Chroma Road Released!

Hey hey hey! I'm back today, and super excited to announce the release of my ninth #1GAM game, Chroma Road! Thats right, after all this time, you can finally play it! :D

The title screen

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Play it on Gamejolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/chroma-road/184631
or Itch.io: https://hellamagellan.itch.io/chroma-road

Welcome to Chroma Road, where speed and reflexes are king, and color coordination is the name of the game! Chroma Road is a tough-as-nails, fast-paced color-puzzle/endless-runner hybrid where you must match colors with gates in order to proceed. Use the Z, X, and C keys to change to any primary color (red, green, and blue), and combine them to form secondary colors! Think fast and stay sharp as you pass through the gates, gaining score and staying alive along the way. Keep going to get a high score and ace the best time!

Chroma Road is a major first for me: Its my first game made using the HaxeFlixel framework. This is pretty important, since this is going to be my development methodology going forward. I'll even use HaxeFlixel to develop commercial games pretty soon, hopefully (more on that o come, though).
 
Anyhow, I've made 9 games so far! Woohoo! This has been a crazy year of development, but I'm on track to finish the #1GAM challenge in November. Here's hoping!

If you play Chroma Road and enjoy it (or not), please let me know here in the comments on the respective game pages. I love me some feedback! :D

See you all next time!

Dev Blog #20: Short Update on Chroma Road

Hey, y'all! I don't have too much time to whip this post up, so I'm gonna just leave you with a few of my recent screens and a short commentary. Chroma Road is coming along swimmingly thus far! Check out these images :)

Here's the first screen. Notice the UI enhancements at the top,
particularly the timer.

The number in the top left is a score counter. You gain 1 point
for getting through a gate.

When you die, this is what you see. The screen keeps scrolling, by the way.

As I said, so far, so good. The music I'm making for the game is nearing completion, and as soon as I finish the main menu (a feature I am notorious for leaving til the last minute), only polish will remain! I'm aiming for August 30th as a release date, currently.

See you later everyone!!!

A Quick Retrospective on Tips & Tricks Magazine

Hey everyone! I'm here for a quick post for the week, and I decided that I would take this as an opportunity to bring some attention to a subject that isn't talked about too much anymore: physical-copy video game magazines. Specifically, I wanted to talk about Tips & Tricks Magazine, which is in my opinion the greatest gaming publication of all time. This isn't meant to be a long or in-depth feature about Tips & Tricks, but rather just a moment for me to give some props to a bygone era of gaming journalism, as well as perhaps introduce some of my readers to T&T if they've never seen it before. :)

A sample Tips & Tricks cover, showcasing some awesome games.

Tips & Tricks was a magazine that ran between 1993 and 2007. Unlike most gaming-related publications, Tips & Tricks didn't produce reviews or anything like that. Their main focus was on providing readers with gameplay help and lots of cheat codes. The magazine was famous for its cheats, which were featured in huge, alphabetized lists in the back of each issue. They also had huge features and walkthroughs at the front of the magazine that provided plenty of assistance to those that might purchase the games they covered.

T&T had something special, though, and it wasn't just the cheat codes. Where as most gaming magazines even then functioned as hype-and-review machines or specialized newspapers, T&T was always about playing the games you already had :) It had an interesting perspective and was an invaluable tool in the pre-Game FAQs era. Tips & Tricks also had numerous columns throughout the magazine that focused on specific gaming communities (Halo, Final Fantasy) or on peripheral aspects of video games (such as Japanese imports or game collecting). In short, Tips & Tricks was the ultimate hobbyist video game publication, and was, for me personally, an amazingly enriching lifeline into the broader gaming community, especially before the internet got into full swing.

A selection from my own Tips & Tricks collection. I had lots more as
a kid, but I'm slowly building back up :)

 
But, alas, all good things must come to an end. Like many magazines, Tips & Tricks wasn't able to handle the oncoming of digital media very well. The aforementioned Game FAQs site largely made their walkthroughs pointless, and it wasn't long before huge catalogues of cheat codes sprang up around the internet as well. In 2007, T&T made the switch from a monthly magazine to a quarterly (then semi-annually) "Codebook," or simple collection of cheat codes. Even this was not enough to save them, however. The Codebooks themselves ceased publication in 2011, and just like that Tips & Tricks passed with the wind into the realm of history.

