So far so good. 😜 Ludum Dare is even more fun with a team!

This was my first Ludum Dare with a team. We really pushed ourselves and I couldn't be happier with the results!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/camp-snuggle

If you're mostly making your game jam game for yourself then this doesn't apply, but if you're hoping a lot of fellow jammers will play and enjoy your game, here are some of my thoughts.

• People will be playing a lot of games, so any friction in getting to your game is going to be a problem.
• Make it run in the browser if at all possible (downloading and unzipping a file is just enough of a pain that people won't do it). Especially if there are tons of other games that do run in the browser.
• Make your game easy to understand. If your idea requires a tutorial to ease players into it, making that tutorial will take time away from making your actual game. People might not even be willing to go through a tutorial.
• Bold important words in your directions (like score and Gameover). This gives the viewer's eye something to latch on to so they might actually read your directions.
• Think about what assets are easy/hard to make. Text and voices can be produced rather quickly and can add a lot of content to your game. (We recorded 20 sounds that made it into the game in 1 hour)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/camp-snuggle

My team really went all out this time, and the results make me so happy. But I am seriously wrecked after 3 days of massive creativity and problem solving. (The game is goofy as heck, so it sounds kind of funny to say "massive creativity", but you know better than anyone it's not easy bringing a working game into existence out of nothing)

My willpower/self control was totally shot today. At work I had 0 energy/motivation to work on anything that required creativity. I ended up watching a lot of cat videos and I sort of felt like I deserved it after jamming so hard. But I know this is just temporary.

Creativity is like a muscle and when you give it your all in a game jam, you're exercising that muscle in a way that when it recovers will come back stronger than ever.

Creative work is hard, but it gives back way more than what you put into it.

But for now, let's all get some rest like the dudes in our game.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/camp-snuggle

To my fellow programmers out there, how dirty do you let your code get over the course of a jam? Obviously there's enormous time pressure. But my sense is that at least on the first day, if you don't put a little thought into the organization of your code, you're going to wind up with a terrible bug the second day that's going to eat up way too much of your productivity. For that reason when I'm writing my code, in the moment, I try to make it as clean and understandable as possible. If I come across something that should be majorly refactored, I usually don't, but when it comes to the little things that pop up while I'm writing the code, I try to do a good job making my intentions clear so if I have to go back the next day, I don't get lost and mess everything up.

What has your experience with code cleanliness during game jams been? Has really dirty code come back to haunt you?

Speaking of dirty code, consider checking out my game about dirty old men. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/camp-snuggle

Is it just me or does the Jam seem way more competitive than the Compo? I'm not saying people act more competitively towards each other, it's just that there are 2x as many Jam entries as Compo entries and many of them are made by multiple people so the quality bar is definitely higher.

This was my first LD with a team and we really went all out making our game so I'm dying to know how we stack up with the other entries. Three weeks is a long time to wait!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/camp-snuggle

This might be obvious to some people, but I didn't figure it out until after the previous LD. The number rankings you receive are relative to your category (Compo/Jam). Not relative to all the LD submissions. You can confirm this looking at the winners from last Jam: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/results

So if you did the Compo your ranking will be out of 1056 submissions whereas if you did the Jam your ranking will be out of 2013 submissions.

You might say "Why does it matter?" But I think you know the answer to that. With the right attitude it can be fun to compare yourself to others and we can't help but want to know how we stack up.

That being said, the fact that you even made the commitment to participate is a huge positive step. I'm sure you've talked to friends about LD and they've said things like, "That seems like too much of a time commitment". My answer to that is, "What could possibly be a better use of a weekend than making a game?!" (well maybe your child's birthday or something, but you get what mean :P )

If you aren't satisfied with your ranking, use that as fuel to do better next time! The only way to lose is to stop making games!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/camp-snuggle

I'm curious what the rankings would look like if you averaged all the categories together to get a different kind of "overall" score. I noticed a lot of the top games got sub-150 rankings in one category or another.

I'm guessing this would be possible through the API somehow, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to use it. Does anyone have a good grasp on the API or have access to the ranking data for all the games in a script-friendly format?

I'm so proud of my team and what we were able to pull off this Ludum Dare. Everyone did a great job with the aspects of the game they were in charge of.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/camp-snuggle

Like many other teams, we struggled with the theme this time around. We ended up with the idea of a village management game where you use the lives of the villagers as sacrifices to bargain with various gods. Halfway through the first day I suddenly remembered that the theme for the last LD was "Sacrifices Must Be Made". So it probably looks like we made a game last time and restarted it now, but I promise you that isn't the case. When it's uploaded you can check the Git history and see that we built the game piece by peace starting yesterday. I like where our game's going, I just hope people don't get the wrong idea. Do you think we'll be alright?

