Hey everyone,

Been following Ludum Dare game Jam by following the Youtubers who took part in it. Always wanted to take this challenge but was afraid as I can't make good game art or music, but then I realized this is the whole bloody point of this game jam, so here I am to make a mediocre game with ugly graphics.

Best of luck to everyone taking part. -Monish Vyas

Hello everyone,

I am Monish Vyas, a wanna be indie game dev from India. This post is about my first ever Ludum Dare experience, I would like to share what I went through in those testing 72 hours and despite not been able to complete and submit the entry why I feel content.

I started my game dev journey in 2015 when I started to learn Unity, Since then I have worked on more than 30 mobile game projects for a client. But don't get impressed by this number, most of them were kids games which were basically point and click and an animation starts to play. Though this work was good for me as it brought good money for me, I was never happy with what was I doing, so one fine day of September 2018 I stopped working for clients.

I thought I will have all the time in the world for myself and the games I wanted to make and I will make some quality games for myself, boy was I wrong. Since that day I was never able to finish any project and I kept running in circles and was getting nowhere for different reasons. Finally not anything going my way at one point I started doubting myself and I questioned myself again and again that do I have any skills to make a game at all?

Finally I took break from the programming and picked graphics design as a new skill to develop, I always suck at graphics design so I thought I should give it a shot. I went through a couple of tutorials for a week and learned a few things in vector design. Now I was able to at least draw that was 40-50% close of what I intended.

In the meantime I came across Ludum dare 44, I was following Asbjorn from Brackeys and Noa from BlackThornProd as everything I learned in Unity, I learned it from them. But every time for different reasons I didn't participate. One time I chickened out after almost being determined about it. So Ludum dare 44 was my ultimate test and this year I forced myself to participate as I had all the time in the world.

It was still a week to go so I cancelled all my schedules (not that I have many) for the weekend, and I was ready to dive in head first. After the theme was announced which was 6:30 in the morning where I live, I poured myself some tea(yes not coffee), I started sketching ideas and settled on to make a space game where you go to different planet and trade items from the planet with the oxygen you have (to fit the theme "Your life is currency"). I quickly started prototyping it and made some basic scripts like Camera movement travelling to different planets.

After the half day passed, NOT finishing a single project paid off big time. I started feeling the game does not fit the theme well, the game may not be that good etc. All the motivation I had was wearing off. But as time was running out I had to focus on the game and have to somehow complete it. So...? You guessed it right! I scrapped the idea and started to work on a new one.

I came up with an idea of a "Plants Vs Zombies" kind of tower defense. To fit the theme I decided to allow the player to buy stuff but at the cost of the hit points of the object you are defending(which is even today Im not sure what you are defending). At the end of the first day I had enemies and units ready. Next day I spent to design the enemy which did not take a lot of time as I had a week of practice so I already had become a pro. I managed to design 3 enemies (same shapes different in colors), a shooting gun and a shield like looking thing. I swear if Picaso was alive he would have killed me first and then committed suicide after watching these "artwork".

Shamelessly posting a screenshot. ENJOY!

At the end of day 2 I had some decent spawning and buying / selling mechanics ready. I was happy that I will be able to complete the game (boy was I wrong). After the basic concept was ready I started to balance the game but also I was aware that some of the graphics for background and stuff still remains. At this point I had no idea how will find or create game music or SFX.

After some hustle and the last day was half gone, I had a working game but it wasn't balanced. Some graphics done (looked decent given my skill set), no sounds. At this point I was testing the game to determine the variables I need to tweak to make this game somewhat balanced (Spoilers: I never found any tweaking). But finally I was ready to submit my duct tape patched entry hoping and praying this will not fall apart. I built the project and was ready to upload the game, I created everything required and was filling up details and guess what I slept before hitting the "Publish" button (In my defense I was tired).

Now the REAL reason I wrote this long ass post is that despite I could not submit my entry I was so much happy. I never worked this hard on anything before. This made me realize that if I can make something this close to a game given only 72 hours, I can one day make a decent game that people can really enjoy. For the first time I was able to build something from scratch, and was able to join the pieces together to make it work. This was close to a complete project for me which I was never able to do in past so many months.

I take away so many positive points from this experience. The first and foremost is that if you keep a strict deadline for something it gives you a push to work through. I learned to break something big into smaller tasks you can get it done one at a time. Second is that I shared this with a couple of close people who were constantly nagging me about the progress and it made me responsible for my actions and kept me focused. In contrast to regular working days where no one knows what I'm doing. I did not feel alone going through this journey which is very important given how game dev sometimes can feel when there is no one there to hear about the progress or updates. And last and the most important is to visualize the end product that you are creating. When you know what you are set out to make, you get motivated just by the thought of it. There were couple of times I felt like I wanted to give up but when I thought what I will achieve I was able to guide myself back into this mammoth looking task.

I sincerely apologize for engaging you in this 1259 words long post, (YES! MS Word told me), but I hope you read this and can relate to what I've been through and what miracles can happen if you just stick it till the end. I wish all the best to all the participants and hope to see you everyone in Ludum Dare 45 silently hoping I don't screw up next time. Have a good day all.

