The Ludum Dare 36 was a massive two part Jam and Compo. This time, the theme was “Ancient Technology”. This is one of the biggest online jams, so there were many, many entries. I covered as many as I could in my video compilation series. Below are some of my favorites, in no specific order.

Trireme is a fast and fun ship building game that has you custom building loads of ships! You are given different ship orders - some ships being long, others short, each with a sail and different colors. You must build the ship from left to right as fast as you can! As you select each piece of the ship to build, you will be given instructions to help you do what is needed. Chopping wood, sawing pieces and even painting are involved - each ask you to push a few keys over and over. The ship graphic will quickly change from one turn to the next, so make sure you are not still trying to chop wood when you need to be sawing. If you finish a section of the ship, the circle under that piece will turn green. Once the whole ship has green lights, you will move onto the next one. This game is simple, but very fun to play. See how many ships you can build in such a short time!

The Cave of Wonders is a mysterious point and click adventure that has you exploring technologies from the past, present, and future. You are in a strange, dark cave. Unsure of how you got here, you must go and explore the area and see what is waiting inside. You will soon find a giant, gem powered portal that will summon items from different times, allowing you to use these items to progress. There is a lot more to this cave then it seems, as there are two other levels - each with more items to use and gems to plug into the portal! The bottom level is more natural, and decorated with gems and waterfalls. Above you is a bright dorm-like area full of fun objects! You must figure out how to get to these levels so you can explore and collect more gems. Summon everything you can from the portal and learn about the different objects you have discovered. This game is brilliant, with a powerful message at the end.

Pyramid Builder is a super challenging arcade game that has you building ancient wonders using the power of Aliens! You are an alien controlling a spaceship. This ship is in charge of placing pieces of world known landmarks correctly. You have to drop these pieces down into the right place from the sky. This is no easy task - sometimes pieces don’t go where you think they will, causing the whole structure to be off balance. When you move the ship around, the piece will swing and sway, causing issues if you drop it before it balances out. At first, the landmarks are made of big sections, not giving you many pieces to drop down into the wrong place. As you get through these structures, you will be given ones with more challenge and more bits to place. After completing a building, you are given a rating and the option to move on. Its very hard to achieve an A+ rating, but maybe with some practice you can become the best alien builder there is!

SUNWARD is a super stylish game where you must hunt strange animals for their souls. You have a glowing blue spear that holds an ancient power. As your world is quickly burning, you must hunt animals and bring their spirits to the resting point in the middle of the land. If you collect enough souls to fill in the ritual point, you will be able to save yourself from the fire burning around you. The fire will start to kill off the animals and if you go into the fire, you will also die. You must shoot your spear out, hit an animal, and then take its soul and your spear before starting again. Each spirit follows you as a fire. Once you have enough, you can take it to the middle of the game to fill in the circles. This is going to be quite a challenge, as time is not on your side. Survive this massive fire with only this ancient tool on your side.

Babel is a fantastic arcade typing game that has you climbing up a massive tower! You have stolen the spellbook of Dark Majik! This book was on the bottom floor of the tower of Babel. Now, this tower is filling with lava, forcing you to go up! There are only a few floors that you can see above you in this tower. When you make it to the top level, you must stand in the center and type out a spell from the book of Dark Magik. These spells need to be typed fast, as the lava will not wait for anyone. Once you have typed out the spell, you will see the next few levels of the tower appear. Sometimes, there are spikes or large places without blocks. You must quickly find the path to the top and get there to do your next spell and continue. Make your way up the tower of babel to keep the spellbook!

Supercontinent LTD is a mysterious point and click adventure that gives you the task of attempting to hack into a large company. When exploring the offices of the company Supercontinent LTD, you find some sort of old technology instead of the futuristic machines you are used to dealing with. You soon figure out how to use this technology - a landline phone - with the help of the guy who hired you. As you start to use this phone to call people, using your voice changer to pretend to be other people, you find that the company is pulling off a major coup tonight! You can find information around the office, change your voice as long as your partner finds medical records, and use this telephone to connect all of the dots and figure out what is happening. This is not going to be easy as there are many little operations at play that you did not know about. Figure out what is going on under the surface of this company without even using your hacking skills.

Forever Someday is a deep, alternative game. The whole game is full of meaning and each page of the story has a reason behind it. This game seems to deal with depression that came after a major break up. You seem to be with someone you love, until suddenly you are not. Everything changes after that - but there is nothing you can do but wait for time to heal you. Each scene in the game has a different task for you to figure out then achieve. Some are quite straight forward like hitting call or knocking on a door. Do not rush each action of this game, instead listen to it and watch it. As you play through this game, you will have the chance to see a very delicate part of the developer’s life - to understand what they were going through and how they dealt with it. This breakup hits you hard - so you must figure out how to move on and be happy again.

