Feelings are mixed as I head into my second Ludum Dare. Nervous because I have decided to use pure C, and heaviness as it was announced that Ludam Dare 64 will likely be the end. I am grateful that I started when I did way back with LD 56.

Ludum Dare 56 the theme was "Tiny Creatures". For those unfamiliar the theme is decided over the week leading into the start of the jam. Participants recommend themes and then the themes are squashed. The pool goes from sometimes over 1000 themes to just under 50. My strategy is typically to go for themes that have some sort of restriction, this gets the creative juicesflowing for a unique mechanic. Since you only have 48 or 72 hours to make a game, I find it best to come up with a strong core mechanic that plays into the theme. You cannot rely on content and additional features.

During theme voting for LD 56 I really liked "Absorb". I was assistant teaching at a highschool at the time and we were in a Biology unit about amoebas. I brainstormed a good focal mechanic if "Absorb" was chosen. However the winning theme was "Tiny Creatures". I could not come up with anything, but since Amoebas are tiny creatures I went full swing with my "Absorb" idea.

I was using haxe - Heaps.io with a tool set from the great Deepnight - Sébastien Benard. He had a relatively easy to use level editor LDTK. This allowed somewhat fast creation of levels and rooms. In the end I think relying on levels and room progression hurt me, as I released a game with an unpolished mechanic, and not much content. I am not even sure one of the levels was fully traversable.

So that is my main recommendation. Especially important the hours prior to the game jam begins, look at the potential themes and come up with mechanics. For LD59 not many of my choices made it into the final round -

You can see how I voted, I think split would work but I came up for loose ideas for Merge, Side Effects, and Wrong Tool for the job. I am having a tough time with the remaing: Unusual Communication and No Text in the entire game. The ones I didnt vote for I have either no clue, or any generic RPG game would do. I cant stress enough I need to identify strongly with a core mechanic.

Last time being my first time I was unaware the jam may end after 72 hours but the contest isnt over just yet. You still are able to do bug fixing, and if you plan on placing you must partake in voting on other games. This builds your karma so that your game can be found and thus voted on in return. I think if I was more active in this portion I would of placed slightly higher-

My goal this year is simply to place higher. Particularly top 100 in theme, and to drastically improve my fun, overall, and innovation scores. Try out Amoebalize if you wish. I developed a comment system here, any feedback would be greatly appreciated just login and enter a comment below!

I hope this was helpful or informative. I will soon have the link for my game which I will host here with Web Assembly. Ideally I have 2 versions- Stable(ish) and live updates so you can see updates and real time. Again comments are appreciated and you can leave comments on any of my games here same as the blogs! I do not expect to sleep much, you will here from me again early next week as I will do writeups 'daily' for the games voting. I will leave my thoughts and feedback and showcase some of the games in these posts to follow. So stay tuned and wish me luck!