The Ludum Dare 37 was a massive two part Jam and Compo. This time, the theme was “One Room”. 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.

Sonder is a puzzle game where you are directing patients in a waiting room. You watch over the waiting room - you have been doing it so long that you know the patients, and when most people come in, and who they like to sit next too. You have never asked what’s wrong with them or why they are here, but you know you can make their stay better by finding the best seat for them.

Each day there are a set number of people that need to find a seat in the waiting room. You must read the needs and requests of the patient and then find a good spot to place them. At night, the janitor changes everything around, so you will not be able to rely on the placement of the waiting room. This, along with the change in each patient’s preference, makes each level unique. As you play more of Sonder you will really get to know about each of the patient’s - hearing about their lives and connecting with them. Sonder is a really lovely puzzle game, allowing you to make a difference in these character’s lives, even in a little way.

In One Fell Swoop is a puzzle game that has you cleaning up trash as fast and efficiently as possible. You are a janitor who’s only job is to clean up trash. You do this by finding a path around the massive empty room, and running into as much trash as you can in that path. The path you travel on can bounce off walls - to help you collect more trash.
Collecting more than one piece of trash in one run does give you a slight combo, however sometimes it is just not possible.

As you master sliding around these rooms, the game gets more challenging. Your boss limits your moves, gives you a time limit, and challenges you with rooms that have corridors. There is a lot of trash in each room, but the real fun is trying to quickly find good paths to take, and then watching your character bounce around, cleaning the floor as it goes. In One Fell Swoop is a pretty fun game to play, complete with small cutscenes from your boss.

One Room Dungeon has you running around rooms, activating tiles, and avoiding enemies.You are looking to blunder through as many rooms as possible, lighting up tiles along the floor as you go. Once you have lit all of the tiles in a room, you are able to bash into the wall, which refreshes the room full of new tiles, enemies, and some health!

As you run through room after room, different monsters and bombs appear, as well as tiles that make it more challenging to run around. If the monsters - ghosts, balls on chains, archers, zombies - touch you or strike you, you will lose a life. It is simple to walk over another health tile to gain a life back, but sometimes there is just so much going on at once, you might miss it and bash into a wall instead. One Room Dungeon is a very fast paced game, so there isn’t much time to think - just flail around and run over your tiles.

One Room Hotel is a super fun game that has you building a hotel room by room. Each day you start off by adding rooms to your hotel. There are a variety of different rooms, each with an activity your guests might enjoy. Once you have built as much as you can, your day will start. You are managing the main bedroom - of which there is only one. The guests will arrive and spend a short amount of time in the room, before requesting to be brought to one of the many activities.

The catch is, only one guest can do an activity at a time and only one can be in the bedroom. You must shift guests out of activities and into other ones, to make room for guests requesting that activity. Sometimes, you are unable to please everyone, so you may have to cut a guests time short swimming for example and move them to a massage, even though they didn’t ask for it. If enough guests wait too long, the rating of the hotel will go down, and you will lose. You do get to add more rooms at the end of each day, but as your hotel grows, your clientele grows with it.

Puppertrator is a dog detective game that all takes place in a single room. You have been kidnapped and thrown into the middle of an investigation regarding Fluffy Flufferton’s secret stash of bones. This stash has been stolen, and Fluffy Flufferton has evidence that you took it. Dotted around the room is all of the investigative work that Fluffy Flufferton has done, which you can interact with and investigate for yourself.

You know you have not stolen the secret stash of bones, but Flufferton will simply not take your word on it. Instead, you must use his work to figure out who has done it, and present your case to the kidnapper himself. Some of the stuff around you is irrelevant, so it does take some time to wade through the clues and figure out who the real suspects are. Once you have pieced together the mystery yourself, you must explain your reasoning and hope it is accepted by Fluffy Flufferton. He may have some other evidence to counter you and prove you wrong, so make sure you choose your suspect wisely!

s p r i n g c l e a n i n g is a surprisingly simple game that keeps you addicted through random waving text. You are a roomba (those robot vacuum things) whose job it is to clean up a very messy room. This is done by hovering over or around garbage, which is sucked into your vacuum. Once you have cleaned the whole room, you must return to your charging station for the next day.

All of this is very simple - the room doesn’t change much, other than the lights flickering on or off. Sometimes the junk is a bit hidden,l but it is always the same amount. At the end of every day, an interesting message is displayed. At first these messages are very friendly in nature - encouraging you. Soon, however, it starts to feel more like a conversation with the developer as it goes into aspects of the jam itself. Having these little conversation sparks your curiosity and drives you forward in the game.

