itch.io

The Jam draws to an end, the winners are starting to get their prizes. Maybe we'll up this department the next time, because why not?

I'm not sure I've written a post-mortem before, is it even 'a thing'? And have I mentioned that I've never hosted anything before? Anyways, here it comes:

The Good:

    The Jam got some traction from the beginning, so there was interest to participate, and at the end there were circa 37 people registered, which resulted in 15 submissions. Not bad for a first-timer, also given the myriad of other concurring jams at the time. I've tried to find a period with relatively few jams but apparently they multiply quite quickly.
    Rules were generally understood, and or accepted quickly.
    The communication was pretty straight forward, which resulted in establishing a Discord-group early on, in spite of my ignorance of it. I adapted. Questions arose and were answered satisfactory, there were no misunderstandings, and talk was in general quite pleasant, as was the whole atmosphere,  IMO.
    2.5 days seems to be a sufficient period of time to craft a LCD-game, a genre which lends itself well for such an occupation,  IMO.
    The games are mostly high quality, fun and beautiful!
    The jam was a success!

The Lesser Good:

    The Itch.io Community tools (posting) seem somehow glitchy, which eased the transition to Discord, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because it works well enough.
    LCD-games are a matter of the past and so it is easy for younger gens to confuse them with Gameboy style games. That is a point to remember for the future, maybe better explanations are in order, visual or so, although I really like the short and handy name of the jam - personal preference for sure.
    The antiquity of the genre resulted sometimes indeed in a kind of Gameboy visual aesthetic (the greeen!), which isn't bad per se, just a spin I haven't anticipated.
    I think I had some points to make here, but it seems I'm wasting everybody's time instead.
    Voting: there's something that could have gone better! I know, and was educated, that the general voting ratio is low, but we can't compare e.g. LD, which nowadays has several hundred submissions, I think, and no 'prizes', with this tiny jam. Under 50% is not too bad for sure, but I'd have liked more. There's no good solution either, maybe we need more cookies!
    I hope nobody was confused by the announcement of a 'special judge' in midst of the jam, we should have communicated that from the beginning. VV was integral in the conceptual stage of the jam, is a fan of LCD-games and we thought a wild card in voting would be fun. But never mind, It didn't happen.

Some general thoughts:

I liked the variety of game ideas: there were some 'static' games, as well as some 'scrolling' ones. The two most underrepresented 'sub-genres' were the driving&dodging games, as well as the Donkeykong style ones, where you try to reach a goalpost of some kind by mastering a fixed parcours on one or two screens - speaking of which, because two screens equal double work, we've seen none of that.

Which brings me to the idea, that maybe 2-screen games need a jam with double the time?

All things considered I don't know how it could have gone better!

NEXT JAM

I'll definitely try another round in 4-6 months. Hopefully you will too!

The only bigger addition I'd like to make is the announcement of a theme just before the start. That would spice things up a bit and be very broadly formulated, just to give it a general direction.

Conditions for prizes could be upped too, maybe the first treshold, the number of submissions, could be the number from the last jam, i.e. 15. Another treshold could be the number of votes: 70% or so, but if voting in jams is generally low, would that anger people? What do you think, and how are other jams handling that?

On thing to make it easier could be a web-only games rule, but wouldn't we loose people who, while willing to participate, don't deploy HTML5/WebGL, or how the terms for browser-games are nowadays ...?

POST-JAM Activities:

On the subject of mobile deployment:

It's true that LCD-games have few downloads. I think the range is 1-10 T. But I'd still prefer, if at all desirable, a branding for LCD-jam games to a bundle. I think many games can stand for their own, and if you ask me, I'd love for them to have the same skin, UI and branding, which could make it a trusted group of games (just to be clear: I'm not considering my game in its current state a part of it yet, in spite of having put some additional work into it already).

Stay tuned for possible updates regarding manufacturing of the real thing!

Well, it was a pleasure! I'm curious how you experienced the jam?

Just a quick note: I'm not sure how to handle the prizes, maybe you want to post your paypal credentials to me: b.ryzom@gmail.com

Otherwise I'll be hearing your suggestions?

As promised I'll post a post-mortem later, from the perspective of the host.

Thank you all again for your submissions (you made us very happy)! You've all really wielded the art of LCD games gracefully! (You may also have noticed that I get a bit enthusiastic sometimes, that's because I care much for LCD games.)

It was all in all a good success,  exeeding my expectations and the treshold for rewards by 50%!

Now that the developing time of the jam is over (and I'm glad), happy voting for those who haven't yet! (I started the jam with the intention to participate, only to back down then because of time restraints, and finally pulling off an all nighter, and now I'm pouring even more time into it, thanks to all your great work! ;)

THE END

Now all that is left to do is wait for the results (I may be able to speed up time if all ... I think 225 votes ... are in, or all participants agree on it, then onward to some administrative back-and-forth about the rewards.

As promised I'll seriously contemplate the doability of a real device, even Kickstarter might be an option for a larger production scale, once I have the time, which should be this summer.

THE FUTURE

But that doesn't have to be the end just yet!

- For starters, I'm entertaining the idea of inviting everyone to publish your games on mobile. Personally, I'm sporting an Android dev account, which could serve as a low-level entry for publishing, there shouldn't be problems with rights which of course stay with the developer, as well as money, because as I see it the games could be some kind of open source/public domain? (Obviously games that can't be published for Android right away need much more work to make the publishing work.)

