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Jayenkai
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AGameAWeek Y2 : Note : Quite big!Oook! |
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54 games. Last year I only managed about 30-odd, so I think that's pretty good going. Sure, it might not have truely actually been A Game "Per" Week, but I did at least keep the ratio up. If I hadn't taken the time out to build the framework, I probably would've actually achieved the target a little better The stats show I was pretty much on top of things up until that point, but then things got slower and slower until my buffer zone was all dried up. Anyhoo, this is a nice big lengthy retrospective, and we'll be looking back at each game, giving 'em all a fresh score, and seeing how it all tots up. You can download each one by clicking their titles, or you can grab the super-sized 150Mb megapack torrent, here. Year 2 : Part 1 : 200901 - Rock My Chords18 August 2009 AGameAWeek Year 1 had just ended, and I had some relaxation time. I figured it was probably about time that I grabbed a "Plastic Instrument" game, and the cheapest at the time was Rock Band. Having played the game to death for a few days, I wondered what might occur if I plugged the guitar into the PC. It recognised it as if it were a USB Joystick, and so off I went hunting for a nice program. On the DS, there's a 'game' called Jam Sessions. You hold a chord button, strum the guitar, and play along with whatever you want. It's not really a 'game', more one of those app-toy things that you tend to get on iPods. Anyhoo, a good hunt turned up nothing. A shame, because I thought that'd be useful. What to do? .. I began AGameAWeek Year 2! I started WAY too early, and had hardly rested a week, but I was spurred on by my need for a strumming app! The resulting "Game" does exactly what it oughta. You hold a chord button, strum the strummer, and it plays a chord. You can set up the buttons to strum any chords you want, placing notes onto a keyboarded grid, and can even slow the strum down so that it sounds more like a pluck, instead. It's fun to play with, but probably not anything that folk'll be playing with. It's one for myself! But it works, and it works really quite nicely, considering I threw it together in next to no time at all. The downside? All those guitar sounds (nice and crisp and clear) resulted in the game being a whopping 50Mb! Aiik!! Polish : 2Nice and crisp sounds for the guitar, but the UI leaves a lot to be desired.Playability : 5If you can be bothered to set it up to fit your favourite songs, it's great to sit and strum along!Completeness : 3Enough for myself, not enough interest to warrant anything more.Interest : 0This game sat on my hard drive, but I don't think it ever reached anyone elses!02 - Tetripong25 August 2009 I'd had a comment for Centipong that suggested the game was quite dull, and that "I'd rather play Pong against Tetris" Hey, who am I to argue! So I set about bodging both games together, to see what I could make. Tetripong turned out as a great game, but it has one very slightly annoying issue. Actually, it's a pretty big issue, and it's one that I chose to ignore for a long long time. BlitzBass, the music player I chose to use, annoyingly hangs the game if the player uses the window's close button. To help avoid this, I slapped a giant "Not this way!!" warning over the screen if the player tried to close that way. It kinda does the job, but it's messy. And annoyingly, it's in a whole great big bunch of my Year2 games, because I never got around to fixing it. Argh!! No matter, Tetripong is awesome, and should be played by everyone! Polish : 5A great menu, a variety of graphics, and it even has shadows!!!Playability : 5Hey, who doesn't love Tetris! And since you can switch off all the "new" stuff, it's even a great plain tetris game, too.Completeness : 5More toggly switches than you could ever need!Interest : 5Everybody loved Tetripong, it got into magazines, and it's everywhere online! Although most folk complained that it wasn't very "Pong" like!03 - Painter1 September 2009 I used to love Painter on the BBC Micro, and wondered how much I could recreate that, but bigger. In fairness, once I made things sprite based, rather than line based, I suddenly realised exactly how much this game was actually just a reskinned version of Oh Mummy. No matter, the game played nicely, and I tried out a nice new "Zoom" on it. The zoom turned out to be a little messy, and quickly vanished for a while, having left weird Floating-point-based lines all over, but it did vaguely work! A batch of 16 maps in there, and it's playable for a fairly decent amount of time, but it's probably nothing you'd play over and over. Polish : 4A simple frontend with quick instructions, and enough to get you started.Playability : 3One or two plays is probably enough.Completeness : 3It's more than a little repetitive after a while. Lacking excitement.Interest : 2A few people seemed to like this, but again, it lacked a certain something.04 - YBox8 September 2009 For week four, I decided to try a nice slower puzzle game. I love Yahtzee, so I figured I could do something new with that. Placing a bunch of dice onto a grid, and giving the player some little post-it style cards, the game asked folk to organise the dice so that they scored as high a tally as possible. The basics of the game worked, and everything seems to be as it should, but it doesn't seem to be