My Game Came 2nd in the World's Largest Game Jam! | Ludum Dare 54

I participated in Ludum Dare, the largest online game jam in the world, and I landed 2nd place out of almost 500 submissions in the Compo bracket. A game jam is a short-term contest where participants work alone or in teams to create a game entirely from scratch. The Ludum Dare Compo is the strictest bracket in the Jam, in which the game, all assets, and game-specific code must be made from scratch in 48 hours.
The game I created is called Less is Moore. It's a fast-paced humourous puzzle game where you have to put together phones with increasingly strict criteria. Builds must be completed within two minutes, or you fail to meet your quota, and you have to start again. The game features a ton of handmade pixel art, funny dialogue, and a complete lack of audio (I ran out of time 💀) It's free to play, and it runs in the browser. The entire thing was programmed in ReactJS, a web development framework!
This is my second game in a row that's scored in the top 10 of the Ludum Dare Compo, and I'm planning a more in-depth video discussing the techniques that I've been refining to score well. If you liked this video, than I think this next one will be even better. It should be out soon!
I'm an endeavoring indie developer in my 4th year of University for Computer Science. I've been working for the last four years on my dream project, Zepha, a voxel game engine where all ingame content is entirely defined within sandboxed mod files. I'll be uploading more about that in the future, and my other projects, so I hope you stick around!
Play the Game: ldjam.com/even...
Direct Link: aurail.us/ld54...
My Social Media:
Discord: aurail.us/discord
Twitch: / aurailus
Patreon: / aurailus
Tumblr: tumblr.com/zep...
Livestream VODs: ‪@AurailusVODs‬
Music Used:
Mochi Yasan (Shop) - Downwell OST
Clock Tower (Marvel vs Capcom 2 Remix) - Mewmore
More Information:
ludumdare.com/
react.dev/
en.wikipedia.o...
#ludumdare #gamedev #gamejam

[@dorktales254]

Please come back 😢

[@Aurailus]

Hey, guess what... kzbin.info/www/bejne/aKebo2OlhslsjsU

[@cagataykaydr3015]

Let’s goo 🎉

[@MrOnosa]

Oh boy.. i started getting back into game development and this is what's possible in 48 hour!? My goodness. It looks amazing.

[@Aurailus]

Thank you so much! Anything is possible with enough practice!

[@jadefae]

What an adorable aesthetic! It all fits together so nicely (hehe, get it), your art, the simple but engaging gameplay, the really nice and gently funny dialogue. it's good! It's *consistent* which is important.

[@Aurailus]

Thank you so much! I'm glad you like it!

[@rubenwardy]

Oh I thought this would be the full postmortem for the game jam, looking forward to that, will have to wait a bit longer 😅. I like the voice dialogue you added to the game! Really brings it to life even more

[@Aurailus]

Full postmortem is coming soon!! Large videos are so much more complicated than I thought they would be 💀 I hope it's worth the hype!!

[@tombur_]

great video! The game also looks crazy polished for a jam game, well done!!

[@Aurailus]

Thank you so much!

[@marshallchapman994]

Really looking forward to more videos about your game dev process!

[@Aurailus]

Thanks!! I look forward to making them!

[@calicow]

Congratulations! This looks so polished, and you have a knack for VO. Can't wait to see more game dev videos!

[@Aurailus]

Thank you so much! Hoping to do some more fun video editing things in the future!

[@shingouki8465]

The game looks so good! I can't believe you managed to do this in just 24 hours! Just amazing!!!

[@Aurailus]

Thank you so much!

[@Maker_Star_Hero]

Hiya this is Terence! thanks for coming to the party! This is a great video!!! You are really good at this! Inspiring me to get my first vid published! 😊😊😊

[@Aurailus]

Hey, thanks!!! I had a great time there! Good luck to you on publishing your first video!

[@limji3674]

Seems Great ! Gonna check the game asap, Congrat for your work !

[@Aurailus]

thank you so much! 😺

[@Xeros08]

Guess like we'll have to wait a bit longer for the full postmortem of the game jam haha. Love your vídeos, they are so well edited and good™. Keep it up!

