Corridor - Part I Released!

Hey everyone! Wow, it's already been a month since I last posted here, huh? So sorry for the delay! School has switched into high-gear (as it tends to do near finals) and, as such, I've let my blogging slide... But that's really not a very good excuse, huh? :V

Anyway, I'm back now with some exciting news! Though I may have been lax with my blogging, I've decidedly not been lax with my game dev work! I'm here to present you with the culmination of my development efforts over the past month: my twelfth and final #1GAM game, Corridor - Part I!

The title screen!

Here is the link to the MediaFire download!

As is perhaps obvious from the image, Corridor is an RPG Maker game (made with RPG Maker VX Ace, specifically). In this game, you play as a mercenary who has been hired to venture into a dangerous labyrinth to rescue a group of kidnapped children. You are accompanied by an official from the village who hired you, who is hoping that negotiation is still an option. But things aren't always what they seem, and this grim cavern might just hold more secrets than you can handle...

I sort of hashed this game together through trial and error, and learned a lot about RPG Maker on the PC in the process. When I was younger, I used to make games on the PS2's RPG Maker 3. In fact, that program was in large part what inspired me to be a game developer in the first place, so returning to RPG Maker (even this new version) was a special experience for me.

Corridor is made with only the default resources that come packaged with RPG Maker VX Ace. I used the built-in character editor to make the portraits. The game is quite short, and mostly narrative. Also, as the title implies, it is only the first part of a series of games that I hope to work on in the future. RPG Maker is a lot of fun, so I definitely want to return to it later :)

Hooray for #1GAM!!

Also, as I said, this is my final #1GAM game! WHOOOHOOO!!! :D 

I've officially made 12 games in the past year, all of different kinds. I learned so much that I can hardly believe it. I'm so very glad that I took this challenge! I want to extend a heartfelt thanks to McFunkyPants, the architect of the #1GAM challenge. If it wasn't for what he does to keep the ball rolling, I probably never would have completed even one single game, let alone 12! Thanks so much also to all the people who play my games, and especially leave comments and ratings! You all are what keeps me going!

Now, in the upcoming months, I'm going to be getting to work on my ultimate dream: creating a commercial (read: sell-for-money) game. I'm in the late planning stages for what this game will be. I can reveal that it will probably be pretty small (and have an appropriately small price tag), as well as that I hope to have it out sometime around the middle of next year. Things can change though, so please don't think of that date as set in stone or anything!

In the next little while, I will probably continue to post erratically on this blog. I hope to have my own website online in a few months, so I will probably shift this to being a more personal blog where I can post my thoughts on games and maybe the odd tutorial or two. My final semester of Junior College ends in about a week and a half, and after that, my attempt at making a career of being a game developer begins! Wish me luck :)

See you all later on!
 

Annotated Rock Paper Scissors Released!

Hey everyone! Long time no see! I'm here on this fine Halloween night to announce the release of my 11th #1GAM game! This time its a game I made a while ago, a simple implementation of Rock Paper Scissors! But that's not all...

The (non-transparent) title image!

I decided to rehash this older game (which I made about a year ago, but never released) and to release it in source code form. I also went through and heavily commented the code, so that any up-and-coming pygame developer should be able to learn at least a little something from it :) I didn't edit my code much, so some of it is still quite sloppy. Nevertheless, I feel that it is a pretty good representation of what I cobble together each month, and I hope it is useful to someone :)

Here's a MediaFire link to the source code (in zip format): http://www.mediafire.com/file/ppq8u4ia6ex6rsp/Annotated_Rock_Paper_Scissors.zip 

The game was made with Python 2.7 and pygame 1.9. Check it out if you have the time!

That's all for today folks. See you when I see you!

Here's the Plan

Hey, folks! I'm here to give a brief update on my #1GAM endeavors here lately. I'm currently in the process of developing a game, but I'm not quite ready to officially announce it just yet. Instead, I figured I'd let the curious in on my plan for this month.