Avastory is a super well made platformer that has you exploring a cave of birds. You are in this cave without any instructions. All you have is a gun and the need to continue forward. It is up to you, whether you kill the birds in this cave or continue onwards ignoring them. As you make your way through this black and white world, you come across doors you can enter. These doors will take you to new part of the cave system, allowing you to explore and go deeper. At the end of this cave there is a giant bird, gardening some stone that you want to get. This boss is quite the challenge, but I am sure with some luck you can achieve it! This game is not finished yet, but is super well done. I hope the developer finds the time to finish this awesome little world.

Blocky Hill is a charming and unique tower defense type game that has you defending your home from all sorts of baddies. Your house sits on a deserted island in the hills. It is quite a peaceful place until the chickas start invading. It is up to you to defend your house, using the terrain to your advantage. You are able to set different types of medieval traps on the land, depending on where you place them. Some traps can stand on their own, like lightning towers, while others, such as shooting spears and rolling boulders, must be hooked on the side of blocks. You can purchase blocks to place traps on, but it is more cost efficient to use your surroundings, and match the right traps to how it is naturally laid out, to stop these invaders. At first, the chickas will come at a slow pace following the path through your land. After a while, or in harder levels, you will see boats start to appear and circle the land, breaking towers placed on the island. You must defend from all sides - both on the paths and against the boats in the water. The game comes with over 300 different maps to choose from, so there are plenty of homes to defend!

Fireworks Grandmaster has you making custom fireworks for customers who need them! Each day a customer comes to your firework shop looking for some hand made fireworks for their specific needs. You will need to listen to their story - why they need the fireworks display, what they are doing with it, then design the perfect fireworks for them! Each firework is comprised of ingredients and later, designs. Different ingredients are made of different minerals and resources - and each one of these means a different thing. You can scroll over the designs and ingredients to learn what they mean. Then you must put them in the firework to get the desired effect for your customer. Once your firework show is complete, you can watch it light up the sky and see what your customer thinks. If you do not please them, you will lose respect and not be able to become the fireworks grandmaster!

Emily Morrison’s Garden is a super challenging, hardcore survival planting game. You are trying to keep a whole alien planet alive by planting lots of flowers around the surface. The seasons of this planet slowly take over the land in sections, changing the environment as the day passes. The seeds that you have to plant only work in specific seasons, as shown by a dial at the top of the screen. This dial will show a picture of a well bloomed plant in the start of the plant’s growing season and a dying plant when the plant dies. You must pay attention to the season affecting a planted tree by standing near it and watching the timer tick on. These trees need to be planted in the right season and harvested before they die to collect more seeds to plant once again. This planet is dying, so you must keep growing plants to keep the life flowing under the surface. If the planet runs out of life, it will die, and you will die with it. This game does a couple of cycles to get you into the idea of the game, but once you get planting seeds, you will be passing the days helping the planet live on as well.

STONECONF 12,016 BC is a challenging adventure game that has you trying to take your invention to StoneConf. You are a caveman scientist in the stone age who has invented the first ever wheel. You want to show the world this wheel, but cavemen live far away from each other. So you have decided to take it to StoneConf - a conference that shows off the best new inventions of the stone age! This event starts in 10 days. You must make the journey there in time, without dying on the way. First, you must decide how much time you want to spend packing - as you need supplies to make the journey. Once you are off, you will face many different obstacles. Spiders, bears, cliffs, and traders all can be found along the way. You can decide how to react to these different events and maybe even come out with more supplies! But, you must not let them hold you back. You are never sure how far you are from StoneConf, so you need to keep going forward! Will you be able to make it? If not, the world will never get to see your invention!

Spectacular Stride Machine is a super fun walking simulator that has you knocking down victorian looking people. You have invented the Spectacular Stride Machine - a machine that helps you walk through town. While in this, you are able to knock people over, and fly. You can knock over as many people as you want, but you must avoid all of the black lined things in the road. Balconies are one of the biggest things that trip you up. If you run into any object once, you will break your invention and have to restart. This machine is also very heavy, so you must keep it balanced by tilting left or right, so that it does not fall. Do not wreck your spectacular machine! Keep it level and reak tons of havoc in your town.

