My first Ludum Dare - Post Mortem

I used to think Ludum Dare was how all jams were: two or three days = super crunchy, and in no way for beginners. I never considered it.

Turns out jams come in more hapes than that and while LD is the classic there are jams that are easier for beginners. With a few dozen under my belt I dared (haha - yeah I know LD doesn't mean dare but it's such a nice coincidence, isn't it) entering Ludum Dare 58 in Oct '25.

My hope was to get into the top fifty percent of ranks. At a total participants of nearly 1400 and my lowest score 716, that mostly worked. Against a total of 1083 JAM submissions (not compo or extra categories) I fell slightly below. Overall I am not unhappy with my result; I did not expect to do grand work but a solid little game and that was what I managed.

My 2D singleplayer game "Pigment of your Imagination" was done solo for the jam version of LD, taking three days. You collect pigment nuggets at the beach, which are turned into paint that colour a mural. The fewer seashells you accidentally pick up, the clearer (= the more beautiful) the colour becomes.

It wasn't technically hard to do, although on that schedule, everything is harder than normal. My engine of choice is Defold. It took a few factories that spawn the pigment and seashells, a mechanic to colour them according to which search screen the players are on, and to add that colour to the mural once a search screen is completed, while mixing the colour accoridng to players' scores. 

The single hardest thing to do was to synch different screen resoltuions with the spawn area definition - as it turns out Defold handles that almost all on its own, but I still sunk some time into it believeing it would be harder.

Freesound.org has been my ally for finding sounds for jam projects and I got everything from there again for this one. At first I messed up the gating so every time players touched anything, sounds amassed to ill effect. It was an easy fix once players reported it though (and I should probably just test my audio more but it's often the last thing I do and the finish line beckoning makes me hurry too much sometimes). Because of using only found assets, I opted out of Audio voting.

A main point of commentary was that players wished to know their progress, or at least an explanation of gameplay. Indeed I included nothing even resembling an instruction, believing players to be able to figure it out rather than spending time on it. The only real feedback was the button to return to the main screen becomes visible once the target value is reached. Lesson learned, there will be next time. Someone who played where I could hear them jokingly complained about the unwanted colectibles spawning under the mouse start position.

Almost all commenters complimented the art, and Graphics were my second-highest score. Being a pro illustrator does that. I based the mural on an illustration I did in 2024, simplified it and added decorative elements. 

Some commenters stated they had not seen the gameplay before. I suspect the gampelay is out there; getting a nice Innovation score was still cool.

All in all, not too shabby for my first LD, given that I started programming less than a year ago.

Future plans: the base mechanic is fun enough that I can consider polishing it up with the feedback. A full version would include several murals, a true colouring mechanic to choose placements, and difficulty progression.