Hey everyone! First time participating in a game jam and wow is this community awesome.

I wanted to keep my scope small to make sure I'd finish something, and I think that worked in my favor. By not putting a whole lot of time into artwork, I think I ended up with a pretty clean look. Check it out, especially if you're in the mood for a rhythm game!

I'd also like to shine a spotlight on my favorite game I've played so far. These guys knocked it out of the park. Check out 20,000 light years deep in the sky: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/20-000-light-years-deep-in-the-sky

Are you feeling particularly competitive today? Want to play a game that tracks everyone's high scores and shows your ranks in game? Then try out Perfectly Balanced

It's a physics-based game about rearranging weights on a platform to keep it balanced.

And if you've made a game with a leaderboard, please comment it below!

Want to get your name on a high score list? Check out Perfectly Balanced.

It's super simple with easy controls, but has an infinite skill ceiling. Don't forget to spend your hard-earned money on upgrades between each attempt! Can you survive long enough to see the orange and blue blocks?

I always make sure to play and rate anyone's game that leaves a comment on mine.

Polish can easily take a game to another level. Without changing game mechanics at all, something that was boring can now be really enjoyable. Have you come across any games that blew you away?

Boat History is a gem I was lucky enough to stumble upon. Try it out and give this author the great ratings they deserve.

Polish is an aspect of game dev that I tried to do better on this time around, please give my game Perfectly Balanced a try. Leave a comment to let me know how I did, and I'll be sure to play your game too!

Hello fellow jammers, congrats to everyone for finished a game! Even if you didn't, I'm betting you learned a good bit along the way and hope you'll try again next time. This community is so supportive, so feel free to ask questions about how other devs manage their time and get a game finished.

I just want to send a friendly reminder out to everyone that the jam isn't over once the submission deadline has passed. You should play, rate, and leave feedback over the next 2 weeks. You may see games where you can leave constructive feedback so that author can improve, and you may see things that are really well done that you want to use in the future. Also, the more ratings you leave, the higher your game will be listed in the default discovery queue.

If you want to help some of the new jammers, you can also go to the Games page and sort by "Zero". This will show games that have the fewest ratings, sometimes because those authors didn't know that they are supposed to keep playing and rating. There's also a sort by "Danger" which will show you games that are really close to getting the 20 ratings needed to get a final score in the end.

Finally, if you leave a comment on a game, most authors will play your game back and leave feedback and a rating. I make sure to do that, so leave a comment on my game Perfectly Balanced and I'll be sure to get to your game.

As a programmer, I'd always focused on raw gameplay coding in my little projects. I'm starting to realize more and more how much value other things can add to a game, especially sound design. Good sound effects at the right time can just make you feel things. Whether it's a crunchy impact noise for dealing damage, or the right bleeps and bloops as you navigate through UI.

My favorite sounds so far came from Trenchrunner. Navigating through the buttons on the main menu alone was so satisfying, due to the nice popping sounds. Then the sound effects during gameplay were also really well done. Check out their game to give your ears a treat.

I tried to do better with my sound design this jam. Music is still a bit out of reach for me, so I selected music tracks from 3rd party libraries. However, I made the main gameplay sound effects by recording noises and applying a few effects. I'm really happy with how they turned out. Let me know how I did in Perfectly Balanced.

Got any sound design tips, or other games you've found with really nice sound design?

In AAA games today, the trend is to push graphics towards realism. But I think we've all come across games (especially in jams) where that trend is up-ended. I really enjoy seeing games that have a great visual appearance, without needing the most talented artists to create gorgeous textures.

My favorite game so far this jam that demonstrates this is Volatile by @mateu. Most of the images on screen are just simple shapes, but the color choices and the way the dev designed everything makes it all really cohesive.

That's not to say artists aren't necessary... I'm super jealous of you artists out there that can start with a blank page and make something beautiful on it. As a programmer, I have no talent to do that, so I've worked on designing games that don't need impressive art to convey my gameplay ideas. I guess I have a "less is more" approach to my graphics. Check out my game Perfectly Balanced if you're interested to let me know how I did. Leave a comment on it and I'll be sure to play your game and leave some feedback as well.