This Ludum Dare things got kind of out of control. We spent a long time coming up with an idea and once we started implementing it, we realized the idea was super close to the previous LD theme "Sacrifices Must be Made". We also chose an idea that would require lots of balancing and testing to make it fun. We ended up working 16+ hours all 3 days whereas our previous LD had been much more relaxed. The game turned out... interesting to say the least. I think it is quite a bit different than other games I've seen so far this LD. Try it out and let me know what you think!

I thought the last Ludum Dare was intense, but this was another level. We submitted our game at 4:00am JST 3 hours before the jam ends. We are thoroughly exhausted. Looking forward to see what everyone came up with!

I am really impressed at the sheer amount of content we were able to pack into our game this time. We couldn't stop laughing as we were making it so I think that's a good sign. :P

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/ld-45-game

We sent our game to some streamers and got to watch them play our game and comment. I feel like it's every aspiring game dev's dream come true. At least it has been for me. Seeing people get invested and have sincere reactions to the game is honestly the greatest feeling. Watching their reaction as they go from freaking out to rejoicing (see screenshot) reminds me that games can be a really powerful medium.

Our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/final-flower-petals-of-a-lost-age

Our online leaderboard is really heating up, come check it out!

Twitch VOD with timestamp: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/598037925?t=02h52m00s

If you are able to make an HTML5(Web) build of your game you really should do it. It's going to greatly increase the chances of people playing your game. The Unity web player was a bit jank in the past, but lately I haven't noticed any meaningful quality difference between my HTML5 and Windows builds. Seriously, do it.

If you have an HTML5 version, consider putting the HTML5 logo in your thumbnail. It will definitely attract more clicks. Make sure to put the logo near the center so it isn't blocked by the giant Ludum Dare overlays.

There's no shame in wanting more people to play your game, do what you can to make that happen!

Our Game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/final-flower-petals-of-a-lost-age

Our Thumbnail:

Sometimes it's the little details that make a game feel special. In the middle of the jam our artist asked if I could make the character's eyes track the capsule. I was already close to my mental limit trying to implement the core of the game, but he seemed so excited about it, it was infectious. I decided I had to try. I spent an hour on it and it actually worked. I think it adds a lot of personality to the character. I'm sort of risk averse so I probably would have never tried it if it weren't for my artist being so excited about it.

What's a little thing in your game that wasn't necessary but gave your game that little something special?

Our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/final-flower-petals-of-a-lost-age

Our team is based in Osaka Japan and two of our members are Japanese natives so we did most of our discussion in Japanese over Discord. It was a serious test of our Japanese ability and we learned a whole lot. Both of our Japanese teammates work at AAA companies in Japan so they were surprised by how loosely we worked together. "So who's the director?" they asked, "I dunno, whoever thinks they have a good idea" I said.

In the end I think we collaborated well and I'm very proud of the end result.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/final-flower-petals-of-a-lost-age

It's more likely than you think!

Our 2nd programmer wanted to try to put online leaderboards in our game. I didn't imagine it would be possible, but he really wanted to try it and he came back the 2nd day with it working. I think it added a lot of replayability to our game and a handful of users went in hardcore and achieved some level times I could hardly imagine were possible.

We've posted the source code for our high score server on GitHub along with an example of how to communicate with it from Unity. It can be hosted on Heroku which is what we're doing. It's unbelievably convenient and free with light usage.

Server Code Github: https://github.com/midblue/highscore

Consider checking out our game, in addition to the leaderboards, I think the rest of the game (The parts I was involved in) also turned out really well :P

LDJam Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/final-flower-petals-of-a-lost-age

So now that the frenzy of the first week of rating has started to die down, what are you guys going to do for the remaining 18 days until the ratings come out? In the past I have just forgotten about it until I get a pleasant (or sometimes not so pleasant) surprise 3 weeks later.

Do some of you guys keep rating games all throughout that time? Certainly there are a bunch of great games out there I'll probably never get to play.

If you have an HTML5 build of your game post it here and I'll give it a play/rate/comment.

And consider checking out our game (there's still a chance to make it onto the online leaderboards!)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/final-flower-petals-of-a-lost-age

Because there are certainly lots of interesting games I haven't gotten to play yet, please send me your HTML5 games!

And consider trying our game out as well: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/final-flower-petals-of-a-lost-age

This is my 5th Ludum Dare and I've always wondered how to get more people to play your game past a certain point. Clearly just rating/commenting on tons of games doesn't do much after first 50 ratings. Making blog posts can also help, but at some point you run out of actually useful/interesting content to post about.

But making posts asking for people to send you their game (like this post :wink:) actually works really well. You tend to get higher quality games that are more fun to play and it creates a bit of connection between you and the person who's game you played so there's a higher chance they'll play your game as well.

So send me your HTML5 games and I'll be sure to play/rate/comment.

And consider trying out our game as well: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/final-flower-petals-of-a-lost-age

Hey all, if you're using a newer version of Unity, you may encounter a bug uploading a WebGL build to itch.io

To fix it check this box: Project Settings > Player > Publishing Settings > Decompression Fallback