as great as expected. Not sure why.. Polish : 2I missed a few obvious things, here and there, like the fact that even though it's a mouse based game, you still need to hit Z to start!Playability : 3It's one of those "Should play well, but doesn't" sort of games. Maybe it would play better on a touchscreen?Completeness : 5I don't think there's anything more I could've done.Interest : 1A couple of people enjoyed the strategic qualities of the game, but overall people agreed that it wasn't suited to a mouse.05 - JNK Sokoban22 September 2009 I released a quick Java port of Sokoban, which wasn't anything special. It'd already done the sprites for the PC and DS versions, so it was a simple case of flinging all the bits together, and desperately trying not to kill Java in the process. Worked out nicely. Did it's job. Nothing special! Polish : 1Just the game and a menu! I didn't really bother making this anything special.Playability : 2This is as playable as Sokoban usually is. I don't like Sokoban!Completeness : 390 packs, each with 5 levels. Crumpets!Interest : 2Most people enjoy the fact that this is playable, and not horrible, slow and unplayable like some other Sokoban clones.06 - Webding Fighter22 September 2009 Here's an example of what can go horribly wrong, during AGameAWeek. One of the main issues is lack of testing, especially getting other people to test things. This is mostly a timeframe issue, whereby I'd start a game a little late in the week, and leave myself no time for getting things properly tested before having to post the game. Webding Fighters took this to the extreme. As I was building the game, I took the logical step of making everything shootable, but anything "with a person in it" could be collected, to save the people inside. Makes sense, right? Fire Engine, save it. No smoking sign, shoot it. Boat, save it. Eyeball, shoot it. School Bus, save it. Chilli, shoot it. The list goes on, and it made sense while I was making it, and it made sense as I was testing it. But.. BOY, is that ever complicated! Trying to play it now, it's like a bizarre mismash of horrible white splodges that fly across the screen looking all baffling and obscure. Tried/Failed.. Polish : 3Looks ok, for what it is, but it's nothing, so it doesn't!Playability : 0If you can sit down and try to figure it all out, it's ok. But I wouldn't bother!Completeness : 3Perhaps if the game slowly built up, per level, rather than instantly throwing everything at you, all at once?Interest : 0The complete unplayability of the seemingly random goody/baddy thing, made this game die a very quick and uninteresting death.07 - Blockman Gets29 September 2009 The previous game was a nasty case of overcomplicating things, so I wanted to do the opposite, this week. Taking the basic Pacman formula, I wondered what might happen if you actually subtracted something from the game. The thing I removed was the ghosts, and in it's place, I setup a "Don't stop eating" rule to the maze. This is one of those occasions where planning wouldn't have helped. Blockman Gets pretty much fell into place, with it's rules emerging as I played around with the game's engine. The Target/Bonus system gave the game a progression feel, and a simple method of recolouring the level quickly, gave the game a much bigger feel. Blockman Gets became an instant hit, and it's still totally replayable, even if you've seen the mazes 100 times! Polish : 5The lovely nice "fluttery" level forming effect made things look really nice.Playability : 5Just keep eating!Completeness : 5Everything's here, except the ghosts.Interest : 5This game went everywhere!!08 - Blockman Gets DS6 October 2009 Having proved quite successful, and simple enough to create, I decided to tackle a DS edition of Blockman Gets. I had to tweak most of the game to fit, though, with the single screen mazes having to be entirely redrawn so as to span both screens, and take up as much room as possible. I also needed to get rid of the lovely colourchanging lines from the PC edition, since I couldn't quite have that many colours onscreen at once, on the DS. Instead, I crammed as many colours as possible, into a set of chequered tiles, and lined them up to give the effect of even more colours than I'd normally manage. The newer bigger mazes mean the player needs to plan ahead a little more, with little nooks and crannies hiding dead ends that are unnoticable until it's too late, especially now that the game wraps around onto both screens. Polish : 2Much like JNKSokoban, this was a case of "Titlescreen/Game/Done". There's not a lot here other than that.Playability : 5You can't fault Blockman Gets!Completeness : 4This version is missing the boulders. It's not really noticable, but... ?Interest : 5Blockman Gets DS continues to get mentions months later. Perhaps I should do a bigger-better edition?09 - Munky's Block13 October 2009 This game started with me drawing a block that looked a little like Companion Cube. So, what the hey, I made that! Here, you have to guide Munky to his exit, using his little Companion Cube (or Munky's Block!) to push buttons, and hold doors, along the way. With winches, and keys, and doors and things, I really tried to make this game nice and adventurous. Unfortunately, it only ended up ever having ten levels. Maybe some day I'll make it beyond that! Also, I think I got away without anyone noticing the fact that the background tune is a remix of a Pulp song! Polish : 5Fantastically polished, right down