Hey everyone, thank you so much for making, playing and rating all the games here. There's been so many great games I've managed to play so far and I can't wait to try out even more! I had a great time participating in this game jam, my first one in at least 10 years! It's marked my return to games development and has given me a lot of satisfaction. This is also my first Ludum Dare! It has by far been the most social game jam I've entered, I'm really liking the community here. A lot of positivity and constructive feedback all around!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/penguin-snoir

My entry Penguin Snoire is currently at 12 ratings and so the 20 ratings minimum isn't out of reach yet! I would be really grateful if anyone checks it out! It's a fairly simple game made in about a couple of days between life stuff and my hope is it's a fun few minutes of gameplay. :heart:

I'm mulling over writing up a bigger blog post or two about things soon but I just wanted to quickly say my bit and wish everyone the best!

So I joined the jam about 16 hours late but I'm giving it a go. My mood was ruined last night by something so today I decided to focus on nothing but the LD Jam and I seem to be making some okay progress. The main actual gameplay loop needs implemented but I'm pretty sure I have it and the scope locked down and hopefully it'll be manageable.

I've been learning a bunch of new stuff and so far I have a grid based cursor that is positioned based on the player's position and it snaps to my tilemap! I can locate, identify and change the tilemap based on this stuff and it seems to be all working great so far! I just have the player sprites to do (this monstrosity is a made in 20 seconds placeholder), an NPC sprite or two, a set of sprites for one object and maybe another for interaction and then anything else will purely be bonus if I have time.

It's almost 3am so the gameplay loop, art and audio will need to be done tomorrow if I can manage it. I've been having a look at what everyone else has been posting too and everything looks great. Looking forward to trying everyone's games out!

I never thought I'd be able to enter a game jam within 2 days, let alone 32 hours (I started late)! I struggled with a 7 day jam years ago later extended to 9 (didn't help much) and I struggled to wrap up the last Ludum Dare for the 3 day jam which I think I also started late! It was a near miss though, 1 minute till the compo deadline for working on the game!

Here is my compo entry: Life is Fleeting

My confidence as a game dev has been low for a while now but I managed to do a whole bunch of things I've never done before. The cursor is based on which direction the player is facing and snaps to a tile based on it and the tilemap position, I created a farming system, shops and a few other bits here and there. I'm quite pleased with that. Weirdly I think this is one of the only projects where scope creep just hasn't been a factor at all.

Anyways, I very much enjoyed this! I had a horrible night a couple of days ago and this jam has been just what I needed! I can't wait to see what everyone else has come up with. The posts showing little bits of progress up till now have been looking great!

If you take a look at my game, thank you very much and you get bonus points if you spot a typo that I knew about and didn't have time to fix! Now... time to chill for a bit.

This was a fun event. Thanks to everyone who played and rated my entry. It's an improvement over last time on the ratings and hopefully I'll be able to do a lot more in the time for the next one.

I've just started working on the tilemap I made for my compo entry to redo a few things, polish up others and add some new tiles. I'm quite pleased to have something to take away from this that I can use in future projects!

I may even see if there's some nice communities for all this stuff that I can find in the meantime!

I'm back! I did quite well with what I accomplished last time but this time I'm a bit less confident for some reason but I'll give it a go! A farming sim might be obvious but I may go with it anyway tbh! I'm more deciding on theme when it comes to that.

This time I've managed to get started a bit faster but I had to slow myself down by experimenting with state machines and making my game code a bit more complicated! I think it should result in something much more robust that allows me to do more but I'm not sure just how much it will slow me down. I've also started up a little settings menu for the first time as a fair few for my last game mentioned they would prefer something being different so I'm giving options this time!

A few things I'm most worried about are getting the art and audio done in time but I'm also not sure whether I want to go for something frantic and chill or something that's slow and chill. So many decisions and no time!

Hope everyone has a fun time making stuff! I'm about to go get some sleep so I can make the most of the day!

This jam is weird. I feel almost too tired to keep up but I'm still getting by.

I've made progress on my game today but I'm not sure if I'll make enough in good time yet. I've got a tile targeting system that selects and IDs tiles, I can interact and change them and next will be planting crops, watering and having them grow in stages. Using states and keeping execution order in mind is definitely helping things lots but I still have the settings menu to implement and either a hotbar or inventory (probably just the former) to allow me to equip different items and make farming feel smoother and easier for people.

Then I still have, a dialogue/menu system, the art assets to do and some more audio/music to create. So much for a solo project!

If anyone reading this happened to have played my previous game Life is Fleeting then there's a decent chance you were one of the people who wanted the tile cursor to be beneath the player as opposed to in front of the player in the direction they were moving/facing. I've got things set up so you can toggle between both ways and use your preferred style.

My game is a successor to my last one as the theme fits perfectly. I don't know whether having a shorter time limit to make things frantic again while still being chill or just having a long timer for the days would work better but maybe that's something to worry about later!

Time for a break for lunch then back to it!