The One Room Experiment is a dungeon crawler that all takes place in one room! You are trying to collect lanterns in a dungeon. This dungeon is not a normal dungeon however, and instead it all takes place in a single room. As you enter doors, a claw sets up the enemies and the tiles flip over to reveal a new floor. This all happens quite fast and before your eyes, a whole new room is made.

Each room is different - some with spikes or monsters in them. You are able to shoot fire at the monsters and jump over spikes, and if you kill all of the monsters in a room, a claw will take away their bodies and give you a lantern. This lecture can then be lit with your fire before the claw will add it to your sidebar. The One Room Experiment is a really fun take on dungeon games!

Home is Where The Heart Is is a quirky little dating game where you are looking to earn the trust of a few strange characters! You are a giant house with no one to live inside of you. You want to achieve the occupation of at least three people living inside your home, so you must go and make some friends. To do this, you can interact with various people and try to tell them what they want to hear. Some of the characters have little missions you can go on to appease them.

Once you have made them happy, they will release hearts. You do need to get three people to trust you however, before you will be content in the new world. I really enjoyed the strangeness of being a giant home, trying to help wacky characters so they will accept you as their home.

A Buzzy Bee is an adorable game about a bee who is packing to move. You play as this bee, who is very excited to be moving to a new hive. With nothing to worry about, you are going to go start your packing - after all, your sister has already done all of her packing so it should be easy. When you enter your hive, you find that she has slept instead of packed, so you have a lot of work to do!

You must pick up objects and toss them into the correctly labeled box. You can do this by throwing the item towards the block - it will move forward until it hits a wall. Once your box is packed, it will say ‘OK’ on the top, and you can take it to the cart. While you are packing, a giant bear’s paw will also swipe things around, changing the location of everything on the screen. Once the cart is finally packed, you must shuffle the boxes so they all fit before taking off to the next location. A Buzzy Bee is a very cute looking game - though there isn’t too many levels, it is still quite fun.

KILLOBIT is a super challenging game that has you poppin bubbles. You start off with different weapons - a single shot upwards that has a short delay before blasting a line downwards like a wall, a ‘galaxy’ shot out bullets in a spinning patern, and a rocket looking shot that brings lines of lasers across any surface it meets. These bullets not only pop the bubbles but also will destroy you.

With only one life, this is an intense game to play. The bubbles when popped, do split into more bubbles, so you will need to be quick in eliminating them all. Each screen changes colors when you die, but will have the same map, for you to make another attempt. KILLOBIT is not for people who easily rage quit!

Maggie’s Grinning Soul is a mysterious story based game that has you playing the lead detective on a physicic case. You are investigating the death of a young girl named Maggie. Maggie died suddenly - everyone thinks it is due to a heart attack, however with her state of health and age, it is very unlikely. She is haunting her room and as a paranormal detective, you will need to communicate with her and find the real reason she died.

You get to do this by exploring the room. Some objects will trigger ideas on what to ask her. Once you have picked up an important object, you will have the option to ask some questions via the Ouija board. Some questions that you may get will upset Maggie. If you ask too many upsetting questions - questions about her personal life or that she takes offense to, you will die. You must ask relevant things to the case. Maggie’s room does have a lot of stuff in it, sometimes clicking on objects after you have spoken to Maggie triggers new questions, so be sure to listen to her and try to think about objects that have not worked previously. The voice acting for Maggie’s Grinning Soul is also pretty well done, adding depth to this game.

Levelone is a creepy platformer where you play a character being watched by the developer. You are a small character almost living in a box. The developer watches above you, experimenting with your environment and the controls that you are allowed to do. This developer does not view you as an equal, but instead looks at you as both his creation and a toy.

This developer gives you very specific commands and gets quite upset when you do not follow them. If you mess with him enough, he adds new things to your box and provides some entertainment. This developer is very short tempered, so be sure not to make him too mad, unless you want to deal with his wrath!

Coincidence is an immersive game where you are someone trapped inside of a jail cell. You get to experience some of the different days that you are in the cell. Instead of being there each day, you get to experience select days that have a bit more to them. During these days, you are extremely interested in escaping, so therefore, you must look around the cell and use what you can find in order to escape.

Most of the time, you are not successful. It is very hard to escape from a prison, as you do not have everything you would need to break out. You can keep trying though! Explore the room, see what you have to say about various objects, and don’t forget to eat before moving onto the next day.