Nowadays, Tips & Tricks doesn't get much remembrance. There is an excellent in-depth history of the publication on GameLosers.net, which features interviews with several staff members. There are also a few scans of some early issues available from the Internet Archive. Chris Bieniek, Editor-In-Chief of T&T and the mastermind behind much of the magazine's greatness, runs a site called Video Game Ephemera, where he showcases some of the items in his jaw-droppingly huge collection of gaming paraphernalia (he also gave a really cool interview to Atari HQ many years ago where he talked about his early career and gave some insight into T&T's predecessors and founding. Worth a read!). And... that's pretty much it! Like much print media before the internet era, it isn't new, so it isn't tended to.  

Tips & Tricks magazine is something of a relic at this point, but its pages still brim with a wealth of information for anyone courageous enough to brave a paper-cut :) It was a huge part of my childhood, and in many ways, I wish that it or something like it were still around. I have yet to find a game-playing-focused publication either physically or digitally that truly recaptures the sense of pure hobbyist enjoyment that T&T had. Maybe that doesn't exist anymore, but in this era of rampant clickbait, multi-year-long hype that ends in bitter disappointment, acidic reviews, and constant gamer infighting, the peaceable world of Tips & Tricks, where games are just about having some fun, is something I personally can't help but long for.

Whew! :) That's about all I have to say this week. I promise next week will be more on topic of my usual fare, such my upcoming game Chroma Road. See you then!

Dev Blog #19: Chroma Road Progress Report

Aloha! How is everyone today? I'm pretty good, myself. In case anyone missed it on my twitter (or, I should say, since you probably missed it) I'll mention here that I've decided that my weekly blog posts will come on Mondays from now on, instead of over the weekend like before. That's when I've been getting around to it lately, anyway :P

Anyway, hello again, and welcome to the 19th edition of my dev blog posts! This week I have some fun and exciting news regarding my upcoming #1GAM game, Chroma Road! What's more, I have screenshots! Whoopee! Read on :)

First and foremost, I have running, lane switching, and color changing all implemented in the game. Chroma Road is a 3-lane endless runner/color puzzle game, so these are the main things the player can do. Here's a sampling:

The background scrolls by, and the player runs forward automatically.

Press Z, X, or C to change color, and try to correspond them to the gates.

You can activate more than one color at a time to turn to a secondary color!

 
So far so good with the game! The scrolling gates are just images for now, but in the final game they'll be obstacles that are impassable unless you are the correct color. Also soon to be added: a timer, a score tracker, incremental difficulty, and improved graphics :)

Also, I've been using this game as an excuse to learn to use the HaxeFlixel framework. It has been going well so far. HaxeFlixel has a bit of a different approach to what I am accustomed to with game development APIs, in that its approach is sort of to have everything packaged and available if you choose to use it. HaxeFlixel has a learning curve, especially if you haven't got any experience with Flash ActionScript, but it is well worth the effort of learning. I'm hoping to be able to contribute somewhat to the project in the future, once my Haxe chops have improved.

Quick screen of my IDE, FlashDevelop. Check out that sick color coordination :0

(By the way, if you want to support HaxeFlixel, they currently have an IndieGoGo campaign going on right now. Support them if you can!)

That should do for today :) Hopefully I've given you something to look forward to when my game comes out later this month! See you soon!

Dev Blog #18: Announcing Chroma Road!

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the first dev blog here in over a month! I'm a day late today (yet again), but that's partly because I was waiting for the first day of August so I could announce my next #1GAM game! :D This month's game is called Chroma Road! Read about it below! :)

Current logo for Chroma Road! The pink will be transparent in the game.

Chroma Road is an endless runner/color puzzle game that features multiple lanes you can run in. You control a player character that has the power to change primary colors, which allows you to navigate through colored gates that block your path. The game will be very fast, and the puzzles get harder and harder as time goes on!

I'm making this game in Haxe, using HaxeFlixel. I am really enjoying using these tools so far, and I think that HaxeFlixel is going to become my go-to game development instrument.

I'll have more to discuss about Chroma Road in the coming weeks :) Until next time everyone! Peace out!