LCD games as a product are dead, no question about that, but they still have a sentimental value and are therefore a great nostalgia vehicle, as well as having some advantages for jams (low production time) and enough artistic value to be viable in a small niche.

- Another thing is a recurrent jam: what do you think about repeating this jam regularly,  say every half year, or maybe every four months? I have already some minor ideas I would like to try for it, more on this subject in the lengthy Post-Mortem I'm planning to write once the results are in.

Purely accidential! And it needed your comment for me to realise it! :)

One more thing I just thought about: It would make for more visual candy if the sword strike would go from overhead: if you made the helmet-tail smaller you could easily fit the two arms for both animations in, and they could share one sword? You could either start with the sword position like it is now, or holding it already overhead... Because now the strike is just a bit too small IMO.

Haha! Thanks! Now that I think of it, that is indeed a good metaphor for life: one is so occupied by living (stirring), that it can make you forget to just be still in your mind for a second! :D

Yes the rocking thing springs to mind, but I thought more of touch-sensitive cell, where you can really slide between the two inputs...

Thought I'll post a screenshot of the updated version for mobile.. background optional.

If anyone is interested in trying it out, I can put up a download link of a developer version in the next few days..

Thanks! I guess it shows that I played through almost all Game&Watch games recently! ;-)

I've already an Android version running, but have to find the right button layout. One idea I just had reading your comment: for stirring it would be cool not to press a button but to have a sliding input, where you move your finger left - right: I should research if this is possible with 80/90ties tech!

Great game! Very cute graphics! Gameplay has lot of variation and the different enemies work good together, but I would suggest to split it over time rather than having all attacking at once. You could start with 2 enemies and by varying which enemy/boulder appears for a given 'level', and the attack speed, make a really long and challenging gameplay! It also deserves more detailed backgrounds IMO, hand-drawn rock-walls and so on!

One thing, and it should really be the first rule of all game jams: using Z and Y as controls is a poor choice because many languages have them switched on the keyboard, so imagine me playing: x .. right move, y ... left move!! But I did solid!

Very well executed concept and a fun game! Just died in Lvl 8! Reminds me of the D&D LCD game, but I like your style better! I'd love to have a second screen for the battles, but yeah for Roguelikes! Another idea is different items, question if there's a need for them (invisibility spell?), but there is enough room between the figure drawings for them. Btw: great art style, love the drawn walls!

This entry pushes the art of LCD games to the limit! Very carefully crafted and very good level design. The moving case is great! It could benefit from a zoom, like Gunslinger, tho. Challenging gameplay - will I ever pass Lvl 3?

And the mechanic for moving and jumping is excellent, you almost forget the movement by block...

Very clever variant of the catch-in-three-positions mechanic! And how cute! And icecream! And a serve-the-customer mechanic! It get's better and better. Graphics are spot on, although I would have preferred if it had a real LCD game look, rather than a pixelated Gameboy emulation one!

P.S. played the hell out of Oil Panic lately! Now that you mention it, I see the inspiration...

Very well crafted entry! In my opinion it would look even better with some color beackground elements, like the walls. And while repeating what I said on Discord, I really miss a continuous score to make the game more engaging, and a little variation would be nice too! But I understand that you treat it more like a demo than a full game.

Great work, and it really is a joy to look at your code (and learn something too)!

Nice work, the zoom is a nice touch! Balancing needs serious work. A show-down, i.e. a duel springs to mind as a possible variation. I also recommend to show the gun at the side by the player, it would point 'up', because let's face it: we want to see the guns in a western!

Cute entry! Not much of a challenge, tho. The classic Game A and B is a nice touch, I think you are the only one who did it!

Far from finished entry, but as PixelPaladin puts it: cool style! :D

Beautiful skin, great title and nice icon set! ;) Solid entry, balancing needed, good work for the couple hours you've had!

Very well put together LCD game! Flawless style, and the concept allows for much variation. And you really topped it with the boss fight! Shame that the balancing is not yet there, if you fix it I'd suggest that you also add more different flight formations for the fighters, to make it even better!

Fun idea, could easily be a real LCD game, given a graphical overhaul, where each cart position is a hand drawn picture, the shelves are colorful backgrounds and the stuff represents something! Button presses are a nice touch.

The balancing needs work too, the difficulty curve rises too fast for me, which prevents the game in its current state to be enjoyable for longer, and which could have been easily prevented.

Solid work!

Yes

One more thing: Postmodestie is comprised of two persons, yours truly and vivianvoda, who will act as a special judge.

Here you can share sketches, work in progress, etc.

Below one of mine. The Little Monk cooks rice.

A pro pos control: it would be cool if the game could be played with, say, an Xbox-controller, so e.g. if there's left-right movement: that could be controlled with the shoulder buttons. In this way one would have the feeling of holding the actual case in hands... of course totally optional.

Nice pinball game! Sound sounds quite right, so as long as as it 'feels' right, push all you want I'd say.

Hello to all!

Great to see so many participants on such short notice!
Hopefully we'll have fun and sweat crafting something in this old 'genre'!

Feel free to ask and discuss to your hearts content, as you can see some questions have already arisen. So how is it with Discord?

I played many LCD-games as a kid, and just recently I've finished almost all Game&Watch collections for Gameboy (the GBA one to finally unlock Climber, which I haven't played for decades).

As there are not many new LCD-games, for obvious reasons, last time I checked on the Play Store, I though it would be nice to do something about it.

And here we are! Nice to meet you!

Yes of course. The main feature as I see it are the immutable graphics..