https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVWZ8uUV3UM

There are tons of games which didn't get enough ratings to be considered in the final results. If you're in the same situation, please don't panic!

First of all, try to answer all these questions:

How did you market your game? How did you prepare your screenshots and social media posts? Were you helpful to other devs? Was your feedback highly rated? How easy/hard is your game to download, install and play? How does it look in comparison to other games?

Even if you think everything went right, there's ALWAYS room for improvement. Write it all down and save it for next LD. Our game, Loot Keeper, received a lot of ratings and feedback - but we still think we might have made it better. We all make mistakes and they are the most valuable lesson!

Remember that although you might not win or get on the leaderboards, you've already won the most important thing: experience and prototype for your portfolio. Feel free to use your Ludum Dare experience while talking to a recruiter for any game development studio - game jam participance usually has a pretty high value for them!

So glad we finished on time! This is our second LD as parents and it was definitely easier when the kid was in the crib, but we proved ourselves there's no need to resign from having fun challenges from time to time.

Also my jam debut as coder, which was TERRIFYING, but turned out very satisfactory in the end!

Don't let anything in your head tell you that you can't do something :heart:

Link to our game

Itch page to play in browser

A lot of fun themes this time! When's the next round, folks?

Looks like some progress was made! Done with the game now, off to play what everyone else cooked :)

I feel like playing some horror today, so send me horror submissions to LD55!

And check out my game about running your little dark cafe if you have time :)

Hey folks, have you noticed that on some games, we can see their placements in the descriptions already? Is that a bug?

What if my café game had romanceable demons? 🤔

Phew, it's been a busy weekend, but you can play our game now! We've decided to make all music and assets ourselves...

...and it all started on paper, with a pencil and a pen for lineart! Then, we colored the assets digitally to look like above.

Let us know how you enjoy our cheesy lil' game!

Our underwater colony builder, Tidehold, is our little love letter to strategy games I spent hundreds of hours in - and few of its features were heavily inspired by other titles. Every time I participated in LD before, I ended up playing many strategy games other people made and telling myself: "damn, I wish I made something like this!". So, this time, we came prepared with a wish to somehow wiggle a strategy genre into the final theme - I wrote down my ideas for each of the 10 themes on Friday, figuring out how to make them fit.

Main inspiration for the grid-based map and simple resource management was an amazing game I played lately, which I can't recommend enough: Dawnfolk, made by one guy in Godot, same engine that we use. In our game, you have to expand your base using O2 tanks in order to reach the final point: a portal to the new, better lands. The mechanic of reaching further with linked buildings of the same type was inspired by another amazing game, They Are Billions, where smart placement of electric beacons expands your base to reach best narrow defense spots. Finally, we needed a simple endgame scenario, some goal that players could aim for. The idea for the portal you have to reach was inspired by the classic: the first map of Settlers 2 that I played hundreds of times as a kid. On that map, you need to simply expand your base north in order to reach the final destination. Our portal has a random location, but the idea stands.

Hope you enjoy playing Tidehold! We appreciate your feedback, ratings and even few minutes spent in our game :)

Drop links directly in chat and have fun! :)

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Post links to your games directly in chat if you want me to play them! :)

Join now!

The end has come - congratulations to everyone who managed to finish their games in time! With a lot of conversation going on about the scores, let me add some thoughts to the bucket - starting with where our game, Tidehold, placed.

Imho - it's alright! We haven't beaten any of our records when it comes to placement in categories, and got a bit of a dive since our last game, Cheddalier, which reached a surprising 22nd overall. Yet, the placement doesn't matter much outside of the bragging rights: Tidehold is the game we're eyeing the most when it comes to future work and moving on to making it a small, paid title to be fully released.

Why? It's the easiest to build up on and we spend the most time fleshing out the basic UI and comfort of play. Cheddalier was fun for a jam game, but would be much more tricky to expand on - Tidehold is less innovative, but because of it, there are tons of similar games we can draw inspirations from and flesh out new elements very quickly. Plus, simple strategies are much easier to market than dice-based games, and have existing playerbase waiting for more titles in the genre. Unfortunately, our little mice-and-dice game would probably have a harder time positioning itself in the market.

Want more reasons why placement doesn't matter much? My least scoring Ludum Dare game overall (although personal top in Mood and Audio) was covered by PC Gamer https://www.pcgamer.com/games/life-sim/dark-roast-cafe-is-an-adorably-satanic-cozy-game-where-you-employ-quirky-demons-to-help-run-your-business/ !

What matters is not the score, but what you make of it. And we're making steps to make Tidehold into a proper game :)

Deal with pesky kids and thieves, go on expeditions and get your hands dirty, arrange your collection for the best results, get accused of counterfeits and controversies - and it's all because you own a tiny, old museum!

We really wanted to make something tycoon-like for the challenge, of course with the doable scope in 72 hours of work. Still, we're proud of the amount of assets and events produced!

Enjoy the game and let's exchange ratings!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/broke-custodian-from-dust-till-display

Become your own museum curator, grow your collection and deal with dramas that come with it! Play here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/broke-custodian-from-dust-till-display

...but at least I'm having fun writing the absolutely worst character I've ever come up with!

Few people told me Scott reminds them too much of "that one coworker". I consider that a success! Play Pyre Lookout, our Disco Elysium-inspired thriller about managing fire signals under a dystopian Regional Coordination, here!

This feedback for Pyre Outlook has absolutely made my day:

I need to wait for the weekend to play more games, but saving theirs on the first spot of my list! Go give it a try now HERE!

Feeling endlessly honored and teary right now. Three days can do so much! Read the full article here and play Pyre Lookout here if it convinced you to check it out!

When we've decided to make a Disco Elysium-like game for this Ludum, we've never thought it would become our best rated LD game so far!

1st in Mood and 7th Overall was absolutely unexpected. We feel beyond honored and can't wait for the next one :)