I actually want to release a different game for this month than the one I'm currently developing, because this one will take a bit of time to get finished. So, later on this month, my plan is to release a very small game that I finished about a year ago (before I started #1GAM) but that I never released. This game was made in about two days, and is quite small. My intention is to go back over the source, comment it heavily, and then release it here along with a tutorial that explains how to create it from scratch. I figure that will make this simple game at least a bit more interesting :)

The game that I'm making right now, then, will be my twelfth and final #1GAM game, and is set to be released in November. I'm going to try to get it out around Thanksgiving.

That's about all I had to say today. School has stepped up a bit, so I may slow down somewhat on my blog updates until this semester is over. I've also been pretty much dead on Twitter. Unfortunately that will probably continue until the end of the semester as well.

 See you later!

Tic-Tac-25 Released!

Hello hello! I've returned to the blog after a short hiatus to bring you my tenth (TENTH D:) #1GAM game, Tic-Tac-25! That's right, after untold delays caused by yours truly, I've finally got this game out! Check it out!

The slightly-blown-up logo!

This game is an Itch.io exclusive! Play it here: https://hellamagellan.itch.io/tic-tac-25

Tic-Tac-25 is an expanded version of the classic game Tic-Tac-Toe (or Noughts & Crosses) that features a 5X5 board, but still only takes 3-in-a-row to win! It allows for four players (the shapes X, O, Square, and Triangle), with all non-human players being controlled by a very simple AI. It works in both desktop and mobile browsers (though you may have issues with certain browsers/screen sizes).

This game was mostly meant as an experiment for me to learn how to make an HTML5 game using HaeFlixel. I learned a lot, but I still have some ways to go.

If anyone reading tries the game, let me know what you think in the comments here, or on itch.io. Particularly, if you have any problems displaying or running the game, I'd like to know the details, along with your device and browser info. This information will help me improve the quality of cross-platform web games I make in the future :)

Thanks for reading and playing! See you again!

Another Week, Another Post!

Hello, folks! I realize I'm a day late with this blog post, but this has been a pretty slow week for game dev for me, so I don't have too much to say here. I still gotta keep that once-a-week-at-least streak alive though, so here's some words! Fresh, tasty words.... D:<

Anyway, enough of that. Since the release of my last #1GAM game, Chroma Road, I've been focusing mostly on brainstorming ideas for my next project. I have decided to challenge myself for the remainder of my #1GAM experience and disallow any further "twitch" (reflex-based) games. I have made far too many of these, I realize, and I am becoming a poorer and poorer judge of the difficulty of my own games. As such, all my #1GAM games from this month on will not be reflex-based! Whoopee! :D

As for this month's game in particular, I have a few personal goals. The first is that I want to make another browser-based game. I haven't done this since March with Keyro: Arena Lockdown (which I was roundly unsatisfied with), and, what with the ease of developing for the Flash or HTML5 targets in HaxeFlixel, I have no excuse not to. Being browser-based definitely has an effect on the number of players a game gets (so many more people become engaged when the game automatically loads up for them). Secondly, I hope to find some way to incorporate scalable vector graphics (SVGs) into the game with HaxeFlixel. As best I understand, this could potentially be done with OpenFL, which HaxeFlixel is built upon, but it will take some digging. I have recently become interested in vector art, and the scalability of it seems very enticing, hence my desire to incorporate it into my games. If anyone out there has some info that could help me out (or stop me from barking up the wrong tree, if need be), I would be greatly appreciative :)

My next game will be technically experimental for me, so my intention is to keep it simple. One other thing I want this game to support is local multiplayer. I have a few ideas, and some should be ready for sharing come next week!

That about does it. See you in seven days, or thereabout! :D

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!!!

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!

Star Fall Released!

Woohoo! I'm back already, folks, and I'm overjoyed to bring you my seventh #1GAM game, Star Fall! That's right, you can play it yourself now, free of charge, as always! :)

The once and future title image of Star Fall

You can download the game on Game Jolt here: http://gamejolt.com/games/star-fall/160883
or on Itch.io here: https://hellamagellan.itch.io/star-fall

From my description on the game pages: Star Fall is a lovely, relaxing game about catching stars as they fall from the night sky! Play as an adorable stuffed bear in a dreamy world where the stars are within your reach! Watch the spinning stars as they drift toward the clouds on which you stand, and score points by catching them in your net before they hit the cloud. Be careful, though! Some stars are large and magical, and if you miss these, it's game over!

