distractionware: devlog

Now retitled “VVVVVV” at the last minute and at great expense!

From here on out, I’m not working on anything else until this game is finished.

The Best Years of my Life is a game for two players, seated at one keyboard. Made in 48 hours for Mini Ludum Dare #10, which had the theme “Domestic Violence”.

Playing alone is not recommended. The game won’t make a lot of sense if you do.

Play it here!

Last week Anthony sent me a message on Twitter asking about VVVVVVVV – so I sent him a link to the prototype! This week’s Bytejacker shows a few short glimpse of the game so far (at around the 3:10 mark) :

The preview shows the basic mechanic that the game’s built around, so don’t watch if you don’t want it spoiled!

Fun and all as it was to see him pronounce VVVVVVVV, I should probably have mentioned that the first five and last two “V”s are silent

Last week Bullet Time was on it too, in free indie rapid fire. Tim still seems to hold the best time, God rank at 2 minutes. I’m not sure that Martha rank is even possible.

Ok, maybe it’s not as complete as it, er, didn’t look. But it is starting to take shape! I’ve posted a quick non interactive proto, which sorta gives some idea of what I’m going for.

Think maybe I’ll give it another day. Maybe two. It’s been a while since I tried to make an RPG.

Spent today working on a game for a contest over on FGL, but misjudged my time completely. I always end up doing that.

Earlier I thought I was just going to scrap the game I was working on, but now I kinda like where it’s going. Gonna spend tomorrow working on it, see what happens.

It’s more complete than it looks!

Remember that something short and fun I mentioned in the last post? It’s going really well, but turns out it’s not as short as I thought it would be. Though that’s a good thing – this project is a lot of fun to work on!

The game’s called VVVVVVVV. I think I’m finally far enough along to post some screenshots:

I’ve already been working on it for about two weeks. I think maybe it’ll take another two, but hopefully not much longer.

So! This has pretty much been my main focus for the last couple of weeks. At this point the basic gameplay is finalised, and I’m in the process of making levels. It’s taking far far longer than I thought it would or even might, but it’s shaping up really well. Even in the test levels I’ve had quite a few interesting matches against the AI, who beats me in virtually every game.

Detonate (or whatever I end up calling it) is a pretty simple game, and I really thought I’d be finished at this stage. Honestly, one of the reasons why it’s taking so long is that I’ve been in a bit of a rut; I’m getting a little tired of going from one big project to another, and it’s starting to wear me out. Whenever I finally finish this, I probably won’t be able to account for all the time it’s taken me.

I think taking the last few days off to work on bullet time was probably a very good idea – in fact, I think I’m going to put this on hold for a week or two altogether and work on something smaller for a while. I have an idea for something short and fun that I want to try making!

Bullet Time is my game for Mini Ludum Dare #9. It’s finished, and playable on Kongregate!

The game’s dead simple; the goal is to survive as long as you can. If things get too hectic, you can activate Bullet Time, which slows down enemy bullets long enough for you to navigate to safety. The highest rank is “Martha”, which requires you to survive for 3 whole minutes.

Making this reminded me of how much I enjoy shooters. I really should take a week out and make a more ambitious one at some point!

Here’s a video, courtesy of Tim!

Just uploaded a new flash prototype, a demo of a little shooter I’m making posthumously for Mini Ludum Dare #9. Right now it’s just randomly throwing all the game’s enemies at you, so it’s not indicative of the actual game yet (it’s also missing the most important gameplay mechanic).

It should be finished tomorrow sometime!

On the third saturday of every month, Glorious Trainwrecks host Klik of the Month Klub, a celebration of improvisational game design! This time round, I created a game called Sine Wave Ninja. Some targets: 1000 is a good score, 2000 is a great score, and anything above 3000 is a hell of a lot better than I can do.

I really love messing around in Klik and Play, but it’s an old, buggy and seriously limited development environment; so this month, my only objective was to try and familiarise myself with Klik and Play’s big brother, Multimedia Fusion. Turns out I absolutely love using it – it’s exactly like using Klik and Play, and it resolves pretty much every problem I have with it.

The first thing I associate MMF with is Ikiki – so, I figured as an exercise, I’d make a game in his style. Hence; naked ninjas.

My original idea was to make one of those timing games like Hitotobasi or Gonbutoman; you’d start on the left, run by tapping z, jump at just the right time into the ocean, press jump again to change direction and leap out, in a sine wave. But, er, it ended up being completely different than that. Probably a good thing, seeing as I really like how it ended up!

Actually, I’m tempted to take a few days out to turn this little prototype into a real game. I think it’s got potential to be pretty addictive!