My second time participating Ludum Dare Jam, now with different ppl in the team. This was fun! Time ran out of course, but we got a game out, a game with a beginning and the end. Had to ditch levels and stick their cutscenes straight to the ending, but still - we finished!

This time we didn't exaggerate so much in the planning phase, so I can say I have learned something. Next time I'll make something even smaller, and/or prepare a lot more beforehand.

So here it is, Spirited Back https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/spirited-back

After an indetermined period of time we'll make an extended, separate edition of the game and have it downloadable on http://blackenter.com ...with all the planned content.

This time we finished with a complete game! I'm sooo happy right now :smile:. Try it out!

LD 46 Feed The Fire

Help poor Spurdo to survive without freezing... As the night is dark and full of terrors!

Try out and rate our game Feed the Fire if you still haven't!

Can you last through the night?

LD 46 Feed The Fire

https://youtu.be/qN7DgnYRDCw

Download Feed the Fire - Advanced Edition directly

Feed the Fire - Ludum Dare entry page

FEED THE FIRE - POST LUDUM ADVANCED EDITION 1.6

• Options - including a difficulty setting
• Esc now pauses the game (instead of quitting)
• Pick up items to any free slots!
• Cursor shows you if fire is hot enough for the wood item in hand
• Cursor shows you if you can or cannot reach or pick up stuff
• Show red cursor if hover on stuff and inventory full
• Better weapon hitboxes
• Particles when hitting stuff
• Sounds for the enemies
• Bear now only goes unconsious when beaten
• Starting a little bit brighter than in 1.0
• At the end a little bit darker than in 1.0
• Fixed music glitching and put fadeouts to tracks
• fixed some sounds
• Balancing
• Bugfixes

EDIT: Percentages now fixed to relate the total of games participating the jam. Before I had the compo games in the total and it skewed the percentages.

I'm happy about the results but same time a little bit puzzled about the ratings... Last time we put in a 50% complete game which had only graphics and story as strong points and it got way better standing than our current game.

Our current game was feature complete, had at least better audio, gameplay, overall mood and polish and we had actual full team making it.

Maybe it's just corona giving other people time to push their games to be top good. It most surely has influenced the amount of participants since this time there was double the average amount of games posted.

Anyways, we had lots of fun making our game and we even put up an advanced edition to our page :slight_smile:

If you haven't tried Feed The Fire, try the better version. I'd say it's quite complete for what it is. Only thing it's missing is tutorial and story, but at this point we most probably wont expand those aspects.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/feed-the-fire-4

I was busy on other stuff for the weekend but still want to participate the jam, so I start now. I'll try to make today something very small very quickly as I don't even have a team this time. We'll see if I get anything completed, but at least the theme gave me an idea for a game :)

Remember Feed The Fire a year ago? Yes, the one with the spurdo-octopus and not the other 10 entries with same name :laughing:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/feed-the-fire-4

Well, we got the same team together again with some new reinforcements too! Last time we had a very fun run together (and also my best run so far) and we're eager to get to it again.

Also this is the first time for me to work with same people in another LD. Up to this moment I've always had to gather a new ppl around me so this time is special as we already got experience in working together and we can go on to weld our teamwork even better :sunglasses:

I know we'll at least have a good time creating stuff together :smiley:. I hope we'll also end up making something intresting for others to enjoy too!

Have a great jam everyone!

I'd like to share some of my habits of reviewing downloadable games in LD jam.

1. Choosing what to review

There are literally thousands of games, so how to choose what to review?

• I'm following a bunch of friends and interesting developers from the earlier Ludum Dare's so I always review all of their games

• It's only polite to review back people who have left well thought feedback about your game, so I'll always review them (or put someone from our team to do it)

• I look through the news feed before, during and after the jam and if I see something interesting being developed, I follow them so I'll get a mention when they publish their game

• For the last, I'll browse through games with different filters, and make some interesting picks. But this is only last resort and I don't use loads of time on it, because it takes so much more time to find something of interest than the formerly mentioned measures.

2. Making a backlog of games to be reviewed

To make sure I don't forget to review anything I've wanted or promised I make this kind of folder: ...and do this: - Download zipped games straight in the folder and unpack them into a folder - Delete the zip so it doesn't bother me later - And most importantly: Name the folder the same than games url so I can find the game's Ludum-Page again! - Make a folder for already reviewed games and throw the game folders there (could also be deleted, but this way I also get to see later straight away what games I've reviewed)

3. Reviewing in an agile way

With these preparations all I need to do is review the games in row with a clear workflow - Copy the game folder's name after "https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/" and navigate to see game's page (and instructions) - Play and review, always leaving some comments if I specially liked or disliked something in the game - Throw the game folder in the ALREADY REVIEWED -folder

--And thats about it!--

I hope this is helpful to someone and that it encourages people to review more downloadable games and not just the HTML ones. It sure has helped me reviewing the games!

How do you review games? Are there more efficient ways?

Our game Shrink and Destroy features Speedrun Scoreboards and has already attracted some dedicated people who have made some pretty sick playthrough times!

Even we developers cannot beat them anymore, but we'd like to see if you can!

As a bonus we also made a little fix for our game for speedrunners: Press Shift + S in title screen to activate speedrun mode. It simply disables the cutscenes so you can concentrate to your runs without interruptions :sunglasses:

As you can see, a playthrough won't take more than one and a half minute... If you're fast enough :wink:

(Also if you liked the game, consider dropping us a review)

Will you be able to give the mentally unstable witches their meds before they destroy the world and/or crash the game?

Try Volatile Witchcraft!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_SZvewksW0

...Also while you're at it, maybe make a new speedrun record to the Hall of Fame

Hi!

Me and my wife had a blast last time trying some great coop games in Ludum Dare and would love to try it again :slight_smile:

So post your coop games in the comments and we'll play and review as many of them as we can manage!

Hi! I have been wondering about this for some time now. If several members of my team scores and reviews same entry, do we still get the karma and rating points for every review?

We have always reviewed different games because we have not been sure if there is a penalty if reviewing the same game. There are such great entries that I think deserve to be played by our whole team but haven't been because of our lack of information about this mechanic.

Were in with Viivakoodiponit and other friends. This time we might get biggest team we've ever had :slight_smile:

A thought about theme suggestions: In the past I have mostly suggested themes that I would dream of making a game in the jam, but hadn't thought what others might get out of that theme. This time I went the other way and selected themes that I could make up at least three meanings for the mere wording of the theme. That way when making it a into a game there will be even more interpretations for those alternative meanings.

Don't escape placeholder object! We must animate you properly first!

Your ship has limited inventory space

Cruising around in limited space

https://youtu.be/U28CM9va9Ns

https://youtu.be/km-a17vsXjY

Race the jungle! Try Cavescape

We are proud to present our new cave flight game: Cavescape. We had a great team (13 people) who all worked hard doing graphics, sounds, music, story - everything from scratch. We hope that you will try and play our game.

https://youtu.be/drm0PgvSZCA

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/cavescape

It's difficult to get players and ratings for a multiplayer game. We can help with that!

We'd be happy to try out your multiplayer games with my wife (and also bunch of friends this weekend).

:arrowdown: Post your multiplayer games in comments below :arrowdown: