Because a lot of people have done a post mortem of their game, I decided to do mine.

First what is Ninja Instinct ?

It’s my first game in Ludum Dare compo. I’ve already done Ayond a long time ago in an old Ludum Dare jam. Ninja Instinct is a simple plateform game were every thing is made of black cube. The only way to finish the game is to guess the level intention or just remember where you failed. To help you, can throw shuriken, the sound of the impactcan give you clues on the danger of an object.

The tool I used :

Gimp 2 and Construct 2

What went right ?

– The engine: I’ve made the game with Construct 2, I didn’t use it at all before. I was amazed on how simple and how fast you can create something. It allowed me to make something good with the time I had, and export it to HTML5.

– The idea: You can think it’s a bad or a good idea for a game to make everything look the same, but it saves you a lot of time with the graphics. I just had to do a little Ninja on Gimp 2, and every thing else was just sprites done directly in the engine.

What went wrong ?

– The time: I was pretty busy this week end, so I had to make a very very simple game and I couldn’t make a lot of content.

What I failed to ?

– To exploit the idea: I tried to make a lot of different situations but I think I could add a lot of other thing, like NPCs and different kind of ennemies. I also wanted at the end to make the game only with shadow play, but it was too late.

What’s next ?

– Probably make a 2.0 vers: At the beginning I thought my game was poor and the idea sucks, but with all the comment I had, I think the concept of the game need a second thought. Maybe if people are really interested, I can make a new version with more ideas, more content and better graphics.

For the next Ludum Dare ?

I will try to find a team, because “It’s dangerous to go alone !” and have all the time I want.

Links:

Ninja Instinct: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=12650

For the one interested, my old LD jam, Ayond: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=10934

From team Angoutoutmoisie

We’re having  a good time building the game. This blue screen is like a surprise for the world. Our release will be amazing, we hope so! Great news coming soon!

Our neandertal man in action! Lost in the darkness, alone against all, he will destroy all the ennemies and find a way to get out. Our blue screen is now revealed!Play the cave man through darkness and find a way to the outside! A lot more coming soon!

Love from the team Angoutoutmoisie!

Follow the path of the team here on twitch : http://fr.twitch.tv/dracomagna

Hi folks, like a lot of people here, I wanted to make a quick post-mortem about our Jam entry, Nobag.

Play Nobag

Nobag is a game about Nehandertal men which are stuck in a cave and can only take one item with them.

The game is basically a top/down dungeon game like zelda. You choose your item and you explore the dungeon, avoiding traps, killing monsters and finding keys. One of the important feature of the game is that you can play with your friends! In fact, the game support local multiplayer up to 4 players with Xbox pads.

About the team, we are all intern at the same game company and we wanted to take part in this Ludum Dare.

When we were brainstorming about the concept, one of the main aspect was to have a multiplayer game where each player has his specific role and has to cooperate. We create the game with this aspect in mind and we are proud about the game (even if he needs some polish).

Now that our presentation is done, let’s talk about what went right and what went wrong during the creation of the game.

What went wrong:

• The time: We started with a lot of idea to implement in the game. But the more time we spent on it, the less we could integrate. So we had to wisely choose the content we wanted to implement in order to have the best experience possible.
• Working monday: Still about the lack of time, we all had to work Monday, so we were all thinking about making the most saturday and sunday and doing the less possible monday evening. This day lacking clearly held us from implementing things like feedbacks.
• Working through internet and not at the same time: We surely were a big team on this project. But not everyone could stay during the whole production. The effect was that the beginning was very quick and the end slow and the last night, we were finishing it through Skype.So it was sometimes hard to understand each other about what to do.

What went right:

• An organized team: We have the chance to work in the same game company, and we all have our role in it. This allowed us to have a natural synergy  during the project, where everyone knew his role and the role of the others.
• Good choices: The only way to fight the lack of time is to make some concessions. So at certain points we had to make choices like choosing which trap, which monster or even between randomly generate rooms or multiplayer. A chance we had was to make the good choices, choices that could keep the experience of the game even limited content.
• Your comments: The best thing for us surely is getting all the critics and comments we have about the game. We just want to say thank you for everyone who tried or will try the game and even will share his feelings about it.

Thank you for reading, you guys are awesome.

See ya next LD!

Our game is ready to be played.

Hard Winter, when Zelda meet Tower Defense on one single screen !

Feel free to play, comment and rate, we would love to have your feedbacks.

We will begin to rate other games after a long night of sleep.

Good night everyone and good job!  😀

Thanks for all the people voting and commenting on our game, Hard Winter!

We are trying to play and rate as many games as we can. 😀

So according to the terms you can fix a bugafter the deadline if  it’s make your game unbeatable.

So, I fixed a little bug that made the game easy and almost unfinishable.

Now the name is legit, Hard Winter is hard as it should have been!

Because I’m kind here’s the victory screen you’ll probably never see 😀

Here’s the post mortem of our game Hard Winter

If you haven’t played it, it’s a game between action/exploration and tower defense.

We were a team of mainly 3 people, all involved in the game design, with one programmer and two graphic artists (1 for the characters and 1 for the environnement).

What went good:

– We made a lot of jam recently so we became really trained for this kind of stuff.

– We all know how to work on our own so we don’t always depend for the others for small stuff.

– We were able to put a lot of small content like feedbacks which add some understanding to the action.

– Blood split, because we put it in everygame we make 😀

What went bad:

– We had a hard time finding the idea of the game, we figured it out 30 hours after the beginning of the jam.

– We either live in different country or have obligation, which make hard sometime to be always together to discuss.

– When we upload the game, we had a bug that make the game really easy but almost unfinishable, but accord to the LD terms we were allowed to correct it, and so we did.

