Hello! I made a new game last night, using Twine. It’s called INSULATION; it is about moving through a bedroom and looking at some things that are in there.

You can play it HERE.

Hey y’all. I’ve been chipping away at Super Chicken for awhile, and I recently took some time to redo a lot of the sprites and actually attempt to shade them and animate them consistently. I also added a proper title screen, and I’m working on the inbetween-levels segments right now (where Connor and I yell at Super Chicken and say What Is Up). Somehow, doing all this polish-y work on a game as I make it helps me to stay motivated to finish it; when things are left unfinished, it’s harder for me to keep going.

I was originally planning to hew pretty close to Super Crate Box as far as how this thing would actually play, but since the core mechanic is “clear the screen” as opposed to “stay alive forever”, I’m having to put more thought into weapon balance than I thought. So far, I have three weapons planned: Snack Wand, Giant Hand, and Cat Beam. I want each weapon to have a charge version and a tap version. I’ll post some drawings soon to show what I mean. I’m getting reasonably excited about this game; I want it to play like a shooty Bubble Bobble (since I love those kinds of games).

Too many exciting prototypes floating around my hard drive, bah bah bah.

a list:

magic planet snack : eat everything in the universe and find a friend

max and kyle house of style : destroy everything by touching your friend

mulder’s totally bogus (rabbit) journey : avoid monsters and look for a psychic computer

together fight! friendly hat spirit : use magic words to fight monsters

super cake fight : imprison your friend in a cake you are making

shoot the butts : shoot the butts

super punch everything : punch everything

punch forever : punch monsters

punch the butts 3D : fly to gigabutt’s party and punch him

owww : unlock doors to release a trapped spirit

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything here; this summer was such a whirlpool of Anxiety and Jobless Feelings and Making Things and Baby Times, I feel that I’ve traveled a long way away from who I was when I used to write blog things. So it is nice to make a thing that is just words. Well, words and magic words that take you to Real Experiences. Which we all know words can’t provide, you are fake right now as you are reading this.

I’ve been really enjoying the idea of video game mixtapes that people have been floating around. Michael Brough posted one over on his site, and porpentine has one, L has one, and there is lots of good stuff in there and they have cute themes. I like mixtapes because it seems to nudge video games closer to close reading, and appreciating small things like poems and phrases and themes because you are making them all talk to each other by collating them. That said, I’m just calling my mix COOL MIX because I can’t think of a good theme for this first one. So these are either games that make you FEEL COOL or they have COOL AUTUMNAL VIBES honestly this is the equivalent of taping songs off the radio, and they’re a little longer. That porpentine tape is nice for the short jabs.

—

COOL MIX SIDE A FEELIN COOL!:

Lazy Brain Games – INFERNAL EDGE
Lazrool – WARLOCK BENTSPINE
Beau Blythe – 0SPACE
Umlautgames - THRUSTBURST
Tom Sennett – DEEPAK FIGHTS ROBOTS
Matt Thorson – RA RA EXTREME STAR BOXING

COOL MIX SIDE B FEELIN COOL:

Michael Brough – GAME TITLE
aliceffekt – DRYPOINT
Stephen Lavelle – ACTIVATE THE THREE ARTEFACTS AND THEN LEAVE
Daniel Remar – HERO CORE
thecatamites – SPACE FUNERAL
Merritt Kopas – LIM

—

So, definitely a true COOL MIX: scattershot picture of things that I love, divided roughly in half based on whether or not you’re FEELIN COOL! or FEELIN COOL.

Also, I’ve been working on finishing up some short jammy games from LD48 and Glorious Trainwrecks; they’re friends, so I’d like to post them together. They involve KITTENS. Soon.

everyone! i finally did it and added preloaders to SHOOT THE BUTTS and SUPER CAKE FIGHT and there are lots of updates to those games, including a new SECRET MODE that might have something to do with a code that you enter on the title screen. also, I have finally put OWWW online, so you can play that if you haven’t already, and if you have, play it again, because it was probably broken before.

FURTHERMORE, the PUNCH TRILOGY is up over at the GAMES page. These were all made for the GDC 2012 Pirate Kart and they are sadly WINDOWS ONLY at the moment, because I do not know how to port them to Mac, or HTML5, so if there is a kind internet fairy that wants to help, please do that for me.

Finally did one of these for Shoot the Butts:

I really need to figure out a better way to line things up for attract mode screens. OH WELL. Now I’m going to change the controls to be a little (just a little!) bit floatier and more Thrustburst-y and then I am adding a secret mode which hopefully won’t take very long and then I will upload it, along with the Punch Trilogy and the new version of Super Cake Fight. I’m also making a video for Super Cake Fight because I think there were maybe 3 people who played it.

so, today I embarked on a Website Tidying Up Adventure, which is most evident in the new header. I’ve also been tying up loose ends in released and finished-but-unreleased games, the first of which is SUPER CAKE FIGHT. I’ve needed to add a how-to-play screen to the game for awhile, and that’s what I did this evening. It took a long time, but it’s animated and hopefully does the job.

SUPER CAKE FIGHT actually has a lot that needs to be added to it (or what feels like a lot), but I think I’ll be happy to close the book on it and I’ll feel better about having it online. I quite like how it originally came out, but time and distance has afforded me the perspective necessary to see that it is rather rough in its current state.

TO DO:

- there needs to be some sort of timer on the level, so that players are driven to win and don’t just grief each other by running away. music needs to be made for this event.
- a player should not be able to be held in another player’s mouth indefinitely, so I need a “bursting free imminent!” sound effect and code to go with it
- another level would be nice, especially since I’ve already drawn tiles for many other levels
- the game needs a preloader, so I have to change the preloader I made for OWWW to use Anna Anthropy’s delightful Bubble Butts font, which is a TrueType.

oh, the attract mode loops now, in a famicom style.

with this little VVVVVV jam.

Music Power Family Rescue