Sorry if it's a duplicate. Have a productive day :)
Write smell code [I have caught myself at every jam - overengineering a system, inventory, movement... Basically I was trying to write reusable code and think of best solutions - which is a waste time during the jam].
Complete whole game in the 1 day [all the other code and work should be polishing after the demo is ready, if you complete the game in 2 or 3 days - you will have a working mechanic, but you won't have a game].
Select as few things(mechanics) that make up your game after which it would be somewhat playable and focus on those until they are complete. Then make a game out of it. After that you can either polish[↑] or you can start adding new mechanics to already playable game [many times I have picked the thing I wanted to work on the most and I got it working, but then I didn't have some mechanic that was essential for *fun* in the gameplay, so the game was just boring].
Forget about story if your game isn't story based [make it fun to play without story, it takes a lot of time to come up with a good one, just don't bother with it if you can avoid it].
Don't do it in a team if you are new or some team advises, reasons: 1. You are setting up people that expect something to be completed in time with a good quality [it's not always true, some newbies are dedicated. But I have seen too many people just giving up or doing almost nothing or unusable]. 2. Keep your team small, like 4 people is already a crowd, but manageable if it's not your first time. 2 programmers - only if they are very good in version control system or have worked together for some time. 3. You are more likely to do much much less if it's the first time you are working with someone. It's best to have team consisting of people you already know or have worked with in the past. 4. Game Idea: oof, this is a tough one, you will probably not like it, and if you do - it's either you got very lucky to have the same taste or you are the person whose idea was chosen. The best solution I see is to come up with creative way of everybody adding something to the table, so that everyone is excited. Another good solution is to have an idea beforehand and gather people that like this idea as well.
I have probably taken part in 20+ jams :) About some of them I wasn't serious, so I would say it's around 7. I am not a pro jammer, I haven't won any but this is my failures based experience.
I have originally written this in a comment section but thought that it might be a waste to just leave it there.
I kind of want to make a strategy game because they need some love in game jams, they are rarely found in game jams since RTS or building games, or games alike are pretty hard to make, so it may be a critical factor when choosing a type of game to make for a game jam, but I am not loosing hope :)
So yeah, themes are something like a great fit for a strategy genre, but I think they are not limiting anything.
You are the villain frog on a floating island, but you are an enemy and not the main character, also you are stuck in the loop in a shrinking space. And think outside/inside the box because you control the environment. Finally connect the dots.
Took me around 4-5h in total.
I know what is causing it, but oh well...
Hopefully not the last one, I am not sure how much I will be able to get done but it will be good to divert my attention for a while.
So leaving this post for the archives of the internet just in case :P Maybe after nuclear fallout someone will look at this post, so if you are reading it - it's not worth it to wage wars, keep an eye on politics and read different points of views, don't be so one-sided -> side which starts the war and killings is usually the evil one.
P.S. Answering in advance, I am in relatively quiet zone far from the main action but it's not safe anywhere anyway. Not writing this to look for sympathy, it's all good, I am staying positive. Have a nice jam and don't quit!
This is a generated image by Midjourney and I have added "LD53" text to it.
I would love to post an image with a higher resolution but I don't know about any ML bots that resize without leaving a watermark for free.
Why not to vote on these 2 themes IMHO(no hard feelings):
• Your health bar is more than just a health bar - if you don't jump around it with clever tricks, it assumes that your game has a health bar element in it, it's good when theme is limiting what you can do but not cool if theme is limiting the genre or enforces you to add a gameplay element/mechanic to a game that might not need it at all.
• Every input does 2 things - I believe I have participated in such a jam and resulting games aren't fun, most of the time they are just confusing for people and have clunky controls, it's already hard to make controls fluid in the game jam without this restriction. Our brains aren't intended to work in that way and the theme is basically too limiting, you can throw out most of the genres you have in games just because of this. (Take into account that your game is going to be played probably no more than 2-5min - which gives you relatively small time to explain the controls to the user while also making user think a lot and remember new information.)
(I can't predict with 100% certainty that AI is going to get to a level where it will replace most people current skills, but I am basing off my prediction on the latest events. I am happy if you challenge my way of thinking about this issue.)
I agree, that would be the ideal way would be to opt out of certain categories if person submitting it is honest. But there are no processes that validate someone's honesty about these things with the advancements in AI.
Right now it's more of a thing where you include the category if you want to get feedback on your own work and not some AI tool's work.
I don't like it the way it is, I don't want people to use AI and claim it as their work, but what is anyone going to do about it? There is no way to validate that, except if they blatantly use Midjourney art - then you can use online tools to identify that they did use it.
All I mean is that there will be time in 1-2 years where submissions will be littered with AI music/sfx and art, and no one will be able to tell authentic work apart from AI generated.
I myself going to opt out of Audio and Graphics because I will definitely be using AI for those, but I bet 100% there is going to be at least someone who doesn't opt out and use AI. And some time in the future they will even win the competition in that category.
So the problem with these rules are they are outdated and won't work anymore. It's really sad that it's happening, but it is what it is, and we can't change that.
They kind of have always been hard to enforce, but other people could kinda see if the art was generated or if it was stolen from somewhere, not anymore.
I will very much miss the days when people from different fields gathered together and HAD to gather together(if they didn't have required skill) in order to get some kind of game working. Voice actors, musicians, sound designers, artists, programmers, designers.
Now it's going to be transformed into something different, dunno what. VIBE CODING, artistic vision, good music taste, sfx use-cases, etc. At least 3D art is safe for a little bit.
People are going to change field/type of work(because the skill is no longer going to be required this widely). And there won't be so many artists, voice actors and sound designers, probably even programmers. Thus with the lack of such people - most participants are going to use AI tools for that, especially because it's going to give them better results than entry level people that are usually interested in the JAMs.
Ludum Dare format has to change to adapt to it, or keep it's style and play cards in old school style. Because there is definitely going to be a more popular game JAM format where lots of students who like Video Games are going to participate and use AI.
This JAM might be one of the last LD jams where teams form out of people from different fields of work to create something with their "own" hands.
I would suggest everyone to enjoy it and remember it like it's the last time they are doing this kind of thing in teams. Future holds something different and it was lots of fun. People who were able to enjoy it for more years in the old format are lucky.
I know the post might sound sad, I am kinda sad about it, but I am also excited that the games are going to be more complex, bigger in scope, more fleshed out, and maybe we will find many new ways to collaborate.