Ludum Dare 27

Hmm... just barely made the top half for some of my ratings. Otherwise, I was hoping to do a bit better. :/

Nonetheless, it was fun. Congrats to those who made the top 100! Quite a few Stencylers made that group!

Yeah, congrats to everyone. It's incredible that 2200+ games were entered and among those, there are several Stencyl games in the top 100. Duke Dashington is #5, DEZ is #11, The Clocktower is #39, etc.

Just browsing through the top 100 of the comp and jam I saw a lot of Stencyl games. Good job guys. I was impressed with what you could do in the short time.

That's why they call me Blob "#39" Romney.

Oh also check out this awesomely written article of the game on Indie Statik.

Oh man this is awesome. I had such a tough time to make the controls that at first I thought I was not going to make it in time. 5th place. I will have hard time to top this in next LD.

AdventureIslands, I'm curious as to how many games you rated and commented on.

AdventureIslands, I'm curious as to how many games you rated and commented on.

I'm pretty sure it was about 107.

Congratz to all who made it into the Top100.

Edit: My score. It's not too shabby I think, considering the devoloping time of 7 hours

Coolness   100%
#171   Theme(Jam)   3.37
#182   Audio(Jam)           3.17
#248   Graphics(Jam)   3.44
#270   Mood(Jam)           2.98
#419   Innovation(Jam)   2.64
#430   Humor(Jam)           1.83
#491   Overall(Jam)        2.66
#539   Fun(Jam)           2.21

   Coolness   90%
#336   Humor   2.66
#476   Fun   3.00
#535   Audio   2.59
#548   Overall   3.06
#612   Innovation   2.88
#721   Graphics   2.61
#721   Mood   2.51
#944   Theme   2.68

Not bad considered how rough and impenetrable my entry was Will do better next time!

Coolness   100%
#21   Graphics   4.33
#35   Audio   3.73
#48   Mood   3.75
#64   Overall   3.78
#98   Humor   3.42
#116   Innovation   3.71
#152   Fun   3.49
#184   Theme   3.60

Happy with the results, learned a lot from this Dare. Hopefully I'll do better next time

   Coolness   86%
#29   Innovation(Jam)   3.82
#79   Fun(Jam)   3.52
#85   Overall(Jam)   3.58
#98   Humor(Jam)   3.27
#164   Audio(Jam)   3.21
#212   Theme(Jam)   3.28
#219   Mood(Jam)   3.12
#353   Graphics(Jam)   3.02

Surprised I cracked the top 100 (Jam), and Innovation score too. Very satisfied overall, but I think the "humor" of my game may have been lost on some players.

   Coolness    57%

# 115    Graphics           3.82
# 186    Mood           3.30
# 492    Innovation   3.05
# 497    Overall           3.11
# 552    Audio              2.56
# 693    Humor           2.00
# 694    Fun                   2.76
# 1092    Theme           2.33

I received pretty awesome feedback from various people, which filled me with joy! Thanks to ludum dare, participants and the Stencyl team!

Oh yeah, I'll throw mine out here too...

#251 Theme(Jam) 3.18
#298 Innovation(Jam) 2.97
#358 Overall(Jam) 2.97
#358 Fun(Jam) 2.76
#375 Graphics(Jam) 2.94
#431 Humor(Jam) 1.82
#452 Audio(Jam) 2.13
#486 Mood(Jam) 2.31
#1196 Coolness 47%

I think the things I've learned so far are as follows:

1.) As I saw with my first game Pixel Ninja, having no clear "end-goal" hurts you unless you have a REALLY solid endless/survival concept... even then, some form of achievement is typically important.
2.) Along the same lines, the game needs to feel COMPLETE. I ran out of time and didn't quite get to all I wanted, and that did hurt me I think.
3.) Being unique and innovative is nice, but ultimately your game just needs to be fun. If you can accomplish that with a simpler, more generic concept, than go for it (AdventureIslands stuck to his platforming guns, and look where he landed!). Whatever concept it is, just make it the best it can be.

I think I might go through and play some of the top entries and try to learn from those. Guess maybe my playing sessions aren't over quite yet!

3.) Being unique and innovative is nice, but ultimately your game just needs to be fun. If you can accomplish that with a simpler, more generic concept, than go for it (AdventureIslands stuck to his platforming guns, and look where he landed!). Whatever concept it is, just make it the best it can be.

Ludum Dare is more about developing your game dev skills rather than being #1, and I think it's a more important skill as a game developer to make new and creative games rather than pandering to the masses by making something safe and reliable.

2.) Along the same lines, the game needs to feel COMPLETE. I ran out of time and didn't quite get to all I wanted, and that did hurt me I think.

This is the reason Duke is rather short. I spend so much time trying to create the controls that I was running out of time to finish the game. I decided I wanted my game to rather be short but finished than long but unfinished, and spend the final hours making the ending sequence so the game would feel complete. Downside is, the game is very short and doesn't properly show all the cool stuff you can do with dashing, the upside is, the game is simple and short enough that most people have the patience to play through it.

3.) Being unique and innovative is nice, but ultimately your game just needs to be fun. If you can accomplish that with a simpler, more generic concept, than go for it (AdventureIslands stuck to his platforming guns, and look where he landed!). Whatever concept it is, just make it the best it can be.

I tried my hardest to NOT create yet another platformer, but failing that I wanted to give the game at least an unique twist, to make something different and new instead of "just platformer." I came up with the Dash mechanic and end result turned out pretty well. Bit clunky in compo entry, but I've already made the controls smoother for upcoming post-compo version.

But I agree, the most important thing is that the game is fun to play. If your game is not fun, nobody's gonna stick around to play it, or rate it properly.

Ludum Dare is more about developing your game dev skills rather than being #1, and I think it's a more important skill as a game developer to make new and creative games rather than pandering to the masses by making something safe and reliable.

This. Every LD I try making something different. My games have mostly been platformers, but at least they all have something different and new to them. In Persist you lost your skills as you continued playing, in Duke you dash around. I keep learning more and more by trying little something new all the time. It can be a huge risk to try something new with such a short time limit, but in the end it can be very rewarding too.