Last month, there were eight great game entries that members of Knoxville Game Design created for the Ludum Dare game development competition.  The theme for this competition was “One Room”.  The entries by our group are listed below in no specific order.

Your the only person that matters by Jacob

Your The Only Person That Matters is a game about saving before fighting the final boss.  To win you must confirm you want to save.

Da Vinci’s Revenge by Jax

You are a troll and you are after Leonardo Da Vinci because he killed your family. So go kill him now!

Room by Jeffry

My two sons wanted me to make a game while they made games too. So I made this shmup. All made in game maker studio pro (thanks humble bundle), sounds via sound recorder app on my phone.

Eye in the Sky by Joe

Your goal in Eye in the Sky is to find the requested people using the casino security camera feeds. There are 4 different views set up looking into one room – the casino floor. People will be freely moving around the room and as such you’ll need to look at all the cameras to see where they might have gone. You can click on any of the camera feeds to zoom in on that view in the room, which will help you pick out the correct person. The score is based on how quickly you are able to find each person, with no points given after a certain amount of time. There is no gameover, feel free to play as long as you like!

Isolation Knight by Dylan

Persistence pays as you confront a series of enemies, each requiring their own unique strategy. Learn skills and spells as you try to escape the isolation your captors have placed you into.

Free the Frog by Levi

Help Froggy escape the room by collecting the quantum accelerator artifact. When the artifact is collected, Froggy leaps through time and space to the exact same room in another dimension! Help Froggy avoid the dangers so that he can hope that the next leap will be the leap home!

Zombie Swarm by Jason

Its a twin-stick type shooter set in the mythical zombie apocalypse. While enemies are coming at you from all directions, you will want to watch your shots as your ammunition is limited. Thankfully for you, it appears that every zombie is carrying at least one or two bullets, or a grenade. You only get one life, and the zombies are coming faster and faster, how long will you survive?

Fair Damsel in Distress by Ruth Ann

This platformer game for children was developed using Processing version 2 with Java. Only one level (hardest) is provided here. New feature for touch screens is showcased.

Time lapse Videos

Several games were submitted by Knoxville Game Design members to the 34th Ludum Dare this month.  The theme was tie between “Growing” and “Two button controls” so participants could choose one or both for their game.  Here are the games submitted by Knox Game Design members!

Button Flower by Jacob

Play the game here

Jacob (age 11.9) has created a different game this time. He did all the art and coding with Gamemaker Studio with built in sprite editor. Dad is helping compile and post the entry but that is all the help dad has done.

Super Autoscrolling Space Robot GROWZINGER by Dylan

Play the game here

Flying through space, constantly growing, SUPER AUTO-SCROLLING SPACE ROBOT GROWZINGER is hot-blooded forced scrolling giant robot action.

Survive by Paul

Play the game here

Now the game is called Survive, and all you have to do it that.

Mutant Veggie Arena by Levi

Play the game here

Save the world from the mutant vegetables!

Postmortem | Time Lapse 

The past weekend was another Ludum Dare game jam, and once again several games were submitted by Knoxville Game Design members.  The theme this time was “Entire Game on One Screen” though many of us were hoping for ☃(not “snowman” but the unicode symbol for snowman was a possible theme).  I think you’ll see that many of us included some cold love for unicode Frosty…

Ice Fishing Derby by Dylan

Play the game here

Ice Fishing Derby is inspired by David Crane’s Fishing Derby for the Atari 2600 (where the entire game was played on one screen–there wasn’t even a title!) My goal was also to make a retro-style game.

This game is a bit more complicated, however. You’re ice fishing, so you have to cut holes in the ice, and you can use bait to attract fish.

Each fish is worth $1 to $3. In addition to being your score, you can use this to buy various types of bait. Each bait has different properties: some attract fish at greater distances, some keep fish interested longer, and some are less likely to be lost once you reel in a fish.

TV World by Levi

Play the game here
Watch Time-lapse

Make your way through the nine channels of the TV World!
Collect remotes… shoot everything else!

Snowman Simulator by Jacob

Play the game here

Jacob (age 11) has his interpretation of the theme presents: Snowman Simulator
play with: WSAD, arrows, mouse — secret stuff to click on and do. can you find multiplayer mode? Get the high score?

Made with GameMaker Studio and Tile Studio.

Dad helped with minor debugging, encouraging, and cleanup for submission. Jacob did 99% of the work.

Click For Dragons! by Mike, Rachel, Hannah, and Cicelie

Play the game here
Watch Time-lapse

We decided to combine the fun of idle games like cookie clicker with the RPG setting of games like Dragon Age. It’s a game you can play while playing other games in Ludum Dare!

The development team was myself, my wife, and my two oldest daughters (we entered the game jam as a team). Even though this is a jam entry, everything in the game was made by us.

Build A Snowman by Paul

Play the game here

I have to admit, the original idea was all based around the fact that the ‘uni-code snowman’ may have won, but the theme still allowed me to build this.

There are 8 boxes at the bottom of the screen, and falling from the left and right you have parts of a snowman, two snowballs, hat, coal and a carrot. The idea being you catch it, and drag it down to the box, as you do, a piece appears in the box, get all the pieces the snowman starts to dance, click it, you’ll get points.

