I’m thinking about putting my LD entry on itch.io with an optional payment, as I’ve seen a few other devs do in the past. I was wondering what everyone here thinks about that practice: do you mind as long as the game is also available for free? Does anyone ever donate to these devs?
It would be the first revenue I’ve ever generated from a product of mine, so I’m eager to hear what you think.
You can view the Trello project here:
I'm going to try using Trello to organize myself during LD42, and the preliminary schedule is starting to look interesting. Here's how it breaks down:
Last LD I had a total of 29 hours to work on my game, working around my regular schedule. This time around I'll have 23 hours keeping the same hours.
I'm going for three scheduling goals during this LD:
Spend at least 6 hours sleeping every night. This will give me about 12 hours of sleep total for the full 48 period.
Get to church Sunday morning. The way it works out I'll have about two hours in the morning on Day 3 and then three in the afternoon before Submission Hour starts.
Spend no longer than 40% of my time on graphics and polish. I want this entry to be feature/story rich, not just a game with nice graphics.
I'll also be spending a couple of hours with the guests (they are just passing through, so they'll be leaving the morning of Day 2), and of course, hydrating and trying very hard not to starve.
How will you break down your time (if it all)?
...but if the theme is "It's Spreading" then I'm going to make a game about spreading jam on things. A jam game for a game jam.
Please don't humor me here, this behavior really shouldn't be encouraged.
I've decided I'm going to wrap it up and call it 'done.' It's horrible, buggy, and confusing, but there's no way I'm going to be able to do better with the time I have left. My engine is crashing on me left and right and throwing stupid errors for no particular reason, and I'm finding myself spending ridiculous amounts of time fixing little things.
I'll still submit it but I don't consider it my finest entry. I'm proud of what I did accomplish, which was jump into the 3rd dimension for the first time and learn the Blender API in a little over 24 hours. I like the art style and I think the music is above my average, but the game itself is too far gone. Personal obligations mean I don't have enough time tomorrow or the day after to enter the jam, so I'm calling it quits now.
Good luck, everyone, and I hope you had better luck than me!
I know you don't want to have to scroll through a 750 word post, so here's a link to it. :wink:
And of course if you're interested, you can also play my game here. WARNING: It's unfinished :smile:
So, you finished your first (or maybe second or third?) Ludum Dare! Congratulations! But the question remains: what now?
For the next few weeks the community will be playing and rating the games submitted. All your game needs is about 20 votes and you’ve placed! Sounds easy, right?
Wrong. While algorithms are in place to prevent this, the fact is there are THOUSANDS of games and the chances of one person seeing yours is actually smaller than you’d think. You need to get the word out about your game, and there are a couple of simple, effective methods to get this done.
This is the most obvious and hopefully the most used way to get ratings. By playing other people’s games and leaving feedback, they are more likely to play your game in return.
If you write a good review with constructive, helpful feedback, people will give your post hearts! This increases your coolness (Smart/Classic Balance) which moves your game up the board so more people will see it.
Don’t leave short, unhelpful comments like “Good game!” or “Cool. Play mine too plz.” These comments aren’t helpful to the developer and are (to me at least) borderline spam.
Remember: It’s not about the ratings, it’s about growing as a developer. You want that feedback to make you a better game maker in the future!
This is my personal favorite as it employs a little hobby of mine: social marketing. Create a post on the home page with some screenshots or a video of your game and let everyone know where to play it!
Creating extra content is also a big plus. A post-mortem (a blog post about how you made the game), concept art, bug fixes, extra in-game content, and gameplay videos are all excellent ways to get the word out about your game while not spamming the homepage with “Play Mine” posts.
Don’t copy/paste posts! There's no real reason for it, and if you write repetitive posts (such as using the same images or text every time), people tend to just scroll past your content.
Remember: There are YouTubers and Twitch streamers playing games all the time! If you can get them to play your game it’s an excellent way to promote in front of an audience.
Don’t spam the front page! Remember, even with thousands of entries, you still have almost a month to hit your target. I think that a good interval between posts is 3-4 hours, minimum.
I’ve seen people in this jam and previous jams copy/pasting posts every few minutes, or throwing up a screenshot as soon as their last post drops off the homepage. That’s not the best use of the blog feature here, and can be very annoying for fellow jammers!
Remember: That’s a real person you’re talking to. Be polite and try not to put down your fellow developers.
