5 Weird and Wonderful games.

I think these are games that make the experience for me when rating Ludum Dare games. Pure shots of unadultered bizarre joy. There were a lot of well-designed boxes doing other things with boxes games, but it is difficult to appreciate playing a whole lot of those games at a time.

Minimum Reason Game: Hail To The Potato King

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=2154

I feel that the instructions are clear.

Perfect Crime

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22508

I feel like Surgeon Simulator opened the door to a lot of interesting physics games. And then a wall of blood poured out of that door.

Special client

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=23430

I would like more games that feel like Oatmeal comics.

Mr Potato assembly-line

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=4681

Its a little tedious, but the fun is all waiting until the end and looking at all of the ugly babies you created.

Get The Potato

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=2117

YOU HAD ONE JOB

Number of games in this list that have anything to do with minimalism: 2? Games that have everything to do with potatoes: 3. I’m not some kind of vegetable-humor activist (But now that there’s a word for it…) But I don’t think minimalism was the greatest theme.

5 other great games

Leaf Me Alone

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=7984

Its a metroidvania! There’s floating mechanics! Its absolutely adorable!

Line Knight

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=15244

There were a couple of games with the line flipping theme (Did I miss some popular Adult Swim game or something?) But this game made me the most happy to think about.

This is not a minimalist game

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=11243

This is similar to what I originally planned on doing: You unlock concepts for the world by progressing through the game. Super neat!

Flight Time

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=20

There were a lot of graphicless / themeless games, but few as engaging as this, I felt. My consoles detect a high ratio of players making swishing noises while playing.

Nega-girl

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=2074

THATS RIGHT THERES A GODDAMN LADY IN IT. Plus some really good illustrations and an interesting mechanic.

Shameless plug: Look at my game I Dream In Color! I THIRST FOR EYEBALLS! Its been described as Lemmings meets Closure. When I read that comment, I feel a small part of my heart die, but I also know good ad copy when I read it http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=7902

I’m interested in playing some local multiplayer games tonight. I’m aware of these:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&q=multiplayer

But if your game isn’t in that list please tell me about so I can play it!

I’ll be participating in the jam with a regular co-participant (My brother), my cool friend Kate, and maybe someone else.

Programming: CraftyJS, probably

Graphics: Photoshop, maybe some Pickle

Audio: Audacity and probably Sunvox

Others: Quite possibly Tiled

I’ll be using some scavenged code from a warm up project (With random unattribuited graphics) here:http://www.transfixedgames.com/Warm%20Up/topdowngame.html and possibly my not-quite-ready-for-primetime-particle-system here: http://www.transfixedgames.com/Crafty%20Particle%20System/particleeditor.html

I’m extremely happy with how its coming together. I hope in the next 18 hours I can polish it well enough.

Here’s the current version:

http://seanmgames.nfshost.com/ld24/applet.php?gamefile=ld24_0.4.jar

The Game as of Day 2 is playable here:

http://seanmgames.nfshost.com/ld24/applet.php?gamefile=ld24_0.3.jar

Not a whole lot to show, but you can see the main mechanic of the game.

PRESS Z TO DREAM OF NATURE

http://seanmgames.nfshost.com/ld24/applet.php?gamefile=ld24_0.2.jar

This LD started out kind of rough. Some depression, team shrinkage, joining in on being disheartened about the theme because it seemed like the popular thing to do.

I’m feeling better now. I’ve got the same prototype of boxes jumping on boxes as everyone else, BUT its playable and WOW WATERFALL EFFECT Priorities completely correct.

http://seanmgames.nfshost.com/ld24/applet.html

Do you ever think that you wern’t made for office slavery?

Do you ever think that that’s not in your DNA? That you were made for a different world?

A world where you climbed mountains and drank from waterfalls?

How could you get to that world?

Riding horseback with your hair blazing in the wind, trampling garbage cans with your hooves.

How could you find a horse here?

You would make it

Out of paper

I’ll be in for the Jam again this year. I’m not entirely sure who my team will entirely compose of.

Framework: Java, Slick2D

Graphics: Photoshop

Audio: Audacity + ?

