Author: arimia

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First Ludum Dare Tips

arimia

Is this your first Ludum Dare this weekend? Don’t fret! Here are some tips on how to survive your first LDJAM!What is Ludum Dare? It’s a tri-annual event that runs for 48-72 hours where you make a game in the time limit!

So, this is your first Ludum Dare. You’re thinking, “I want to become a better game dev”, or, “I want to challenge myself”, or, “I hate myself so let’s do this!”. But how do you get started once the theme drops? Here are a few tips on how to survive Ludum Dare from me, someone who’s entered it 10 times before successfully.

  1. Don’t spend too much time on one thing. If you spend all your time on the art, guess what? You have a nice portfolio of art assets now, but no running game. Spread out your time evenly among what is needed. If you need to, make a plan of what you’ll try to accomplish every day.
  2. Make a list of everything you need. This is more of a general game dev piece of advice, but it works just as well here. Games require a lot of different things, and if you’re like me, you just can’t do everything by yourself, no matter how hard you try. I can’t do music, so it’s almost always one of the things I forget about since I’m not making it. An easy way to avoid it being 5 minutes before the deadline and you realizing you forgot music or such is to make a list of everything you need to accomplish. This will also help you see if you’ll be able to finish in time and if you need to cut parts out.
  3. Have a playable build by mid-Sunday. If you’re entering the jam (where you have 72 hours), you need to have something playable by Sunday night at the latest. If you don’t and you still have other assets to finish, you most likely won’t be able to finish in time. Even if you have a couple assets to finish on Monday (as I usually do), if you have part of the game put together you should be relatively safe.
  4. Stick around for game rating! It can be easy to say “I’m tired and don’t even want to look at my game” after that Monday, but you need to rate at least a few games! Rating games is how your own game gets rated- the karma system works based on how many games you rate. The more you rate, the more ratings you’ll receive. The “minimum” amount of ratings you’re supposed to give (and receive) is 20, but sometimes people aren’t able to / won’t (I got sick twice in the 3-week span 2 Ludum Dare’s ago, and I wasn’t able to vote on any games).

​These are just a few tips for first time and seasoned game jammers- if you found these helpful or already do some of these, let me know!

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It’s Been a Busy Few Months

arimia

It’s been a while since I made an actual blog post here, but I felt it necessary to sum up everything that’s been happening game dev-wise the past few months, namely with releases and what not.

During September I made an extended post-Ludum Dare version of Lights Out, my RPG-horror homage which was my first real attempt at RPG Maker MV. This version doubled the size of the house, added a couple puzzles, a new character, and even a harder difficulty, as I had many people saying the Ludum Dare version wasn’t very challenging. 
Then, after that, I adapted an old, unfinished webcomic into a visual novel for the Yuri Game Jam, The Witch in the Forest. I made a new art style for this and made the game in NVL mode, to give it an older aesthetic. The music was done by my friend Alyx, so please check his other music and his own game dev studio out!
Finally we get to this month, November. A day after I finished working on my Yuri Game Jam entry, I started working on my entry for the Indie Game Maker Contest 2017, something I should had been working on all along. For IGMC, I started development on That Which Binds Us, a visual novel about memories and the string of fate. Even though I got the writing finished, I wasn’t able to put it all into RPG Maker MV, so I had to just release a demo for it. After the judging is over, I’ll try to finish it while also working on Asterism.

So, what’s next? I just published like 3 games in the span of a month. Well, now I’m going back to working on Asterism for a short time, though Ludum Dare #40 is right around the corner. I also have another project I’m spear-heading which will be announced soon. So, I’ll still have a few busy months ahead of me, and I hope you guys like what comes out of it!