All of our first game jam and we actually ended up with something to submit! Super stoked. Enjoy Minotaur Mania!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/$122087

This will be my second jam. A few of my teammates from the last time are coming back along with some first-timers.

Last time

We kinda decided last-minute we were going to participate (I forgot it was coming up). I had been toying around with TIC-80 as a widescreen alternative to PICO-8 and we decided that's what we would use even though I was still getting the hang of the differences and no one else on the team had spent any time with fantasy consoles (or gamedev at all for the most part) until the jam. In hindsight we should've stuck to what I already knew and could teach efficiently, so this time we're going back to PICO-8. In addition I wish we had: * Had ideas for all the possible themes planned out ahead of time. (good-bye first hour!) * Gotten everyone's software and tools set up earlier (good-bye first day!) * Had genre-agnostic starter code ready to go. We didn't have a main menu > game > game over screen loop until the last day, and just barely made the cutoff with a single level because we didn't have time to implement switching between all the ones we'd made. * Taken advantage of dofile. We lost a lot of time to merge conflicts in our one giant cart. * Just used Lua instead of Javascript. We thought it would be easier since everyone knew the language but that mostly just led to deliberation about the best way to do things and weird issues between what's supported in the browser and what's supported in TIC-80.

Despite all that we are very proud of what we managed to accomplish:

Jam Page

This time

We have some teammates who are new to coding, don't code at all, or don't really play games and we're super excited about that. It should lead to some interesting discussion and creativity that those of us with a firm idea of how games are supposed to work otherwise wouldn't get. We also: * Planned out mostly all of the possible theme ideas in advance. * Are meeting up early to get everyone set up before the theme is unveiled. * Have a full game loop in our starter cart ready for hacking. * Have split our cart into sub-carts thanks to PICO-8's new-ish #include functionality. * Can't use anything but Lua because PICO-8.

6 hours to go...

Play the game here

Here in a city quite like all the others... there lives a dumpster cat.

Her name is Taki.

Taki of House Dumpster is just a lonely cat trying to navigate a cruel, chaotic city. She wanders the streets in search of shelter, snax, a place to warmly loaf, and most of all, companionship.

But be careful out there, brave cat! There are foes aplenty and only but a few furiends. Her foes are furmidable and may take a toll.

If she fears she is not strong enough to make it through the streets on her own, there are mystic cat ways of seeking help.

She may purchase a few pawers to help her on her journeys. But know this, small cat. The cost is high... The highest any cat could hope to pay.

She must pay it with her lives.

Like any cat, she entered this world with nine lives. To help her on her journeys, she can use these lives to purchase pawerful advantages against her street foes. But beware! It may take more than one life to survive the alleys of this treacherous city.

The bargain is yours to make. Guide her well.

This game was made by:

Brogrammer in Chief: Justin Wash

Cat Mechanics Engineer/ Pigeon Resarcher: Emilio Navarro

Master of Tedium/ Cat Pun Supervisor: Aubrey Byron

Rocket Cat Photographer: Bridget Cromien

Assistant Vice Principal of Beeps and Boops: Charlie Nowell

Prospective here

My second ludum dare (and two of our teammates' first!) is complete! It was a huge success for us, and I'm really stoked our team turned out to work so well together.

Starting Out

We began coming up with ideas for all the theme finalists the day before the reveal. You can see those here. I was really looking forward to Limited Memory, Ridiculously Overpowered, and Side Effects based on what we'd come up with. While we had an okay idea for Your Life is Currency it was kindof on the bottom of the list (just above Change the Genre of a Classic Video Game, which is objectively the worst).

So when that theme got picked we all kindof sighed, but with my cat Taki as our muse we ended up ditching the death-harvesting-furnishing idea and developing the mechanics of what turned into Don't Die, Dumpstercat!.

