Ludum Dare 60: Loose Screw

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 Cover image. A hand-drawn repair-shop workbench by a rainy window. A battered Atari joystick with a bent, melted stick sits on a blue work mat, and a red-handled flathead screwdriver rests against it. A radio, a red instruction manual, a pegboard of tools, and a glue bottle surround the bench.


tl;dr: We made a game for the Ludum Dare 60 game jam. You run a cozy repair shop for old tech: broken gadgets land on your workbench, and every tool is its own tiny microgame. Unscrew, yank, glue, whack, wipe, and blow each gadget back to life, then send it back out.



The jam

The theme of the jam was "Old Tech".

We made this game for the Ludum Dare 60 game jam in 72 hours.

I made this game with Zaven Muradyan and Taryn Schwartzstein.

We used Claude for code assist, but all art, music, and sound effects were made without the use of AI.

Screenshots

An animated GIF showing a recording of some gameplay: The player drags in circles to turn a yellow Phillips screwdriver on a Game & Watch, chasing the moving green zone on a small radial gauge in the upper-right.
Every screw is a tiny timing game. Keep the needle in the green!

An animated GIF showing a recording of some gameplay: The player holds a loose radio dial in place over its glue point, keeping the dot inside the green ring until the glue sets.
Glue it, then hold it steady until it sticks.

An animated GIF showing a recording of some gameplay: The player swings the hammer at a dusty old TV on the workbench, knocking puffs of dust loose.
Some gadgets just need a good whack.

An animated GIF showing a recording of some gameplay: A parts drawer hangs open over the bench, full of gears and knobs, while the player fetches a replacement part for the joystick base on the work mat.
Busted parts come out. Fresh ones live in the drawers.

A screenshot showing a handwritten repair ticket over the empty workbench. It reads: 'Grandpa just says it needs a good whack, but I don't think that's enough...' Below, in blue: 'spotless. Fixed in 1 sec', with a red circled stamp that says 'Great!'
Ship it out and get rated!

Retrospective

  • The game concept:
    • Our idea was a repair shop where every tool is its own little microgame. The flathead driver has a slip-out-of-groove cycle, the Phillips driver has a radial timing gauge, the glue makes you hold the piece steady, and the hammer whack stuff! You also blow dust, wipe grime, and replace plenty of parts!
    • The gadgets are all old tech with knobs, screws, dust, and grime: a toaster, a TV, an Atari joystick, a computer keyboard, a piano, a Game & Watch, a radio, and a shrink ray with a hair trigger.
    • You get graded for each item on how well you perform each minigame during each step of the repair.
  • My main takeaway is that I'm always so happy when working with other creative people making art or music! (No offense Zaven, your code is top-notch ðŸ¤Œ!)
  • I think this is the most art-heavy game I've worked on in a game jam! Taryn made around 90% of the art, and quite quickly!
  • This was Taryn's first time making a game, so I helped point out all sorts of things along the way.
  • This was one of my least favorite themes for coming up with interesting concepts that fit (although, possibly me not getting enough sleep this week didn't help with brainstorming!). But I really like the concept we ended up with.
    • That being said, I'm not certain we really fit the theme _too_ closely, but the point is really more that the theme inspires you to make something different, not that you strictly match the theme as close as possible!
  • Like with all jams, there were a lot of games that had the same basic take on the theme. But I haven't seen any other games yet with our take!
  • I also downloaded and learned a new tool during this jam: FL Studio. I've been wanting for a while now to dabble with a more "real" DAW (digital audio workstation), in order to make more-real music, rather than just chiptunes like I normally do. I chose this particular DAW because Zaven mentioned liking it, but also because it has a great tracker feature, and supports generative sound flows well, rather than requiring me to actually play and record real instruments in real time.
  • I recorded a lot of foley for this jam! Hundreds of sounds! So much time hitting random things in the garage!
  • I was unusually happy with the state of the game at submission time. During most jams, I still have a decent list of really important stuff that I really wish we'd gotten to! But we really got around to most of the things we planned for this one! :)


🎉 Cheers!


This is a simple icon representing my sabbatical.

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