Now that it's been a few weeks since the jam, I feel like I'm able to take a few steps back and look at what went well and what went wrong with untRACEable. (In case you're wondering, the pun neatly straddles both categories). I'll likely add to this list as feedback rolls in, but here's a start.

The Good

• Using OpenGameArt made things look better than they would have done otherwise.
• The game has a title screen, multiple levels and it's possible to finish it.
• The car is difficult to control at speed, which makes the levels challenging (to some).

The Bad

• Not customizing the art means the concept is confusing -- why are the racers being stealthy?
• I wasted hours of development time learning how to implement title screens and level transitions in Unity.
• The car is difficult to control at speed, which makes the levels boring (to others).

What I've Learnt

• Bad programmer art that makes sense is better than good art that doesn't.
• It's important to practice the basics between jams.
• Play-testing should happen before the jam, not afterwards!
• You should always add screenshots to your Ludum Dare entry page. :laughing:

With the above in mind, I'm going to task myself with improving untRACEable between now and the next jam. It'll help me to practice, and with a few tweaks to the art I hope to make things more coherent. Watch this space!

As a final note... untRACEable is still in need of ratings. If you could find it in your heart to play it and give me some feedback, it would be much appreciated! Thank you again to everybody who has given feedback already; it's been very useful.

Keeping my fingers crossed for an abstract theme with many interpretations...

I'm planning another solo submission, using Unity, Inkscape and mtPaint. I'll use Tiled if it's appropriate, and won't if it isn't. :)

Let's all do our best!

I had it all planned out -- I was going to take everything I learned from using Unity, Inkscape and Tiled during Ludum Dare 41 and make something awesome in 2D. But then I convinced myself that I could use a 3D world with a perspective camera and... well, I ended up making a game in first-person.

I think it turned out really well, and probably even better than the original plan.

You can play (and rate :smiley:) Shrinking Panes here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/shrinking-panes

Thank you to everybody who has already rated Shrinking Panes. A few people have said that they found it too difficult to win -- and some doubted that it was possible to win at all! -- so I went ahead and created a playthrough video to prove them wrong. :stuckouttonguewinkingeye:

If you haven't played it yet, I recommend you do so here before watching the video so you don't spoil it for yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuSKMyvV6Fc

We're almost at the end of the rating phase, making it a good time to look back on Shrinking Panes (and to try and attract some last minute ratings :wink:). Thank you to everybody who has already played and rated it -- your feedback is greatly appreciated, and I've tried to address some of it in the post-compo release.

The Good

• The narrative. I've been blown away by the number of people who said they enjoyed the story -- it's only 10 lines of dialogue! -- and I'm going to make more of an effort to include some sort of exposition in my future Ludum Dare entries. It also proved a good way to inject some humor into what would otherwise have been a fairly dull experience.
• The characters. There are only three visible characters, and each is represented by a rectangle (or cube). This was originally intended as placeholder art, but the more time I spent staring at the Professor and her Assistant the more I came to love them. I've come to the realization that a consistent style is far more important than a particularly flashy one, and that minimalism can work to my advantage.
• The plan. I've already admitted that Shrinking Panes is not the game I planned to make -- it's not a top-down shooter about somebody trapped in a shrinking box -- but I drew up a prioritized list of features and tried to spend an appropriate amount of time on each of them. Without this plan, I wouldn't have finished in time for the Compo.

The Bad

• The bugs. There's a lot I've clearly forgotten (or never truly understood) about developing in 3D, and the initial release had some fairly spectacular bugs: the player and enemy could phase through the glass under certain conditions, the mouse controls would go crazy on window changes, and the camera could be flipped upside down by looking at the player's feet. (This last bug is still in there -- let's pretend it's an Easter Egg.)
• The textures. I wish I'd had time to introduce a few simple textures to spice up the lab: even a simple bump mapping to imply that the floor or ceiling were tiled would be a great improvement.
• The music. It's not as bad as untRACEable -- nobody's ears bled this time -- but the loop is too simple. Next time, more variation!
• The web build. I always leave this until the last minute, and there are always problems. Maybe next time I'll be more disciplined: even building once a day and asking a few people to play it would likely help a lot.

