As suggested in this post, here's my "I'm in". T-minus ~80 minutes!

Screenshot: https://paul.st/RKox0TPS11gD.png

Super quick update! I did very terrible prototypes of a couple ideas without much luck. Eventually, they sort of morphed into this spaceflight game. You travel between tiny planets doing… something, I'm sure!

https://paul.st/zuUyfx8Svn0F.gif

I'm not totally sure what it's coming together into yet, but it's coming together into something!

https://paul.st/lXVMeFXrd00h.gif

Time for some sleep, but I'll be back at it in a few hours. 💞 🕹

http://imgur.com/E7b5pzL

I hit a rough patch earlier today, but finally broke through over the last several hours. Planets now have atmospheres, and show an indicator of their atmosphere and gravity well. Also just added the mini-tutorial you can see in the GIF, and I believe I've got a solid gameplay flow idea in my head. I think this is going pretty well!

Thought this was a fun little GIF.

Things are going great still, I think I'm going to work on sound design for a bit.

Working on the itch page for the game. I love how Ludum Dare flexes every creative muscle in your body. What a blast this has been. I'm going to take a break for a bit, then come back and wrap everything up before the compo deadline!

I finished just under the wire. Setting up the page here and on itch now!

Play on itch.io!

Vote on ldjam.com!

It's live! I got my final commit in with 92 seconds to spare. What a great weekend.

Here are some sped-up GIFs!

Now that judging has started, I wanted to release my postmortem. Here goes. This postmortem is based on the same categories Ludum Dare itself uses for judging.

But first, the basics! LD38 was the first game jam I've participated in, and resulted in the first game I've ever released: Booster's Day Out.   * ### Visit the itch.io page to play Booster's Day Out in glorious WebGL!

• ### Check out the ldjam.com page for voting and feedback.

Overall

After years of making excuses, I finally participated in a Ludum Dare! Better yet, I finished a working game with a win condition by myself in almost exactly 48 hours; my final commit was 92 seconds before the 6PM Sunday deadline! I had an absolute blast, and can't wait for the next one.

I'm pretty happy with the game, even given all its missing bits and rough edges, and plan to expand it in the future. I'd call that a pretty big success, no matter what happens in judging.

Fun

I've always been obsessed with physics-based games. To me, this version of BDO feels a bit like a miniature, extremely simplified Kerbal Space Program, which is something I find quite enjoyable. It's pretty dang tough, too; I still have trouble beating it sometimes! On the other side of the coin, it definitely needs more content. Right now, there's only one powerup (fuel), one type of obstacle (planets), and one level.

Innovation

There's not exactly a ton of innovation here. Lots of people have made physics games before me, and lots will after. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Theme

BDO is a bit more "small worlds" than "a small world", since the whole thing is based on traveling from planet to planet. A bit on the nose, but gameplay over theme is best in my book! I arrived at the current gameplay by starting off with what I thought I wanted to do, and then going with whatever felt most fun as I built things out. Originally, my idea was a Super Mario Galaxy-esque 3D platformer! It took about six hours from the start of the competition for me to arrive at "rocket game".

Graphics

I'm very pleased with the rocket itself, especially the engine particles (and the crash explosion, of course). The worlds are too bland, simply because I didn't have time to flesh each one of them out. In the planned full release of the game, there will be significantly more planet diversity, both in terms of shape, as well as items on the planets (plant life, landing pads, structures, etc). Overall, I'm happy with what I was able to achieve in such a small amount of time.

I like the 2D/3D environment, it seems like a good base and future direction for improving things. One specific thing I'd really like to play with on that front is subtly rotating the camera around the rocket a bit as it approaches and leaves planets.

Audio

Audio ended up super rushed (committed ~100 minutes before the deadline). I was only able to add a sound for the rocket engine and for crashing. Some sounds I'll be adding: fuel pickup, win condition, and possibly ambient "gravity"/"atmosphere" noises.

I also didn't get a chance to create any music, which is a bit of a bummer, as I was looking forward to trying my hand with that. Ah well, next time! For the full release of Booster's Day Out, I'm planning to feature some music from my good pal Kevin, who's also doing the soundtrack for my VR game, Microcosm.

I highly recommend checking out this sneak peek of Kevin's work during a second playthrough of Booster's Day Out. 👌 👌 👌

Humor

I didn't focus a ton on humor, but tried to make sure there were nice little touches of "soul" in the game. Specifically, this was done though floating text, which also serves as a tutorial. Also, you get little messages of encouragement when you die, which seems nice.

Mood

This is a spot where music would have really helped. I like the current mood, but the ideal Booster's Day Out in my head feels a bit more lonely. I think fixing those dang walls will also help with the mood a lot.

Let's talk about those dang walls for a second. I added the walls very shortly before the deadline to prevent three things:

• Skipping the whole level. Ha.
• Getting through the "moons" segment too easily.
• Getting too far out of orbit and having to just drift while you burn off fuel.

To solve the current issues with the walls, they are going to be made much more transparent (maybe entirely), and moved quite a bit further out. To prevent level and "moon" skipping, I'll be using "asteroid fields" and other obstacles.

