First time Ludum Dare. No idea what is going on, but extremely excited.

We are ready...

We are creating a plant growing puzzle game. The first small world is already growing...
Imgur

After about 7 hours the sprites for all plants are finally done. :seedling: (Note: Most of them are not real :grin:)

Imgur

The Plant-o-pedia is the best friend for scientists who want to research new plants. It will automatically update when a new plant is found and provides hints for unknown ones. :seedling:
Imgur

All plants now have a description which are shown in the plant-o-pedia. Unknown plants have a shorter description which will hint on how to create the plant. :rose:

Finally, had the time to write this down. Bad timing with the final exams in school. Anyway...

We did it

We took part in our first Ludum Dare and also published our first game! It was amazing to see years of work gathering experience and learning lead to a pretty small but awesome game! If you haven't already, you can check it out here: A World in a Jar

The Process

I and @Traincraft finally had the time to participate at our first Ludum Dare (and didn't forget about it). I took my PC and got together with him for 3 days.
We were quite excited, started planning out some ideas for games, prepared the Twitch streams and updated all our software. Then it was finally time (which was 3 AM for us). Ludum Dare started.
About 2 hours in we had a pretty good idea of the game and started working. Me mostly doing design work and @Traincraft mostly doing programming work. We mainly used Unity, Aseprite and Visual Studio, because we already worked quite a bit with these.
After only the first day, the game took shape. After the second one, the entire core was done. On the third day, we polished and added more content.

What went well

Time Management
We nailed it! We had a working game after 2 days and then could expand it on the 3rd day. Thanks to our JSON-based approach to reading game content, it took nearly no time to add 200% more content to the game. We even had time to add little details like particles for putting down soil. A small detail, but really adds a lot to the mood.
Game Design
According to the feedback, we are receiving, we have a pretty solid gameplay. While the descriptions and puzzle elements could have been a little bit better, they already seem to work quite well.
It definitely helped that we didn't close down on one idea. By changing and tuning the gameplay on the way whenever we thought is was necessary, we ended up with something uncluttered and fun. For instance, we initially had planned for money to be a component of the game, but eventually decided against it because it simply didn't add anything.
Graphics
I was quite a bit nervous about this. I don't see myself as a great artist, but for some reason, people seemed to like my pixel art in the game. I'm really happy to see this worked out so well. Especially since I had limited time.

What didn't go well

Theming
We had some ideas in mind, but we were completely caught off guard by the theme. We never thought "A small world" would win.
So we essentially stood there for half an hour with no idea what-so-ever.
Timing
Sadly, we didn't have a lot of time after the judging started since we had final exams in school. Really bad timing, but that shouldn't be a problem next time.

Conclusion

Had lots of fun. Will definitely be back next time! :grin:

We have liftoff! :rocket: I've completed the simulation for the gravity of planets and the controls for the ship. The white line in front of the ship displays the expected line of flight. Here is a gif showcasing it:

In an effort to play god, I've created a Galaxy Generator. It generates planetary systems and its stars and planets! Nearly everything is randomized. Here you can see the overview of all systems for this run.

Did I tell you that you can jump from system to system with your FTL drive? But be careful don't run out of power or fuel!

(Tried to post this yesterday, but it wouldn't let me, so here we go.) Now we can finally take a look at the planetary systems with our ship! By going into orbit with a planet, events can trigger and resources can be harvested. Meanwhile, your board systems are draining your limited amount of power. If you take damage, you can repair your hull with metal. Food and Ice are required by the crew and must be gathered from planets.

Also be sure to not go head first into a planet or star. :grin:

We did it! We successfully completed our second Ludum Dare!

The game is about controlling a spaceship and trying to get to your home planet before your power runs out. By orbiting planets you gain resources like fuel for jumping or food for the crew. The game is randomly generated and the scoreboard is online, so you can compare yourself to other players.

If you haven't already, take a look at our game over here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/orbiting-home

3rd times the charm, right?

So, @traincraft and I are joining the Ludum Dare Jam again for the third time. Our first one was a real surprise "win" (10th place). Due to the second one we now know that it's very important to follow this tip: "Easy to pick up, Hard to master". When people can't understand the game quickly enough (a few minutes), they not gonna give it a second chance.

We will mostly stick with our usual tools: - Unity - Visual Studio - Aseprite - Affinity Designer - Krita (maybe) - Trello - GitLab

Themes are ok this time around. We've seen better, but it could be way worse...

Looking forward to getting a game done!