to the rhyming level descriptions.Playability : 5As long as you avoid the few Death traps on the later levels, you should be able to get through this game nice and easily.Completeness : 3Could really do with 100 levels. Without those, it'll never be complete.Interest : 2Unfortunately, this game never seemed to generate any sparks. Perhaps due to the lack of levels.10 - Yip20 October 2009 And here's a rushed game. It feels rushed, it looks rushed, and by golly, it WAS rushed! Yip must collect the frisbies, while avoiding the bird poo. .. It's not very good! Polish : 0A rubbishly rubbish game!Playability : 1It's playable, but...Completeness : 0Blah..Interest : 0Nada. Congrats!11 - Guesstimates27 October 2009 I've always wanted to make a quiz-game, but trying to find oodles of question/answer packs is a whole lot trickier than it should be. Luckily, Socoder has a daily Poll, and I was able to extract all the poll questions, all the answers, and how many votes each recieved, from the database. I used these to make a simple little board game. The player's roam the board from A to B, and as they hit each square, they're asked to pick the winner from the displayed poll. If they're right, they get points added. If they're wrong, they lose points. It's kinda fun for 10 minutes, although whether it's "family" fun depends on how techy most of your family is, since most of the polls are about programming languages, and other techy stuff! Polish : 4Although the frontend is a little lacking, once you get into the game, things swoosh around quite nicely.Playability : 5Once you start, you'll probably get through a whole game.Completeness : 3Can't argue. Everything works as it should. A better menu, perhaps!Interest : 0Another dud, it seems. Hey, I liked it!12 - Blockman Gets More3 November 2009 As I was releasing Blockman Gets, I knew in my heart that it could've been bigger. I knew that, given another week, or a whole month, Blockman Gets could've had oodles of extra gameplay modes, and rules, and settings and all sorts of neat features. That's why I made Blockman Gets More. From simple graphical updates, to added floor tiles, and much much more, Blockman Gets More became a huge game. There's even a few tweaks to the regular gameplay, with bonus rounds, and lava that eats away your path. And I even put Ghosts in, too! More is more, and this is definitely that! Polish : 5There's a wanderable menu, full of unlockable extras, and it all looks wonderful when zoomed in!Playability : 5You could replay mode 1 to death, and then there's about 20-odd more modes!!Completeness : 5I can't imagine what else I could add to this.Interest : 1?!13 - Ninja, Duck!10 November 2009 Blockman Gets More had fallen flat. I'd spent the full week tweaking it to the hilt, and even gone as far as making a bitmap font for it, something I hadn't done since the 90s! I really had no idea why that didn't take off. For all intents and purposes, it should've. But it didn't. Ho hum. For week 13, I just made another bog standard game, with a ninja, a duck, and a frog. A really simple background, and a simple floor to match. In many ways, this is very much like Yip, except with a sword! Polish : 3Everything got scaled up, so the "noise" effect on the sprites ended up looking quite nice.Playability : 5A nice and simple game that repeat-play's quite well. There's no real progression, so it's a case of High-Score, or die!Completeness : 2There really isn't much to this, at all!Interest : 5THIS one got the interest!?! Really!?! The internet is a fickle place!14 - Firework Chaos17 November 2009 For Bonfire Night, I made a nice firework based puzzle shooter. Grab a rocket from the bottom of the screen, and fling it up to the oncoming asteroids. Blow them up by letting go of the mouse button, and try to destroy them in a nice colour co-ordinated fashion. The game plays simply enough, but it's all a little too cludgy. I'd initially made the fireworks also disappear in a "Connect 3 alike" style of puzzle thing, but all that happened was you started losing missiles, just as you needed them! I scrapped that quite early on! Polish : 2A nice enough swooshy effect, but otherwise nothing magical to see here.Playability : 3It's quite intense when it gets going!Completeness : 2It doesn't build up, there's no bonuses, it's just what it is.Interest : 1Flashy explosions makes people try things!15 - Munky Blocks DS24 November 2009 Having created Munky Blocks and Munky's Block for the PC, I decided to try and mash the two games together, to create a new Munky Blocks on the DS. The game is pretty much the same as Munky Blocks PC, except it now has the doors and pullies integrated from Munky's Block. Annoyingly, there's a bug in it that breaks the game, and I've yet to bother fixing it. Some day. Polish : 2Everything's fine, up until that darn bug..Playability : 5The game is nice and runs smoothly.Completeness : 5I think I added everything I intended to. Maybe!Interest : 5It garnered quite a bit of interest from the various DS sites, and probably would've continued to do so if I'd have fixed that blinkin' bug!16 - NeonPlat1 December 2009 A simple idea from Authentic Kaizen (pixelprospector.com), who suggested I make a neon-styled Bubble Bobble clone, with moving platforms. I struggled for about 3 days to make it happen, and then decided to try popping Platdude into it. A strange warped Neon-Platdude was born, and suddenly the game fell into place. Hopping about, throwing balls and smashing