• with a twist of old-school animation juiciness and WTF-is-going-on

I decided to take a gamble on physics based gameplay that would be rendered at 24 fps with all hand-drawn art, and was pleasantly surprised with the dumb fun it turned into!

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

The key mechanic is the player's management of the "tray" that is bound to them with a hinge joint. Moving left and right has the expected effect on its tilt, which combines nicely with the light impact of blocks tumbling down from the sky. The trick is that players must build up speed to send the blocks over the edge (instead of into the fire), which messes with the desire to keep things still and balanced.

This core gameplay tension / learning / feedback loop is tasty goodness, and I could easily envision different scenarios: blocks of different sizes, exploding blocks, skill-based point systems, timed challenges... all of the fun treats that game designers use to extend and expand on central mechanics.

The animation effect (if you're curious) was implemented like this: - Framerate set to 24 fps (this does not effect physics, which runs on a "separate thread" at a constant rate) - Every frame: - One of 24 old paper images is drawn on the background - Orthographic size on the camera jitters by a tiny amount (zooming slightly in and out) - Camera rotation jitters slightly (seriously small, like less than 1 degree in each direction)

The physics mechanics, animation effect, and juice I injected (hinged trap doors, heart coins, the player's head lerping to the tilt of the tray, etc) make me feel like this is one of the best LD's I've had in a while. I'm looking forward to seeing what other people have done with this fun theme!

Thanks for playing and rating!

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

Being a Mac guy has its downsides during Ludum Dare, because most of y'all make Windows builds!

:weary:

I found myself greatly appreciating web versions of entries, so I figured I'd do the same for my game!

• Play Robox in your browser
• Check out its LD page

I started in the industry as a game designer, but eventually felt the pull towards programming. I was tired of writing design docs and ready to wrassle with the true language of games: code.

Ludum Dare 23 was my first jam, and it was also the start of a journey that led me here to Florida, a Unity programmer at... hmm. Let's just call it a company with name along the lines of "Mystic Jump." :)

Ludum Dare is important to me, as it is to many people, and despite Life always looking to throw a wrench into my plans, I never, ever miss it.

For LD41 -- my nineteenth! -- I've been cooking up generic starter code, jotting down game seeds, and coming up with concepts for the final themes. I've never been more ready. Let's see if that makes a difference! :D

Tools: - Engine: Unity C# using Visual Studio Code - Art: Photoshop, Blender, Pen + Paper - SFX: Audacity + Mic for foley, SFXR for 8bit crunchiness - Music: Bosca Ceoil, Figure

¯_(ツ)_/¯

What's the most incompatible genre with a golf sim?

If you've got a crazy suggestion, leave it in the comments!

I'm already blown away by the crazy concoctions I've seen, and it's just warming up!

There's also my game, which involves a) golf and b) side-scrolling brawling.

Honestly, I'm not even going to try and sell you on it. You already know if you're going to click the link. :)

Golf War.

As always, many thanks to @Pov

Hey there, friend! How about three holes of side-scrolling golf brawling action? More tactical than an RTS cooking show, with more injuries than a zombie horde card battler!

Golf War

is only a few votes shy of 20. Please give it a whack!

Click here to play

Great! Assets are finished. NOW I JUST HAVE TO IMPLEMENT THEM.

seriously, why don't I ever just do simple pixel art?

:|

So far it looks like I have RTS controls and... not much else. :D GONNA BE A GREAT JAM

https://vimeo.com/364486872

It's been about 24 hours! So far, I have a decent hero select system, story dialogs, map loading/unloading, actions with a queue, fluffy fog of war, and some prop interaction. Nothing exciting to report yet, but I'm really hoping this will be a solid foundation for funtimes galore.

Funtimes. Galore.

https://vimeo.com/364545804

Hi folks. This will be my 8 year anniversary doing Ludum Dare. :two_hearts:

One thing I often do is set my sights waaay too high for a 48 hour (or even 72 hour) project. We're talking 3D art, special effects, full music, story, the works. Doing a better job at managing expectations and scope would obviously be a great first step, but an even better first step would be to organize a fantastic template that has a lot of ultra-powerful starter code!

As a result, I've been spending my "extra home time" (thanks COVID-19) organizing my "Jambox" into a template. This collection of Unity code (shaped over the course of 30+ game jams) will help me (and hopefully you) get a head start on those impossible game jam goals.

There are plenty of examples to make things easy to understand. And even if you don't use any of it, I hope you learn something new. Cheers and good luck. Dream big!

https://github.com/Oreganik/JamboxTemplate

Deja vu

mwahahahahahaha... I've always wanted to make a 3D beat 'em up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjyaTcn9Vac

This will be on-theme eventually. BUT FOR NOW, WE SMASH

I had so much fun making Gardening Angel Kung Fu that I turned around a 30 second trailer for it. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xagOQZoydL4

Please play and rate if this looks fun to you. I always return the favor!

A few days after LD46 wrapped up this year, the company I worked at laid off 1000 people, including me. I mean, yeah, it sucks, but I'll be fine. The real danger is the time I lost rating games and getting ratings! :smile:

I feel like I had a solid entry this time, even though I expanded into new territory, like animated 3D models and GarageBand. So if you like short beat 'em ups with a gardening mechanic, please play and rate my game, Gardening Angel Kung Fu. Thank you!

I've been building games in Unity for years, but for LD50, I'm using Lens Studio and publishing to Snapchat (!!!). I work at Snap, so it's not huge leap technically, but I'm excited to finally challenge myself with something different!

Give this a whirl on Snapchat!