[@Aurailus]

Yeah 😔 It's still on the way, but it's a bit lower priority right now. My schedule was messed up by a bunch of life events haha. Thank you though!

[@shadamethyst1258]

I'm definitely looking forward for the making of!

[@Aurailus]

Awesome! I have the script all done already, I just have to record a *lot* of dialogue. 😺

[@WellDressedMuffin]

Wow, nicely done! I love game jams and I love JavaScript, it's cool to see the two united.

[@WellDressedMuffin]

(as a side note, thank you for teaching me about generator functions and yield, somehow I never knew these existed)

[@Aurailus]

Hell yeah! I love Javascript, despite its many many flaws. And when I think of getting things done fast, there's nothing that speaks to me more than React. Generator functions are relatively unknown, but they're one of the coolest Javascript features. I'm glad that I helped you find them!

[@IzorAscended-h3p]

Got epic rank in your puzzle. It was amazing!

[@alifnafili5153]

Thanks for making this video! I'm starting my first game jam in 3 days (acerola jam) and I'm nervous especially about making art, so its nice to know that it's a universal feeling, and that it wont get in the way of development if you draw mock assets first. Oh yeah if you were to drop that tips video there's no better time to do it than within the next 3 days (for no reason at all). I will also be using react so any tips on that would be great!

[@Aurailus]

Hey!! I realize it's like 3 months after the jam, but yeah, I unfortunately really did not have time to get another video out. I'm in my final year of university and my last semester was absolutely brutal. I basically did nothing with this channel and I'm only just going through the backlog of comments now 🥲 I hope you did well in the jam! I'll take a look at your game if you share it!

[@theowenmccarthy]

This is awesome!

[@Aurailus]

Thank you!!

[@monsterwook2472]

YOU ADDED SOUND! YAYA :D

[@Aurailus]

Only in the video unfortunately ;w; planning on adding vocals to the actual game through!!

[@RumTerry]

You make great videos and content. I’m also studying 3D graphics and trying to make an engine. Your video about sparse bindless texture arrays was very cool. There is very little content on KZbin that discusses rendering optimization techniques with examples in certain APIs, etc.. Keep it up!

[@Aurailus]

Thank you!! I'm glad you liked it. I hope you enjoy my future videos too!

[@anderpz2886]

Waiting for this to drop

[@Aurailus]

Hell yeah!

[@bitdecay7773]

You're an inspiration!

[@Aurailus]

Thank you! Roughing it through COVID right now and this really cheered me up ❤️

[@Jenner_IIC]

Gotta hand it to ya, the game was fun, though the puzzles were a bit too easy. Would be awesome to see a after Ludum expanded version since it has a lot of promise.

[@Aurailus]

Hi! Glad you liked it! I tended towards the easy side because a lot of people got stuck on my last game. I figured it was better to let people get through everything than have a bunch of people who got stuck. I'm considering making an expanded version, I'll post an update on my channel if I commit to that!

[@WowCoolHorse]

@@Aurailus easier is always better than harder when it comes to game jam games imo

[@xKond3i]

Congrats! 🎉

[@Aurailus]

tysm!

[@switch7925]

I love the game! I wish more games would use space management as a game mechanic.

[@Aurailus]

Thank you!!

[@kplays_6000]

You did amazing!!

[@Aurailus]

Thank you so much!

[@MCSteve_]

Hmm... what desktop manager do you use? 🤔 Congratulations, what an impressive feat and for such a short time! Also that burnout is REAL, putting a ton of focus onto one thing for a few days and finishing it can paradoxically hurt drive so much lol (it is like a form of venting) Keep that passion safe and best wishes in the future!

[@Aurailus]

Hihi, thank you!! I use XFCE on Manjaro Linux, with the Arc-Dark theme. Yeah, burnout is definitely real, I probably shouldn't have tried to do Ludum Dare during a school semester, I felt the repercussions of that for a while. I really enjoy these things in the moment though, which makes it hard to resist. I think the next game jam that I did a few days later is what really just decimated my motivation :P

[@gordon7478]

My only complaint is the time limit, but that's more a me problem than a this game problem to be fair, lol. This is an insanely complete experience for a 2 day game jam, especially considering the artwork.