Misc Tools: Tiled, Pedigree

Me and my team have finished rating 200 games, and I’d like to take a moment to pick some of my favorites that I’d hope you’ll try out.

I’m going to present two different lists: one of games that I see as particularly well designed, and another for games that are awesomely weird.

5 Best games for normies:

Kumiho

A beautiful vertical-scrolling shooter with a wonderfully animated squid boss and a very well balance of difficulty.

Phobius

A puzzle platformer that has one of the more rare takes on the concept of “Tiny World” by having the game mechanics revolve around your blue nerd dude’s claustrophobia.

Tiny Garden Of Hope

MakHappy

Save Your Folks

5 best awesomely strange games:

Baby Farm

Plant those babies in the ground, build your own, baby farm.

Big Bad Dom Finds a Little Happiness

I really have to wonder what the combat system would have looked like. (The author has declared it to be Not For Human Consumption. I suggest you violate his wishes in a bizarre reversal of power roles.)

Eye Quest

Dino-Cab

Nobody

Classical myth meets pixel wang!

We now have a web version up!  Its been tested on Windows and Mac, and should work on Linux.

I wanted to show off some of the art that didn’t get used:

Originally there was going to be this delightful game over screen, but I decided at the last minute that I wanted something that took shorter between death + restarting

There was a couple of stuff that I wanted to do, and would’ve been  easy, but the last couple of hours were too frantic to put them in:

Yep, there was an ant walking animation all ready to go.  I didn’t think it was that important because the ants legs are a little hard to see against the background, but it is regrettable.

Originally the wasps were going to shoot stingers.

There was going to be a confusion expression when you escaped the ant’s alert status.

There were a couple of alternate ground tiles that were never implemented. Originally Chris really wanted dinosaur bones. “But everything else is tiny”. “This is the land of the tiniest dinosaurs?”

I felt like one part of keeping an artist happy is to make sure their contributions actually make it into the finished project whenever possible, and in this I feel some degree of failure. Did other Jam entrants feel the same way?

I uploaded Source Code + files to my entry. Feast your eyes on my sloppy code! One blob to rule them all!

With 3 minutes to spare.

Next up: Nap-time, Transformers g1, post-mortem?

I’m extremely happy with our artist, Renee Davis’s work. Once my sad little programmer art tiles have been replaced It’ll be even better.

This is my second game for Ludum Dare. I’m entering the Jam with a couple of my friends.

Engine: Lew-jiggle with Slick2D

Art: Gimp

Sound: Some combination of bxfr / audacity / audition

Edit: I made a small template for a state based game here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/74572404/Ludum%20Dare%2023/Java%20Workspace.zip

I’m interesting in rating some games (I’m thinking 30ish?) that are focused on creating an interesting atmosphere or narrative, and than writing about my observations from playing them.

I tend not to be into “interactive fiction” for the following reasons.

- Non-intuitive control schemes (I’m looking at you, text-parser.)

- Boring opening situations (I’m looking at you, I’m-somewhere-but-I-Don’t-know-Why)

- Find-the-Authors-Solution-Through-Trial-and-Error (I hate you, every puzzle revolving around kitchenware)

However, if your “interactive fiction” doesn’t feature any of those qualities strongly, than we’ll talk

If you comment that you want your game to be rated, I’d probably be somewhat critical about it. Not actually that critical, because I’m a big softie who spent 3 days doing the same thing you did and thought it was totally awesome that you did, but still somewhat critical.

I’ve finished my game, and now I’m wondering where would be a good place to host it (I’ve never bought web hosting). Its made of HTML5 + Javascript. It’s 7mb. I’d be nice if it was relatively fast. I’d be willing to drop $10-$20 for a temporary hosting soloution.

Latest screenshot:

You can view screenshots of my game here. All the way from programmer art on a black screen to shaded programmer art on brown noise and lights!

I’ve noticed by making a black background, white border and non-black inside, the game looks a little like a Demotivational Poster – Should I try to avoid that? Make use of it for clever game-over sequences?

Hello!

First LD! Going to take part in the jam with my brother/hobos who show up at my house.

I’m planning on using: HTML5 + Paint.net + Audacity