for games and haiku
batari or javascript
hope i don’t mess up

there's a fan of ncurses and unity

who this time's on a work trip in philly

if there's time on the plane

he'll mash out a quick game

cause breaking a streak is just silly!

Hey all! In for LD43 - first time I've had time to seriously do one of these since I first laid hands on Unity. Hoping to get some practice in ahead of time.

I'm open to suggestions on my themes. Admittedly I didn't get the chance to give them a whole ton of thought.

Planning to use Unity and most likely pdn and audacity - possibly a little blender but I'm not hugely expert with that.

Wish me luck - looking forward to making a game with you all!

as usual, i downvoted a large majority of the themes. i don't have any hard-and-fast rules for voting a theme up or down, although there are some common criteria i use (i think they're common to a lot of people having read some other responses).

i tend to vote down a theme that is overly specific ("pogo stick manatee restaurateur"), implies making a bad game ("bad controls", "loot box gambling"), or presupposes too complicated a game to make in 48 hours ("3D time travel platformer", "multiple-pathway narrative-driven JRPG"). additionally, some themes are not exciting or encourage too little variance in peoples' games, and i downvote those too ("Pac-Man clone", "procedural generation").

as a lot of other people have said, the themes i most often vote up are ones which can be interpreted a number of different ways - it's good if the phrase could be taken to mean a game mechanic or a thematic element ("navigation"). if, after reading the idea, i can immediately think of a half-dozen different game ideas that i could quickly prototype, i'll usually upvote the theme. same goes if the theme really captures my imagination or is really unique (although simplicity is usually key to this too).

let me know what you think of those criteria, or of any themes that really stuck out to you. what sorts of themes would you like to see in the future? i'd like to see more that hinge on a thematic suggestion rather than a mechanical one (since we get more different kinds of games), and ones that encourage unusual games to get made.

hope i can get lots of good practice in over the weekend (don't live in America so no visiting to do) and i hope you all can too. looking forward to helping choose a theme and making a game with you in a week's time!

Finished the theme slaughter with about as few themes voted up as usual. I stand by my existing voting criteria. Unfortunately I didn't finish the last LD because my computer died in the middle of the jam! Back up and running now though, and ready to jam out some code+resources (and watch some hockey).

Will hopefully get through the jam this time. Planning to use the following tools: - Unity - Blender - Paint Dot Net - Audacity

This time around I'll try to be a little more active on the blog site both before, during and after the jam. Good luck to all involved!