spheres. You couldn't fault it! Polish : 5Neon sprites makes everything that little bit more polished Playability : 5Playing like a brand new 80s arcade game, you could repeat-play this until your joystick fell to bits.Completeness : 3It's all pretty much done within the first few seconds. Nothing builds, except the peril.Interest : 5NeonPlat was a hit!17 - Traffic Cones8 December 2009 Having overdone things with NeonPlat, I took some time doing a simpler game. A car, a track, and a whole bunch of traffic cones! Simply put, you had to race around the track within the time limit, completing as many laps as you could, in order to gain some bonus points. I stuggled, for a while, trying to decide how to do a proper track, before chickening out, and using the "green dots" method of keeping track. Basically, you drive near a green dot, and it disappears. Drive near 'em all, and the game counts a lap. Sometimes, though, this became much trickier to cope with. If you missed one little green dot along the way, it was a killer trying to find it again! Polish : 3Nothing much here, but the traffic cone effect was quite nice!Playability : 2If you missed a dot, you were as good as dead.Completeness : 3Nothing much to add, but I did as least make a whole bunch of tracks.Interest : 0People were still playing NeonPlat!18 - Greenie's LCD Adventure15 December 2009 I remember once playing a Legend Of Zelda game on a watch. This game is pretty much that, except less interesting! I took the time to build up a simple LCD sprite, which actually contained all the objects and sprites for the game, all within a really tiny single tile. This tile is then repeated over the surface of the fake LCD screen, and certain bits of that are displayed as needed. This gave the game a really odd looking LCD-esque effect. Fun to achieve! I later added an improbability button so you could actually see the game properly! Polish : 4The little buttons pop in and out as you press 'em!Playability : 3It all turned out a bit "squint"ish!Completeness : 2Nothing more added, but had I not been squeezing it all into a single little tile, I probably would've added a whole bunch more stuff.Interest : 0Blame NeonPlat, still!Year 2 : Part 2 : Merry Christmas!Over Xmas, 2009, I decided that I should attempt to make a different game for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Most ended up being slightly rushed, but there's a few fun ones here. 19 - A Partridge in a Pear Tree25 December 2009 A "Spot the partridge" shooting gallery! I was slightly worried that someone out there would complain about my apparent cruelty to animals, over the coming weeks, so I started with a simple harmless game. You shoot, and the partridge flaps away. He's never harmed! He's happy! Overall, the game's quite tricky in places, mostly because the partridges seem to vanish into the folliage. And what lovely leafy trees they are, too! Polish : 3Lovely leaves!Playability : 4It's like Duck Hunt, only with less movement! Still perfectly playable.Completeness : 2Probably could've done with tougher levels, more birds, things like that. But I aimed to roughly match the titles, so it never got any further.20 - Two Turtle Doves26 December 2009 A maze hunting game, with Thrust-esque gravity fighting! You control one turtle dove, and must meet him to his partner. You can roughly tell where she is, by watching the direction of oncoming coos. Also, the faster they appear, the closer you are to her. It's a slow paced mazey game, and it doesn't care if you know it! Polish : 2A horrible jittery grid kept cropping up for reasons unknown, and rather than fix the bug, I made it even more apparent, so that it looked as though it was done on purpose.Tricks of the trade!! Playability : 2The mazes were probably a little bit TOO big!Completeness : 4Not much to do, but there's a mountain of randomly generated mazes to play through, if you have a spare week or two to do it!21 - Three French Hens27 December 2009 This one was suggested by PixelProspector's Authentic Kaizen, who said it'd be fun to hop on top of the hens for a bit. Sure is! It's also #2 in our strangely unseasonal "cruely to animals" list! Polish : 4A barn, a stickman, and some little hens. There wasn't much to go wrong, here.Playability : 5Hopping on Hens is so much fun!Completeness : 2Again, the game was limited by the song's list. If it could've been bigger, it would've!22 - Four Colly Birds28 December 2009 This time, we're not trying to kill the animals! But you do need to avoid them with your little rocket. As the birds get close, your rocket is harmed. This game is slightly more "Thrust" than the last one, although it's actually more like Asteroids. But without any cruelty to animals! Polish : 3Blue, Blue skies!Playability : 2It probably could've played better than it does.Completeness : 0This game isn't even slightly complete!23 - Five Gold Rings29 December 2009 In Five Gold Rings, you need to drop a ball into the arena, and watch as it tries to hit each of the rings. If you fail, pick the ball up to try again. This game took the longest of all the 12 games of xmas, and was scrapped/restarted multiple times before getting to the very rough stage it's currently in. Must try harder! Polish : 2Could easily have had a little bit of spit and polish! It's messy!Playability : 5For the small number of levels that are actually there, it's actually really quite playable, albeit a little quirky!Completeness : 2Only 7 levels, could easily have been a