#ld41

[zephyo]

You wake up in a different world.

How do you escape?

Why are you here?

..You've forgotten something important. But what?

Remember - before it's too late, and you're lost forever.

Play it free on itchio | Game Jolt | Newgrounds

Watch how I made it

YOU LEFT ME. is a dark/funny/surreal game about loneliness and loss. Comes with chat-speaking cat and moon that tells dad jokes.

Features:

5 endings

5 - 30 minutes each play-through

Surreal, original art and story

Available for Mac, Windows, Linux

**Warning: contains explicit handling of suicide.**

Hey guys - I made this in 48 hrs for Ludum Dare 41; it was a blast! As always, hope you enjoy :)

[dak-khuza]

Hey! If you didn’t know I participated in Ludum dare 41 with @vsemily and my good pal Jimineybob. In 72 hours we made BEAT, a rhythm based horror game where you have to time your steps with the beat in order to avoid tripping!

There’s also a sarcastic talking phonograph, if thats the type of thing you’re interested in!

If you want to try out the game, here’s a  >link< to the LD41 submission play. If you’ve got any bugs or feedback either leave them in the comments section of the game or drop me an ask and I’ll see if I can fix it!

[torcado]

Hey! I made another Ludum Dare game, Heck Deck!

It’s a Bullet Hell + Card Game with a bit of Super Hot :D

Go play it!!

itch: https://torcado.itch.io/heck-deck ldjam: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/heck-deck

[elfcirynn]

Have a vanity render from our latest Ludum Dare project (not entirely game graphics, but inspired by in-game content?). The theme for LD41 was “two incompatible genres”, so we’ve been doing our damndest to make a text-based tower-defense game with some space-western flavor and as many sci-fi references as we could cram in there. I got to do art again and a wee bit of sound design, UnlikelyNomad did the coding, DudeCasey typed up most of the text interactions, and Zahmbei provided the tunes (and additional graphics and sound effects!). This theme kinda sucked but I’m stoked to see what the theme is in August!

[balladofsong]

Acute Stronghold Postmortem (Ludum Dare 41)

In December, I participated in my first Ludum Dare Jam. I always wanted to try it out, but I always missed the deadline. LD40 was a lot for me because I was working alone during a big jam. Eventually I made it through and got honest feedback from other jammers. 

That brings us to Ludum Dare 41 and my submission of Acute Stronghold. While looking through the posts of ldjam.com, I saw someone mention that they were putting together all of the code that they needed before the jam. I thought that this was an amazing way to go about LD. Why not create a game and simple tweek it to fit the theme. In other words, don’t become attached to my idea. 

Thursday: I spent all day Thursday creating notes for my concept. I have a major project that I am working on. Slowly I am trying to throw out small portions of the game into the community to see the reactions. I decided to create a dungeon crawler after playing NITW a few days before. 

Originally I wanted a four level dungeon, but I haven’t made any games where the player attacks. So I thought what can I do to make this game non-violent? I looked online for things that made dungeon crawlers unique. I forgot what triggered the thought, but I decided to pull an Undertale. I would make the dungeon crawler like normal, but add in an extra mechanic that the player can interact with the creatures. 

Friday: I spent the day trying to relax. This way by the time the theme was announced, I would be ready to tackle the monster known as Ludum Dare. 9 PM came and the theme turned out to be Combine 2 Incompatible Genres. Since I already planned the game with the dungeon crawler theme, I figured the best 2nd theme would be math based. My big project will be an edutainment game and I figured this would be a great way to test how an edutainment game will be accepted in the gaming community. The first thing that I did was use my go to art programs (DISCLAIMER: I am not an artist) MS Paint & MagicaVoxel. I started creating the assets that I listed down the night before. So far so good! My jam was right on track with the schedule I created. Another important note is that at GDC18, a big topic that many of my mentors (both AAA and Indie devs) mentioned was self-care. For LD41, I decided that I would test out what everyone told me. I would take care of myself by eating well, taking breaks, and sleeping at least 7 hours a night.

Saturday: Today is when the fun began. I scheduled my day with a three-hour break for lunch and dinner. I was to stop my day at midnight and I had every item planned to make sure that I had used enough time wisely.  Everything went smooth until I had to code the interaction piece. This took up all of my time and created a lot of frustration for me. 

I ended up cutting my breaks about an hour short and stopped working at 2 AM.