This past August was once again Ludum Dare game jam time, and several Knoxville game designers took part.  The theme was “Connected Worlds” and each developer or team had to use this theme some way in their game.  Here are the games submitted to the jam, plus another game completed by Ruth Ann who choose not to upload her game but showed it off Sunday night.

Revo by Devon, Elena, and Manuele

Play the game here

This was originally going to be an iOS game that played out over simulated text messages.. Since none of the team knew iOS development, that turned out to be unrealistic. Then, we were hoping to make a “graphical” text adventure, but we’re still getting the graphics together. We may make a more fleshed-out version in Twine after the jam. For now, the text-only version will have to suffice, but the screenshot shows a tease of the style of the graphical version.

Planetary Escape by Paul

Play the game here

I Found it really hard to think of something to link with the theme.. This is the best I could come up with 🙂

Parallel Puzzles by Dylan

Play the game here

A match-3 game with two connected boards.

Dots by Mike

Play the game here

Puzzle game of “connect the dots”. There are 12 levels in this version.

Dream World by Levi

Play the game here

Adventure through the connected dream worlds to find the clarity of your true reality.

Postmortems and Other Things

Several members wrote about the jam and made time-lapse videos of the process:

• Ludum Dare 30 Post-Mortem
• Writing a Match-3 game in Unity
• Dream World Time-lapse Ludum Dare 30
• Ludum Dare Day One Progress
• “Dots” Postmortem – Ludum Dare #30
• Ludum Dare #30 – “Dots” Timelapse

This past weekend was the second time members of the Knoxville Game Jam took part in the Ludum Dare game jam.  The theme was “Beneath the Surface” and each developer or team had to use this theme some way in their game.  There were a total of four games submitted from KGD teams, plus another game completed by Ruth Ann who choose not to upload her game but showed it off Sunday night.

Upper Crust by Dylan

Play the game here

You are a geomancer exploring beneath the surface of the earth. To move forward in your journey, you will need to bribe the giants who guard your path.

Archaeology by Levi

Play the game here

Welcome to Archaeology!

First select a surveyor to find good locations for treasure. If treasure is found nearby, the ground will be highlighted with a certain color.  Once you find a good location for treasure, assign an excavator to that area. If the excavator successfully digs up treasure, it will be shown in the world. Then assign an appraiser, who will determine the value of the treasure and add it to your total money.

Repeat until you’ve found all of the treasure, but you have only until 7pm before the game is over.

Under the Surface by Jacob

Play the game here

Jacob (age 10) went camping this weekend and created the game basically in a little over 1 day from Sunday – Monday. The game is a maze style game with a mining element and enemies trying to kill you. Arrow keys to navigate, some other hidden short cuts, in game warps and tricks. Dad did some debugging, score/health tweaking, and collision fixing, but Jacob did 95% of this one alone.

Jungle Noir by Rachel, Hannah, and Mike

Play the game here

We took the theme “Beneath the Surface” as a reference to hidden or double meanings, which lead to the noir setting.

Time-lapse Development Videos

It’s common for participates in the Ludum Dare to live stream their process, and then crunch the whole weekend down to a short video.  Both Mike (and team) and Levi made time-lapse videos:

This past weekend 3 developers plus 2 teams from Knoxville Game Design took part in the Ludum Dare for a total of five entries!  The theme was “You Only Get One” and it was up to each developer and team how they incorporated the theme.  Here are the five entries:

Weird Kingdom (Jacob, Jeffry, and Jon)

Play the game here

Jacob age 9 is the team leader (Lead Designer, Lead artist, Lead programmer). Dad and Uncle Jon provided technical assistance. Game done in GameMaker Studio 1.2. Tile Studio used for sprites. Audacity used for sounds. Game play with Arrow Keys, A = attack. Weird quirky glitches are by design. The final boss can be tricky to kill. You only get one life, one weapon, one boss fight.

One Gunman (Levi)

Play the game here

You play as One Gunman, who must gather the rewards for shooting the bandits (Evens, Odds, Fibonaccis, Squares). Each bandit has a numerical value associated to it, which determines if it is one that can be shot for a reward. The reward will change periodically to a new set of bandits. Shooting an incorrect bandit will result in One Gunman losing a life. When all of his lives are gone, the game is over.

YoGo Burger (Mike)

Play the game here

It’s your first day at YoGo Burger, and management has said it needs to make some cuts. Effectively immediately all customers can have only one item on a burger. Marketing suggests we do not tell customers of this new policy, and research shows people only care about one topping anyway so there should be no complaints.
Also, new policy for new hires: get one complaint and you’re fired!

One Card Hero (Dylan)

Play the game here

Collect the coins! Avoid the enemies! Score the points!
Power-up your robotic avatar by playing cards–but you can only hold one card at a time (that is, “you only get one”).

Shovel Master (DBRalir, Aarithian, Chume, Reginald, Ben)

Play the game here

You are are a skilled treasure hunter, exploring various areas in search of gold.
Collect at least 50 gold to pay for travel to the next area, but you only get one minute!

Time-lapse Development Videos

It’s common for participates in the Ludum Dare to live stream their process, and then crunch the whole weekend down to a three minute video.  This time, both Mike and Levi made time-lapse videos:

The response was very good this time, even with it being in the middle of the holidays, and we’ll likely do another in April. Be sure to sign up on the mailing list for future meetup and game jam announcements.

Congratulations to everyone who entered the Ludum Dare #28!