This game was a lot of fun to make, primarily because I got to collaborate with wonderful artist (and stellar girlfriend) calmcalling on it :) Her artwork is far and away my favorite part of Star Fall. I think once you play the game, you'll agree with me!

Thanks, as always, to those of you who follow my blog! I couldn't 'a done it without'cha! If you play this game (or any of my others) and enjoy it, or even if you don't, please comment below! I'd love to hear from any and every one of my readers and/or players :)

See you next time, everyone! Ciao!

Dev Blog #17: Quick Update

Hey, everyone! I'm here to offer a brief update on the status of my upcoming #1GAM game, Star Fall. This week has been pretty busy, but I've managed to find some time for development, and now the game is nearing a completed state! Check it out!

There isn't TOO much to show off this week, since the main gameplay consists of a static screen you move around on. However, you will surely notice that the wonderful artwork by calmcalling really brings the atmosphere together :)

The art is a major focus of this game, and it's looking great so far!

Another screen...

Some art still needs to be done (namely, the main character sprite), but the programming is actually about 95% done. I'm hoping to release in the middle of next week, so stay tuned! :)

See you then, everyone!

Dev Blog #16: Running and Falling

Hello, folks! Time for another weekend update on the status of my #1GAM endeavors! This week I have some new info to bring you about my June 2016 game, Star Fall! Check it out!

The gameplay programming is broadly done, and you have the ability to guide your avatar left and right, and to catch the stars that randomly fall in your net. You gain score, which is displayed in the upper-right-hand corner. Here's a (rather primitive) screenshot:

Fancy lookin, huh? :P

You earn points by catching stars, and the rate at which the stars fall increases slowly over time. Also, instead of flying off-screen when they reach the edge, the stars bounce back towards the center. I'm thinking of making them do something similar if they hit your player character, but not your net.

As you can see, the graphics are obviously lacking, but that's because my guest artist is still working on the art, so I haven't even tried to put my pitiful programmer 'art' in the game :) Yep, it's just plane ol' squares on black backgrounds so far ;)

This game has a bit of a different design goal than my previous #1GAM entries. Firstly (and most obviously), the artwork is the primary focus of the whole project. Secondly, though, I decided to make this game purposely easier than my previous games. I may have ramped up the difficulty a bit too much recently (Keyro, Torso Ninja II) , and I don't want to fall in the trap of making games that only have content in the form of discouragingly hard challenges. Make no mistake: you CAN lose in Star Fall, but hopefully repeated loss will not be the default mode of this game :)

That about does for the time being. See you next week, hopefully with some finalized art for me to show off :D

Torso Ninja II Released!

Hello everyone! I'm super excited to announce the release of my sixth #1GAM game, Torso Ninja II! That's right, its out! Hooray! Just in the nick of time too ;)

The logo, which I still like :)

Torso Ninja II is the sequel to my December 2015 #1GAM game, Torso Ninja. In this game, like its predecessor, you play as the brave (and armless) Torso Ninja, who is beset from all directions by his enemies, the Red Ninjas. You, the player, must use your mouse pointer to guide Torso Ninja safely through his enemies' barrages of bullets (err, shuriken), all the while collecting power-ups and and trying to get the highest score possible! You must also beware, for the Red Ninjas' evil leader, Goemon, might just make an appearance to try and destroy our heroic shinobi himself...

Play the game on Game Jolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/torso-ninja-ii/153329
Or play it on Itch.io: https://hellamagellan.itch.io/torso-ninja-2

This is the biggest game I've made since Cargo, and I would probably consider Torso Ninja II to be the best game I've ever made. I think I've come a long way since starting #1GAM, and I hope this game exemplifies that somewhat :)

Most importantly, though, I hope you, the audience, like this game and find it fun! I certainly had a great time making it, and I would love to hear from any and all of you who read this, and/or play my games :) Leave a shoutout below here on my blog, or comment on my Game Jolt and Itch.io game pages! You can even find me on twitter @HellaMagellan!