– Not enough time to balance the difficulty, as always.

Overall we are happy with what we have done, the game feels really polished and people seems to like it. 😀

Anyway good job for every entries and see you soon in other game jams!

PLAY HERE

You didn’t ask what the diversion was for, you didn’t ask for a good teamate and munition too… But the fate of the world depend of you (well… you think)
Survive the longest time, fight for your life, and don’t forget to get the pieces of your truck back after tossing them.

Your tank shoots really bad without his canon… and you cannot drive without wheels…

Credits:
Aubry Grieger & Antoine Semblat
Musics by MachinimaSounds

Hi folks,

First, thanks for playing to everyone that have played and comment on our game. Either you liked it or not, it allowed us to learn what were our mistakes (like putting a timer instead of a kill count) or say what your liked in our games (mainly the stupied voices and the randomness of the games).

PLAY HERE

What went wrong:

• During the process nothing went really wrong. The only small problem was that the tank on the menu screen doesn’t look like the in-game model, we figured it after finishing it and didn’t have time to change. But that’s only a detail
• After making the game, we quickly realized our main error, the timer. When we finished the game, we didn’t have a clear objective, we had a choice between “Staying alive” and “Killing the most aliens”, but because our characters were pretty dumb, we thought that staying alive was enough hard regarder their skills. But after seeing people play the game, we saw that avoiding the aliens was the best strategy to have a good score.
• The randomness of the physic wasn’t a problem for us, but some people were able to get out of the battlefield and fall forever. We didn’t had something to prevent this, but, hopefully, this problem seems to be rare.
• Finally, we used made some references to other games and movies in our the random voices that appears during the game, we wanted to do it to make people laugh, but some seems to not like it, and we understand why.

What went right:

• The game makes people laugh! That was one of our main objective, we were constantly having fun during the developpement and we’re happy that it has the same effect on you!
• The game was on the front page of Newground for one day! This is the first time that one of our game has that much popularity on a web based game platform and we were extremly proud.

What’s next?

Well nothing for now. Despite some player saying that the game can be extend to a full length one, we think that the randomness of the physic can make it pretty frustrating if the game last too long. However we had some idea of abilities that you can gain (and lose by tossing them), so maybe if the game is really a huge success, we can change our minds.

Anyway, thanks to our players, thanks to the other participant, you guys rock!!

PLAY & VOTE HERE

Before the real graphics:

After:

I think you're wondering why I put this clickbait title, especially if you're an artist. So let me explain you our journey through this Ludum Dare 40 and how what went during the developpement of One button Hero.

The beginning

I never make post-mortem of game jams because usually the developpement of the game run smoothly. However this time, something was different.

I've participated in a lot of game jams with my sound designer/friend Aurélien, wheither it's a Ludum Dare or not. But everytime, it's just us and while he's doing the sound and music (and working for other teams), I'm doing the game design, level design, code, art, ... well it's a lot.

But for once, he found a guy, an artist even, who was willing to work with us. The guy was good, able to make both 2D and 3D assets, used to make UI elements, well, everything was perfect.

But after some time, something was off...

Why this title

We started like more than 12h late we a first meeting. I already had the idea of the game, and everyone was ok with it. The artist told us what style he could make for the game, and to have a good margin we decided to go with pixel art. At this point, it was good, he said he would start on some concept art.

Then time had passed, I put some gifs of the game to show my progress in term of code, but still no news from him. It went like this until like 8h before the end of the jam, then after putting some pressure, he said that he would do everything soon. This wasn't the best scenario, because he would be a rush to have everything ready, but 8h was doable.

Then it was like 5h before the end. Still no news, until Aurélien the sound designer said "Go ahead, I think we can't count on him". And so we were alone, at the end of the jam, just both of us with no art at all ...

How we managed it

So right now, you're probably saying "But I saw your game, it has some arts, how is it possible!?" and that's a good question. I just remembered opening Pyxel Edit and then I probably went into "Ultra instinct" mode.

The main thing was doing pixel art and making everything really small. For example the tiles are 16x16 pixels and the character and enemies are 32x32. Also I tried to minimize the amount of animation frames.

But mainly the big thing was to stop doing the level design and the polish of the controls. This was a hard decision though because it was either had a good gameplay from A to Z with maybe some lacks in the feedbacks or having something decent to show.

In my opinion, the graphics was the best solution as it was giving some "life" to the game that was otherwise really blocky with lot of placeholders.

Here's a before/after:

What was good

Anyway, despite that moment of panic, the fact of having a graphic artist made me spend more time on the level design and difficulty balance in order to craft a solid gameplay even if far from perfect.

Also, some enemies are missing like the flying one, and some level design elements like the bumper which are already working in game had to be cut from it due to the lack of graphic representation but could be part of an update later after the jam.

What's next

For now, I think we will let the game as it is for a week or two, and if the feedbacks are positive (which seems to be the case at the moment) , we will probably make an update with a complete level design and new features.

In conclusion

So sorry for the rant, it needed to come out. And no, I don't think artists are traitors, this was obviously a bad exeperience that probably doesn't happen too often.

Anyway, despite all that, this game jam was a fun experience as always. Aurelien and I are proud of what we have made and we'll probably be part of the next one.

If you have read this far, you're probably a very curious being, so I want to thank you and hope to see you in the next Ludum Dare.

And don't forget ...

I have just one thing to say about the result:

WOW! Thank you so much for the support guys. You're the best!

But don't go anywhere, while you were waiting for the result, I took some time to make a more complete and polished version of the game. I hope you will like it.

You can play this new version on Gamejolt:

TRY IT NOW