Why do I need to do this again?
Each game has to reach about 20 votes to get a place at the end, otherwise your game just drops into oblivion with the other non-ranking games (which hopefully is a very small number by the end of the voting period). On your game page you can see if you’ve ranked by looking for a check mark next to the Ratings Received field at the bottom.
Thanks for reading, and I hope this article helps you out!
While I wasn't able to finish my Ludum Dare game, it was a completely new adventure into the 3rd dimension in terms of the art. If you find the time over the next few days, give my game a try and tell me what you think of the graphics and music.
You can find it here.
Thanks, everyone, and have a great week!
I'm seeing a lot of posts here of people promoting their games, which is great! But did you ever wonder how you can do the same to get more ratings? I wrote a blog post a few days ago about just that, you can read it here.
And if you'd like to check out my prototype of an entry, you can find it here.
If you've got some time I'd really appreciate it if you'd play my prototype game. You can find it here.
I've had some positive feedback on it so far and I'm excited to see what you think!
Good afternoon, fellow jammers! Or morning, as the case may be :wink:
I was just scrolling through some of your games just now and noticed that a lot of feedback goes un-hearted. Unliked? Unloved? Un-:heart:-ed?
By clicking the heart, you increase the reviewer's karma or coolness or whatever it's called these days. This is taken into account by the algorithm to place games with deserving authors higher on the Smart or Classic game lists. And we all agree that a developer should get what he/she deserves, right?
Of course, we should not go around promoting comments that have no constructive or critical value to the developer, such as these common examples:
Nice game! Here is ours if you'd like to check it out LINK
good game
Good for a first time jammer! Play ours as well.
good game. much graphics. plz play.
These comments have absolutely zero value to the developer other than to boost their ego. Constructive comments are much better!
And guess what? You can get this recognition, too! Just leave helpful, detailed feedback for each game you play.
But I have a reason to leave short, unhelpful comments!
Yes, there are legitimate reasons for leaving short comments. But there are certainly ways to get around these hurdles!
I'm leaving a lot of reasons out, but you're all smart people here! I'm sure you can figure out how to get around the handicaps.
So what makes up a constructive comment? - Include the main reasons why you gave the rating that you did, and if you have time, do this for each category (graphics, audio, etc). - Talk about the weaknesses of a game as well as its strengths. How can we learn if we don't know what we did wrong? - Make sure to be encouraging no matter what, nobody likes to receive an angry 'your game sucks' comment!
Above all, be honest in your review. If you aren't honest, the developer gets the wrong impression of what he/she should change in the game. And we all want to help each other become better developers, right? That's what Ludum Dare is all about!
I'd like to take this moment to point out and EXTREMELY GOOD comment I saw recently (props to you, @koala-squad!):
NOTE: The beginning of the comment was removed as it was part of another discussion in the game's comment section. The part I've included is the actual review. The game is SpaceLab 42 and can be found here.
``` ...I really love the graphics! I love seeing a game that makes graphics the focus instead of gameplay, as it does tend to freshen up the competition! Now, I understand what people are saying about the assets used. However, I feel like we are making a rather large mountain out of a molehill here. The only reason this has become an issue is because you did not opt out of graphics, for the very reason that this would absolutely kill your game. Now, here’s my opinion. Firstly, you should have been up front about all of this, addressing it in the description rather than letting it devolve into a flame-war. Honesty is the best policy, especially with something where you may get panned if you remain secretive about it. Next, I believe you are fine with using the spaceship, as well as any materials for the game, because they aren’t the point. The main focus of the game is the art in the menus, not the game or its art. Putting some other people’s assets into minor pieces of the game shouldn’t take away from the major purpose of the game. Really, it should just kinda be shrugged off, because it isn’t the focus of the game.
Finally, the biggest issue with the assets: the background in the menu. I’ve got to be honest about this one: it’s going to hurt your score. There’s no denying that this is an issue. It’s a major piece of the graphics, and the best part of the game at that. I’d take away a full half-star from your graphics score, mostly because it is the visual crux of the menu.
Now, the gameplay. I’d say that I’m kinda just going to throw this out the window. It’s going to get a terrible score because it is a pretty terrible game. It’s got a basic premise, it’s almost impossible to lose, and it lacks mechanical interest. It is free from bugs, and it does work for what it is, so I will give you 2 stars, but overall I’d say that because this isn’t the purpose of this game, you really should just opt out of it so you can get a good rating at the end.