What Went Right

• Having a starter cart ready to go we were able to jump right in and start working on making a game rather than an engine. By the end of the first day we had basic platforming and collision stuff done, as well as an almost complete game-loop (even if there weren't any enemies yet).
• We pivoted really fast into a working idea that would be small enough in scope for our skills and experience.
• We took advantage of PICO-8's new #include functionality and took the time to make sure everyone knew how to work git in a basic sense, which made version control a lot easier than last time.
• We had people who actually want to make art and music. This was huge for motivation as we could see the game getting better even when the coders were stuck on a problem.
• WE FINISHED! And not only a barebones game but one with multiple purchasable abilities and different enemy types. Yes, there's only one level, but feedback has indicated that the abilities add to the replayability of it, which affirms that we put our effort in the right place.

What Went Rightn't

• I failed to understand how the PICO-8 cart is laid out as far as art and music go. This led to some version control headaches until I figured out that placing a blank sprite on each sheet fixes the issue and makes everything simple to merge.
• We didn't build the game with new levels in mind right away. By the time I went back to try and implement this it was 6pm on Monday and I ran out of time.
• We didn't document as much as I wish we had. Photos, timelapse, streaming? All of these would have been fun but I guess we were too focused on the game to bother.
• We didn't end up with much time to playtest so balancing the game proved difficult. We as a team felt that the game was too difficult and wanted people who were quickly playing through to give it a rating a fair shot at completing it, so we tuned it to be a bit easier. But now we're getting feedback that the game is too easy. Game balance is really difficult, especially under a time constraint, so I don't feel too bad about this one, and I also feel that we were in the right to lean toward too easy rather than too difficult. More time would have done wonders for fine-tuning though.

In Conclusion

This Ludum Dare was a big success for us. Not only finishing something but making such a stride over the last one feels great, especially with new teammates, less coders, and a theme we weren't actually looking forward to.

We already have enough ratings to get ranked, and most of the comments have been positive:

Next Time

We're going to take some time between this jam and the next one to get familiar with Godot. Debating between gdscript and C#/C++ for scripting in it but I think we're ready to step out of the fantasy-console world and into something a little less restrictive.

For Now

Gonna spend the next 20 days playing and rating as many entries as I can. I've been blown away by some of the ones I've played thus far. Nice job to everyone who participated, and thanks for playing!

A HUGE improvement over last year!

Prospective here

Retrospective here

Thanks to everyone who played and rated out second Ludum Dare game!

Next Time

We're gonna leave the cozy fantasy-console security blanket and work in Godot. Heeeeeere goes nothing!

Counting down the days to Ludum Dare 45!

Here's my theme suggestions. Rip 'em up.

• On/Off
• Some assembly required
• Recursion

This time we'll be using some new tools and welcoming some new members to the team.

Ludum Dare 43: Minotaur Mania (PLAY)

• TIC-80

Ludum Dare 44: Don't Die, Dumpstercat! (PLAY)

• PICO-8

Ludum Dare 45: TBD

• Godot Engine
• Piskel/Aseprite
• Ableton Live/Sfxr

We're stepping out of fantasy console -land and using Godot this time. We've also got some new people on the team so it will be fun to see how their first jam goes. We've all been exposed to the tools at least a tiny bit so no matter what it's probably going to go more smoothly than the first one where I made everyone learn TIC-80 after the jam had already started... oops.

As far as themes go, I'm personally hoping for: * Side effects (my submission!) * Night is coming * Making connections * Isolation

PLAY WICKED WANDERINGS HERE

Description

Wicked Wanderings is a top-down foraging game. Start with nothing, find ingredients and unlock recipes to make exciting potions, then sell those potions to the townsfolk. What will it take to make your first $1000?

Screenshots

Tools

Engine - Godot Engine 3.1.1

Art - Aseprite/Piskel

Music - Ableton live

Team

Nathan Wash - Code, Inventory and crafting

Trifectuh - Code, Project pre-work, Dialog and map

Polkadotbot - Art, direction, cute lil' witch houses

TheDecider - Code, Ingredient generation, Inventory

ChuckD - Music and sound effects

Eric Schneider - Character art, tileset art

Previous games

Minotaur Mania

Don't Die Dumpstercat!

Web player currently broken. working on a fix. Please download the Win/MacOS/Linux version from the Itch.io page in the meantime to play. Thanks for your patience.

Due to feedback, we've added WASD/ZQSD support to Wicked Wanderings! This should make the game playble for those on keyboards without arrow keys.