Pyramid a platformer based in an ancient pyramid. Aliens have left the remnants of ancient technology, and you must use them to upgrade your skills and fight your way through this pyramid. Each level has various enemies - bats, wolves, people that chase you, and stationary towers that shoot at you. You are able to shoot back at them to destroy them. Once you kill an enemy, a key at the top of the screen will fill up. If you can completely fill it, you can move onto the next level. If the enemies start to attack you, your health will deplete until you die. At the end of the level you will enter a new room with a tower that will allow you to pick from three random upgrades. These upgrades include; speed, arrow speed, damage, charged attack, and much more. After you have selected your upgrade, you can move onto a new and more challenging level. If you can make it through this pyramid, you will have to take on the final boss! If you die, you will have to restart at the beginning once again.

Anachroma is a super unique game that has you collecting triangles and starts to bring the world to life! You start off in a grey world - no color anywhere. You are able to jump around and move to different parts of this map. Eventually, you will find a triangle that you can reach. This triangle will add color to the world! Once you start collecting the stars, the world around you changes. The stars allow you to access the world differently - you can start running into corners to rotate the world and allow you to go to new places! After the second star, you can flip into colorful shapes, allowing you to move through this other world and get to more triangles! This game is challenging, but fun to explore. There are also circles here and there, that give you a some of the story when you run into them. Can you bring color back to this whole world?

Chadwick the Charismagnetic is an arcade game that has you controlling the character and environment movement with a giant magnet! Chadwick is trapped in a circular dungeon with heavy armor. He can only be moved around by the force of a giant magnet located outside the dungeon. This magnet is trapped outside the walls, but you can move it around the outside to attract Chadwick towards you. This magnet pulls anything made of metal - this includes spiked pillars! Spiked pillars can be used to kill the hordes of dragons that appear, but if Chadwick collides with them, he will also die. You must move Chadwick around to collect gems, but avoid traps and dragons. Once you get hit by anything you will die and have to restart. Each level randomly generates the items that appear, so you never know what awaits in the dungeon!

The Polaroid is a beautiful game that has you recreating photos in a strange house. You have appeared in a home that you seem to know nothing about. There are some old polaroids on the wall. These polaroids are of the room you are in, and you must use them and your camera to take a picture that lines the polaroid up with the environment around it. Once you take the picture, the missing object in the room that is shown in the picture will appear in the room. This item will then need to be used for the next polaroid you pick up. Some objects in the room can be changed or moved - paintings tilted, books moved, to get the perfect environment for your photo. If you try to take a photo that is not quite right, the game will give you hints so you can try and figure out how to correct it. This game is quite relaxing to play through!

Poramid is a challenging pyramid builder that has you dealing with harsh clients. You are looking to build different pyramids for different customers who would like them! Some want pyramids to party in, others just want to hang out in them. To build these pyramids, you must pick up pieces from your tent, decide how you want to bring them to the site, then get them to be placed inside the guidelines. Some pieces will need designs on them, which you can control from the screen that allows you to choose how to transport these blocks. You can walk each block over - though this is a slow way of doing it, it is quite percies! You can drag pieces with a rope which is much faster. You can catapult blocks over - quite fun but very challenging, and lastly, you can use Alien spaceships to move them! Whatever the way you do it, you must get the building built before the timer runs out. Hopefully it is good enough, so your client likes you. If not, they will give you a bad grade and you will need to try again.

Video Telefaxer 570X is a realistic fax machine and other ancient technology simulator! As a secretary in an office, you must use this slow, old machinery to send faxes, record VHS tapes, and many other things. This machine is a fax machine, VCR, washing machine, coffee machine and much more rolled all into one! Since this machine combines so many different machines, it requires many, many manuals to control. Orders will appear in the upper left hand side of your screen. Each order has a page number of the manual you will need to go to. You can click on that order to open that specific manual - a real manual from a real piece of technology! You will then need to use that as a guide to complete the job. Sometimes the same job requires two different manuals, so always click to open that manual in a new tab before trying to do the task. You must get these orders done before the time runs out, or you risk losing your job! Try to get your job done with this confusing fax machine!

Steam Heart is a super fun steampunk styled shooter that has you defending a golden cog. People have started to go insane over a golden cog - something that has incredible power. The world has gone into chaos. You must go through level after level, destroying everything in your path, as the world starts to break down around you. Each level starts off with an area you can walk through, destroying robots along the way. These robots will shoot at you and attack you, but you can shoot them back. They will die in a huge explosion! There are letters in bubbles that you can pick up in each level to change your gun to different types - some are more laser like, others like flame throwers, some with bullets that bounce around. At the end of each world level, you will face an epic boss that is related to the last environment! Each of these bosses work differently, attacking you in a new way, and challenging you to defeat them. This game is super well made and very fun to play!