whole lot more.24 - Six Geese a-Laying30 December 2009 A super-quick remake of MadBomber, whereby you need to collect all the eggs into the basket, as they fall. Miss 5 times, and it's game over. Polish : 3It's not much, but it's enough!Playability : 4Almost right, but there are times when you have eggs dropping almost simultaneously, at opposite sides of the screen. Impossible!!Completeness : 2There wasn't really too much I could've added, but I'm sure if I tried, I could've come up with more.25 - Seven Swans a Swimming31 December 2009 Back to the Cruelty to Animals streak, here we see you trying desperately to save a pack of swans from an oncoming swarm of horrible death inducing spikey things. Save all the swans, by feeding them bread! Polish : 2Many effects were left out of this. I wanted more, but rushed..Playability : 2The game doesn't quite feel as playable as it would've, give enough time. AGameADay doesn't lead to very many good games!Completeness : 0Bah!26 - Eight Maids a-Milking01 January 2010 Pass the buckets, and collect the Milk, as Ted Bob tries his hand at being a farmer. Plenty of mouse work, here, as you grab the buckets full of milk, and try to fill up the giant milk bottle as fast as you can. Fastest time wins! Polish : 2Probably should try to draw better, next time Playability : 3It's ok, but it's not really!Completeness : 2Feels as rushed as it is!27 - Nine Drummers Drumming02 January 2010 The nine drummers march in line, and it's your task to help them avoid the vomit stains that happen to be all over the road. Guide them up and down, dodge the puke, carry on! Polish : 2Nice little drumloop, but nothing could really have saved the terrible art style!Playability : 1This isn't much of a game, at all!Completeness : 0Aww...28 - Ten Pipers Piping03 January 2010 A nice simple Lemmings style game, for this one. Guide the piper's towards the exit, using the little Stop signs to turn them around. With only a limited number of signs, and 10 whole pipers, you're going to need to move the signs around as they march! Polish : 4Quite nice, actually!Playability : 5Nice and simple, but gets tricky WAY too quickly!Completeness : 2As usual, it's a case of "Not enough levels".29 - Eleven Ladies Dancing04 January 2010 This game was planned from the very beginning, and turned out to be every bit as much fun as I expected! Tap the buttons in time with the music, to make all eleven ladies dance! Polish : 5There's plenty of polish on those floors!Playability : 5It's a none-rapping Parappa style game! Play away!Completeness : 4If I was being really whingey about it, I'd say that 1 tune isn't enough.30 - Twelve Lords a-Leaping05 January 2010 What better way to round off Xmas, than with a game of Jet Set Willy? This game, too, was planned from the start. In many ways, I started planning these 12 games in the wrong order, and very quickly realised it when I had to write Game #1, but had only planned the last two! whoops! Never mind.. Polish : 5Feel great!Playability : 5Plays great!Completeness : 5And keeps on going!Year 2 : Part 3 : 2010As I headed into 2010, I decided to take some time out. I'd built up a huge "buffer" with the 12 Games of Xmas, so I was able to take a bit of time to essentially start from scratch. I switched to a new language (BlitzMax) and spent some time making a new Framework. The framework is probably my nicest so far, and includes fairly obvious things that I've never really bothered to include before. From this point in, all my games would have a nice bunch of settings that allow the user to do lots of things. Screen Resolution switching, and Fullscreen mode work wonderfully. There's redefinable key settings whenever a game uses buttons.. Audio volume sliders to turn off the music. and then there's the graph! Oooh, the luvly graph... A very simple little addition that basically charts your latest scores, and lets you know if you're getting better or worse. 31 - Munky Tests his Engine19 January 2010 Taking a couple of weeks to do, I built up the basic engine for the framework. Wanting to get the simple pieces tested, I created a quick test game, and set it out upon the testing world. Munky did indeed test the engine, and I learned quite a few tweaks that needed doing, mostly that the various audio drivers would mess up on certain systems, and other nasty things like that. Munky helped a lot, and the game became a nice simple typing game. Polish : 4Considering this was only a test game, it turned out quite nice. Probably could've done with better input, though!Playability : 3Things go awry if you mis-type anything, and it's otherwise quite repetitive.Completeness : 4There's a nice long poem in there, to make things look fuller!Interest : 4I don't think that says anything about the game, though.. Most of the interest came from the fact that a bunch of people were testing it for me!32 - Centipong 29 February 2010 My second game of the year was a sequel to my original multi-ball Breakout game, Centipong. The main problem I found, though, was that the original was actually good enough! Having got the engine running, and thrown in some nice chunky hi-def versions of the original sprites, I found myself trying desperately to add something new into the mix. Eventually, a collectable Net was suggested by MadTinkerer, and it seemed to add a little something. To be honest, though, it probably wasn't enough, and I struggled to add anything more. As a result, Centipong 2 isn't really any better than the