There you have it. I'm sitting at about 40 ratings, which is twice what I got last time, and overall I'm very proud of how Shrinking Panes turned out. I guess we'll see how proud I should be in 3 days time. :laughing:

I'd somehow convinced myself that the competition was next week. Imagine my surprise when I happened to check the website this evening.

Oh well, at least I have an excuse for my lack of preparation this time...

I think this is my worst pun yet. Does it even count as a pun? :laughing:

I'm very happy with how my menus worked out, but the more I stare at this the more I realize that I am vastly under-utilizing the available screen space and should have opted for larger sprites:

I'd like to continue with this after the jam, so constructive criticism would be very much appreciated!

A big thank you to everybody who has played and rated Can't Get No Sacrifaction -- I really appreciate all of your feedback! I think there's a pretty solid consensus at this point on what worked and what didn't...

The Good

• The sacrifice system. I spent a long time (too long) on the UI for this, and other game mechanics definitely suffered as a result. But the underlying system is solid, and deserves further exploration.
• The opening cutscene. If I learnt one thing from my LD42 entry Shrinking Panes, it's that a few small textboxes can completely change a game -- and they saved me again this time. At the end of Day 2, Sacrifaction looked like this: ...the player was a circle shooting at squares for no reason whatsoever, and it didn't make any sense. Then I wrote "That's right -- Kurt Fasthold is THE SACRIFICER."; suddenly I had a character, a plot, an opening cutscene and a chance at scoring some Humor points. :laughing:
• The music :musical_score:. As infuriating music loops go, I'm pretty proud of this one. Despite being only two bars long, it's easily my most complex score to date. Perhaps I'm kidding myself, but it even sounds (to me) like it's genre-appropriate!

The Bad

• The physics. If I had a dollar for everybody who said "Why does the character slide around!?" I'd have about $20.
• The resolution. My previous forays into 2D Unity games have all been plagued by strange artifacts arising from incorrect camera settings, poor sprite sizes, etc; I tried very hard this time to ensure that there were no strange visual bugs, but ended up having to lock things to 1024x768 to make it work. This is clearly an area where I need to practice, if I'm going to continue to aim for pixel-perfect games.
• The difficulty. Since the player starts with all of their powers intact and the enemies are very stupid, it's easy to win simply by spamming the gun. The other powers (in particular the sword) are too difficult to use, and this makes choosing which power(s) to sacrifice at each step too obvious.

If you're still here, thanks for reading! And if you haven't played Can't Get No Sacrifaction yet, please do; I make a point of playing and rating the games of anybody that leaves good feedback, and I'm looking for more games to play!

...can you keep it that way?

This was my first attempt at juggling parenting with the Compo. Despite the additional (self-imposed) time restrictions, I've still managed to finish a game that I am proud of. Resisting the urge to add new features as I went along was difficult, but key to producing more than a collection of half-baked ideas! :laughing:

Please play (and rate!) Keep It Alive here.

I've had a lot of fun joining the competition for the last few events, but to buy myself some extra time I'll be joining the jam this time around.

I've been playing around with some new tools recently, and I'm excited to give them a proper go: - Godot - Aseprite

My Jam entry, A Good Way to Die, is finished and uploaded. Unfortunately I haven't left myself enough time today to do a lot of playing and rating of other games, but I'll be picking them up tomorrow.

You can play (and rate) my entry here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/a-good-way-to-die

I decided to develop everything on my Ubuntu laptop this time, which worked out really well. However... I forgot to test the Windows build before I uploaded it. :sweat_smile:

I only just realized things were broken, when I tried to use a Windows machine to record a gameplay video. If you tried to play A Good Way to Die previously and were put off by the fact that it crashed immediately...

My bullet-hell Jam entry, Shoot 'em Down, is now available for Web, Linux and Windows! :tada:

Time to start rating...

I've made several tweaks to Shoot 'em Down today based on player feedback, including: - Larger delays between bullets, making it possible to dodge certain patterns - Smaller hit boxes, making the game more forgiving

I also overhauled the graphics a little bit, remixing some tiles from Time Fantasy and creating some obviously-NieR-inspired bullet sprites. Thank you to everybody who has played and rated so far -- things definitely feel a lot nicer, now!

