Here is the Game. It is a platformer (oh yeah again :D). This time it is a little bit tricky.

In the start of each level you can get an Upgrade (but you buy it with your life health). Some of them cost you 80% so it could be hard to survice the level with the rest 20%.

Sometimes you must die and restart to get the right item for the level. Hope you like it :)

Here is the game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/$139946

You can play it here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/risky-life

Hi, so last week i released my game where i worked some years on.

Balloon Girl is flying platform adventure where you can control a girl, a boy, a baby or a dog.

Ever seen a game where a baby can fall in spikes ? well thats balloon girl :D)

Here is the link to the steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1011440/Balloon_Girl/

I hope you like it :)

In the meanwhile i start to work on my Ludum Dare "Hyper Skater" Entry to make a full game out of it.

If the theme gives me a good idea - i am in for sure :) This time it is special for me as i create 2 games this week. My First game is for my current "Game A Week" Challenge (Read more about it here - https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RamiIsmail/20140226/211807/GameAWeekGettingExperiencedAtFailure.php). I am now in Week 6 and it is a great experience. Well the only thing i missed is feedback but this is where Ludum Dare come in.

Thats why i love Ludum Dare. It is my 7th time i am here and hopefully "making shit" :joy: .

So this will be my second game this week. I Plan to make my weekly game simple and finished on friday.

So i hope to see great games again from you all.

So my Weekly Game is ready and i have now time to rest a day and to prepare for Ludum Dare. It was a little bit exchausting this time - and the game foritself is not really good i think. But this is the Goal of "Game A Week" - failing often and fast in prototyping games.

If you are interested in my games so far - here are they: https://www.nerdvision.net/game-a-week/ .

It is a very interesting way to learn fast. In every week you get through the whole process of making a game.

Some weeks i had no idea until the mid of the week. And i usually overscope ideas. Some weeks i had ideas that where great but too much. And some ideas i wish i had more time to invest.

But it is a cool feeling to see "wow i made 6 games in 6 weeks" and if you see yourself to gain experience. I am not sure how long i will make this - but i want to keep it going until i think it is enough.

The only thing which i really missed is feedback - this is hard as nobody really cares about it (even if you tweet it) which is a normal reaction. Maybe i change the ciclus to match a weekly game jam (but the weeklygamejam has no rating system). I need something to see if i become better. That is the only thing i missed.

So LD can come now :)

Hello again, i want to share you what setup i plan to use.

Here are the tools:

• Game Engine: Unity 2019.2
• Art: Aseprite for Pixel Art (maybe Photoshop sometimes for "normal" art)
• Music: Beepbox.co / Famitracker / Bosca Ceol
• SFX: Bfxr / Famitracker
• Planing: Notepad++
• Source Control: Gitlab

And a bunch of coffee.

If you struggle with the theme like me sometimes here are some tips: - Cry - Cry louder again - scream "This themes sucks - why does they choose that theme? whats wrong with these guys?!" :) - Go to a bar and drink a beer - If you are still struggle repeat the last step until you have an idea ....or you are drunk.

Just kidding - here are the REAL tips: - Look at other LD Development Streams on Twitch - Search Twitter to they other devs have ideas or how they interpret it - Google the words and look what they can mean - Go out for a walk (sometimes this could help)

Coming up with the right idea is sometimes hard - but i learned something from my last 6 Ludum Dare's: - "The theme always sucks" (TM by PixelPhrophecy) - If you first think "oh boy what a bad theme" it happens often that i said "wait i have a really good idea for it". So if you look twice on the theme it CAN be good (..ok besides LD41 Theme - "Combine two incompatible genres" - this was bad at all :)).

And here is a small motivation too if you struggle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRpUr5iQPIY

Wish you all a great Ludum Dare

After 3 hours of work - game controls and some assets are done :) Core mechanic works with some bugs.

As the Jam started my first idea was "make a metroidvania". And this is what i made :) I often thought "well is this not very overscoped?" - and hell yeah maybe. But yesterday in the evening i realize (agains my expecations) - "it could be hit the Compo instead of the Jam Deadline". So i rushed it to the Compo Deadline and implemented the features i wanted so far.

Here is this game about a drunken man who wake up in a cave and have no f*cking idea why he is here and where he got his things :)

Play and rate: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/claimbeer

I added a Web Build yesterday so you don't need to download and can play now my metroidvania game.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/claimbeer

TL;DR

I made a little web tool where you can find the games by platform (and Competition Type). Also it has pagination. Currently ONLY for Ludum Dare 45 (but i want to extend to get all past events and future events up and running).

It is fresh deployed and the crawler is now finished and has all your games. I plan to make a small fulltext search (to search something like "VR" Games or within the description) but that comes later.

Here is the Link: http://ldgamefinder.nerdvision.net/

I hope it helps someone :).

If you click on a image in the results you get directly to the Ludum Dare Page.

Longer Version

So maybe you have some questions - i will try to answer.

