FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD58 → Meta Jammer

Meta Jammer

By faithcaio, pschichtel and Oxropy

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3113.6140
Fun7002.7039
Innovation24.5341
Theme3023.8140
Graphics6223.0240
Audio4991.7830
Humor4582.8239
Mood7022.8438

Comments

mrmaico 2025-10-06 23:15

OK this is insane! How did you even test that this works? What! It took me a minute to realise what this is and how to use it but I got there in the end. Really impressive and very meta lol. GG

2025-10-06 23:18

I don't see how different this is to playing and rating people's games on here. In all fairness, it is really innovative and does work, but just ignores the theme and doesn't really do much.

georgeburg 2025-10-06 23:22

Unusual, I've never seen anything like this on jams. Cool job)

mr-kliff 2025-10-06 23:22

Interesting idea, but I didn't immediately understand what this "game" was about. Thank you for your efforts.

kalasherr 2025-10-07 00:37

I thought that "A game!?" was an absolute cinema, but this thing is the best I have seen during this jam

ira-baciu 2025-10-07 01:02

help how to playScreenshot 2025-10-07 040234.png

zazios 2025-10-07 01:03

Guys, that's INSANE! How'd you test that??? Good job!!

faithcaio 2025-10-07 01:14

@ira-baciu You enter your LD-Jam username and we COLLECT your game for our hex-grid. It will be placed on a free tile near the center.

matthew-rose 2025-10-07 01:16

Cool design! No idea how you got this to work no issues, props!

faithcaio 2025-10-07 01:22

We use the same API this site uses e.g. https://api.ldjam.com/vx/node2/get/419397 to get data about this entry

nbumgardner 2025-10-07 01:28

Interesting way to make a gamified browsing tool. Listing controls somewhere might be good for knowing about scrolling for zoom and right click hold to drag the view. I like how the hexagon sizes show off the thumbnails well while being a unique shape.

she-wrote 2025-10-07 06:20

The idea is amazing, but it’s one of those concepts that really need a lot of people participating to truly shine. It works well as it is, though. I love the addition of prizes and how you can get a better sense of a game’s general rating — something that’s not present on the LD page. However I think the emojis on the trophies could be a bit bigger, as they’re a little hard to see. But overall, it’s a great and fun way to experience Ludum Dare. Well done!

seven-z 2025-10-07 06:29

Super innovative! A collector of collectors haha! I personally wish the camera could go a little higher so that I could view more games at a time

moonblast 2025-10-07 08:20

What a brilliant idea—the games have been collected here. It's an absolutely unbeatable interpretation of the theme.

faithcaio 2025-10-07 10:59

@seven-z you can zoom out more now. Also ?max-zoom=600 as query parameter allows even more!

khamekaze 2025-10-07 13:48

Okay this is so cool honestly

jo-bettaque 2025-10-07 14:06

Such a great idea

b0guslaw 2025-10-07 19:22

What a terrific idea, very cool!

hank-ather 2025-10-07 23:43

Brilliant. Absolutely wild interpretation of the theme.

jesus-gonzalez 2025-10-08 00:00

Love it

joaog 2025-10-08 03:50

I admit that was a bit confusing, but the idea of the mechanics is brilliant! I've never seen anything like that before. Great job!

antti-haavikko 2025-10-08 14:51

Damn, pretty cool! Sadly there really isn't anything to play here as it's basically just a different type of listing of the games.

Also crashed at some point and panning around stopped working due to it but could still click on the games that were visible.

Screenshot 2025-10-08 at 17.47.30.png

mikhailne 2025-10-09 07:07

Very cool idea! I loved this metagame, it was incredibly unexpected.

I would like to see a modified version that will also show games from previous jams.

I was a bit shocked when the game reminded me of my game from the jam before last :)

cartmouse 2025-10-09 11:46

What a cool concept! Definitely haven't seen anything like this in a jam before so massive kudos for pushing the boat out!

faithcaio 2025-10-09 14:18

@mikhailne funny that you ask, we already had that functionality for testing as not a lot of games were published yet just add a query param to the url with `jam=` e.g. https://banana4life.github.io/MetaJammer/?jam=56

We did reset the database for release so almost nothing is placed.

faithcaio 2025-10-09 14:30

@antti-haavikko The "game" part of it is the awards and ratings, we had some more ideas to collect more information (dialogue style) but couldn't fit it in.

The "Game not found ..." error is a caching issue that we could not completely get rid of. But it should only prevent the tile that game is placed on to load temporarily, until the cache is invalidated.

Do you mean the panning itself? The grid does not generate more empty tiles that are too far away from any placed game tile. Currently only 204 games where placed on the hexgrid.

antti-haavikko 2025-10-09 14:52

@faithcaio Well yeah, but that "game" is already there without your game. 😅 I guess the awards are something extra.

Yeah it blocked panning completely, couldn't even move back to where I had come from.

phobos 2025-10-10 14:13

I have no idea how you even did that, but that's incredible

thadev 2025-10-11 03:10

That feels like it was though about a lot before deciding to make this final, it's a really cool concept! (i'm not sure how you award trophies tho)

nomelu 2025-10-11 03:56

Such a cool idea! It was fun looking around at all the different games, I clicked on a random one and it ended up being one of my favorites I've played haha. Really impressive that it works well. Although, I couldn't figure out how to get awards.

faithcaio 2025-10-11 06:17

@thadev @nomelu On the selected game click the "Award a Trophy" Button and then on the popup select the awards you want to give. You can give one of each but not to yourself (your game).

ditam 2025-10-12 09:11

Very cool idea! I was excited to find my own game on the board :) Great UI, the tiled game covers look very stylish, and the effect of new tiles being loaded is beautiful too. Kinda tricky to rate this one, but it's certainly one of the most innovative ideas and takes on the theme.

I sort of wish you took it one step further, and made it into more of a game with clearer objectives and somehow using the ratings or other metrics as resources - but that's certainly a tricky minefield to navigate, as you don't want any gamification to create an incentive for people not playing and rating games fairly and in earnest...

omiya-games 2025-10-16 07:36

While I confess I couldn't really rate the rest of the categories that highly, I really *love* this take on the theme. I couldn't stream much more of the web-app, but I definitely will be playing around with this more and see how it differs from the usual Ludum Dare game list scrolling, and get back to you on my thoughts. I do really appreciate this different take on Ludum Dare game listing, and hopefully we can see this built-up more so future jammers can explore in the same way as well.

dengyixa 2025-10-21 07:36

It is so cooooool !!! I have never seen the similar one before! I love this idea.

volcanoeyes 2025-10-22 13:57

Awesome concept! Love how it mentions your previous games from old jams when you enter your username. Rare to see a web stack based game too, and it's such a good match.

cislaru-corneliu 2025-10-23 19:38

I really love this game concept,maybe we would colaborate in the future

pschichtel 2025-10-23 20:12

@cislaru-corneliu sure, get in touch, email is on our website :)