Storm O.S. is a super stylish game that has you exploring your newfound freedom as a robot. Your master has died, so you are left to see what the world is like. You can look around your masters old room until you find a floppy disk. Curious about what it is, you go out into the desert to see if you can make it work! You can explore and interact with different places and people to see what is going on in this world. This game is quite short, there is only one terminal which you can activate with your floppy disk. You can find another disk for a different program to play around with as well. Most of this game isn’t explained, so it takes a bit of trial and error. However, the environment is beautiful to walk around. See if you can find the ancient game to play on this old computer!

NEONAUT has you flying a spaceship through the galaxy while being attacked by pirates! You are trying to complete loads of trade contracts to earn 50.000 credits. In doing these missions, you have to travel around the galaxy. You can do this at a slower speed, taking the time, or at hyper speed, taking far less time. Each contract has a time limit, encouraging you to travel at hyper speed, but if you travel at that speed, you can be ambushed by space pirates. These pirates will jam your navigation console and break bits of your ship. Quickly you must use the navigation console to move your ship around and shoot the pirates down before repairing everything else in your ship. Time does slow down during combat to give you some breathing room for repairs. Your ship is also quite old, so it may just malfunction from time to time. You need to keep the ship intact, avoid pirates, and make as much money as possible! This game is super fun to play but takes a lot of management to complete.

Something is Wrong with this Museum is a super funny, challenging platformer that makes you explore a museum of old technologies from the past. You were on your way to an interview, but showed up far too early. So you decided to take a look inside the best museum in your town; the Museum of Everything. It claims to have everything! In exploring this museum you find that the inside does not like like the outside. This museum is massive, and as you go deeper, quite dangerous. You can explore and see the exhibits, learning funny “facts” about each item on display. They have comical descriptions such as the N64 being called that because only 64 were made! As you get deeper into this place, things become a bit… off. You meet the spooky owner of the museum who instead of helping you get out, leads you deeper into this enormous building. Some floors are quite unforgiving, with spikes moving along the bottom. If you die, the whole building seems to tilt, making it more mind warping to continue. Sometimes you are upside down, with many bottomless pits to cross. It’s a challenge to get back out of this museum, but the exhibits inside are so worth it.

Stone Age Clicker is an addictive clicker game that has you focused on building a huge civilization. You are controlling your own world. You must click on trees, rocks, fruit trees, and water to gain resources that keep your people going. With those resources, you can build homes and buildings that your citizens can then work at to gain more resources. Your end goal is to build a huge, expensive statue for your town. Some resources can be transformed into new items, like clay into brick. This will help you unlock new items to build and continue growing. Sometimes, bad things randomly happen, like the people in your town will get sick and start dying. You have to make sure that some laborers are still working to continue to keep the resources coming in. The world around you will also expand as you use resources, so you have an unlimited world to explore. This game is really fun to run alongside your work - your own little town that grows.

Ancient Invaders is a super fun, single or multiplayer game that puts you in the place of treasure hunters on a strange planet! There are two differently armed treasure hunters; a flamethrower wielding player and a sword wielding player. In both singleplayer and multiplayer you can switch between these two players. I played this game in multiplayer mode with Lewis as the second sword holding treasure hunter. You travel through the land, looking to destroy stones so that you can take the gems from inside them. Each stone must be torched until it is molten, then hit with the sword until a green checkmark appears. Once all the sections of a stone are broken, it will release a gem you can collect. Then, you can move onto the next one by following the arrow around the map! Some stones are guarded by tribesmen in tents! You must destroy their tents and continue on your quest. This game is super fun to play with your friend! Mind your health, as you need to be away from danger to regain health!

Bro-Mag Arena is a short but fun local multiplayer game that has you competing against your friends to be the best Bro in the Arena. You and up to 3 of your friends all will face head to head in three challenges! The first one is outrunning giant boulders, the second is catching dino eggs, and the final challenge is sawing a log! Whoever wins the majority of these short games is the winner over-all. Though all of these games are simple, the audio to this game is super funny! The announcer tells you to keep going and to be the best bro! You need controllers to play Bro-Mag Arena, but it is a super fun, short party game!

Madness of the Golden Relic is a local multiplayer game that has you racing to the gold relic in the middle of the screen! Each of the four player start at different sides of the arena. Along the open area around the golden relic there are traps, levers, buttons, and rocks that you can land on. Each of these tiles does something different - buttons and levers activate traps around the area, rocks block you off, and traps kill you. You can activate a button or lever to turn on some traps your friend is standing on! This will kill them and reset them at their starting tile. You must get to the relic first and not die along the way. A green and red bar runs along the top of the screen. You can only move to a new tile when this bar is green, so time your moves correctly. This game is quite challenging and takes a few plays before you understand what is going on, but once you have a good path to follow you can make it through!

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