Conclusion

One of the things that really struck me about LD is how much it flexes every creative muscle you've got. Of course there's the code part, but not having a team or the ability to use existing design assets means everything falls on your plate. Code, design, modeling (in Blender and MagicaVoxel), "marketing" copy and images, sound, music (which I didn't get to), and probably more. It's really an incredible creative workout, and a great way to pick up new skills, or hone skills that need work.

Enjoyed the postmortem? Play the game and vote!

• Visit the itch.io page to play Booster's Day Out in glorious WebGL!

• Check out the ldjam.com page for voting and feedback.

Hey all, thanks for the great feedback and videos of Booster's Day Out so far! I'm super close to 20 ratings across the board, so I'd really appreciate your reviews if you haven't checked it out yet.

• #### Play Booster's Day Out in your browser! https://paulstraw.itch.io/boostersdayout
• #### Learn more and rate! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/boosters-day-out

Also, don't forget to read the in-depth postmortem!

I'd been away from game development for over a year until this afternoon. It feels great to finally be back at it! I'm stoked another Ludum Dare has lined up with my schedule - number 2!

The first thing I tackled after the theme announcement was figuring out a decent conceptual match. I landed on a platformer where most of the blocks quickly "decay" after you touch them. Players who don't make quick (and good) decisions will find themselves quickly "running out of space" and falling to their doom!

In terms of controls, I'm really trying to keep things simple. I only want to have two movement buttons and a single action button. My overall idea has some similarities with a mobile tower climbing game idea I've thought about in the past, so a personal side-goal of mine for this Ludum Dare is to make something that feels good on mobile.

At just shy of 12 hours in, I'm reasonably happy with my current progress. I split the rest of my time between:

• Getting started on a tileset
• Figuring out game mechanics, and starting to work on a bit of implementation
• Familiarizing myself with a year+ of Unity updates 😛

It's bedtime for me now, back at it in a few hours! 🕹👋😴

This is going out a little bit later than I'd like, but I'm still making decent progress! I've implemented the core mechanics, and I'm pretty happy with the workflow I've got going on for idea -> art -> implementation. Now I'm going to spend more time building out the level, endlessly tweaking, and adding juice! Here's a little gameplay clip, excuse the placeholder Corgi Engine character art. 🙃

I can't believe we're already down to 11 hours! There's still so much I want to try to get to, so I'll let this screen recording do the updating for me:

This was my second Ludum Dare, and second compo entry. Overall, I'm really happy with how things went, especially given that I hadn't touched Unity in over a year before this event.

• 🕹 Play now in your browser on itch.io
• 🗳 Vote and leave feedback on ldjam.com

The Good Stuff

• Checkpoints and a finish line! I wanted to make something challenging, but hopefully not frustrating. Ideally, I can give a wide range of players a chance to have fun and feel like they're improving at the game.
• POLISH! I spent a good bit of time making sure the game felt good to play, and had as many fun, "juicy" bits as I could.

The Less Good Stuff

• I wasn’t able to get to any music or sound effects. This is the most glaring omission, in my opinion.
• I didn’t have time to get the level background quite how I’m picturing it.
• It would have been great to add a bit of UI, specifically a death counter, timer, and maybe count of blocks destroyed?
• More floor/wall styles would have been nice, and more props/interactive objects.
• The screen shake is a bit intense. I want to tweak it, but I'm being well-behaved for the judging. 😂

Conclusion

I had an absolute blast, and can’t wait to participate in another Ludum Dare! I struggled with music and SFX again like the last compo I participated in, but overall I think I ended up with a much more “finished” product this time around.

• 🕹 Play now in your browser on itch.io
• 🗳 Vote and leave feedback on ldjam.com

This time around, I teamed up with my friend @thomas-eckert. More info coming "tomorrow" after a bit of sleep!

Just shipped what I think is the last commit for The Brothers Deep off for a quick round of testing. Getting the itch page set up now for submission! It's happening!

This was my third LD, and first time competing in the Jam instead of the Compo. I teamed up with @thomas-eckert and we made The Brothers Deep in 72 hours. It was a blast as usual, and you can…

• Play the completed submission on itch.io
• View and rate it on Ludum Dare
• Check out the source code on GitHub

Hope everyone had a great Ludum Dare, I'm looking forward to checking out some submissions! (After a bit of rest, of course)

I'm excited to be participating in my fourth Ludum Dare, and third Compo! I've had a few false starts today, including missing the start time (I thought It was still 6 PM Pacific, but thankfully only missed 30 minutes!) and losing the first update post I just typed. That said, things are still going pretty well. I locked in my game idea very quickly after about 30 minutes:

It’s harvest season, and the apples are growing quick. Search for ripe apples, chop them down with your boomerang, and collect them in your truck before they hit the ground!

Be careful, though. The normally-peaceful Inches have sensed the feast and started their yearly assault. A few bad apples will spoil the batch, so watch out for falling Inch-infested apples!

I spent most of today working on art, then took a few hours to get a Unity project set up and start on worm brains, seen above. Apologies to Secret of the Oracle, I couldn't help myself ;)

Over 50% through the compo already?! No time for a proper update, but here are come worms chomping away at fresh apples. Now I just need to… checks notes … implement a player character and about 50 other things :)