Asked me anything

Less than a week to go before the big collection comes out, phew! I’ve been somewhat frantically working away on finalising some last minute details, but I think it’s all basically going to be ok. My big wall of post-it notes is starting to get fairly thin!

In case you missed it, yesterday I did an AMA on /r/Games, which was terrifying but went really well. Check it out if you’re interested in, e.g. my rankings of which Dark Souls games are best to play level 1 runs of!

[AMA – I’m Terry Cavanagh, indie game designer of VVVVVV, Super Hexagon, Dicey Dungeons, and some other stuff. Ask me anything!]

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So what’s in the collection?

Hi! So, last week, I announced that I was releasing a collection of my “other” games, on Steam and Itch. It’s gonna be out in less than a month! I figured I should start talking about it a bit more.

I saw some people on Bluesky speculating about exactly what’s in it – I, uh, didn’t really mean to be vague about this, but I guess I was, sorry! So, here’s a nice clear answer:

There are 21 games in the collection.

So what are they? Humor me for a minute, and let me be slightly vague about that.

Honestly, I’ve made a lot of rubbish over the years; there are all sorts of little things I could have considered including in this. Once I’d decided that it couldn’t be and shouldn’t be “everything I’ve made”, it’s been a very interesting task to figure out what should make the cut.

I could go on about this for a while, so let me just give you a buzzfeed style top five: five games that you might have expected me to include that I haven’t, and five that you might not have expected that I have! And then at the end of this blog post, I’ll just tell you exactly what’s in it.

Not included #5: Climb the Giant Man Obby

Right, well, I guess it’s probably not be a huge surprise that my Roblox game didn’t make the collection – but I gave it more consideration than you might expect! I like this game a lot, and loved making it, and I’ve gotta admit that there was something very tempting about including something that nobody would reasonably expect.

From a technical perspective, while it’d have been extremely difficult, it is sorta possible, since Roblox lets you export your scenes as .obj files. I probably couldn’t have done the multiplayer part of it, though, so it would have been a weird single-player version.

Ultimately, I figured it wasn’t worth seriously considering – too much is lost when you remove this from its Roblox context.

Included #5: A Proper Cup of Tea

I never got around to posting them here, but last year I made a couple of games in Downpour, which is a fun tool for making collage games on your phone. I really like these games, but hadn’t originally planned on porting them. However, whenever I would tell friends what I’ve been working on recently, a surprising question I kept getting was “are you going to port your tea game”? So eventually, I did! Both the Tea game and the Boardgame game are in the collection.

Now that I’m wrapping things up, I’m really glad these games are included – they go well with the kind of personal and messy vibe I’m hoping comes across with the collection. And Downpour made it pretty easy to port them – you can just export a downpour project as a simple json file that contains all the image and hyperlink information.

(Fun fact, adding these games to the collection almost doubled my localisation costs, lol)

Not included #4: Judith

Something I had to decide early on was if I was going to include design collaborations or not. I decided against it, which I think is correct; I feel like the collection is a more personal, cohesive thing if it’s mainly stuff I did solo. So that ruled out American Dream, Xoldiers, my Experiment 12 chapter, among other things. Judith is definitely the one that made me most unsure about that decision, though.

Included #4: Bullfist

…then for some reason, I made an exception for this little jam game that I made with the other people at my table at BIGJam 2009. Yeah, I dunno! I know it’s inconsistent, but it made sense to me at the time!

Not included #3: Pathways

This was an important game to me back when I made it, but replaying it last year, I really just don’t vibe with it anymore. I feel like it doesn’t succeed at what it’s trying to do, and I find the writing excruciating. So I didn’t bother porting it. Sorry if you liked this one, I guess!

Included #3: The Hunt

…not that I necessarily have a problem with excruciating writing. Case in point! Here’s a game I made when I was a teenager.

This was a very last-minute addition – originally I considered anything from before I “went Indie” to be out of scope. But I randomly came across it again late last year and the muscle memory came back to me immediately, and I decided I really wanted it to be in here.

Not included #2: Halting Problem

I took a good long look at some of my abandoned projects for this! In particular, I considered the early jam version of State Machine, my Pico8 raycaster Dr. Monstershooter, Wild Selma, my survival RPG It’s Very Cold, and Halting Problem.

Halting Problem was a puzzle game I worked on for about six months in 2014, and it seemed like the one to give serious consideration to. I properly announced it and everything! I really regret never figuring out how to finish it.

Unfortunately, all of my unfinished games basically have the same problem – I just never really got any of them to a point where they were ready to show to people. Halting Problem, in particular, is a mess of half finished puzzles with no tutorialisation or structure, and it doesn’t work unless I’m literally standing over your shoulder to talk you through it. (ignore that bit, don’t go that way, oh wait let me load a different level for you, etc)

Included #2: Four Letter Word

There was one exception, though: Four Letter Word. Unlike the others, I submitted a demo of this unfinished game to a competition, so I had a build ready to go that had been designed to give people an idea of what the game is like.