How To Cope With Boredom and Loneliness - A Guide For The Isolated - A Documentary Filmmaker Simulator is a super funny, slightly sad, point and click adventure that has you making a documentary about the life of a man who has been grounded for 30 years. You are trying to select three objects in Harold’s room to talk about in your documentary. You can view different items in his room, thinking of soundbites for the documentary. Sometimes his mother, or perhaps Harold himself, will talk about the objects and give you a peek into if they are worth talking about.

Once you have selected three items, you get to watch the produced video, with full responses from Harold about the objects you picked. You also will receive some reviews based on how interesting the TV show is. This documentary is super fun to watch - it is everything you’d imagine in a documentary and more. Harold has a sad life, but it is worth documenting!

Good Impression is a really addictive game about cleaning up your room before your mother comes to visit! Your mother wants to drop by your new apartment tonight. She has not given you much notice, so you only have 3 minutes to get everything where it belongs. Thankfully, your entire house is one room - a studio apartment. There is everything you would need; a closet, desk, fridge, bed, washing machine, closet, laundry basket, stove, and a sink.

You will need to use all of these areas to help clean up your room. Spills of liquids dot the floor, each one needing to be mopped up with some sort of cloth. Dishes cannot just be pushed in the sink but need to be washed and put away properly. Other items that litter the floor need to be put where they belong before mother arrives. If you hide everything in your room, something that you can do, your mother will notice and tell you what you have done wrong. You will really need to work hard to get this room good enough to pass the mom test!

Bedtime Fright is an adorable puzzle game about turning off the lights before bed. Your father has told you a million times to not leave all the lights on in the house when you go to bed. However, you have a phobia of darkness, so you always keep the lights on. You are allowed to have one bedroom light on, but you must turn off all of the other lights in the house before you go to bed.

Some rooms have only one light, so you must only enter the room once, while the light is on. Others have two which require you to enter the room twice to turn them both off. A horrible monster is following you around on your quest to turn off lights, so you cannot enter a room the monster is in - even if the lights are on. If you enter a dark room, the monster will race towards you and scare you. Make sure you turn off all the lights in the house before you return to your room to face your dad.

Behind the Wallpaper is an emotional WWII point and click adventure where you play a young girl living in hiding. You and your family are stuck in hiding, staying behind the wall of a shop that your parents owned and made a lot of money from. They were quite successful before the war started, but now it seems that people blame you for the war - you are Jewish after all.

Your mother, father, and little brother all live behind this shop wall, sharing the space and making as little noise as possible for most of the day. You do have a close friend running the shop for you, which works for a small amount of time, but things get worse as the war drags on. Your world is in this tiny space where things are not really okay, but you are able to try your best at helping your parents and brother. You can also ask questions and learn more about the situation. In Behind the Wall you are able to play one girl’s personal story in her own world behind the wall.

The Recursive Dollhouse is a trippy puzzle game that has you venturing deeper and deeper into a series of seemingly never-ending doll houses. You are able to jump into a doll house and see what’s inside. Normally there is at least one other dollhouse that you may be able to jump into. Sometimes this dollhouse is blocked by a locked wall - which may need a key for, or maybe a code in order to unlock it. You might not have what is needed to get into the next doll house, so you have to go into a different available dollhouse, or use the rainbow spring to jump out.

As you explore these dollhouses it’s very easy to get lost and start forgetting where you have previously been, and also where you need to go next. This is all part of the game - sometimes you are forced to go backwards just to end up finding a new key or new way to a new place. The Recursive Dollhouse is a really interesting game to explore, challenging you to stick around, jumping from room to room.

The Chinese Room is a challenging narrative that has you trying to manage the human body while extracting information about a rival Triad. You play a robot who is controlling a human body. This human is Yu Jie, a person of great importance to the Eternal Flame Triad. You are dining with the head of the enemy team, a great friend of Yu Jies. This old friend is very suspicious of you, as Yu Jie has been missing for a while, and there is this huge rumor going around about human-robots looking for information… You will have to convince them that you are Yu, while controlling bodily functions like breathing, eating, and even farting. This is much more challenging than one might think, as various keys on your keyboard show you the actions you can do. Some need to be done - breathing, blinking, beating your heart. Others portray emotions that you can use as a response.

You are digging for information to help your triad against these enemies. You will really have to fool this leader in order to get the information needed, so make sure you take care of your body as you attempt to get them to open up about their whole secret plan!