The art has been entirely neglected so far so this is all purely placeholder stuff to test that things are functioning. Those water tiles are my farming tiles until I make my art 😂

I'm going to have to go chill for a bit, eat and rest up. Feels like lots to do but I'll see what happens when the art starts coming together. The hotbar is working great, the foundation for implementing farming is ready to go. I'm going to end up with something very similar to my last entry but hopefully it's better and with more polish. This time I've been mostly focused on better quality code, organisation and trying new features which has been taking longer but I feel it will benefit me in the long run outside of this jam.

Hope everyone is making good progress on the games!

I was hoping since I managed to enter the compo last jam that I'd be able to push myself to do that for every jam since but I'm trying to not beat myself up about it since this jam came out of nowhere and I'm trying new things this time. I should hopefully manage to get everything done for the jam submission. It's amazing what a difference it makes when you suddenly go from no art in a project to all the art! One or two things could tile better but it'll do.

Today has almost entirely been spent on creating art for my game. Like my code this time, I've gone for a better approach that's more consistent looking. I'd like to redo the building roofs and some other things but things are at a point I can move back to code and get the rest of the game sorted now. Tomorrow will involve implementing a few core mechanics, adding audio and then laying things out in a way that look nice.

I decided to remake my last entry as the theme fit but w ith better code, art, trying new things and doing a little more. It took double the time! There's issues with it but here's stuff I did for the first time with this jam:

I experimented with state machines, created a settings menu, rebindable keys and default keys so you can reset them, the ability to toggle which aiming/targeting style you prefer, a volume slider, a pause menu which has all those things, a hotbar in which you can select slots by scrolling your mouse or using the number keys, keeping track of everything between scenes, a shop and creating sound effects.

I wish the final result was a bit more impressive looking but I'm very happy to have got something playable from start to end at the very least... even if it was right up until the very last minute! :sweat_smile:

I was so tired throughout this jam and more than a few times I wasn't in the mood. I had the whole range of emotions from motivated and happy to being annoyed and panicking! I almost gave up several times, even as late as an hour and a half before the end because I just thought finishing it was impossible. I'm ready for a good rest now!

I cannot wait to start playing all your games once I've slept, recouped and seen the outdoors! It's going to be so nice just playing games after 72 hours of only focusing on making them!

For some reason even though it was the very first thing in my submission , the description did not include the link to play my game which I think has sadly resulted in a couple low ratings. I just went in and updated the post 4 times though and the link is finally showing! Failing that, it’s also in the comments!

My submission is here: hope it’s at a little enjoyable!

I wanted to enter the compo but I wasted the first 14 hours being exhausted and not being able to think up a fun idea so that's not happening but I did end up coming up with a few ideas that seem fun. One I really want to work on, I'm not doing because I want to push myself a bit but I'm having fun with this too!

I have the obvious drive about and deliver stuff kind of game but I've got one or two things I'm hoping make it a little different if I can pull it off. My game started off 2D and then somehow, I got side tracked and started playing around with 3D primitives and 2D art. I'm liking the direction it's ended up in, it's the kind of thing I don't normally go for too!

A little peek at some of what I have so far:

I'm in the middle of bringing something else into 3D too:

Hope everyone's game dev is going well. I'm just going to eat and get a few hours of sleep as I was up the full night!

Fed Up Delivery

I've a bad case of insomnia lately and at the moment, I've been up for over 60 hours and counting despite that and a late start, this has ended up being my favourite and the most chill game jam I've ever participated in. As usual, I created everything and worked alone but this time I managed to do far more than ever before, switch my game from 2D in an engine that doesn't really like 3D to 3D a day in, keep up with day to day life stuff and just chill while working on my game. I even put an hour in towards making a music track for my game last night that I'm really pleased with.

Something new for me is I've been having a lot of fun playing my game just to play it. It's even made me laugh a few times and not because of a bug! I think I may actually be reaching some level of what I can consider competency!

For my game Fed Up, I have players driving around a city to meet a delivery quota before their shift is over while balancing that with thirst/hunger and keeping your lorry dashboard clear without littering on delivery zones. Silly, hopefully fun and it's actually finished!

After I hopefully get some sleep at long last, I'm really looking forward to playing everyone's games. I feel like many of us weren't too happy with the theme when it was announced but I keep seeing so many screenshots of games that look so fun! It pushed me to not only go with a theme I wouldn't normally go with but a genre I don't tend to try out too so I can't wait to see what you've all done!

If anyone wants to check out my game, Fed Up then you can check out my submission page with all the info and link here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/fed-up-delivery

I had to take a few days to recover post jam and insomnia but I'm finally playing and rating lots of games! I'm about 9ish ratings away from the minimum requirements myself and I'm having a really fun time trying out what everyone else has made. There's a lot of fun, impressive and imaginative games on here!

At the moment, I'm finding games using the Danger filter which only shows games with less than 20 ratings and with the first page typically being around a couple of ratings away. If you want to find games this way yourself, this is where you'll find the option:

If anyone wants to check out my game submission, you can do so here!

I'm playing those who have rated and left comments/feedback on my game (I've a bunch lined up for tomorrow!) first but I'm also happy for people to ask me to play their games here and I'll have a go when I can!