It was really nice revisiting this game for the collection. I wish I’d stuck with it and finished it up back in the day, because I think its moment has passed and it sorta feels like plenty other people have done similar things since, but much better. Some cool stuff in there, though. Excited to finally be sharing it.

Not included #1: Constellation

Honestly, I could have gone either way on this, but I eventually decided not to include Constellation because it requires a keyboard. I just really wanted the whole collection to be something you could comfortably play on a telly with a controller.

Also! This game is *weirdly tricky* to localise, because the word list is really particular and built about what words prompt you to think of other words, and those connections don’t quite seem to translate from one language to another.

Included #1: At a Distance

The original version of At a Distance is an absolute pain to get up and running. To even start, you need two computers, set up side by side. Then, they need to be connected on a local area network. There’s no clever server/client auto-configuration code, because I didn’t know how to do that back in the day. So you’ve gotta open a terminal on each machine and figure out the IP addresses and type them manually into a in-game console. This was hard enough to do on Windows 7 back in 2011, and with firewall changes and so on, it’s only gotten harder.

I think, reasonably enough, not many people bothered to do any of that.

At a Distance was not an easy game to port – I’ll spare you the technical details for the moment. But it was pretty important to me that it be in this collection – actually, it was one of the big motivations for doing the project in the first place.

The final list:

Alright, so here’s the final list: the collection is arranged in a slightly weird way, with 5 A-Sides and 5 B-Sides:

But one of the B-Sides is itself another collection, which contains another 12 games. Some of these are extremely slight:

(also, no promises, but I might try to sneak another game in there if I get time before launch lol.)

Right, just a couple of weeks left to go. Wish me luck! You can find my store page up on steam here (itch coming soon): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2824580/Terrys_Other_Games/

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Some of my other games

Hello all! God, it’s 2025, where does the time go? Over the last year, I kinda lost the habit of being “online”, in general, which I think has been a good change for me and a much needed break. It’s a little strange writing a blog post again, how does this even work, etc. I’m sure I’ll get back into the habit.

Anyway, I have some news! Recently, I’ve been working on a big collection of my some of my older games. It’s a single pack, updated to run nicely on modern computers and steam decks and containing some of my favorite stuff I’ve worked on over the past 20 years or so. It ranges from big freeware releases like Tiny Heist, to little things like that tea game I made last year. And it’s coming out in about a month! You can check it out on steam here:

[Terry’s Other Games on Steam]

Hope you enjoy it. Thanks for checking out my blog in 2025 <3

(oh, also, there’s a sort of presskit here with more information if that’s of any interest to anyone)

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Mr. Platformer

Hey, I’m back! And I’ve got a new game for everyone, check it out here:

[Play Online (HTML5)]
[Download for Windows/Mac/Linux on itch.io]

I’m gonna try to keep this short, but, aghhhhh, I think I probably do need to say something:

Back in April, I got covid for the first time. I was unlucky – it hit me pretty hard. I wasn’t really able to do much of anything for months.

Fortunately, though, I now seem to be on the way to a full recovery.

This game started as a tiny Ludum Dare project, and it was the last thing I was working on when I got sick. Maybe I should have just abandoned it at that point? But… it became a really good recovery project for me. A nice, low stakes thing to poke at whenever I had the energy. As I got better, and as I continue to get better, I worked on the game more and more, until the last couple of weeks where I was back to just working on it full time. Releasing this game feels like part of my recovery, like I can start thinking about bigger things again.

Anyway – I hope you all enjoy it, I’m really happy with how it turned out. And thanks for buying my games and supporting my work, and making it possible for me to do things like take a few months out to recover <3

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C.H.A.I.N.G.E.D.

Hey all, got a new game for you! This one’s been on the backburner for a little while now. I contributed a chapter to the new Haunted PS1 chain game out today, called C.H.A.I.N.G.E.D.

[Download on itch.io]

I discovered this project in its exciting early stages on the Haunted PS1 Discord. Once I heard what they were attempting, I couldn’t wait to sign up and take part!

The really cool thing about this project is its structure – each chapter ends with a choice between two paths, and each path is a completely different game. This is not the first time I’ve seen a forking-path chain game proposed, but I’m pretty sure it’s the first time anyone has actually pulled it off.

My game is buried deep, and is a bit slight – to be honest was a little bit of a 3D learning project for me – but I’m very happy with how it turned out, and more than that, it’s super cool to have been a part of this ambitious project! I think the end result is really special, and I can’t wait to see people discover all its many paths.

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May: Healthposting

So hey! Not gonna do a monthly blog post this month – in fact, I’m planning to take a little break from regular blog posts, and from updating my freeware blog Terry’s Free Game of the Week.

I’m ok, but I’ve had some old health issues flare up recently, maybe complicated by catching covid for the first time a month ago. So, I’m gonna take an extended break, and focus on healing up. I’ll still be around, just, er, lurking, I guess!

