I’m almost recovered from Ludum Dare, which means it’s about time I write a post-mortem, but before that I’ll add here the progress reports we published over the weekend.

Day #1: A game about plants and sundials

Day #2: Everything is ready-ish

The game was made by Rubén, Celer and myself.

So let’s do a quick recap of the overall experience. We got to a local LD gathering to enjoy jamming along some friends of ours, which also means you goof around with everybody until the theme is announced, something I don’t usually do since I prefer to sleep and start the jam fresh.

We discussed a few concepts and decided to go for a gardening/harvesting game, which I liked, in most jams I tend to make games more focused around content creation (level design, narrative, etc) and this time I got to spend more time working on systems, which is nice for a change.

I believe we worked for about 3 hours before deciding it was time to sleep. At that point the project looked like this:

Day 1 was mostly about creating the system and testing it. On day 2 we focused on implementing all the art and eyecandy while trying to find some time to balance the game. Day 3 felt really short (nothing new) and we spent our time fixing bugs, adding the last details, implementing audio, adding a score system, a title screen, etc.

What went wrong

• My biggest issue with the game is that the rules are hard to pick up. I don’t think it’s too complex (in fact, I believe it could have ussed some add-ons) but the truth is that throwing all those mechanics at the player’s face as soon as the game starts isn’t the best thing to do. If this were to be a content-based game we would have made a first level to teach them the mechanics, but since this project was based around systems we would have needed to include a tutorial and we didn’t really have time for that. At least we got all the help/instructions in-game, so players don’t have to read the description to find out  how everything works (otherwise I think nobody would stand playing it).
• UI. Could have been better, we didn’t have time to iterate it. There was too much information we wanted to display and I’m pretty sure there was a better layout than the one we chose.
• I had to throw away part of my work (and re-do) it while implementing art.
• Seasonal change remains too “blocky”, but improving that would have taken many hours.

What went right

• Closed game, polished and with just a few bug reports.
• We didn’t have to cut off gameplay features.
• We got it working soon to focus on polish and art implementation.
• We were handling quite a lot of assets (4 types of tree, 5 different growth stages for each one and 4 different seasons) but fortunately communication was smooth and this didn’t became a big issue.
• We enjoyed working on it.
• Slept enough hours.
• Jammed with friends!
• Finished a couple of hours early (which means we could get back home on public transport :-P)

I’m happy with what we made. Sure, there’s a couple of things I’d like to change or add, but felt pretty decent to me, something that I don’t get to achieve on every jam. So far players are saying what we expected, they liked the mechanics but it takes a few games to get used to them.

-> Click here to play “Emily Morrison’s Garden” <-

Now that I’m done with the post-mortem I’m gonna start playing the games you made over the weekend. I’m starting with the ones from devs I know, but I’d like to play about 30 games over September. Let a link to your game on a comment so I can check it out!

About three years ago I joined Ludum Dare for the first time. I had never finished a game before and had little to no knowledge. Thanks to Ludum Dare I discovered an amazing community and fell in love with gamedev. Since then I have been working non-stop, joined dozens of jams and even became a full-time indiedev, something that makes me start every day with a smile on my face.

This is going to be my 11th Ludum Dare, haven’t missed one since I started and I’m as excited as the first time. I would like to make something a little bit more action-packed than what I usually do, but I would also like to make something that encourages players to be more creative, who knows what we’ll make once the theme is announced?

This time I’ll be joining the jam (instead of the compo) along Oluwa(art) and Celer(music & sound), so I’ll take care of design and code. We’ll jam in the same place as other local gamedevs who we know, so I’m sure it’ll be really fun.

I can’t wait for it to start, but I’m equally excited about watching McFunkypants‘ keynote video. If you aren’t sure about joining in just forget all those excuses and get your tools ready. This weekend there will be lots of creative moments, brainstormings, bugs and crashes, but at the end of it, we’ll have a new game finished.

