In case you hadn’t heard, last weekend was Ludum Dare 41 which means --once again-- we’re flooded with awesome jam games on the site. This compo’s theme was “Combine 2 incompatible genres” and the entries are about as wild as you’d expect. Our team has been combing through the submissions this week and have a Collection live now, and we have a page of all the entries if you want to dive in yourself. Here are some of my personal favorite games from last weekend.

YOU LEFT ME

I’ve got to admit something to you right here and right now: I’ve been sleeping on Angela He’s games. Sure she’s uploaded a ton of games in her painterly style that look unlike anything else but I’ve never taken the time to stop and check them all out. That is, until this weekend. Angela developed YOU LEFT ME as a part of Ludum Dare 41 and I’m hooked on her work now.

YOU LEFT ME is a sort of visual novel/ escape game/ time management puzzler that you could stop and stare at for hours. He’s visual style is on full display here and the writing is cutting and personal in a way that fans of her work will immediately recognize. YOU LEFT ME is one of the more accessible games I’ve played this week, but it’s one that is worth way more than its free price tag.

Check, Please

Check, Please is not a hard game to describe. It’s basically a dating sim with the control scheme from Surgeon Simulator but in the interest of keeping this blog approachable I’ll go into a little more depth. Check, Please sees the player sat across from a woman on a date, but unable to control anything other than their right hand with the mouse. What follows is a slapstick misadventure in which your date asks you to do the mundane, but with all of the precision of a drunk moose. The end result is a fancy dinner table in which everything ends up on the floor after you begin to swing your lone arm wildly in the face of an unflinching date.

Tempo Quest

I’ve got a personal fondness for jam games partially because they offer up rough experiments that may not work, but are interesting explorations of a concept that don’t have to turn a profit. Tempo Quest fits this bill perfectly. The devs at pixel-boy decided to mash up roguelikes and rhythm games and what follows is a weird DDR controlled adventure about playing music with up to 3 friends in a zelda-esque overworld. It’s a fun romp (although I didn’t get a chance to play it with friends) but it does have some issues. There were times when I spawned into an object and couldn’t move, and some characters don’t work as well solo as others (I’m looking at you, drummers). Fortunately Pixel-boy have promised a post-jam update and I’m excited to see the game outside of the constraints of 72 hours of development.