original. In fact, the original's a whole lot better. Darn.. Polish : 5Looks great!Playability : 2Doesn't play so great..Completeness : 4If I could fix the powerups, it might start to build up a little better.Interest : 3Everybody knew the original was better.33 - Box's Adventure16 February 2010 I added "Badges" to my new framework, and tried best to consider how I could make good use of them, other than as standard "You got 100,000 points : Here's a badge" style things. After much thinking I came up with an idea whereby the player collected the badges, and each new badge gave them a new skill. I built a really insanely simple graphical engine around this idea, implimented a few enemies, got dungeons randomly generating, and even added a calender. Since the game was pseudo-random, I was able to add an insane number of random dungeons, so figured the calender system would let people play a different level every day of the week. Mixing things up was really nice, although I doubt anyone gets many plays on their calender! The game's a wee bit lengthy! Polish : 5Lovely game, and even the main sprite (a square) has a little care and attention added.Playability : 5It's probably a bit too slow for most players, and in fact is even too slow for myself, but it's a nice change from my usual craziness.Completeness : 5That calender really makes this a keeper!Interest : 3People loved the calender, but weren't so keen on the tempo.34 - Ted Bob in a Mario Costume2 March 2010 I'd spent the past couple of weeks tweaking and re-releasing Box's Adventure, alongside making Framework fixes. Whoops! Never mind. It was now March 2010, and surprisingly Nintendo hadn't noticed that that made it the month of MAR10. I decided to take things into my own hands, and make a whole month's worth of Mario based games. Copyright infringment was definitely an issue, so rather than just ripping Mario sprites from official games, I grabbed a handful of my own characters, and plopped them into Mario costumes! First up was Ted Bob, last seen hopping on Hens, during the 12 Games of Christmas. I reproduced the game, redrew the sprites, and then redrew them again with Mario Costumes on. Same game, slightly different style. It did the job, and kicked off the month of Mar10! Polish : 5Lovely high-resolution sprites, and a half-baked reproduction of Mario's Overworld.Playability : 5Bouncy bouncy bounce!Completeness : 3I probably still could've added more to the mix. There's a few powerups, but nothing special.Interest : 2Mario month kicked off with a "meh.."35 - Ace Paceman in a Mario Costume9 March 2010 Continuing our Month of Mar10, I headed back to a much earlier game. Monsters Upside Your Head took the usual 8-bit "Dig the Monsters into the Girders" gameplay, and flipped the player upside down. This time, I tweaked it ever so slightly further, so that it vaguely resembled Donkey Kong, and the rest fell nicely into place. I also added a great looking Flame effect, which I thought was so nice, I'd probably end up using it again.. Polish : 5Mmm.. Flames!Playability : 4It'd probably be slightly more playable if the player were on the floor!Completeness : 3Nothing much to it, besides the usual "More and more death"Interest : 2Mario month continued to draw nobody!36 - Munky in a Mario Costume16 March 2010 And here's your reuse of the flames! A nice redoing of the Bowser Castle levels, from the original SMB, except without an ending. Instead, Munky roams around the huge level, trying to collect as many of the 256 coins as he can. Polish : 4The wall jump is apparently quite tricky! (?) But otherwise, still those same luvly flames!Playability : 5Massive level, lots to do, and you can even load up the level in a paint program, and make it your own.Completeness : 3I could probably have added a whole more tiles into the game.Interest : 3People seemed to like it, but again, were annoyed by the way I implimented the wall jump.37 - Blockman in a Mario Costume30 March 2010 Taking a step back, this Blockman game is actually based on the original Platformer edition of Blockman, rather than the Blockman Gets style. I figured people had seen way too much Blockman Gets, lately! Having missed a week, due to lack of ideas, I decided to change things up a bit for the last week of Mar10 month. Rather than having the player start in their Mario costume, the player has to collect one from a [?] box. This gives the player a head-bumping power up for a short amount of time, and multiplies any points they earn, too. Polish : 5Lovely stars in the background, popping appearances for the characters, a nice transition to "Mar10 Style". This has got everything!Playability : 4I still think the physics are a little quirky.. Making everything 4* bigger has strange effects on your engine!Completeness : 3People wondered why this version only had one level.. Again, a side effect of making the level so darn huge!Interest : 4People seemed to enjoy this one, even with only 1 level.38 - JNKPlat 201020 April 2010 March was Mario month, so it seemed only fitting that April would be Platdude's month. I took an entire month out, to build up one of the biggest and best editions of JNKPlat that I could muster. All new super-high-resolution graphics made up a wonderfully scrolling tilemap, and a neat little overlay trick helped make everything look a little bit fuzzy! Gameplay wise, there's all new tiles, a brand new enemy character, and by the end there were so many levels you'd be playing for at least an hour