See you next time! Hope you enjoy this new game! :D 

P.S. As a side note, remember that you can edit the levels yourself using the level config files in the data\lvl\ directory of the Torso Ninja II folder. There's a short help file in there, so check it out! :)

Dev Blog #14: Almost Done!

Hi! How's everyone's week been? I've had a pretty good one, not the least because I made a ton of progress on my next #1GAM game, Torso Ninja II! It's very nearly done at this point, and I'm aiming to release it this coming Tuesday (the last day of the month, in fact). Here's a sampling of what I've gotten done this week!

First and foremost, the main menu has been improved significantly. It now looks halfway presentable :)
 

Yay! Main menu!

Next, I also completed the backgrounds for all three of the levels, and got all the music, level transitions, and game over screens working.
 

Level 1: The Forest

Level 2: The Plains

Level 3: The Castle

 
Many, many other, more minor things were completed this week, as well. This has been a very productive week. Good thing too! I'm running out of time! :)

That about does it for now, ladies and germs. As I said, I fully expect to release this game on Tuesday, so you'll be hearing from me pretty soon!

See you then!   

Dev Blog #13: Getting There!

Hi, everybody! Believe it or not, I'm on time for a dev blog this week! Woo! I've gotten a good bit done on TN2 this past week, and I've even begun finalizing the bullet patterns that will appear in the actual game. Check it out!

The main thing I've completed this week is the HUD and the ability to drop smoke bombs. This is an integral new feature that allows you to become invincible for a few seconds and escape a dangerous situation. Take a look!

The HUD, complete with score, bombs, and lives.

A smoke bomb is used. You can't tell in this image, but Torso Ninja is blinking.

I've also completed a skeletal version of the main menu (allowing you to start the game, and not much else) and put in some of the first patterns. Here's the second set of screenshots:

Bare-bones title screen. I promise this is definitely not final!

Early pattern. I'm thinking the bullets might be a bit too small...

So there you have it! One on-time dev blog, for your consumption! I'm running out of time on Torso Ninja 2 at this point, but even if it doesn't look like I'm nearing completion (because I've saved the graphics for last), its coming along nicely. I'll continue to be on time for this month's #1GAM, I'm almost certain :)

See you later!

Late Again!

Yikes! Two weeks in a row! So sorry everyone, time has just been getting away from me lately :/

Wait wait wait... What time is it?!?!

This is mostly just going to be a check-in post, since there hasn't been any visible progress on Torso Ninja II (though I've accomplished a lot with the music and some behind-the-scenes code, so its not been a completely unproductive week). I'm still in finals-mode, for whatever reason, so its been a challenge for me to devote a lot of time to the game. That excuse is getting old for me, though, so I've dedicated myself to making some real progress this week! Expect a good dev blog! (hopefully definitely on time this time!)

In other news, I've also been fiddling with the idea of doing some tutorials on here. I'm no expert on game design/development (or on much of anything, really) but I have some scattered knowledge that might help out fledgling devs in some specific situations :) I've dabbled in a bit of everything, game-programming-wise, but most of my in-depth knowledge
is centered around python and pygame. I think pygame is still pretty popular, though, so maybe somebody out there can get some use out of what I have to teach :)

That pretty much does it for now. Again, I'll do better about being on time next time. That's a promise!

So long!

Dev Blog #12: Busy Weekend!

Woah! Hey everyone, how's it going? You may realize that I'm a day late with my blog post. Aaaaahhh! D:

It has been a very busy weekend for me, but to be honest, I just forgot, so it's completely my fault! But, I'm posting this as an update right quick, so nothing lost! (I hope!)

Development on Torso Ninja II has been progressing decently. I spent most of this week creating a method that will allow me to script enemy spawns and bullet patterns for levels, independent of the source code. What does that mean for you? It means a certain level of client-side customization! If you're willing to learn a simple markup language (and calling it a "language" is a real stretch), you can modify the levels yourself!

