Ludum Dare is a regular community driven game development competition. The goal is, given a theme and 48 hours, to develop a game from scratch. Ludum Dare aims to encourage game design experimentation, and provide a platform to develop and practice rapid game prototyping.
Ludum Dare was started in April 2002 by Geoff Howland (Lupine Games, Alitius) as a 24 hour competition. This is often referred to as Ludum Dare Zero or Beta. Later that year (July 2002), the Ludum Dare community held its first 48 hour competition. The community has continued to run competitions one or more times yearly since then.
It's a pair of Latin words. Ludum for “game” or “to play”. Dare for “to give”. We could say it has a deep profound meaning to the competition, but really it's just a catchy name borrowed from the forum it originated in.
No. Ludum Dare is a solo competition. If you'd like to work in a team, see the 72 Hour GDC and PyWeek.
If Ludum Dare was a “prestigious” TV event like the Oscars, the Pelly is our Oscar. The Pelly has been represented as a graphic of a cartoon pelican.
The official website for the Ludum Dare community is Ludumdare.com. If problems arise there, we fall back on the IRC channel.
The IRC channel (#ludumdare on Afternet (irc.afternet.org)) is the hub for the latest news and activity in the Ludum Dare community.
GameCompo.com is the self proclaimed authoritative mailing list for both Ludum Dare and the 72 Hour GDC. We welcome submissions publicizing other competitions, since that's something we're obviously interested in.
Messages are prefixed with [gamecompo].
Over the years, some members have gone out of their way to write user guides for the compo. If you're new to Ludum Dare, you should check them out.
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At the start of the competition, entrants are given a theme to create a game around. Themes are suggested and decided on by the community.
Previous Competitions and Themes include:
Once in a while, we've been known to hold unofficial competitions. Unofficial competitions are a community event. We tend not to publicize them much outside the community, and we don't vote for winners. Traditionally, they've been opportunities for prior entrants to pull something together over a weekend, or to chat with other entrants over IRC.
Previous Unofficial Competitions
By our own admission, we haven't been the most organized of organizers with the Ludum Dare competition. So unfortunately we currently don't have an archive of entries online. However, we are looking to change that.
If you're a previous entrant of the competition, please share with us a link to your previous games.
A sibling competition started in July 2003. Same idea as Ludum Dare, but 3 days, and teams of up to 3. We like to think that we organize competitions around each other, but we don't really talk about it. It just happens most of the time. Learn more at http://72hourgdc.com, and keep up to date with the mailing list.
Previous 72 Hour GDC Competitions and Themes
PyWeek is a competition similar to the Ludum Dare. It allows teams, gives you an entire week to make your game, but requires entries to be written in Python. Richard Jones, the creator of PyWeek, also hosted both the 5th and 6th Ludum Dare competitions.