Best of luck to everyone! I’ll be sharing my progress on twitter, don’t forget to upload gifs! I want to see what you come up with

P.D.: If you think you can’t join the jam because you aren’t skilled enough you should know that’s a really bad excuse ;-P

AlPixel Games is in! This is the first time the whole team will be jamming together on a Ludum Dare, yay! 😀

We had already planned a trip for the weekend, so we’ll only have about a day to make a game, but you don’t skip Ludum Dare, NEVER!

So let’s do this! Create wonderful stuff and have fun, lots of fun! That’s why we jam

We’ll probably show some gifs over our twitter account, see you around and good luck!

@AlPixelGames

alpixelgames.com

Hey guys!

This is my “I’m in” post to announce that I’ll be participating on this Ludum Dare, though this time I’ll be joining the compo instead of the jam, so … … … here I go again on my own!

*badumtss*

All jokes aside, I participated on my first Ludum Dare two years ago from now, back then I had no idea how to make a damn game. I’ve done over 20 jams by now, published lots of small games and started working on my first long-term project, “Missing Translation“, which has won several awards and will be published on Steam soon.

2 years might not seem like a big deal but lots of things happened … … …  I’m getting sidetracked again! 😛

All I wanted to say is that Ludum Dare helped me discover my passion and I won’t be missing it (so far I’ve done every single one since I started), if you’re reading this and you’re not sure about participating just do it, trust me

I’m sure it’s going to be a pretty awesome weekend, will I make a nice game? Don’t know, but I’m gonna have fun, there’s no doubt about that.

And that’s all for now, I guess I’ll be seeing you soon

Weapons: Construct 2 (75% sure about this), Paint.NET and SFXR.

P.D.: I’m running out of tea, I should buy some before the weekend.

(twitter)

I’ve always wanted to make something that simulated a social network, but just as a short and silly project. For this ludum dare I only had one day available so it was a good opportunity to try this idea. First I was going to make some kind of “choose your own adventure” with the context of using a social network, but I had played something similar not too long ago.

I started creating an activity feed to create the mood of using a social network. I added a photo of Phil Fish and wrote a couple of quotes to test the mechanic. And that’s when I thought:”Hey, this could be funny with more characters and quotes.

So I included 9 more characters and someone suggested me over twitter to generate random quotes, which was a great idea. Once I had finished adding more content I made a few tweaks and added some links to twitter and my website(disguised as FAQ and Pivacy Policy).

I added a button to share the game on Twitter, but then it hit me, it be more awesome to be able to share something cool you saw on the activity feed. So I did a small patch to save quotes and share them over Twitter.

By then I was out of energy and with a pair of hours left. When I was going to submit my game I found out that, once compiled, the twitter button is buggy as hell, and I had to spend another hour trying to do a messy fix.

So it’s done and ready to “play”, let’s see if players have a few laughs with it 😀

Play “Ultra Realistic Social Network Simulator”

Ultra Realistic Social Network simulator recreates the whole experience of using a social network. You can’t win or lose, just waste your time watching the activity feed.

Features:

-Watch random updates from different characters.

-Over 70 pre-made status updates plus lots of randomly-generated quotes.

-Mark your favourite quotes and share them on twitter.

-Pop-ups with warning messages.

-No annoying chat sounds.

-Procrastinating has never been easier.

-94.9% more random than your average game.

I just submitted my ludum dare game. Today was quite exhausting and just when I was uploading my game I had to spend 2 hours fixing stupid bugs 😛

Looks like the game works, with some minor issues, and it’s ready to be played. So check it out!

Log in Bookface now!

Features:

-Watch random updates from different characters.

-Over 70 pre-made status updates plus lots of randomly-generated quotes.

-Mark your favourite quotes and share them on twitter.

-Pop-ups with warning messages.

-No annoying chat sounds.

-Procrastinating has never been easier.

-94.9% more random than your average game.

Log in Bookface now!

Previous posts: 1 | 2 | 3

New features: Pop ups, refresh rate and tweet/share button.

Let’s see what can I add before the deadline. Twitter.