Finally, the audio. It’s really top notch stuff! However, I’d like to express some doubts about the originality of it, partic- ularly the ambience in the menu. I don’t doubt that the music is yours, nor do I doubt that the SFX are original, so that already is a major contribution. Forgive me and tell me if I’m wrong here, but I just can’t tell. The audio that you used work really well to bring home the mood though. The mood was absolutely amazing! Incredible work tuning the graphics and audio to fit the style and mood of the game!
Overall, great job on the graphics and mood, not too great job on the theme, and be honest about what you did or did not make as far as graphics go, and maybe make it all your own next time, even if it has to be terrible, simply to avoid this stuff.
Cheers! The Koala Squad
```
They tell us what they really thought about each category (point 1), and while critical (point 2) it isn't derogatory (point 3). This kind of comment is infinitely more helpful than a 'nice game play mine' comment.
So we can see that people leaving constructive comments are being good citizens of the LD community, and should be rightly promoted! So click that :heart:! You should also now have the tools to write your own constructive comments (though they don't have to be as long as the one above!).
NOTE: To all of you who played my 'game' and are still waiting on a rate-back from me: it's coming, as soon as tonight! I've finally gotten a chance to break out of my routine for some game time.
Cheers, all!
Even if we don't rank in the end, do we still get to see our score? I.E. 2.76/5 in THEME, etc.
While not my best rankings, the scores for Mood and Graphics were pretty respectable (and they were the main focus of my prototype). Audio also did decently for something that was put together in 1 hour.
And now the (almost) traditional @ Thanks Board!
@chaitae @wheffle @teelin @remicraft @predominant @digital-bacon @anubhav-kashyap @ajayajayaj @major-sauce @kappinski @foxisiii @wisstopher @leave @hellsquirrel @jonathan-lorenz @cbdevilla
Thanks for playing my game!
@erikkire Thanks for at least trying to play, I'm so sorry it wouldn't run for you!
And a huge shout-out to @anubhav-kashyap, who not only made a very impressive product himself (in only 5 hours), but he helped me in the last hours of rating to get enough votes to rank.
Thanks to @pov for hosting yet another successful jam, even if the earlier start time hampered me a bit, and as a side note, I do think the suggestion to have only two jams a year is a good one (at least for me). I need more free time to pursue my other development projects but Ludum Dare keeps interrupting!
I look forward to seeing you all in December, and hopefully I'll be back with some surprises for you :wink:
Happy Wednesday, fellow developers and self-torture aficionados!
I'm super excited to participate in my 5th Ludum Dare, and this time I'm doing something a little different: I'll be streaming the entire thing on Twitch! Feel free to stop by the stream and chat. I'll also be streaming some entries afterwards so keep an eye out for the sign-up form!
Thanks to @pov who has implemented some welcome new features to the theme suggestion, and to all the developers who are using their free time to work on the site. The jam is constantly improving and I can only see it growing in the future!
You can check out my stream here, I also stream at 3:30 USMST on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Does 325 signups mean 325 new accounts and therefore, 325 brand new participants? If so it would seem we are cycling through jammers really fast since the signups number is always fairly close to the unique authors number.
More than 50% of this Ludum Dare was taken up by other obligations, so I didn’t think that I was going to participate at first. But I really, really like the theme this time (for once), so I’m gonna try and put something small out in the six hours that I have available! I’ll be streaming my development and I’ll share a link when I’m live!
Lead the expedition to capture the Winderglear and try to make it out alive...
And not just because my game has a swampy area!
I've been really busy lately and I haven't rated any games so far. I've got a list of about 20 that I'm going to go through starting tomorrow and leave some good feedback for you guys :wink:
That said I've noticed a few people who have left comments without giving a rating, and some who have left generic comments. I know this is not news for some, but I'm going to take this as an opportunity to tell you how I handle this: I will not rate the games of those who don't mention something specific about my game in their comment, or who did not leave a rating. It's a bad practice and isn't in tune with the spirit of Ludum Dare.
You've probably heard all this before (it comes up almost every jam), but it's an important point that sadly a good amount of people seem to miss. Also, don't forget to reward the people who do leave good feedback by clicking the :heart:, it improves their game's smart ranking and makes them feel good on the inside :smile:
And of course, if you want to play my game, I'll be sure to rate yours back: We Were 5