Sunday: I slept in late because I wanted to make sure that I got enough sleep. For today, I scheduled a shorter break for lunch and dinner. I ended up still focusing on level one’s interaction and attack mechanics. I wanted to increase the player’s health points, but ended up not being able. I tried to have a rejuvenation health system, but wasn’t able to get it to work. I wanted to have health in boxes and have the player break the boxes to gain health, but I was too lazy. I fixed the health and interaction trigger boxes so that the player doesn’t have to be too close to interact, but close-ish to attack. I barely took a lunch because I was so focused, which made me a bit upset because, I was breaking my self-care rule. 

I ended up stopping work on level one and focused my attention to a boss level with the same concept on a smaller scale. I was able to code the interaction portion successfully on a one-to-one (player vs enemy) basis. I was working on the interaction code again, but I kept getting an error message, which was weird. I have been coding the same way all weekend.

Monday: Today, is my last day to work! I realized that Sunday night I was so exhausted from looking at code that I was declaring a line!...rookie mistake, but good thing I went to bed on time. Once I woke up all the creative juices started to flow and I was knocking out code left and right. I felt good about myself. I decided to once again skip the interaction code for all of the enemies and work on other things. So I finished up the music, additional assets, credits, ending, and cleaned up the game with any buttons, triggers, or colliders that I missed. After everything basic was completed, I decided to do a workaround for the interaction code. I decided since I had the code work for one creature instead of multiple, that I would just have one creature know the pass code and everyone else just attacks the player. However, I didn’t want it to be too easy by just giving them a pass code to type in. My solution was to make it a math problem for the player to solve to get the pass code. 

Then I filled in all of my levels with enemies. My goal was to make the levels easy. There is a way for the player to get through all of the levels, including the bosses, and only losing one Health Point. 

Submitting my game: This was my panicking moment. Through all of the frustration and scheduling of time, I was able to create a game without having to technically do “crunch time”. Those nights of staying up late or cutting short a break was me being too focused on the project not because I needed to stay on schedule and was behind. Those moments, I honestly didn’t get much done, which proves that working longer doesn’t mean you will get stuff done. While making sure that my LD page and Itch.io page were matching and correct, I was freaking out about the time. I wanted to make sure that everything was perfect for my submission. I would upload to check that my HUD was within the frame,  that all enemies attacked the player, and that all colliders were placed properly. Once I hit publish for both page, I felt good!. I felt like I was able to eat properly and sleep well without overdoing. For LD40, I ate only junk food and had a max of 4 hours of sleep. 

                               Lesson learned

I can get the same amount of work done with proper sleep and food than if I crunched the entire time. Self care is very important and if I were on a team, I would only benefit them with the correct amount of self-caring. 

[chaoat]

PitFiends progress

Finally got those archways “done“. Currently they’re still very WIP, and I’m going to be doing a lot more work with them to shift away from the cardboard box aesthetic, but for now they’ve helped me to ask a bunch of fun questions about my graphics system. Questions like, why are the stake heads drawing over the top of the roof, and why is the inside of the arch just as light as the outside. Perhaps even the age old mystery, why is that line bent like that. So far I only know the answer to one of those questions. Hopefully by next week I will have answered the rest.

I’ve also been playing through a bunch of LD41 entries. I still stand by my statement of two weeks ago, that the theme was pretty restrictive in it’s specificity, but despite this there were still some pretty amazing entries. For Instance:

Forbidden Love Although it isn’t very long, 15-20 minutes at most, this one was subversive and surprising in a way that I don’t often see in Ludum Dare games. If there was anything I would want to compare it to, it would be Frog Fractions, a comparison that I do not make lightly.

Tactical Hydra I honestly can’t think of any improvements that I could possibly make to this one. The idea is awesome, and the execution is masterful. Everything fits together really well, making for an extremely enjoyable experience. It’s also really fucking hard.

In other news, by this time next week 7DRL results will be out. Nice.

[deathraygames]

My latest Ludum Dare game is by far the simplest game I’ve ever made. It is meant to combine the super-simple clicker gameplay of an incremental game with the limited lifespan of a hardcore life simulation. The result is an existential game that took only a few hours to make, and takes about a minute to play.

The game: http://deathraygames.com/play-online/mortal/

LD game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/mortal

LD announcement post: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/mortal/life-is-short

[benlowy]

BBQ in Austin. I need some Lipitor. 🤪 #onassignment with @markleibowitzpictures (at Terry Black's Barbecue) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQaAMu-lD41/?utm_medium=tumblr

[johgames]

Introducing Spirits of Equivex

In the world of Equivex, one rule reigns above all: Equivalent exchange!