Got any tips on how you make your graphics? Or do you have thoughts on what makes good graphics? Please share them below!

Hello! I'm the programmer behind Perfectly Balanced. I've felt so lucky and honored to have so many people play our game already, and leave such positive comments on it!

I decided to make a video devlog to show the "making of" process that we went through. Maybe you were wondering how I made a specific part, maybe you haven't played it yet and this will convince you to give it a try, or maybe you just like watching devlogs. Whatever the case, I hope you enjoy the video!

https://youtu.be/16BjdA0bjIQ

Hope everyone enjoys the event! Very excited to play some games.

...was the menu buttons. Since the main mechanic required a trail following your mouse cursor, it felt pretty cohesive to do the same thing on the menu screens. I just need to get the opinion of the "button feedback lady" herself, @elysiagriffin, before I can really say it was a good choice :laughing:

Check out Space Ninja and let me know how you like it!

Everyone knows that a big explosion in space instantly wipes out all cloud coverage on Earth. I just wanted Space Ninja to be scientifically accurate. It definitely wasn't that I forgot to test how multiple transparent shaders interact :wink:

Any shader wizards out there who can tell me what I need to do in Unity to see transparent materials behind other transparent materials? I'm guessing something to do with ZWrite or depth stuff? The clouds and the distortion effect are both made in Shadergraph.

Anyone got really cool shader magic they made and want to show off? Link your game below, I love seeing cool technical art.

I put a lot of effort into "game feel" in Space Ninja, adding sound effects and juice to make sure it felt good to hit combos (with the added bonus of earning a lot of points!)

Player "kstan" has proven to be the master of chaining asteroid slices by reaching a x111 combo! :astonished:

Hey everybody!

Hope everyone has been enjoying the jam. I've gotten a ton of really nice feedback so far on Space Ninja, and wanted to do a breakdown of the development process as a thank you. If there's anything I gloss over in the video that you want to know more about, feel free to leave a comment on the game page and I can share some extra details.

https://youtu.be/IdSp0d_VhuY

I'm well past the required 20 ratings to receive a score, so instead I'd ask that you head over to the Games page and play + rate the games in the Danger Zone with me.

Already looking forward to seeing you all again next jam!

I spent a huge portion of Terminal Velocity's development time trying to convey the feeling of speed. The main contributors that delivered on this were: - Setting a wide field of view on the camera. - Pulling the camera back a little bit when you hit a boost. - Adding camera shake when you hit a boost. - Sound effects for the boost and the motor speed. - Speed line VFX. - Close quarters environment with lots of twists and turns.

Check it out if you've got a need for speed.

Hi jammers!

I had a lot of fun with this past jam, and one thing I like to do to extend that fun is by making a video breakdown of the development process. Feel free to ask questions if there are further details you'd like to know about. Or if you wanted to try to dethrone @miltonnh25 from the top spot, Cyber Shapes does have an online leaderboard.

https://youtu.be/CoHJnH5_OnY

I'm planning to catch up on ratings today, so please leave a comment below if you haven't reached the 20 ratings required to receive a score at the end. Otherwise, head over to the Danger Zone with me to make sure nobody gets left behind.

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a fantastic jam. As we make our way through the play and rate phase, I've been getting asked how I made the ghost drivers (or replays) in Insect Racing League. Here's a breakdown of the key aspects.

Defining a run

First up I modeled the data that I would need to recreate a run. This ended up being an array of data points, where each point stored the race time, XYZ position, and the orientation as Euler angles in the X and Y axes (racers cannot change their orientation around Z axis).

I also stored some metadata such as the name of the player, the insect that they used, and their final time for the run. Special note: I used the Newtonsoft.Json package because it handles arrays better than Unity's built-in JsonUtility.

Recording a run

During every run, this recorder script is saving the player's position and orientation at regular intervals. Once a run completes, that run data gets turned into a JSON string and saved to disk (if it's a new personal best) and submitted to the online database if it's a world record.

Playing it back

When you start a new run, that JSON string that represents your personal best and the world record are given to two separate ghost controllers, which use the current run time to interpolate between the positions and orientations in the data points.

And that's really about it! The code I removed for these images was mostly just the file reading and writing. Let me know if you have any further questions.