I made this scripting method to speed up development on TN2 ("Hey, Erik, cool acronym!" they said. "Hey, Internet, thanks!" I replied). I have big dreams for it, and hope to maybe expand it into a sort of development method for making simple scrolling shooters. I used to mess around with the M.U.G.E.N. fighting game engine, so I was thinking of doing something like that (on a much smaller scale, of course) with shmups. Who knows if I'll be able to actually get around to it, but if so, hooray! :)

On another note, I've also been working on the music to I'm going to be using for TN2 a lot this week. I make my music in the Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS, Windows version in my case). Following is a picture of LMMS as I use it, since this article needs some visuals ;)

My DAW of choice, the wonderfully free LMMS.

I feel like I've generally been improving with my music-making skills as time has went on, and I hope for Torso Ninja II to be my most musically-accomplished work yet. I'm making the music early (unusual for me) and I've already got a couple of songs that sound okay, or so I think. At the very least, the soundtrack should be better than the original Torso Ninja (not that it's much of a horse race).

So there ya go, my day-late update :) See you next week, hopefully on-time!

Dev Blog #11: Scrolling and Shooting

Hello again! I'm back this week with a little bit of a status update on my work-in-progress game, Torso Ninja II. I've also got a couple of small screenshots to share, more to give a rough idea of the way the game will work than to provide any concrete details. So, let's get to it!

My goals for this past week were a bit subdued, as my Spring finals are going on (only one more week to go... ;_;) but I got the visuals up and running. As I mentioned previously, I'm making this game in Pygame, so I'm very familiar with what needs to be done at this point.

Here are the screens:

 

The screen scrolls and Torso Ninja follows your pointer, like in the original.

That cryptic blue dot is a bullet. No hard patterns up and running so far.

 

I should also mention that the bullets are going to have much more complex behaviors in this game than in the previous Torso Ninja. I'm drawing inspiration from my favorite curtain fire games, and I've got simple trigonometric movement working for the bullets already, so stay tuned for crazy spirals of death ;)

So, there's a taste of my past week of work. I hope to eventually include 3 total levels, and maaaaayyyyybe, just maybe, a boss at the end of the final one (that one's on the 'dreams' list for now though).

See you in a week or so :) Peace!

Dev Blog #10: Announcing Torso Ninja II!

HELLLLLLOOOOOO!

I'm back again folks, and this time I have some exciting news! For my next #1GAM game, I'll be revisiting one of my older games. That's right, I'm making a sequel to Torso Ninja! Hold on to your hats!

Torso Ninja II's logo, of which I am actually quite proud :)

Torso Ninja was my first #1GAM game, and it was (in my opinion) a pretty choppy affair. I made it in a hurry and the only goal I had was to publicly release it, so its a very small, only mildly amusing game. Nonetheless, it is far and away my most popular game, both among my friends and family, and with the internet at large (it actually has more plays on Game Jolt than all my other games combined).

I feel like I've come a long way as a game developer since last December (when I released the original Torso Ninja), and I want to prove that by reviving this game and making it as awesome as I can. So here's the plan! :)

The gimmick of Torso Ninja is that its a bullet-hell shooter where you can't shoot back; you can only dodge. I feel like this is a pretty solid concept, as, having played a few danmaku/curtain fire/bullet-hell type games myself, it seems like the vast majority of the gameplay centers around dodging anyway, with firing back as only a sub-component. The main focus of development on Torso Ninja II, therefor, will be on making dodging both fun and challenging. I have a few ideas, but you'll have to wait a bit to hear about them :)

Lastly, before I go, I think it bears mentioning exactly how I'm gonna make this game. I originally planned to make Torso Ninja II in Construct Classic, but I kept running into snags with getting a test version of a bullet pattern up and running. I was attempting to use Construct's built-in Python scripting support, but the main problem was not having any way to index specific instances of any of the game objects, which made dozens of bullets firing in all different directions at once pretty much impossible. Unfortunately, I ended up simply giving up on Construct and deciding to make the game in Python with Pygame (the same as the original Torso Ninja). It might slow development somewhat, but with Pygame I'll have all the direct control I need to make this game a reality :)

Adios, until next time!

SKRMSH released!

Surprise! I'm here to announce the early completion of my April 2016 #1GAM game, SKRMSH! This game (which, by the way, is pronounced "skirmish") is a simple card game for two players that I cooked up yesterday afternoon, and implemented in a BASIC script today over the course of about 3 or so hours. It is playable with a standard deck of 52 playing cards. Read on to find out the rules!