In this Deckbuilder meets Puzzle game, leverage the power of possession through sacrifice to turn foes into allies and defeat waves of enemies.

Gameplay

Each campaign level start with a predefined lineup of units and you have to get through multiple waves of enemies. To get through the wave is crucial to use Exchange: An equivalent exchange deal where you sacrifice some of your units to possess some of your enemies. Through this, your lineup will be constantly evolving as you progress on your campaign.

Taking it to it’s perfect conclusion is where the challenge and puzzle lies. For every campaign level, there is a path where you perform no killing and clear the mission through only exchange. Of course, if it fails, you can always brute force your way through with might!

Units

There are currently over 30 unique cards with plans for more to come.

Cards work as units with 3 main stats Health points, Attack and Spirit Level. Spirit level is the value of the unit for equivalent exchange. It can be of two type: Sum (red) or Product (purple) and it determines the means of possessing the card.

Units can also have some skills and abilities: from simple buff and debuffs to complex possession restrictions or spirit level changes they can help turn the tide around.

Exchange

The core mechanic of the game. You can select any enemy for possession and their total value will show up at the top. Depending on the spirit type, it will either be the sum or product of all selected units. (The two types cannot be mixed in one exchange) You then have to select your own units that add up (or multiply) to the exact same value. If you can set up this equivalent exchange, you will sacrifice your units and gain possession of your opponent’s.

This is very powerful and simple way to wipe out enemy waves, but remember it only works if you can create a perfect spirit level matchup.

Origins

This is a project I’ve been working on for a while. It started as a Jam entry from LD41 (Theme: Sacrifice) and it’s been one of the Jam game’s I’ve been the most fond of, always feeling like it had a bit more potential and was worth revisiting.

I’ve spent a lot of time giving the whole game a massive overhaul, but the gameplay remains largely the same. A bunch of new units have been added with new abilities and spirit values to spice things up as well as more campaign levels. There has also been some rebalancing, overall I feel this new iteration gives a much better idea of the game.

I hope this project managed to get your interest and you will stick around to follow it’s progress. It’s pretty far along and should have a demo ready relatively soon, so stay tuned & share along!

Oh and I made a (fresh)twitter, follow me! @joh_games you can also follow me on itch: https://johgames.itch.io/

[arthurbrehm]

MY ENTIRE RUIKE FOLDING KNIFE COLLECTION: #LD43 #L51-B #LD41-B #LD42-B #P831-SF #P108-SF #P801-SF #P135-SF #P128-SB #P105-Q #P138-W #P121-B #ruike #ruikeknifes #fenix #fenixdeutschland #fenixgermany #knifeaddict #cutlerylover

[mariobaronedev]

LD41 Complete!

So the last few days I worked together with @nicholasbarnett and @danielstuddert on a small game for Ludum Dare 41! We present Fight Farm!

https://mariobaronegames.itch.io/fight-farm The theme was “2 Incompatible Game Genres” which I must say, was extremely difficult to develop for. As soon as you think you have something, you either fall into a trap of overscoping, or you feel as though you’re tacking on mechanics to a game for no reason! We had ups and downs and learnt a lot. It was great practice.

[dak-khuza]

LD41

I’m participating in the Ludum Dare 41 this year along with @vsemily and one of my friends! The theme is “ Combine 2 Incompatible Genres” and after being stumped for a bit I think we have a real winner or at least as good as we can do with the theme. Here’s a gif of what the game currently looks like.

[collateralheartbreak]

First post!

Soo uhhh... yeah, this blog was made to cover my work on the game project I am currently working on:

「Collateral Heartbreak」

I'm going to try to make a post every week as I work on on this, maybe more, but at the minimum once a week just to make sure I keep doing stuff.

but what is:

「Collateral Heartbreak」

you ask? Well I'll tell you.

Back when ludum dare 41 was going around I thought to myself "man, I have work on the weekend ludum dare 41 is happening, that sucks" and it sucked. The theme of ludum dare 41 was “Combine 2 Incompatible Genres” and while I was working during the weekend of ludum dare 41 I couldn't help but think to myself what type of game I would make given such a constraint. I would say that it was a difficult prompt except that it wasn't. The obvious answer was, tactical rpg x dating sim. I talked to my friends about the idea and they said, "isn't that basically fire emblem?" to which I was like "maybe~" but it didn't matter. I had been having ideas for tactical rpgs for awhile and this seemed like a good opportunity to do something with them. But with that said, it was... missing something. something decidedly... mecha. and so I decided to make it about anthropomorphic mecha school girls who fight kaiju and talk about their feelings a bunch.