How do people usually go about sharing a post-jam version of an HTML5 game? I can see how to provide jam and post-jam versions of Windows/Linux executables via itch.io, but can't see a way to make more than one file playable in the browser... :thinking:

I've just hit 20 ratings, so I think now's a good time to publish my thoughts on how things went and what I've learned from the experience.

Start Planning Early

In previous LDs, I've waited until the theme was announced before starting to brainstorm genres and game ideas. This time I tried something different: I knew my time would be limited (to nap time), and wanted to experiment with a genre I'd not worked in before.

The upshot is that I knew I'd be making a top-down bullet hell shooter long before the theme was announced, which really helped to cut down the design time during the jam. Figuring out how to force the game I wanted to make into a "deeper and deeper"-shaped hole was much easier than whittling down a shortlist of vastly different game ideas.

Dialogue, Dialogue, Dialogue

Almost all of the ratings I've received so far have included comments about the dialogue, and I'm delighted that I apparently made some people laugh out loud. My jokes elicited a wry smile from my wife, but she knew I was watching her and trying to be funny so her opinion doesn't count. :laughing:

I wrote the text for the introduction 5 minutes after reading the theme, and implemented the entire introductory sequence in the last 15 minutes before submission. I'm going to focus on finding more excuses to include dialogue in my future entries, because it seems to be when I'm most productive.

Stop Compo-ing and Love the Jam

Before the birth of my daughter, I loved entering the compo. Making a game from scratch in 48 hours is an incredible achievement (and anybody who entered the compo this time should be very proud!), but with the benefit of hindsight I realize that I wasn't learning anything useful. Each compo I'd get marginally faster at implementing jumping or fixing collision bugs, but my games weren't getting any better because of it.

Post-fatherhood, entering the jam is my only realistic option. I've made three observations:

1. My games look better (thanks to the fantastic work of Kenney and finalbossblues).
2. The music in my games now establishes a mood instead of simply being infuriating (thanks to the fantastic work of Eric Matyas).
3. Each of my games is a marked improvement over the last. Being able to pick up and re-use code from last time means I can spend my limited time on improving that code, or learning how to implement new things.

If anybody reading this is a solo developer, I highly recommend trying the jam at least once, to see which type of entry you'd prefer to work on.

Do Your Research

I was pretty happy with the difficulty of my entry until the ratings started rolling in. Despite deciding to create a top-down bullet hell shooter, I haven't really played very many of them. Things that were obvious to fans of the genre (e.g. the hit boxes were too big, the movement felt wrong, defeating the enemies should be optional) simply hadn't occurred to me.

Stepping outside of my comfort zone (i.e. puzzle/adventure games) was a lot of fun, but I probably should have spent 20 minutes watching some videos of Ikaruga or something. :thinking:

Most people found the game so difficult they didn't get past the first few waves of enemies. I think most people missed that there were three enemy types. I was so happy with this rotating guy, but I'm not sure anybody ever got to see him:

Make a Post-Jam Release

This is the first jam where I've made some updates afterwards to incorporate reviewer feedback. Making a few small tweaks has really improved the game, and it's a lot more fun than it was before. I expect I'll continue making more tweaks based on feedback as it rolls in -- if you're still reading after my gigantic wall of text, please consider playing and rating here. :smile:

They said that trying to implement a JRPG battle system was too ambitious. They said that I'd have to cut corners. They were right.

I'm as done as I'm going to be -- let the rating begin: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstabled-2 !

This is probably the earliest I've ever hit 20 ratings -- and it feels a little weird writing this so early -- but I can't bring myself to break from tradition. Thanks to everybody for their feedback.

Preparation

I carried forward the lessons I learnt during LD48 and prepared well in advance: I had my genre (JRPG) nailed down a few weeks ahead of the theme slaughter, and a few ideas sketched out for each theme in the final round. "Unstable" was actually the theme I liked least of all the options, but preparing for them all still proved helpful; the Suikoden-inspired rock-paper-scissors mechanic I used had been on my mind since I saw the "3 rules" theme suggestion, and really helped keep the scope manageable.

