From Nothing to Something in 48 Hours
Rambling about Ludum Dare 45 and my entry
Earlier in October, a regular, global event took place. Something, that from my experience not many people know about. Some call it obscure. But it is one of my favourite past times whenever it swings around.
I am talking about Ludum Dare. Ludum Dare is one of the better known Game Jams, with around 3.000 Participants. The premise is rather straightforward. Prior to the event, a theme is chosen based on a democratic vote and after that finished, the event kicks off and each Person or Team now has 48 or 72 hours to develop a new Game.
“The Deadline is the biggest motivational push you can experience.”
Me, back during College
Whether you have 48 hours or 72 hours entirely is up to you — depending on what kind of competition you are entering your game into. Ludum Dare is divided into two parts, the Compo and the Jam. Each subset has different rules that one has to abide to (although there is no enforcement of the rules; just the morality of it all). But the main difference however is that Entries for Compo have to be developed by no more than one person, with every asset being created during the event and every needs to be finished in 48 hours.
This October, Ludum Dare ran for the 45th time, kick off with the Theme: Start with nothing
For me, it was only the 5th time entering — and I once again had a blast and would love to share some info about my entry.
My Entry for Ludum Dare 45 — Nothing but Ghosts and Clouds

My game with the title “Nothing but Ghosts and Clouds” is a basic Platformer. During brainstorming, I had a couple of ideas in which direction I wanted to go — from a god simulator to a puzzle game.
In retrospective, I originally sat out to develop the game as a puzzle platformer, where you start with nothing, not even colour, and would gradually unlock new abilities and ways to solve puzzles. This would be highlighted by colour changes, both in the background and for the character.
In the end, I ended up mismanaging my time, which led me to cutting too many corners. The Game is playable, and it is a nice prototype — but it definitely is not feature and level complete. The biggest challenges that I faced during the 48 hours were definitely were:
- Getting started in a completely new Engine (Construct3)
- Asset Creation (due to my lack of artistic knowledge and skill)
- Rebuilding everything with new Assets due to different sizes
- Creative Level Design
I follow up on especially the first part. Construct3 was a very pleasant Game Engine to work with, but it didn’t come without it’s hurdles. The JavaScript Integration was a bit wonky, and sometimes the engine was thinking differently then I was, leading to a lot of head scratching trying to resolve bugs.
If you want to know, what the basic workflow looked like, i had a small tool called ‘ChronoLapse’ running in the background, so the Timelapse of the weekend can be found embedded below.
If you are eager to try out the game I created, either head over to my personal homepage or the Game’s page on the Ludum Dare Homepage.
Results and Statistics
For myself, although I am pretty content with actually having finished a prototype. And, although short on time, I also played, tested and reviewed enough entries in order to reach the required 20 Votes to get a placement of ones game among all entries.

The total number of entries for this Ludum Dare broke 2.500 Entries and came up at 2.613.
Out of those, around 730 were Compo games.
My game received 29 votes in total, although one person didn’t rate the mood of my game. Games are scored on a scale from 1 to 5 stars and my game received a bit higher than average ratings, coming out at 3.4 Stars in Total.
From a placement point of view, this puts my game on the 231st overall place, ending up in the upper third of all entries.
For me, Ludum Dare is a fun programming side project from time to time, that helps me build new skills, strengthen my creativity and focus my mind on a new project for a short time with little distraction. Especially when you are taking part with some friends, it can be a fun experience — and you don’t even have to be able to program to take part. All kinds of Games are allowed to be able to enter — so it is also possible to submit Board or Card Games if that’s what you fancy.
Ludum Dare will be taking a break over the winter time, giving myself enough time to work on skills like the Piano and digital Art creation — and will be back in April 2020.
What about you? Have you every participated in a Game Jam? Are you interested in taking part? Let me know in the comments or reach out to me and let’s talk, looking forward to hear from you!
