The feedback on our first game has been heart-warming and encouraging. We're heading into the next stage on polishing Pedro, perhaps a full version will roll out soon.

a preview: This game took the combined efforts of many. As the artist of the game, I got many encouraging praises from my team that kept me motivated throughout the jam. Thank you to everyone!

Since we're missing a credits screen in the game still, I'd like to give a few shout outs to people that worked hard on this game: - Paul, our programmer, has held up so well for his first game jam. Because this was the first time we used Unity extensively, it took a lot of improvising and sheer will to push through and problem solve. I would like to thank him for being so determined all the way 'til the end and submitting everything by himself. - Lexi gave us the idea of Pedro to begin with, and provided us his lofi track for the background music (kinda crazy that he thought it wasn't good?). I think we'll hear more of his music in the upcoming finished version. - Special thanks to Andrew for providing us camera scripts and helping us with Unity!! Unfortunately due to exam he wasn't able to participate with us this year, hopefully next time he'll join the roster. - Last but not least William for holding the team together and being the best cheerleader ever. And please get an upgrade for your setup :) - Also thanks to everyone in Paul and William's discord (which I will not mention the name of) for being super duper supportive, this was a crazy weekend and an experience I'll look back upon. Kelvin getting my those maple donuts saved my mental for the Monday night

a link to Paul's post: [https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/pedro/whats-next-for-pedro]

if you haven't checked out our game yet it's here: [https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/pedro]

Try our game here: Decrypt https://ldj.am/$297394

Making the game:

This is my third time participating in Ludum Dare, and each time we're getting better and better at it! or I'd like to think so :P This time we wanted to keep the concept simple and easy to polish, focus more on the UI and less on extravagant animation. In the past, we would struggle with level design and playtesting in a short time. So we decided that a word game would help us stay focused on playtesting and fully polish the game design.

We were inspired by tetris, scrabble, and plateup (yes I am addicted to plateup). We actually had an idea for "Use it or lose it" and ultimately changed that idea to fit the theme of every 10 seconds, which actually turned out well!

This was the first time I used adobe illustrator and xd for a game in game jam. It's also the first time I made predominantly just UI assets for a game. It was also the first time I made a track that's longer than an 8 bar-loop. So a lot of firsts for me, a lot of learning. I'm genuinely surprised by all the feedback we got for the game. I'm just very happy how many people played our game and left a message saying that they liked it, feel like I just achieved a small life goal. Super proud of us :D

Reflection:

Our team is still very passionate about this game, so much that we might put another project on hold to develop this one further into a mobile game? We had some really good ideas going, and the feedback from everybody really helped! There were still a lot of bugs we had to fix, features we didn't have time to implement. Hopefully those will be seen in the full version later on.

Things we did well:

• We discussed ideas for all the themes that made it to the final round. It made all of us less worried about what theme we're gonna get, we felt a little more prepared. Even though we didn't come up with an idea for every single theme, it was easy to modify and work around it.
• We immediately started playing other people's games and leaving feedback after submission hour. I think this gave our game a lot of traction -> more people play our game and gave us feedback -> more bug fixes.

For future game jams:

• I think we should take some time early on with prototyped assets and develop more standards for how the assets should be exported, sizing, positions... Even though we had experience with it in the past, I still took a lot of extra time re-exporting things because they weren't up to standard.
• We also originally wanted to do post processing filter, ui animation, lighting and all that. There was clearly not enough time to learn to do that for the first time during a game jam. We should take time learning and testing those things before coming into this game jam.
• We reeeeeally need to figure out how to build the game ui properly so that it doesn't have to be played in full screen. This already happened once for our LD 49 game Ouch! https://ldj.am/$259834 did not learn from that experience lol
• Take more breaks gaming! I think the team was super exhausted and mentally checked out on day 3. I think if we took some time to play a game or two together on day 2, everyone would be a lot more productive on day 3. Working for 3 days straight day to night is definitely not easy.

Thanks:

Thanks to our friends coming up with the name of our game Decrypt, and helping us out with QA. We all know how hard it is to come up with a name.

Thanks to my team for persevering and being so hardworking even on the Monday when we all had other stuff to do. My two programmers @gabriel-chan @chan-gim kept working on the bugs even after we worked nonstop for 3 days. They also encouraged me so much when I was not confident with the sound work.

Thanks to everybody that played, rated, or commented on our game. It meant a lot to me. Reading all the comments really motivated me on making the game better. I'm trying my best to play everyone's creation and leave feedback as well!

Other Games

Seeing all the other games in this jam was super inspiring as well, I have to let people know about them!! Here are a few of my personal favorites. I link them here so I can go back to play them. Go try them out!

Poda Wants a Statue https://ldj.am/$296784 This game is what I aspire to make. It's absolutely adorable, the sprites are so clean, and the design has so much detail and love.

Yes, Comrade. https://ldj.am/$297272 Anyone who enjoyed Papers Please would enjoy this game. This was super polished, and the voice acting... Chef's kiss! definitely a gem

À la carte https://ldj.am/$304910 I'm just addicted to games where I can make food without having to wash dishes irl, what can I say

Scribble Rush https://ldj.am/$300241 This game was unexpectedly hilarious, I also just like drawing games. It was a simple concept executed flawlessly

Bygone Melodies https://ldj.am/$300039 A rhythm game that looks like a story book??? say less

An Average Day At The Cat Cafe https://ldj.am/$307658 Angela never disappoints!

I might have forgotten a few, I will update this list as I test more.

Will also update when voting period is over!

We originally planned to release the game for Jam, but ultimately decided that this game deserved a little bit more love before we uploaded it. Here's the link to our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/souls-path

Here are a few of my favourite assets from our game:

character animation game screenshots Wallpapers!