Leaning Into My Strengths

My ratings so far reaffirm that I should lean into game genres allowing for a significant amount of text. I had most of the gameplay this time implemented by the end of the first day, and got to spend a lot of time thinking up stupid horse jokes. :laughing:

Go, Go, Godot!

Godot has clicked for me in a way that no other game engine has. I moved away from Unity a few jams ago and I'm never going back. I don't know whether it's that everything is self-contained in the editor, that it's open-source, that the Node system is intuitive or that I have an unfounded hatred of C#, but I love it. :heart:

Lessons Learned

• Godot's UI support rocks.
• Tweens are a good way to hack in some crude animations without much sprite work.
• Coroutines and asynchrony are essential for a good UI, but really brittle. I need to spend more time working on my understanding of yield -- every bug I encountered was eventually traced back to a missing yield, yields occurring out of order, or an extra yield preventing something else from progressing. :sweat:
• Making a logo for your title screen tricks people into thinking your game is more polished than it is.

What's Next?

One of the ideas that I had for "Unstable" was really promising, but way too big in scope for an LD. I'm hoping to build out the battle system I've built here to actually support JRPG-style commands, and eventually use that to prototype my new game idea. After building a pen-and-paper prototype first, of course. :stuckouttonguewinkingeye:

If you're still here, please consider rating here; I'll play and rate your game in return, and I always try my best to leave constructive feedback.

In keeping with tradition, I've hit 20 ratings so it's time to look at how things went/are going.

Preparation

I've recently been reading a lot of Game Design books, and some of the advice from "Game Design Theory: A New Philosophy for Understanding Games" has stuck with me. Long before the themes were announced, I knew I'd be trying to make something turn-based (to simplify balance), competitive (to simplify design of the win/lose condition) and based on ambiguous choices (for fun).

I drew up a short list of game ideas -- almost all related to chess :sweat_smile: -- for all themes in the final round, but I definitely got lucky; my idea for "Delay the inevitable" was the one I was most excited about.

Polish

My last few Jam entries have paired the pixel art of finalbossblues with the music of Eric Matyas and I think I've hit on a winning combination. As my familiarity with their assets has grown, I've become a little more confident in my ability to mix and build upon them.

I'm really proud of how Long Live the King looks, feels and sounds. It's exactly what I had in my head.

Humour & Mood

I don't want to spoil anything, but I'm really proud of the (short) story that I wrote for the game and how it ties into the game mechanics.

I wrote a bunch of different "endings" for the game and some lines that made me laugh. Unfortunately, the way that I structured the game almost guarantees that most people won't see them :face_palm:. Several people have pointed out that the characters should spew humorous dialogue throughout a game instead of just the end, which is the first thing I'll fix in a post-jam release.

Distraction: Controller Support

As usual, I only had about 6 hours of development time (aka "nap time") to work on the game. Things were going well until I noticed that I'd only implemented mouse controls, and that this could potentially prevent people from playing.

An hour later, I had alternative controls set up for keyboards and controllers, and button prompts that adapt automatically based on recent input. Should I have worked on adding more levels instead? Probably. :laughing:

The Post-Jam Release

This is the first Ludum Dare where I'm seriously considering a non-trivial post-jam release. I've had a few comments from people encouraging me to produce more levels, and I wish I'd had more time to explore the concept. I think there is a lot of scope for interesting mechanics (see: Chess), and a few different directions I could go in.

In addition to the regular ratings, I'm really hoping to get some constructive criticism to help me figure out where to go next and what to improve.

Thanks for reading this far. Back to rating!

I might have interpreted the theme a little too literally this time... :sweat_smile:

I can't get over the fact that these are genuine reviews for my silly game: - "Simple but funny as hell." - "Omg this game is actually outstanding. I thought it was just gonna be a joke [...]" - "What a masterpiece." - "THIS IS AT THE MOMENT MY FAVORITE ENTRY!!"

Please continue to play & rate. If your game runs on Linux or in a browser, I promise to return the favor. :smile:

Aside: It's always fun to see two games that started from the same basic idea but took it in two very different directions. The core mechanic of @bogden's Headcount is mechanically very similar to that of Button Masher, and if you like one then I recommend checking out the other!