There are, at last count, 154 levels. Should be plenty to go on! Polish : 5Looks great, Feels great, Great great!Playability : 5Learn the jump and everything's fine!Completeness : 3JNKPlat is NEVER complete!Interest : 5It might've taken him 12 years, but Platdude finally got a little bit of notice on the PC!39 - Gravity Bombs4 May 2010 Is it a Game?! That was the question I constantly asked myself whilst making this lovely swirly gravity thing. Then once I was done, I kept asking it. It's a lovely swirly patterny swooshy thing, but it didn't feel very gamey. The folk at Curly's World of Freeware were in a similar position, but with a few tweaks here and there, we got it to the point where it was considered "A bit gamey" It's very swirly! Polish : 3It's so very swirly! But otherwise a little void.Playability : 5But a different sort of play!Completeness : 1Unless you think swirls are complete.Interest : 5People were interested, even if they didn't know what it was.40 - UFO 24611 May 2010 This is near enough what I was aiming for with Webding Fighter, except without the really oddball complications of having 150,000 different enemy types! The evil spikey things come at you from all directions, you blow 'em all up, swooshiness occurs, and you carry on fighting until they get'cha. Simplicity! Polish : 4Probably could've done with more than 1 enemy sprite! No matter..Playability : 5Nice and fast paced, without become one of those nasty bullet-hell types of games.Completeness : 3Could've/should've added lots to this.Interest : 3The big-red-bit seemed to surprise some folk!41 - Penis Extension25 May 2010 A remake/redo of an earlier game, where you guided the little "stick-fella" through the maze, helping him to get to his "hole", without "splatting" all over the floor. ... Nothing strange here.. Polish : 3Nice animation, decent enough backdrop.Playability : 4Keeping the fella's moving, whilst there's more than one onscreen, proves to be a nice tricky actiony puzzley task.Completeness : 3I intended to add more, based on how much interest the first release generated...Interest : 0...or not.42 - Boing Again1 June 2010 I had hoped that this game would turn out to be a nice puzzler, but somewhere along the way, the game seemed to take an odd turn, and lose every single bit of puzzleyness. Where it should've been a case of hopping around yourself, it ended up as a big empty void, and the game lost all sense of purpose. Try it on hard mode, it's at least half interesting! Polish : 3It looks half-assed.Playability : 0It died before it had a chance.Completeness : 0I could easily have added so much more to this.Interest : 0Poor game... Not even I cared!43 - NeonPlat28 June 2010 At this point, I started to consider that some of my older, better games were lacking Mac and Linux compatible versions, so I decided to rummage around, and pluck out a sort of "Best of". I then spent the next few weeks, here or there, trying to remake them, and built little semi sequels. This was first, because I knew I could've done better the first time. Here, Platdude continues his odd neon-esque warped runaround, and all the "splashy" effects were retained. I removed the "SPLODGE" glow, and replaced it with a much neater glowier glow. I got rid of those darned ladders. And I upped the bad guys thanks to a few suggestions from Shadow1w2. I even took some time to make the levels more level-like, and added a handful of gameplay types. Polish : 5Wonderful!Playability : 5Excellent!Completeness : 5Fantastic!Interest : 5Plenty!44 - Score Rack11 June 2010 I knew going in that a word game would fall flat on it's face, but I wanted to make one anyway! Mostly because, contrary to everyone else, I DO like word games. This is a word game! Polish : 4The controls still feel a little off.Playability : 5Assuming you like Puzzle games, it's quite fun.Completeness : 3Probably should've added a nice Calender based, Puzzle-Of-The-Day type of thing.Interest : 0People don't care about word games!45 - Turret Rush16 June 2010 A nice simple zombie shooter. Turrets appear from the ground, you have to run to one, and then use it to shoot the zombies. Each turret only lasts for 99 seconds, though, so you've gotta keep on the move, to keep shooting. Note : The one in the big torrent doesn't work... durp.. should've tested those! You'll have to grab this one seperately. Polish : 2It's all stick figures!Playability : 4It's not bad, but it's not great...Completeness : 3Probably could've done with powerups, or grenades, or something.. *shrugs*Interest : 0Bah..46 - Space Monkey Climbs the Space Towers17th June 2010 Trying to bring back an old classic, I tried to come up with a bizarre Space Monkeys game. I guess my mind isn't as insane as it once was, because this game wasn't all that bizarre. .. well, you know.. kinda! Space Monkey floats around, trying to hop up the towers, whilst avoiding the great big meteors that are falling around him. Polish : 1Bah! Not even the lovely background square thing (from earlier Space Monkey games) works well in BlitzMax..Playability : 3It's ok for a few minutes, but it's nothing special.Completeness : 4It's as complete as any other Space Monkeys game!Interest : 1Only a minor bit of interest in this one.47 - Barry the Spelling Bee29 June 2010 I actually drew Barry about a year or two earlier, but I couldn't come up with an interesting Spelling game. I guess I still haven't, because this one's not very good, either! Polish : 4Looks lovely!Playability : 1Plays badly!Completeness : 0A bit pants..Interest : 0Who knew!!48 - Microbe25 July 2010 So, back to that plan, then! Remake old favourites, so they're working for Mac and Linux, too. This week, Microbes, a nice remake of an Amiga game, which proved to be quite popular. This one, too, turned out nicely, but probably wasn't all that "Sequel"y, in that there wasn't all that much more to the game. The powerups added a bit, though. Polish : 5Plenty of little particles, and loads of bullets.Playability : 4It doesn't really kick-off unless you're on a none-easy playmode, but once it does, it's nice and deadly.Completeness : 4More powerups and microbe-types, but otherwise nice and complete.Interest : 5So much interest that it even got a nice lengthy review on a German Linux site! (Good lord, that's a lot of writing!)49 - RetroRaiderII12 July 2010 Another week, another remake, this time the retro Pitfall'ish game I'd made last year. Nice and simple gameplay, where Lara Croft'ish runs around trying to find a Cross. There's bats and dogs and bears, and lots of ammo to shoot 'em all with. There's even a wonderfully integrated level editor included, that you can have a nice play around with. Polish : 5Looks as good as it should!Playability : 5Plays great, especially if you have a good-old digital joystick plugged in.Completeness : 3I intended to add more, but never got around to coming up with anything more to add!Interest : 4Probably didn't get as much as I'd hoped, but I think that's because it was just more of the same. The original wasn't really broken. (so.. .. )50 - Chuffed Tracks20 July 2010 I wanted to try my hand at a Sim/Tycoon sort of game, so this week I spent about 5 days making a nice train track system, and then had to rush the whole Tycoon bit at the end. d'oh! If it had been finished off, this would probably be vaguely interesting to play. As it is, it just feels like you're watching a train go around, whilst desperately trying to link up the new stations. Polish : 3The train tracks turned out quite nicely!Playability : 3A little complicated.Completeness : 1It's ok, it's just not what it could've been.Interest : 2People seemed intrigued...51 - Cardagain3 August 2010 I'd recently made my first ever iPhing (iPod/iPhone) game. Note that I've not counted that, so I actually made 55 games.. I decided to redo it on the PC/Mac/Lin things, and this is the result. A nice card based puzzle game that nobody seems to play. Polish : 5Nice swooshy card graphics, in "Retina", or "A decent resolution" if you prefer.Playability : 5Awesomely fun, and really good for testing your memory.Completeness : 5When released, this PC/Mac/Lin version was even better than the one on the iPhings!Interest : 0Really!?52 - Kee Bo Ard17 August 2010 Guide the three characters to collect all of the pickups. A nice simple maze game, where you have to keep track of which character's walking in what area. Can get quite tricky, quite fast! Polish : 3The blue and green are a bit too close, which leads to a few missteps along the way.Playability : 4If you avoid the blue/green issue, it's quite a nice little puzzle game.Completeness : 3Could add more.. In fact, if you open the map images up, you can happily build a bit more.Interest : 2It generated a little interest, but nothing special.53 - Cardagain DS22 August 2010 Cardagain STILL wasn't picking up, so I gave it one last try. Surely a DS version would prove to be popular? Polish : 4Same as it was, but in an "Anti-Retina" resolution.Playability : 5It's still a great game, even when it's tiny.Completeness : 3The game's working, but the card selection isn't.Interest : 2The DS one didn't prove to be popular. But it did generate a little buzz, so that's ok.54 - Fred the Parachuting Flea24 August 2010 And lastly ... *phew* I decided to make a nice simple relaxing sort of game. Fred hops about, grabbing onto the little dandelion spores, and floats his way back down. You need to keep aiming for nearby bits, and keep him floating about. I added Combos and Flower pickups, and the game seemed to be nice and playable. Job done.. Polish : 5Looks great, and there's some nice flashy things as he hops around.Playability : 4Some issues with the controls, but otherwise great.Completeness : 3Pickups?!Interest : 4Probably more interest than some others, lately. People like hopping!So, 54 games, 54 weeks, task complete. What have we learned? 1. REST OCCASIONALLY.. During the last few weeks of this, I was feeling REALLY rough. I'd been pretty much coding, none-stop, for the whole year. I'd overdone it, and BOY did I feel the effects! Rest is needed, which is why I'm now taking the whole of September off. .. .. I say that.. .. I'm also writing a couple of games.. But I'm not pushing it! They'll happen when they happen! 2. Add Polish Even if it's just a few little floating sprites, roaming around in the background, it ends up adding something that makes it look a little better. Add nice swooshy things around pickups, add floating score things, and other little things like that. 3. Only do a remake if you can add something new! Centipong 2 was a complete and utter disaster! 4. um.. ... That's about it. AGameAWeek continues in October, until it kills me, apparently! |
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| Wednesday, 08 September 2010, 04:56 | |
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CodersRule |
AGameAlmostEveryWeek. That's what you need. 
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