I’ve been working on it off and on for the last couple months since ld41 and feel like I’ve made enough progress to start writing about it/promoting it a bit. I’ve had a bunch of projects in the past that I faded out on for one reason or another and I’d really like to go ahead and finish this one.That said. What do I intend to do with this game:

fun turn based tactical rpg combat!

The inspirations for this vary from xcom to fire emblem to the recently released Mario&Rabbids game. However, if I were to point to one game I’d like to emulate it would be Chromasquad for its limited playable unit count, progress through upgrades in place of an experience/leveling system, and having squad interactions drive the narrative. Speaking of that...

A Narrative!

The story is going to follow a squad of 4 mecha as they go on an adventure and face adversity and deal with their feelings and stuff. I’m not super experienced in creating narratives, but I still feel its the way to go. I want the story to be interesting, but more than that, I want it to lend its-self to creating unique combat scenarios and in turn, have those combat scenarios influence the narrative. One way I see of doing this is having missions have, “degrees of success”. You might fail a mission, only to have another squad come in and help finish off the remaining enemies, giving the player a second chance. It would recognize the defeat, without punishing the player with a complete restart.

Finish the game

Its been awhile since I’ve been able to actually finish anything, and if I do finish this I’d like it to be my first real retail game. So that means getting it on steam, promoting it, maybe taking it to a show if that’s possible. I’m going to try to keep it simple, but at the same time I’m going to try to do some unique things with it, because if I don’t then whats the point?

With that, the reader should have an idea of what the project is and what I’m attempting with it. There is obviously more to all of this but writing it all would for one, take too long, and there’s no way for me to guarantee I’d get everything I wrote into the game. So for now, its a pretty good place to end.

My personal tumblr and twitter are here, in case you enjoy stale memes...

I’ve set up a github pages site that will link to everything Collateral Heartbreak related at

collateralheartbreak.github.io

Will probably buy a custom domain name eventually.

Also have a discord set up https://discord.gg/GaksYxG

I’ll be happy to answer questions as long as you’re willing to hear “I don’t know” as an answer.

[silenttowergames]

Super Platformer RPG Postmortem (LD41)

Play Now | Ludum Dare page | Website | Source Code

Ludum Dare 41: Combine Two Incompatible Genres

On the night of April 20th, 2018, I did some work on my current game Retro Slasher for a few hours, and then went to bed. I was scrolling through Twitter on my phone before I went to sleep, when I saw a tweet about Ludum Dare. It had started about two hours before.

I had heard of Ludum Dare, but never participated. I was interested.

The theme also caught my eye: “combine two incompatible genres”. I had an idea! A platformer / turn-based RPG game had been rolling around in my head for a while, and I thought it fit pretty well. It could combine the best of both worlds, while also having a quirky oil-and-water separation between the two.

So I jumped out of bed and immediately got to work.

I decided to enter the competition rather than the jam. Its requirements are more strict: You get 48 hours rather than 72, you must be a solo dev, you must create all of the content new for the event, and you must release all your source code. I’m a solo developer, and since I’m trying to make it in indie games, I wanted to put myself to this test.

HTML5 + vanilla JavaScript

I decided to program the game in pure HTML5. I usually work with C# + MonoGame, but I don’t have a rapid-development engine available yet. I have experience with pure HTML5, however, and knew it would be much faster to get things going. Also, having your game playable in-browser makes it much more accessible.

For the record, I used howler.js for audio, since it makes everything much simpler. Outside of that, there were no libraries used.

Assets

I probably made the art in about 10 minutes. I am not a pixel artist, so I couldn’t have made anything much more complicated. I recently played the beautifully-simple Downwell, so I was feeling inspired by its 1-bit art style. (Despite the similarities between this game’s page and Downwell’s, I’ve never seen their site until this moment haha).

My game ended up being the 11th most-rated (note: most, not highest) compo entry this time around (peaking at 4th!). I think the pixel art was probably the reason why so many people played it. I got several compliments for it, and it was my second highest-rated category (next to humor).

In the audio department, there was no music. The sound effects all came from the incredibly helpful sfxr program.

Coverage

I watched a few streamers play my game in the days following the compo. There was even a Twitch meme made out of it! Possibly my proudest moment yet as a developer.

