Hi people, this is my third (or fourth, if an unsuccessful try at an entry for the 31st edition counts) Ludum Dare, and I’m pumped. Got some ideas some minutes after the announcement (when normally I’d be afraid I might not get a good idea on time, then go have a not-so-great night trying to sleep and failing because I can’t stop thinking about the time remaining), wrote them down to choose one of them in the morning then went to sleep (as I’d not last that long after a work day and a 3 hour travel). Woke up this morning and the ideas were all still incredibly compelling, so in a flash of madness, I decided to start all four of them alongside each other and see which of these will not get left behind with this short time. (Oh man, what have I done?)

First idea is of a “code gun”, which throws “functions” into enemies to process them like streams of data. The player picks up the pieces of the gun along the way, each of the pieces adds a word to the function, in stack/concatenative style. I started it with a metroidvania in mind, but then the imagination of how a bullet hell shoot’em-up would work sprung up and YES THIS.

Second idea is of “polemic grenades”, that a player would strategically throw at certain gatherings of people to start a commotion. Not sure how I’m going to represent the thoughts, the discussions or the commotion itself, but I want this to work in so many ways…

Third idea is of a “change” gun – I’m thinking of those comedy groups who gather for playing games, and specifically of that game where the announcer shouts “change” and the actor who last spoke would have to redo that phrase with a different meaning. I think this will make a neat multiplayer turn-based game – you’d be allowed to signal “change” twice, and have the other player repeat the last move but not in the same way – if the player repeats one of the last moves, he or she loses.

Fourth idea, and the simplest: tennis player in the middle of a battle field. Smash, lob and volley projectiles back to your enemies.

I might be a bit crazy (or… maybe just plain unrealistic), but still want to do all four of them!

I’m sort of in debt with myself (and the world) for having sort of skipped the last LD, but I’m really pumped up over the themes that got to the final round – I can’t see myself complaining about any of them!

I’ll be giving this game some löve and gale, probably with the addition of some sfx(r) and music if time allows.

Hope to see all your games and for you to see mine!

Hi guys, this is not the first time I’m participating in a game jam, but it’s my first Ludum Dare, and the first one I’m doing from home. In fact, I’m calling some friends over to my house for helping me out (and maybe do more than one game if time allows (experience suggests otherwise, but anyway…)).

I’m a (sort of) veteran coder, started in a small game dev studio (that went bust a few months after I entered there), then went on to work on a lot of scientific computing/visualization stuff, and now I’m getting back at making games.

I wish all you people best of luck in this compo! Let the good games be made, and let us all have some fun doing them!