[@Aurailus]

Thank you so much! The time limit was a bit weird, a bit of a vestigal feature from my previous game jam entry, Return to Sender (aurail.us/ld53/index.html). I think that I was just in the mindset that time pressure would lead to more jam engagement, which it seems to have, but I'm not sure it's actually a good part of the game's design. Definitely something I'll reconsider if I build this out into a full game!

[@injust90]

woah this is super impressive!

[@Aurailus]

Thanks!!

[@badashphilosophy9533]

i saw the the sparce lind texture arrays video. it all went over y head, i def learn better with demonstration of implementation and use cases ut you seemed very smart and like you knew what you were talkin about so here i an

[@davidmcky]

You got my Sub! great work! I would love to see what you can pull together in a bigger project (I guess that might be your terrain project?)

[@Aurailus]

Thank you so much! I've been working on a Voxel Game for almost 5 years now which I'd love to talk about more. Hopefully I can find time to talk about it soon!

[@andrew_cunningham]

How does Sophia fit SO MANY parts? | Dense Overtimeless Circuit Matrices

[@Aurailus]

Truly horrifying, I don't know whether to say thank you for this or pretend I never saw it 🙃

[@jcx5750]

Congrats

[@Aurailus]

Thanks!!

[@bbrainstormer2036]

I just played your game. Tons of fun. Audio wasn't working though

[@Aurailus]

Thank you! Audio is unfortunately only in the video for now, it's not actually part of the game. I'm planning on adding it to the game in a post-jam release, though!

[@Heeroneko]

Yes....teach me how make phone. Also, to make the scrolling of the menu more apparent to ppl, you could use a contrasting color for a scroll bar. A de-saturated orange or red would go well, but as you've already used them for other parts of the game I dunno if it'd be better to use them for visual cohesion or go for a light green. oOo

[@Aurailus]

Good call! I'll probably honestly just put an animated arrow at the bottom of the screen the first time you need to scroll, as that seems like it would be pretty clear to most people. I wanted to keep the scrollbar minimal because it's not a particularly important UI element. It only matters when people don't know you can scroll at all! :P

[@Heeroneko]

@@Aurailus That actually sounds like a pretty good solution. Hadn't thought of it! owo

[@StainlessHelena]

The game is amazing and you did that in 48 hours? Also I stopped slouching when the game told me to...

[@Aurailus]

Hahah, I wrote that line specifically to see if I could call anyone out with it! :P Thanks!

[@_nashset]

banged all that out in 48 hours using React, VS code, and (presumably) stock gimp? My workflow needs improvement...

[@Aurailus]

Hahah, it was definitely a struggle! I think that optimizing my image editing workflow (and using a proper tool like Aseprite instead of GIMP) would go a long way for making stuff faster for me.

[@forceofphoenix]

Wait, you can program AND do art? Wow. Im making a vulkan minecraft clone in C right now

[@Aurailus]

Hehe, thank you! How's your project going? I just swapped over from OGL to Vulkan in between my previous video and now. I'm planning on publishing a video about the process soon!

[@forceofphoenix]

@@Aurailus At first it was a mess to integrate vulkan, but after i created my own vulkan helper lib for C (VMA is awesome, btw) it was much better to handle the vulkan stuff. Im working on infinite terrain generation right now using quadmaps

[@Aurailus]

Thank you all so much for watching! Reserving this comment for future announcements. *Play the Game!* ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/mobile-game

[@Gorobcik_7209]

Good job! How do I turn on the sound on the direct site?

[@Aurailus]

Thank you! I mention this in the video I think, but I didn't have time to add audio to the game for the Jam. ;-; I'm considering making a post-jam release with voice-acting for the full game!

[@Gorobcik_7209]

@@Aurailus oh, ok thx

[@nicolecabuyao6945]

also, the web link doesn't have audio ; - ; any reason why?

[@Aurailus]

I never had time to add audio to the actual game, the vocalized lines were added in for the video. I'm planning on releasing a version of the game with dialogue, I think!

[@nicolecabuyao6945]

@@Aurailus awesome!!!