In SKRMSH, two players are each dealt a hand of 6 cards. Both players choose one of these cards to "bet" and a second one to "play," and lay these face down.

Standard 6-card starting hand.

The player (spoilers: me) has placed a "bet" card and has his
hand on the "play" card.

Both players flip their "play" cards at the same time, and the winner of the round is the player that has the higher value "play" card (Aces are low, face cards are scored as follows: Jack=11, Queen=12, King=13). The players then flip their "bet" cards, and the winner gains points equal to both "bet" cards put together. In the event of a tie, nobody gains any points. 

The players then set aside both of their "bet" and "play" cards and continue to play with their now-smaller hands. The "skirmish" ends when both players run out of cards in their hands (that is, after three rounds), and the cards are then shuffled back into the deck and another skirmish begins. There is no hard limit to the number of skirmishes that constitute a game, but at the end of the game, both players tabulate their scores, and the winner is the one with the higher total score.

Whew! Quite a wall of text, but SKRMSH is actually a very simple game. I didn't actually set out to make a new card game for this #1GAM game, though. I had actually intended to simply make a BASIC type-in game!

I'm 23, so I was born long after the microcomputer boom of the 70's and 80's. I have, however, always maintained an historical interest in this period, especially in the types of games available on these machines. I began thumbing through 101 BASIC Computer Games (an early edition of BASIC Computer Games) by David Ahl last month, and I was inspired to try and make my own simple BASIC game. I conceived that I would write the code, take a screenshot of it, and upload that here on my blog, thus preserving the "type-in" (that is, you, the end-user, have to enter the source code yourself, by hand) nature of these games.

I was originally going to implement the simple card game War, but I soon decided that doing so would be too easy. It also would be repetitive, because this game had already been created numerous times in the BASIC language. I then set to work fiddling with a deck of cards in my house, and came up with SKRMSH while trying to add more tactical depth to War. 

I finished my BASIC script for this game earlier this evening, and here is the promised source code screenshot!

Part 1

Part 2

There it is, in all its immune-to-copy-paste, probably-horribly-done-because-I'm-a-novice-at-BASIC glory! :) In all seriousness, I made this game as more of a personal hobby-project for myself, so I understand if nobody wants to go to the trouble of typing this in. Hopefully you can learn to play the game physically from my instructions above, even if you don't run the BASIC script. I played it with my family, and it seems to be pretty fun :)

If you DO decide to try to input the script above, I recommend you run it with the Vintage BASIC Interpreter, as it is what I used. I unfortunately do not have access to a real home computer that implements BASIC natively, but if you do and you get this program running on it, I would absolutely love to hear from you! Stuff like that delights me, cause I'm a nerd ;P

That's all for this week! I'll get this uploaded to the #1GAM site tomorrow, but right now, its already past my bedtime. Goodnight, everyone, and have a pleasant day tomorrow!

Dev Blog #8: Announcing Keyro!

Hey, hi, how ya doin'? Hopefully you folks have been having a pretty good week! I've been busy with, among (many) other things, the artwork and code for my next #1GAM game. I've got pictures this time! And, what's more, this project now has a name! I'm pleased to introduce: Keyro - Arena Lockdown!

I hope you like terribly forced puns in your video game titles.

In this game, as I mentioned before, you must run through a vertical maze of spiked walls that scroll against you, and try to escape the deathtrap. Keys feature prominently in the game (hence the title), as sometimes your progress will be impeded by a locked door and you must have a key to open it.

Much of the artwork is in a very primitive state, so I'm gonna hold off on showing screen shots for the time being. I will, however, showcase a pair of very simple sprites that make up much of what you actually see in game:

This is your intrepid hero, who looks somewhat like a viking.

And this is an evil integrated circuit... Naw, its just a spike wall :P

I have had quite a time making this game so far, and progress has been very slow. This is entirely due to the fact that I'm learning and re-learning javscript at the same time as making the game. I've yet to succeed in one of these endeavors wherein I attempt to learn a language by making a game in it, but this time will break that losing streak! :)

That's about all I have for the moment. See you later on!