My Friend Bubba is an adorable game where you get to play a child playing with your friend. On this play date you can play with numerous different toys that are lying around your bedroom! You are looking to play with your friend and see what your imagination leads you to create with the toys in your room. You can pick up and check out items in your room, which sometimes causes your friend to start playing a game with you. You can jump on the bed, shoot nerf guns, draw on the walls, and stack blocks.

Sometimes, interacting with items in a specific order or playing with toys after you have done something else will unlock a different game to play - more focused on your imagination. At the end of each day, you will get stars based on what achievements you have attained. The names of these achievements serve as hints to the other games that you can end up playing. My Friend Bubba is pure fun, exploring the amazing world of a child’s imagination.

Tree House Quest is an adorable adventure game that has you trying to get back inside your tree house! You have been kicked out by your evil older brother and the only way to get back in is to collect some coins! These coins are deep in the sandbox, which is blocked by a giant mound of sand. So you must find a way to get around this.

Tree House Quest all takes place inside your backyard. You must explore around to find items or pets that will help you get to other areas of the game. There are also many enemies in this game - veggies that need defeating, gnomes that need avoiding, and robots. Different enemies have different ways of dealing with them - veggies have to be fought with your yo-yo, and gnomes cannot see you at all. As you make your way through this game, you will also see beautiful cutscenes that show off some of the story of the game.

Artis@n has you crafting mysterious items in a cyberpunk world! You are an inventor, looking to meet the needs of the citizens of the town. They look to you to create various objects that you need. You have a variety of materials dotted around your room. You are able to pick up two of the items and combine them together - creating either a whole new object, or creating a mashup of the two that don’t quite work together.

It seems like the people of this town do not have the guts to disagree with you, so they keep whatever you create. These objects can not always be failures, as they will play an important role in the future. So experiment, see what you create, and try to meet the needs of the people around you!

Handle with Care is a funny physics based game that has you carrying around expensive works of art and placing them in a pretty packed exhibit. It seems that the last few vases and statues of the museum need to be placed in an exhibition of already placed priceless arts. You must carry the remaining works of art to their proper display places, without breaking too many other objects in the room.

As you pick up objects, you begin to struggle to walk, wavering back and forth and taking randomly huge steps. This movement can be detrimental to the vases and statues dotted around the room. If you start destroying the objects around you, your score will go into the negative. You must work your way around art pieces and even up a ramp to make sure this place looks good enough to open the museum!

Lost in Pandation is a really beautiful, difficult survival game that has you playing a robot cyborg in an apocalypse-ridden world. The whole world has fallen apart, but you have survived and been left in an abandoned building. It is cold, so freezing to death seems like your likely demise. You must plant and manage bamboo in order to stay alive.

At first, there is some abandoned wood that is perfect for burning. There are also some piles of bamboo and some planters you can attempt to plant them in. You must stay by the lit fire (fueled by the wood or bamboo) and allow your body to heat up. Then you can move about the building exploring and placing bamboo to create simple ladders to climb up. It does take some time for bamboo to grow, but once it does, you will be given two piles. One to replant and another to use.

After some time, if you haven’t frozen to death, you can start to find new objects that will unlock new planters or help you get out of this building. It is not going to be an easy task, and with death always within site, you must plan your moves carefully and be very patient!

FIIL Mark 37 is another management game that puts you in the position of trying to survive. You are a scientist who has locked themselves in their home in hopes to finish your own machine. There are several other machines of your creation also inside your home. At first, you do not know what these are for, but over time you will learn to rely on each one.

One of the machines creates water, one creates food, and another gives you more energy. Some machines cost food or water to work, so you will need to be careful with how much you use them. You, as a human, also require food and water to survive, so you have to make sure you watch your own personal supplies so that you do not starve. As you build your project, you will notice your project bar fill up. You must finish creating your project in time before you starve or dehydrate.

Icara’s Takeoff is a very unique spin on a sliding puzzle. You play an angel who is attempting to collect all of her feathers. Your feathers appear around the area one at a time. You then have a short amount of time to make it over to the next feather before you will lose. Some feathers are unreachable and that is where the slow-mo mode comes in use.

You are able to change into a slow-mo mode that lets you shift around the environment like a slide puzzle. Your character will stay on whichever piece she is on, as the world moves around her. You can then use this to get the new feather in a place where you can grab it. Over time, obstacles start appearing. These come in the form of moving spike balls, which can move through the game as you shift around pieces. Icara’s Takeoff is a super challenging game, but it is pretty fun trying to slide around the world in a way that makes it flow and make sense!

