Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Ludum Dare #23 Game Dev Competition Starts Off With a Bang!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 20, 2012

Ludum Dare has been going on for ten years. In a few hours, the latest game-in-48-hours competition will begin.

The keynote for this competition – #23 – is exceptional. Chevy Ray doesn’t just give a ra-ra speech… he leads by example. Kind of. It’s just funny and cool.

Chevy Ray’s LD#23 Keynote

For another amusing note… PyGame is offering A BILLION free licenses for LD participants! Yeah. A BILLION. Free. They even invented a time-machine to make it retroactive from the very beginning with the LGPL.  Okay, yes, I’m easily amused.

For yet another possible tool – Stencyl 2.0 has been released. Just in time for the competition. While one can argue that a 48-hour competition is NOT a time to be learning new tools, I’d also argue that if you are just squirreling around and making it an opportunity to learn and grow as a game developer, it’s a perfect opportunity.

And for an actual discount… Christer Kaitila’s book, The Game Jam Survival Guide, is 40% off right now for the game jam. You can read it while waiting for the competition to begin. Or to get ready for the next one. Or to do your own thing in a short time horizon.

I find it endlessly amusing that such a craft which has such a (deserved) reputation for being brutally challenging – game development – has been turned into a sport. This makes me happy. No, none of the games made this weekend are going to be Citizen Kane or anything. That’s not the point. As I’ve said before… while there’s a big difference between a Game Jam game and an actual commercially-released game, in my limited experience the process is actually very similar. These are excellent learning experiences. They are a great chance to experiment.  And it’s kinda fun doing it with several other people as part of  ‘a thing’.


Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: Comments are off for this article



Comments are closed.

top