PLAY WICKED WANDERINGS HERE

Description

Wicked Wanderings is a top-down foraging game. Start with nothing, find ingredients and unlock recipes to make exciting potions, then sell those potions to the townsfolk. What will it take to make your first $1000?

Screenshots

Previous games

Minotaur Mania

Don't Die Dumpstercat!

Web player currently broken. working on a fix. Please download the Win/MacOS/Linux version from the Itch.io page in the meantime to play. Thanks for your patience.

PLAY WICKED WANDERINGS HERE

Description

Wicked Wanderings is a top-down foraging game. Start with nothing, find ingredients and unlock recipes to make exciting potions, then sell those potions to the townsfolk. What will it take to make your first $1000?

Screenshots

Tools

Engine - Godot Engine 3.1.1

Art - Aseprite/Piskel

Music - Ableton live

Team

Nathan Wash - Code, Inventory and crafting

Trifectuh - Code, Project pre-work, Dialog and map

Polkadotbot - Art, direction, cute lil' witch houses

TheDecider - Code, Ingredient generation, Inventory

ChuckD - Music and sound effects

Eric Schneider - Character art, tileset art

Previous games

Minotaur Mania

Don't Die Dumpstercat!

This is the MOST INTENSE CRAB SIMULATOR ON THE MARKET. We are LEGALLY REQUIRED TO INFORM YOU of the CRAZY AMOUNTS OF CRAB in this game. HOW LONG CAN YOU SURVIVE AS A CRAB??? Just don’t say we didn’t warn you…

We started as one very large team and ended up splitting into two. This was all of their first time using Godot, so I'm proud of them for making a full game loop. Also the crab sprite is preeetttttyy dope.

Thank you!

We now have enough ratings to be ranked! Thank you from the whole team for taking the time to play and leave feedback. We've gotten a ton of great suggestions on how to improve the game and intend to do so after the rating period is over.

If you haven't played Wicked Wanderings yet you can cook up some potions HERE. Have fun!

Thank you for playing Wicked Wanderings!

If you haven't played Wicked Wanderings yet you can cook up some potions HERE. Have fun!

Should be fun.

With quarantine in effect collaboration is going to be tough so I'm probably gonna end up working alone. I also will be out Saturday leaving me with just Friday and Sunday. I also have not prepared in any way shape or form, so here goes nothing.

As the last surviving member of [REDACTED] you are hereby tasked with the following mission:

The alien threat has destroyed or commandeered all but one remaining U.B.C.S. (Unmanned Battlecruiser Class Starship). We are confident that this ship can hold off the ongoing invasion, but our opponents are already working to defeat our connection to the cruiser and control it for themselves.

If the connection is lost, Earth is theirs.

Keep it alive.

Working on a few remaining bugs. Hopefully get it all sorted by submission hour. Would love for this to be not only my first solo jam, but first jam where I don't have to patch something out after the deadline -_-

Play the alien-invasion-thwarting card-strategy game HERE

This is my first solo LD entry. As such I very much appreciate any feedback, no matter how constructive.

As the last surviving member of [REDACTED] you are hereby tasked with the following mission:

The alien threat has destroyed or commandeered all but one remaining U.B.C.S. (Unmanned Battlecruiser Class Starship). We are confident that this ship can hold off the ongoing invasion, but our opponents are already working to defeat our connection to the cruiser and control it for themselves.

If the connection is lost, Earth is theirs.

Keep it alive.

Thanks for playing! I look forward to playing and rating everyone's games over the coming days.

Play the alien-invasion-thwarting card-strategy game HERE

This is my first solo LD entry. As such I very much appreciate any feedback, no matter how constructive.

I always make sure to repay the rate/comment!

OH GOSH YOU'RE BEING ATTACKED BY ROBOTS!

Game page with downloads: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/rainbow-robots

Play in browser at Itch.io: https://justinwash.itch.io/rainbow-robots

This is my first submission in a while, and I ended up with maybe like 12 total hours to work on it, but I'm pretty happy with the end result all things considered.

Looking forward to playing and rating everyone's games!

*Music, "art", programming, sfx, etc all made by me. Made with Godot Engine