UPDATE: The total now is 184!

So here’s a list of all the Ludum Dare first timers I could find!

There are currently 184 entries, which makes them over 13% of the total for LD 24!

If you know of someone else not included, let me know.

Some of these people are also entering a jam for the first time and some are making their first ever game!

I think it’s important to give newcomers a warm welcome and make sure they return next time, even if their first game was not to their liking.

I also included some quotes that I found either informative or just amusing

Go ahead, play and comment on a few random ones!

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(Edit: this is the game I made, if you’re curious. I will be posting my own late post-mortem and list of favorites next.)

The past couple of weeks have been insane, and I got way too carried away with meeting so many people through Ludum Dare that Twitter’s system suspended my account under suspicion of my being a bot. I took this as an opportunity to step back and take a look at all that has happened.

Ludum Dare is not the only game jam, but it’s the most significant. Because of its size and reach, long history, and incredibly strong community, each Ludum Dare creates actual ripples in the game developing world.

The best examples of how awesome people are to each other in LD are the game reviews and the posts on favorites. There is a lot of effort put into encouraging people to see the qualities of their games and how to improve. No matter how unfinished the state of the game, sometimes even unplayable, the comments are always incredibly encouraging. There is always something awesome about it.

It has moved me deeply to see what a wonderful gateway into game making this is. For me, being so readily embraced even though I had never made a game and knew absolutely nobody before the competition caused something long dormant in me to awaken. I’ve learned many lessons that, if it’s not too corny, I’d say might have saved my life.

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Had my first idea 10 minutes in. Tried to see if I could come up with anything else, but think I’m sticking with it.

I’m afraid everyone else is gonna do the same thing! Should I avoid pixels?!?! Gah!

Hello, all. I am as noob as a n00b can be. I decided rather late to join the LD craze, and am trying to grasp everything before the compo begins.

I can’t program and have never made a game before. I hope I’ll be able to complete something, at least.

I’ll be using Stencyl (I think it’s allowed, right?!). I’m just confused about whether I can use stencylforge, which is the open library of code and assets from the Stencyl community. Can I use and tweak sound/graphics/code from there or not? Any help is appreciated.

Thanks a lot and good luck to you all!

Azure