Ludum Dare 14: Results

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: May 12th, 2009

Daring!

Results from the 14th “tri-annual 48 hour solo game development competition” Ludum Dare are in. This time around there were a whopping (sweet, I seldom get to write “whopping”) 123, wait, 132 entries — all of which you can find here, with nice little thumbnails of each and the top games neatly divided into categories. This round’s theme was “The Advancing Wall of Doom.”

Let’s get a torrent up, people! I would seed that all kinds of generously.

Once again, the entries and results can be found here. Also, time-lapse development footage of a handful of the games can be found here. (Nice desktop, agj!)

The next Ludum Dare (15) will begin in August. Be ready.

Posted in Competitions, Freeware, Highly Recommended | Tags: LudumDare

http://b-mcc.com// BMcC

Awesome work, everyone involved!
http://hima.gptouch.com Hima

I’ve been wanted to join LudamDare gah! Maybe after this trimester I’ll be free enough to do whatever I wanna do and not the cruel thesis X(
sinoth

LD14 was the first time I entered and definitely not last. Everyone needs to give it a shot! 48 hours is more than it seems, I promise!
cactus

The timelapse vids are very impressive.
Bennett

Congratulations to mrfun and dessgeega for first and second place. If only I could figure out how to find your games to download them, but that LD website is very confusing.
shinygerbil

Zounds! That is a lot of games.

Hopefully I’ll be in the position where I can actually enter the next LD… =)
http://disruption.ca erik

@Bennett The blog format of the site makes it hard to navigate if you don’t know what is going on.

Here are links to the “final” entries for the top 5 overall games from LD14. Hopefully I don’t get spam filtered for posting too many links:
mrfun
dessgeega
rob
Notch
muku
moi

as susual with the LD website, I have no idea wher to find links to specific games by author or by name for this competition, heck they don’t even mention the games names.
This is the #1 reason I don’t play the LD games. Also I don’t understand anything to their awards or Devlog stuff.
Paul Eres

I agree with moi here. That site feels like it was designed by programmers — I’m always put off by the idea of trying these games out. I once tried to find an archive of all of these contests and winners on their site and went away half an hour later, frustrated. It’s difficult to navigate through.

What I suggest is that they get a web designer to redo it and try to make the site more user-friendly: try to make things that people are looking for be in obvious places for instance. Like download links, or game names.

Of course, they may not want to do that because perhaps the intention is for it to be a programmer hangout, but if they want to showcase the games they create for these contests to a wider audience they should at least make the game pages more user-friendly.
PoV

Awesome. Thanks Brandon for the plug. :)
Corpus

I used Audacity to convert the ascii code of this post into audio and made it the soundtrack to my week
sqrrl

dammit, I’m almost finished a game which features the ‘approaching wall of doom’
Wish I knew about this earlier
Zaphos

From the score page, click the person’s name and then scroll down through what appears to be a comments section. In the depths you will find their game. It is kind of like finding Narnia.
avoidobject

Their website is like an Advancing Wall of Doom if you know what I mean.
Teknogames/Beau Blyth

I shall catch the next one, I shall
Paul Eres

More like trying to find the price in the silver chair (second narnia book) :D
http://www.threeli.com/ Eli

Oh man, so much tripe to trip through. How exciting. Better get started.
Morre

Awesome work, everyone! It was fun :)
cheez

someone make a torrent >_>
Sparky

Ludum Dare was a lot of fun. This was my first time participating, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone with a penchant for making games. A big plus is that people seemed more focused on spending time together and having a good time than ‘winning’ the contest.
Pyabo

My god… This is like an example of how NOT to design usable websites. Serious WTF factor. How much more play and recognition would these developers get if people could actually FIND their games?
Radix

There was a discussion about improving the site at the conclusion of the event. The popularity of this LD took everyone by surprise, and it’s being looked at.

So this may be your last chance to bash the website! Everyone better hurry up and get on board.
AdamButcher

Thanks erik, those 5 links were exactly what I was looking for. No way am I searching for or playing all 132 of the things.
Tim James

mrfun’s MindWall is excellent. I played a few others and enjoyed myself for a few minutes. Loved the timelapse videos. Great work everyone.
Snow

It would be extremely easy to design a site the right way for compos like these. LD’s current site not only looks like it was done by a programmer and not a site designer – but an Assembly programmer to boot lol. WTF is an understatement.

This is the first time I’ve heard of LD (which is very sad to say), but I loved the entries, especially the “deathbeam” entry. Being a Soldateer, I picked that one up immediately. However, it’s also getting me excited about game design again. I’m a cartoonist and artist and wanted to program and do game design a short while ago. My first game was going to be an atmospheric top down shooter that had atari 2600 style graphics. When I played deathbeam, it’s one of the few games that gave some serious emotion. You get scared when that beam comes close. The simple colors, atmosphere and sound are incredible.

I was into minimalist styles before, but it is amazing how well deathbeam works with minimal visuals and sound. Of course, there was a 48 hour limit, so graphics were somewhat least important. Still, the game was very well executed.

Hopefully I can get some entry into the 15th or 16th compos.

Anyway, I’m still playing through the entries. To all those who participated – if you are reading this – good work. Some fantastic entries.
http://www.agj.cl/ agj

My background picture is based on this painting by Alex Gray.
http://b-mcc.com// BMcC

Yes yes :)
Kovski

Oh man, I’m working on my first GM since a couple of weeks and it has pretty much exactly the theme of the competition… would I just have known earlier… :(

Still, congrats to everyone who made the deadline!
SkyBox

Is there a torrent for all 132 of those yet? Including finalized versions posted after the contest ended, not just the “official” versions?