So here we are, we finished our game jam with a somewhat buggy, but totally playable game. Robosseum is all about balancing your health and attack power. In short:

The less health you have, the stronger your attacks are!

Your job is simple, get to the big arena and defeat all the robots opposing your absolute power. We worked quite a lot on various enemies and attacks, defenses and a combat system that challenges the theme. ...and there are bugs...too many to count, nevertheless, we are mostly happy with the experience.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/robosseum

Here is a short teaser of what to expect:

https://goo.gl/Rvwjk1

(embedding doesn't work for youtube videos for some reason)

This time, we went with a choice based detective game. You step into the role of Columbo, an aging detective who needs to go around a movie monster sanctuary, gathering clues, making connections, finding a motive and accusing the killer.

Check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/murder-in-the-refuge-of-retired-monsters

Coming up with the crime and its details was probably the most difficult aspect of this game, especially since we had multiple characters saying different bits of information and it was a lot more difficult to figure out when we should reveal certain clues. Distributing who says what was also challenging, as we had to make room for some worldbuilding too. Finally, we made sure the characters all have distinct personalities, so it's easier to tell them apart.

As for the refuge, we had a standard mansion-like building in mind, with multiple rooms. Dressing up these rooms was actually quite fun. Anyway, we hope you can find the killer!

We hit 30 ratings today in every category! To celebrate, here is a little teaser trailer for our detective game.

The reviews we received were incredibly helpful and very interesting. We would love to know what you think of our detective game too!

You can play The Murder in the Refuge of the Retired Monsters here!

https://youtu.be/urZVUiOcp0Y

This year's ludum dare was kind of odd, I wasn't overly fond of the theme, but seeing all these games made me restore my faith in creativity. Without further ado, I tried to pick out more obscure games for my best category list:

Best in Mood: KTAG

Best in Humor: Horrors of Stangby

Best in Audio: Funk Escape

Best in Graphics: Jeff from Accounting

Best in Theme and Innovation: Missing Princess

Best in Fun: Blueplastgotchi

Best in Overall: Rogue Ball

Obligatory self promo: Murder in the Refuge of Retired Monsters

Hey! It's time for us to thank everyone for the awesome feedback we received! The ratings and reviews were really helpful, and we learned a lot during this jam. We only need a few more votes left until we hit the 50 mark, so if you are interested in a story-based, weird detective game, here is your chance:

Murder in the Refuge of Retired Monsters

More stuff coming soon!

Bloodmoon Season has reached 50 votes, so I thought I’ll do a breakdown of how our environment was assembled.

Bloodmoon Season is an fps werewolf hunting game. Since the idea was to feel some level of fear from the beasts, the environment had to emphasize this. That’s why I opted for narrow streets, with buildings and archways towering over the player, to create a sense of smallness and dread. The small streets also allowed for great scares, as it was never clear what could hide behind the next corner.

Medieval cities usually have brick houses and cobblestone roads with stone walls. To recreate these small details normal maps were essential. I have also added small stone blocks to the edges of buildings. The standard Unity dark fog was added, with AO and some post production effects to make the area more bleak and dark.

Finally, the lights were put in. Different parts of the town were lit with different colored lights to avoid too much confusion, since players needed to return to the shop frequently. We figured highlighting this area with a unique color was the best solution.

...then we prayed that the baked lighting would look similar to what was arranged in the editor...

If any of this sparked your interest, you can give beast hunting a try here, we would love to know what you think:

Bloodmoon Season

Become the Hunter!

Hi, we are nearing 20 ratings with our horror demo.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the monster and the game!

Check it out here!.

Easy train customization, totally unnecessary for our game: