lot more tired going into this weekend than last LD and where I lived we were going through a nasty heat wave that rendered my AC obsolete at times, but ultimately I was still able to enjoy the hell out of my experience! I know 3 times a year is frequent, but I want more! The two times I've participated in LD I've wanted to do it all over again immediately after the weekend ended. I'm glad LD is as popular as it is since it means we shouldn't be seeing it die any time soon. Anyway, onto my game.

My game is called Judged!. Basically Judged! is a simulation game where you sentence criminals to prison or charge them a fine, but you have to be mindful of your jail space or you will run out. You also have to pay attention to criminal attributes such as wealth status and how much they decrease the population by if they are out in the wild. The goal is to have your city's population not reach 0 for as long as possible. So if you're interested, try and see how many days you can survive. - Game Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/judged

Enjoy and goodluck on all your entries!

I didn't take time off this time for Ludum Dare because I knew it would be busy this time of year for me, but I'm still itchin' to jam so I might try to find some time to make something super simple just for fun. Chances are I won't finish whatever I start, but I at least hope to give it a shot! Goodluck fellow jammers!

So this was hands down the toughest LD I've ever participated in. Sure I've only done 4, but boy-oh-boy I sure hope I don't have a harder experience than this one in the future.

We nailed down our idea pretty quickly and storyboarded everything right away. It was a great start and things were looking up. But as soon as we started to implement things we ran into issues. Continuous issues with character movement, issues with checkpoints, issues with triggers, etc. etc. etc.

Come the final day, things were looking so bad we almost just said "screw it" and decided not to submit. But my partner in crime and I decided to have a call this morning and see what we could do. We scaled down our scope, detailed the issues, and made a list of the final features and assets we had to add. Literally minutes before the deadline we had it working!

We quickly built the game, set up our itch.io and Ludum Dare game pages, added the zip file, and submitted! We had done it! Then we decided to run our built version... This is when we nearly cried. While EVERYTHING was working in the Unity Editor, it wasn't in the built version. The framerate dipped a ton and collisions weren't working on hazardous objects. We thought we were screwed once again. We quickly did some research, ran a debug build and captured where the errors were occurring. After some small changes it was working!

We quickly added our post-jam, bug-fixed version and we can sleep easy tonight (I hope)!

In all fairness, we kept the original zip on the itch.io page and just added the fixed version so people can play either.

I hope you check out our game as we check out all your cool submissions! Happy rating!

Game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/hermans-fallacy