Felt like there were so many repetitions, some of them were exactly same verbatim. Some themes were previous Ludem Dare themes, one was "life is currency". Some themes were from other jams which just finished a couple of weeks ago. However some of them really good ideas too. Can't wait for theme voting and theme announcement. Best of luck to all.

Please share your thoughts about this. I have been learning to draw with basic shapes for last few days. I have never made any art before this for my games. So this was one of the driving force to participate this time. Feel free to criticize, I am learning and your honest opinion will help me a lot. Thanks

Hello world,

Hope everyone is doing great. I just wanted to express my gratitude to all who played and rated my game. I got 50 ratings for my game and this is my first LD. I didn't expect to get these many ratings. So I just want to say play and rate other dev's games and you will automatically get rated. This is the best way to get 20 ratings to qualify.

Happy Gaming!!

Hey everyone,

I am Monish H. Vyas, an indie game developer from India. This was my second Ludum Dare and third overall participation in game jams and boy it gets better every time you participate. This time around however has been very different experience and taught me so many things. This competition I could witness the result of my tardiness right in front of me. I am sharing here my journey of 3 days during the competition.

I like to prepare a couple of days in advance for Ludum Dare as I have knowledge of possible themes. What I usually do is plan very little about all the themes so that when the theme is finalized I can already have some idea and it helps me start in the right direction. However for this time I only realized about LD one day prior to final theme voting. At this point I had given up and planned to not participate in the jam just like 2 other game jams I chickened out earlier.

On the first day of the Jam I woke up 5 hours after the theme was finalized (Theme was announced 6:30 AM). Ya I woke up at 11:30 on the first day of the game jam. In my mind I already gave up and was starting to think about what I could have made have I participated in. So after 3-4 hours of mindless scrolling and napping I happened to have an idea of what I could make. I decided to make a text adventure (I made one in an earlier jam), but this time I decided to have choices rather than user guessing what action to take. So I decided to take part in the jam (Half-heatedly) and thus began my awful journey of Ludum Dare 46.

I played a game "Kyle is famous" and I absolutely loved that game and decided to make something inspired(*cough copied) from it. So I quickly made some simple UI that was completely different from the game I played.

I added some nice UI transitions and sketched some idea that would work with the current theme. At the end of day one I had complete functioning menu with animations. On the second day I wrote the scripts to navigate through stories based on user interactions and planned to have multiple endings which can be explored making different choices. All this time the most important part was missing and that was the story itself. Towards the end of the second day I realized that I may need to change some programming and mechanics based on the story and thus the aspects of the game seemed complete started to feel unfinished. And everything started to fall apart.

On day 3 I woke up knowing I only need story and a few adjustments to complete the game. Boy was I wrong. After adding a few dialogues of the game I started feeling the game is not that interesting and felt like clicking buttons here and there and so I decided to take a break for an hour to start with a fresh mind. That break worked in all the wrong way as I was having second thoughts about the game and having new ideas to develop the game. In all these I took the worst decision and that was to scrap everything I did and start on a new idea from scratch.

And so I started working on the assets. The initial idea was to keep the game as simple as possible. So I started drawing a black hole and some simple spaceships. And the idea was to keep the black-hole alive by feeding it the spaceships and avoiding meteors (Some accurate astrophysics right there). In few minutes the idea changed to feeding a human and avoiding bad food. Time was the luxury I couldn't afford, so I went with the later idea and thus born Gannet (Very accurately named by my friend). After all the artwork I wrote a couple of scripts and the game was looking good already. I planned to have a background and some popup effects for later and if time allowed.

After playing and changing some variables for difficulty settings I compromised with what I had and went for dinner break. After the break I tested it some more and decided to add a dimension of difficulty by increasing the "items to avoid", but that went wrong somehow and wasn't working intended. This was before 4-5 hours were left for the deadline. I felt everything falling apart once again and I started giving up again from the jam. But I tried to push it till the end and I am glad I could finish at least a working product. Even though it has a few bugs and feels duct taped, it still functions as a game and I am happy with it. And glad that I submitted it.

During these 3 days the most important thing I learned is the importance of planning. Have I given enough thought and spent more time with pen and paper rather than starting to work mindlessly on the first idea I had I could have made a better game, a game that looks finished and has that juice. So even if I couldn't make a decent game I learned a lot and that's why I shared this experience with you guys as well. I hope you all had better experience and result than I had Best of luck to all.

If you would like to give it a shot, here's my game Keep Gannet Alive.

https://monishvyas.itch.io/keep-gannet-alive

Thank you all for bearing this long postmortem.

A result reflecting lack of planning. This was my second ludum dare and third jam overall and in this I learned the value of planning and managing your resources especially time with care.

I shared this in my postmortem as well that I went on with the very first idea I had, spent 2 days and then started fresh with a new idea and you can see that showing in the results. Disappointed not on the results, but my efforts. Looking forward to LD47. Congratulations to everyone who participated hope you all had good results.