Because i can :) Just kidding. I had this idea since my first ludum dare and i was not satisfied with the search. You cannot filter by platform or do a fulltext search or something to find interesting games. Also i hate infite scroll (if you click on an entry you must scroll again).

So i build this little tool WITH pagination :)

Ok so this is a technical question. This is written in PHP with the Symfony Framework. Doctrine is the default ORM layer and the games are stored in the MySQL Database (with a OneToMany Relation to the GameLinks and a relation from Link to LinkTags).

The Knp Bundle provides Pagination. The Layout is simple Bootstrap 4 styles.

A Symfony Command is the Crawler that runs on the CLI and crawls the public ldjam API.

I don't know. It plan fulltext search and crawl older events (but not now).

I did a major bugfix to the game which should solve the "Bluescreen" issue :) If you like my compo metroidvania game just leave me message ;)

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." - Benjamin Franklin

Play Claimbeer here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/claimbeer

Hi, i decided to spent some minutes to extend the search for the Search Engine that you can now use keywords. Please note it only searches in the body (description text) but this should be enough for now :)

I did that as i wanted to search for VR Games (as you see below).

You can find the tool here: http://ldgamefinder.nerdvision.net/

It was a great experience and i still cannot believe that i made this in compo.

If you want to play my metroidvania please check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/claimbeer

This is my 7th time in a row that i took part of ludum dare - and it never gets boring. I want to thank you all for the ratings and the wonderful and great games you all made.

You can still play and rate the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/claimbeer

Today evening i want to play and rate still some games. If you need some help to find them check out this little search tool (i made it short after the jam and it was helpful to find some gems).

http://ldgamefinder.nerdvision.net/

It is near the finish line but this game needs some more votes from you (still needs 8 to hit 20).

It's not my game - its from @phaix , @cybercat and @joern and its really nice.

And it would be cool if it get a score at the end.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/sushi-slasher

What should i say :)

These are really great results for me. I didn't expected to get high in humor and to be one top 100 of graphics. That i made it so high in graphics made me really proud.

The winter jams are mostly the jams with the best ideas and my favorite games. I had one game where i hit top 51 in theme - but the complete results of claimbeer are much better as all other of them.

Congratz to you all. See you in April.

In the meantime i make some more games (if you want to follow up check my game a week blog here : https://www.nerdvision.net/game-a-week/ ).

This week i don't have a good idea but if you have some leave it in the comment.

I am wondering that theme suggestion is open (90 days before the event). Is this normal ? I was suprised yesterday :D Or did i just missed this before that they start so early ?

I am the only one who noticed ? :joy:

It is funny that some of you just voted different on this theme in both rounds (to be fair: i did it too before i changed it lol - in round 2 i upvote and in round 3 i give it a 0 vote).

EDIT: thanks to @purpledartfrog to notify me that it was already in round 1 too :v:

Hi, as usual since LD39 i am in :) Hopefully i make a game and mayb its a good one - or not.

To share my tools - here are there: - Unity 2019.3 - Aseprite - Photoshop maybe (for some non pixel arts but probably not) - BeepBox for Music - Bfxr for Sound effects - Rider or Visual Studio 2019 (i prefer mostly Rider but i am using an free EAP build currently :)) - Blender (if it is a 3d Game)

In Unity i used normally some Packages in the project like: - 2d Pixel Perfect - Lightweight RP (or Universal RP) for Lightnight - DOTTween

Why not - just made a small game today where you are a hamster and try to collect toilettepaper :D And you should avoid the ill hamster but this doesnt work currently.

However it was not bad to practice a little bit.

As this is my 7th LD in a row i can give some small advice for newcomers: - Don't overscope too much (sometimes it worked but mostly not) - I often start with Design (which is normally a mistake) but bring it directly into the game. This works good for me - but normally you should bring the core mechanic playable to check if this is cool or not. - Test your build game often - You need more time as you think :) - Learning a new engine is a bad idea for game jam (BUT: it could work - see @pixelprophecy last Post Mortem :)). - Cut things if you don't know if you can manage it or if you don't have the time for - Don't say BEFORE the Jam starts "hey i go for the compo" - i decide this when i am jammin. Why ? Because i make everything bymyself (or try too). In the LD45 my goal was to hit Jam and i hit compo as i was faster as i thought :) If you are working with 2 peoples or planning to use other assets that you can directly go for jam. But compo is hard and it is no problem to submit for jam if you don't hit compo. - Have a "fallback" build as soon as possible (a build which works and would be ok). If you have troubles later you can upload the fallback build. - If you work with unity Tilemap systems and you draw your own tileset: - Make a 128x128 or 256x256 or whatever starttileset - Fill all tiles black (or something other) so that unity will generate tiles for all your tile assets Why that ? Because it is a pain to reimport the tiles and you mostly get lost or the wrong index. So you have placeholder for all your tiles and can fill them. - Pixel Art: Hhights Quality, Bilinear Filter for your Assets to look not crisp or blurry