And of course, our lovely music https://soundcloud.com/carteblanche1/sets/souls-path-soundtrack-ld52?si=8b4498c4301e4dda9f90a731dc5e8aac&utmsource=clipboard&utmmedium=text&utmcampaign=socialsharing

Come check out the game, you won't regret it! Don't forget to leave a comment, the feedback means a lot to us. <3 https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/souls-path

Mandatory post-jam reflection so i don't make the same mistakes next jam :))))

Making the game:

This game was definitely the most ambitious game we have tried to make so far. Now we have made a "platforming" game ☑ because we couldn't think of any better ideas for this harvest theme. The ideation stage was the longest yet this jam, and it definitely didn't go as well as we hoped for. Music and art was going pretty smoothly this time, but programming was difficult. Level design was also a new thing for us. In the end we had to submit for Extra, but I think it was worth it, this was a beautiful entry even if it's not perfect.

Things we did well:

• This was the biggest team we've had so far (3 programmers, 1 audio/music, 1 art) and I think everyone did so much to carry the team whenever the others are tired or close to giving up. Big shout out to our audio/music person Catherine who single handedly carried our rating balance.
• Art and music was for sure shipping out assets faster than the previous jams, we're getting more efficient and more organized with it.
• We had a general GDD, it definitely needs to be more detailed but it was in the right direction.
• We didn't dwell on making the complicated UI first, I think we realized that UI isn't always mandatory for a game jam, in the past we always made a separate title screen, pause screen. Keeping it simple is the way to go!

Things to improve on:

• TAKE MORE BREAKS!!! schedule mandatory breaks so people don't burn out. And please, sleep sleep sleep. Not finishing the game is not the end of the world.
• Communicate on progress at least once every 4-6 hours. Especially between different teams. It was devastating to realize that we're not on the same page in terms of progress on the night of day 2.
• Always have a plan B. If the initial game plan doesn't work out (the prototype couldn't be made within the first 2 hours after the idea shipped), just scrap it, it is definitely out of scope and we will have no time to polish. Don't be stubborn about it.
• On the GDD, I should also write out how many assets (art, animation, sounds) need to be produced, for easy organization and to have a general scope of how time consuming it will be. Use a spreadsheet instead of docs.
• DO NOT level design before the basic technical test is passed. I added in too many extra mechanics in the level design thinking that it would be very easy to implement (it was not), and then realizing that the programming team couldn't even get the moving system to work.
• Before making any assets, be set on the screen size/ratio first.
• If I'm going to sleep at a different time than everyone else, leave a note on what is uploaded, and how it should be used. Programmers: please don't use my sketch as a guide for where things go next time :')
• I will also download unity and learn how to use it + import animations so it saves time for the programming team. Also easy playtesting.
• Playtest before shipping the build, dammit.
• Don't be hangry, just go eat.

We might need a game jam caretaker next time, someone who just cooks, cheerleads, and project manages for us. hmmmmm...

We definitely learned a lot this jam. Even if we didn't make it on time, I'm still really proud of our entry. Big thank you's to my teammates @gabriel-chan @chan-gim @iiandii @cat-lab for working on it so much even after the jam ended, all the late nights learning and reflecting. I'm also really grateful for all the comments and feedback we've gotten, I was relieved to see that our efforts didn't go to waste.

here's the game link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/souls-path

See you 90 days later <3

Try the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/pixel-piles

Making the game:

For this jam, our team couldn't dedicate the entire weekend on the jam so we decided to really limit our scope. Turns out that was the best decision we made, and we will be making our scope small for the future game jams as well. We began with pre-jam planning and came up with many potential ideas for the final round themes. There was a reeeally good idea that we could fit into multiple themes, but not for limited space. When the theme came out, we quickly scrapped that idea and came up with a new one.

What we did well:

After coordinating our schedules within our team, we filtered out ideas until they satisfied a few conditions: - fun to play - the prototype could be made and tested by Saturday Noon - can be presented in 1-2 screens, and is an endless runner. - Gameplay was what we prioritized this time, so we knew we had to test and adjust the game before the release.

Learning from past jams, I produced initial assets that were good enough for a prototype instead of trying to make it look good from the very start. This relieved me from so much stress for producing assets on the next two days and I was able to slowly polish and add things in as we go. I was able to draw two splashes which I never had time to do in the past.

What we should improve on:

As many comments have pointed out, we definitely need to adjust the difficulty curve. For next game we should assume that a new player will only try a game twice before feeling like they've mastered the mechanics and can continue to play for a long time. Also we should definitely figure out the pixel per unit thing before we add in more assets, but hey we know how to do it now :D

And we just reached 100 ratings!! I'm so proud of my team, and I think we learned a lot from this jam, the feedback we got were so constructive and valuable for our experience. But I haven't seen a lot of people show off their mystery achievement just yet (hint: it's way easier to get than clearing a line)

Other Games

Finally, here are some really cool games I got to play, these are my favourite entries so far (I will add more to this list if I find more so I can play them again and again in the future hehe):

Introvertigo

The art and music from this team will never disappoint me. This is the best use of AI I have seen so far in a text game, and the scenes are so relatable and immersive. The connection to the theme is also one of the most original.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/introvertigo

Expedition-32

I was genuinely surprised by how polished this game is, since usually the horror entries I've rated are not always successful in a jam. It has a dream core feel that makes you feel uneasy but still have lots of fun. A super cool concept executed well.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/expedition-32

Invenstory

A cute game with cute characters and lot of detail and polish. I think while the limited inventory idea is seen a lot in this jam, this entry did it the best.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/invenstory

If anyone has any recommendations or would like me to check out their game, please comment with a link and I'll try them out for sure!