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It's that time again! LD46 is this weekend!

The first round of theme voting is open. Today's voting options are:

* Garden
* Decay
* Turn a violent genre non-violent
* An ancient language
* Butterfly effect
* DéjÃ* vu
* 1 minute to prepare
* Fragile
* You are the dungeon
* Grow a tree
* Side effects
* Four elements
* Your game has 3 rules, but only one is active at a time
* You are the princess waiting to be rescued
* Equilibrium

As is usual for a Ludum Dare theme vote, I think some of these are interesting, and I think some of these are terrible. But any of them COULD win, so I've gotta prepare for any of them.

I don't know what this is,
but I'm voting for the violent to non-violent thing. x}
Like a battle axe that is actually made of foam and makes a squeaky sound.

Ludum Dare is a game jam! This weekend, indie game developers from all over will make a new game in just three days. You don't have to be a programmer to participate; if you're a musician or an artist or a writer or if you just have a good idea, you can team up with someone who knows how to write code.

All of the games have to follow a particular theme -- sort of like Iron Chef, a required ingredient that you won't know until the timer starts. You can vote +1, 0, or -1 for each theme option, saying which ones you'd like to do, which ones you're not excited for but would be okay with, and which ones you would rather not do.

There have been very few jams where one of the themes I've WANTED to do won...

Today's theme voting round:
* Dreams
* Momentum
* Sabotage
* Echo
* You are the power source
* Tower offense
* Mythology
* Fragmentation
* Turn a job into a game
* Evolve
* Replication
* You can't save them all
* Control two things at once
* Stuck in the loop
* DéjÃ* vu
* Multiple perspectives

Subtle joke in there... ha ha, very funny.

Huh. :D Neat.
I'm not sure if I'd be much help, since I know for a fact that I do not know how to code and have never remotely worked on any sort of collaborative effort outside of an academic setting. <u<;
But I'm not a bad writer I think..I like telling stories.
I like designing too, but my designs are not at all impressive. <XD

I like the Deja Vu Idea, since it can be kinda trippy and spooky.
I would be okay with dreams since it has potential to be silly, scary, or just plain weird.
Though I am not entirely a fan of Momentum. <x/ I'd rather not with that.

Momentum is more fun from the perspective of a physics programmer. There's all sorts of stuff you can do with it -- think about Portal, for example; that's a momentum game. Though you could also do narrative momentum if you're a writer, setting things up so they keep moving.

Deja vu was the subtle joke, because it was also in the day 1 voting options... "Haven't I seen this theme before?"

Dreams is one that I'm not too fond of as a developer because it really doesn't inspire any particular game mechanic to play with. It's just a description of the setting, and those are always the hardest for me. My first game jam the theme was "Ancient Technology" and that was awful. (Though the game we made turned out okay!)

Day 3 themes:
* DéjÃ* vu
* Outdated technology
* Magnetism
* Malfunction
* Ruins
* Connections
* Automation
* Keep it alive
* Reflection
* Planets
* Seasons
* An abandoned world
* Protect the king
* Shelter
* Inconvenient superpowers
* Delayed effects

as much as i'd love to do this sort of thing, i'm vaguely burnt out from coding / arting for an entire ukagaka within a week as a challenge set by my friend.

Hey, no problem. If you just came out of another jam (even if it was informal), there's no reason to overload yourself by starting another one.

I forgot to post the final round themes, but we're about 21 hours into the jam now, and the theme is "Keep It Alive."

I'm going to do a bullet hell game; you play a fairy trying to protect a butterfly from mean bugs. My wife is doing the art; we're going to do a paper drawing aesthetic.

Ludum Dare is pretty cool. I always forget it's a thing, and I am by no means mentally prepared to do that, hah.

Good luck!

You wanna joi--

--never mind!

Maybe next year! Or how ever long it is. It's definitely not annual.

Semiannual, these days. April and October.



Work in progress shot! Coming along super nicely.

*flop*

Okay! Now that I've had some time to recover, I can post about my game! :D

Ludum Dare page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/...y-vs-the-swarm
Play the game: http://greenmaw.com/ld46/

Lily vs. the Swarm
It’s spring, and that means new life! But not all of that life is friendly. Keep your friend, the butterfly, safe from the bad bugs!

Join this fairy and her friend in a child’s imaginary adventure.

Controls
Move: Arrow keys, WASD, or touchscreen D-pad
Fire: Space bar or touchscreen button
Bomb: Shift or touchscreen button
Defeated bugs drop energy. When your energy bar is full, a bomb becomes available. Bombs deal damage and heal you or the butterfly. You can carry up to 5 bombs at once.

The game is over if either you or the butterfly take too much damage. Watch out for the bosses!

Too hard?
This is a shoot-‘em-up game, not quite a bullet hell or danmaku but still relatively challenging. If it’s too difficult for you, the first time you get a game over you’ll unlock an Easy Mode. In Easy Mode, you start with more bombs, you can survive more hits, and the butterfly is immune to damage so you only need to worry about protecting yourself.

Got my scores in. I did pretty well!

Overall: 3.452
Fun: 3.429
Innovation: 2.85
Theme: 3.9 (700th place out of almost 5000 submissions!)
Graphics: 3.737
Audio: 3.525 (676th place!)
Humor: 2.361
Mood: 3.4

This is the second-best Theme score I've ever gotten. The only time I ever got higher was with Dungeons of Indianapolis (4.025), and apparently for "combine two incompatible genres" text adventure + racing game is pretty incompatible.

Also the second-best Graphics score I've ever gotten. Only beaten by Nullified, and it was pretty close.

It's my second-best Audio score, but Network Invader kinda doesn't count because I didn't write the music for that one and the rules changed since then -- Audio is now scored on audio you created instead of overall audio design.

The only time I've ever gotten a Humor score over 3.0 was with Dungeons of Indianapolis. It wasn't meant to be a funny game so it's fine that I didn't score well there.

3rd-best Overall score! Behind Network Invader and Diminishing Lands, and Diminishing Lands has to be one of the best games I've built IMO. (Network Invader... I think I hit a sweet spot on what the audience was looking for, because I don't think the game was actually that GOOD.)

Likewise 3rd-best Fun score, behind the same two games in the other order.

If I average all of the scores I actually care about (and, for fairness, if I disqualify the Audio score from Network Invader because of the rules change), this means this is my best game ever! And it feels like it. I'm happy. :D

that's hella good!

generally speaking, participating in these challenges over the years / bi-years leads to improvement.