My game was also included in videos by Jupiter_Hadley and Ian Hinck of Easy Allies.

Major Criticisms

Between watching the streams and videos, and reading the comments, I discovered that there were a few major issues with the game:

The platforming is too difficult

The RPG elements aren’t very clear

The game is made up of two distinct genre sections, and both of them have glaring flaws!

The platforming not only requires lots of precision in your jumps, but the jump goes too fast to feel comfortable. I tried to prevent it from feeling spacey, but I went too far in the other direction. Then, there are the sections where the player goes off the top of the screen when you make certain jumps, so you can’t tell where you’re going to land sometimes.

To quote user Deprecat’s comment:

Players that enjoy hardcore platforming tend to prefer forgiving controls but brutal level designs.

I had it backwards. The level design was kind of hard, but it was really the harsh game physics that got you killed most of the time.

I experienced a wake-up call while watching streamers play:

What I found was that they didn’t finish the game. It’s a 5-minute game at most, but people kept dying at the same spots over and over because my jumps were just too harsh, so they quit. This is a fatal flaw.

As for the RPG elements, there was no in-game explanation for how things worked. Different options told you how much AP they had, and whether or not they had a cooldown, and that’s it. Most people thought the Psychic move would be some sort of magic attack, or after using it didn’t think it did anything at all. It actually reveals the enemy’s health bar at the cost of a turn, but clearly that wasn’t obvious beforehand, nor was it apparent to some players that the enemy health bar even showed up.

I put these things on the game page’s description, and Psychic showed that it had 0 AP, but this was not enough. If I could do things over, I would probably include a description box that tells you what each move does, and some sort of animation that shows the enemy’s health bar appearing.

Lesser Criticisms

Considering that I made the game in less than 48 hours, I’m proud of it. It’s a short proof-of-concept, so the following issues don’t ruin your 5-minute flash-in-the-pan experience as much as they would an hours-long investment. But if I move on with the project, these issues must be ironed out:

The game doesn’t advertise its controls to you. Heck, the description doesn’t either. I should’ve added some indication of the controls in the GUI. For the record, it’s arrow keys to move/jump and space bar to select attacks. Most people figured this out, so it’s alright, but that was a huge oversight on my part.

The RPG battle system has almost no balance. There were attempts: you level up, enemies get stronger, they roll a die to determine attack strength, your stronger attack has a cooldown, etc. But there’s no real strategy in selecting Jump until next turn when Hit is available. There’s no way to protect yourself from attacks, there’s no telling how powerful your enemy’s next attack is going to be -- it could be anywhere from 1 to 5 AP (or in some cases, even negative, thus giving you HP). And Psychic ended up being basically worthless, since missing even a single turn might cost you the battle.

Scores

After all this, how did I score? Well, I did... okay.

I did the math: my overall score is in about the top 40% (precisely, the top   39.379243453%). It isn’t a glamorous position, but it is better than most people in the compo did. 3.299 is above average, so I count myself lucky.

Surprisingly, Humor is my highest-rated category. There were a couple jokes in the dialogue, but I didn’t expect them to land very well. I guess it went over better than the gameplay did though, haha. (Also, nobody has yet pointed out a Star Fox reference in the dialogue, which makes me kind of disappointed).

I was really expecting the graphics to be my highest-rated category, considering that I got several compliments on that but not one on the humor, outside of one or two streamers mentioning it. No complaints here, though.

Conclusion

I put myself to the test, and I wouldn’t say I failed. I created a game in under 48 hours; a game which got me compliments in a few different areas. Realistically, it’s deeply flawed, but I’m aware and I’ll know not to make the same mistakes next time.

I’m looking forward to the next game jam! I think I’ll be able to make something even better.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Tumblr for more dev blogs, visit the website, or on Twitter for regular updates on what I’m developing. Right now I’m working on Retro Slasher, an 8-bit rogue-lite survival horror. It also has its own Tumblr page and website.

[torchlightsuk-blog]

Fenix LD41 - flashlights (Hand, Black, Aluminium, LED, 50000 h, 960 lm)

Uses Cree XM-L (U2) LED with a lifespan of 50,000 hours Uses four 1.5V AA (Ni-MH, Alkaline ) batteries 175mm(Length) x40mm(Diameter)

Fenix LD41 – flashlights (Hand, Black, Aluminium, LED, 50000 h, 960 lm) was originally published on Torchlights.co.uk