The Failures of Felix is a slightly rough, but very cute game full of classic arcade minigames! You play Felix, a child who has woken up from a nightmare. Your parent’s bedroom door is locked, so you cannot get in. Instead, you must use the toys around the room to distract you from being scared.
As you interact with the different red items in the room, it will display a game for you to play. These games mirror classic arcade games like Asteroids, Donkey Kong, and PacMan, just to name a few. If you complete these games, you will gain peace, but if you start to loose, you will begin to feel scared once again. See if you can help Felix get back to bed in this cute game!

Xenopunch is a space age arena fighting game that has you trying to survive against waves and waves of aliens. You start off with just two moves - a punch and a dash. You can move around the space age arena as aliens are beamed into take you on. An announcer and crowd watch behind the area, cheering you on.

In Xenopunch, you have to face on various easy enemies and make it to minibosses. These minibosses will challenge your strength, but once you defeat them, you gain their attack. These new attacks really help you overcome smaller enemies and make it further in the arena! This game is super fun to play, complete with polished graphics and awesome sound effects.

One Rooms is a bizarre yet fantastic isometric puzzler that has you playing through seriously strange situations! You start off locked in your room, apparently by your landlord. Your only option is to call 911, or starve to death. Deciding you’re not ready to die, you call the police. But, just your luck, the police have been filled with unhelpful robots who cannot really help your needs.

After some frustration, a chest bursts through your window. Inside is a talking stone that takes you to a whole new world and that’s where the game really begins. Now that you are understanding the situation you are in, you can use this new block to change the title of the room you are in. Different room titles, typed out by you, let you explore new areas. You can type out the room names by adding one or two letters to the word ‘One Room’, and if it is correct, your friendly brick will take you there! Some rooms seem to purely be there for fun, but others are there as a way to help out the giant totems that are in this room your block brought you too.

You must talk to mystical totems, explore strange new rooms, and hopefully make it back to your home with the front door unlocked!

OneRoom is a very interesting and slightly creepy game that has you trying to get information out of an online chatroom. You have been sent in for an unknown reason, but it seems like everyone in this room is quite friendly. You must figure out why you are here and what you have to do, before they figure out you are not one of them.

Everyone in the chat is talking about some sort of game jam, you get the chance to try out these little games and interact with them before they figure out that you aren’t who you say you are. OneRoom is a short, interesting game that is not suitable for children. There is a lot going on behind this game jam and in this chat room. Can you figure out what is going on?

The Library is a beautiful rhythm based game that has you playing the music in various books. Each book has the title of a different element. These elements will change the room once you have played their song. You can play their song by selecting the book, pulling it off the shelf, and beginning to play the piano.

Once the book is out, you must hit the arrows in the correct order as the line crosses them. The keys you need to hit are on music note paper, showing you line after line on top of each other. If you complete the song well, the room will change, and you can even try a ‘hard’ mode on each book after doing it the first time! The Library is beautiful in all ways - graphically, with it’s music, and with the transformation of the room you are in.

Hotel Z is a zombie shooter that has you aware of your surroundings. You have made it into the last hotel room before sunset. Now, there is only darkness and zombies outside. You can stay in this room, as long as you don’t damage it too much. You and your two friends must survive the night, fighting off zombies, but not causing any collateral damage.

Your friends work as stationary people who will shoot zombies nearby. You can also switch to them and try out their weapons. One of you has a machine gun, the other bombs, and the third a flame thrower. Zombies also run into furniture and bits of the room, causing damage, so you will need to make sure they are not left to roam. If the room becomes too damaged, you will be kicked out of the hotel! Hotel Z is a super nice looking, very challenging, but very fun to play.

This last Ludum Dare has just ended, check out all of the awesome games here.

#LDJAM #LD37 #Sonder #InOneFellSwoop #OneRoomDungeon #OneRoomHotel #Puppertrator #springcleaning #TheOneRoomExperiment #HomeIsWhereTheHeartIs #ABuzzyBee #KILLOBIT #MaggiesGrinningSoul #Levelone #Coincidence #HowToCopeWithBoredomAndLonelinessAGuideForTheIsolatedADocumentaryFilmmakerSimulator #GoodImpression #BedtimeFright #BehindTheWallpaper #TheRecursiveDollhouse #TheChineseRoom #MyFriendBubba #BullyBullyClassroom #TreeHouseQuest #Artis@n #HandleWithCare #LostInPandation #FIILMark37 #IcarasTakeoff #TheFailuresOfFelix #Xenopunch #OneRooms #OneRoom #TheLibrary #HotelZ