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April: Another new project

What I’ve been working on recently

So, Mr. Platformer didn’t go anywhere. That’s fine, I’ve already started working on a new game! (It still feels a bit fragile, though, so I’m not ready to share anything about it just yet. Maybe next month.)

At this point, I feel like I should explain what I’m actually trying to do here? My process is basically just to churn through as many ideas as possible, and look for the ones that feel special. Most of my ideas go nowhere, which can be discouraging. But it seems like this is the only thing that really works for me.

My goal is to figure out what my next big game is. I really want to be working on that next big game!

My secret new project is pretty exciting. It’s already fun, and I have a lot of ideas I want to explore. I think, maybe, it could be that next big game. (They all could, though.)

I guess I’m doing Ludum Dare?

This weekend is Ludum Dare! I haven’t done one of these since 2020, but I’m excited to give it a go again, and test out some of the new skills I’ve been learning this year. Probably gonna make a 2D thing in Godot!

I don’t have the best track record with 48 hour jams – and these days, a weekend doesn’t feel like enough time to make something I’m happy with. I never even got around to finishing up the post-compo version of my last Ludum Dare entry (in the gif above) – maybe my standards are too high now, or something.

Which is really stupid, and I know it. I’m looking forward to making some absolute trash this weekend. A real bad videogame!

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March: In-Between Projects

Posted in terrynews

What I’ve been working on recently

Hello again! Not much to say this month, because I’ve mostly been on holiday. I’m doing bits and pieces of work in-between, and in-between that, I’ve been poking at a holiday project, which I’ve been calling Mr. Platformer. I mostly started this as an excuse to play around with GBStudio, which I’ve wanted to do for ages!

It came from brainstorming ideas that felt like a good fit for the constraints of a gameboy – the thing I’m playing around with here is flipping between two colours, and areas that let you swap between them. The weirdly non-obvious thing here is that you actually flip the colours around so that you’re always on the background colour, which is way more exciting that just e.g. flipping the player colour around. I can’t really articulate why this is – it just feels better.

What’s the plan here?

So actually, this idea is one I’ve played about with before! Back in 2010, at a game jam in Cambridge, I did something very similar for a VMU themed jam – see the gif above! I didn’t get more than a couple of rooms in to it, but I’ve always like the vibes here.

Honestly, I dunno if I’ll finish Mr. Platformer? I’m sure it’ll show up in something I make eventually, though.

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February: Near misses

Posted in terrynews

What I’ve been working on recently

Aghhh. It really, really sucks when something promising just doesn’t work out.

So, I decided to shelve the 3D game I’ve been working on recently. At first, this game seemed to have a lot of potential: I love how it looks, and I love how it feels to be in. I love the dreamlike feeling of exploring a 3D space with a lot of verticality.

But I’ve learned to trust my gut about these things by now, and this one just wasn’t coming together like it should.

I thought about sharing a playable build; but I think it’s a bit too wonky for that. So I just made a quick video instead:

Designing good levels for this was surprisingly hard. I was aiming for a particular kind of feeling here, and therefore had lots of rules about what I wanted to do (slow floaty movement; no enemies; a weird DOS energy mechanic that I was very attached to) and maybe too many constraints on what I didn’t want to do. So progress was really slow, and lots of ideas didn’t pan out.

Well, it was a fantastic learning project at least – I’ve learnt a ton of new stuff thanks to this! Maybe I’ll come back to eventually, who knows.

And is this process in the room with us right now?

When I rebooted this whole monthly devlog thing, I knew at some point I was gonna have a post like this. Fact is, most of what I work on doesn’t work out, which sucks! I’ve learnt to just accept it as “the process”, because honestly I don’t feel like I really have a say in it anyway. It’s just how it works. Pfffftttttttt

Ok, well, back to the empty project file. I’ve got a clean slate now, which is exciting, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet. See you next month!

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January: The third dimension

Posted in terrynews

What I’ve been working on recently

Hey, welcome back! It’s a new year and I’m excited to get working on some new things! Or, you know, to continue working on the thing I started near the end of last year. Here’s some screenshots I took today:

It’s very much still a “I’m learning 3D!” project, but I think it’s gonna end up being pretty fun.

This has been another month for just sitting down and learning new stuff, which takes forever, but is really starting to pay off. I’ve learnt more in the past couple of months than I have in years. There are things I know how to make now which I couldn’t even consider making before!

As for this game: There’s still a little way to go – I only have one finished level, and I want a lot more – but I’m pretty sure I’ll have it all wrapped up by the time next month’s blog post rolls around.

A crash course in 3D

Since the main thing I’ve been doing lately is watching tutorials, I thought I’d share my notes! The three main things I’ve been learning are Godot, Blender, and TrenchBroom.

For Godot:

I sort of learnt a lot of the Godot basics back when I made Triangle Run – since then, it’s mostly just been practice and google. But I did put together a bunch of links in the “Where do I start?” section of the Stop Waiting For Godot jam page that’s still worth a look! (It also gets into the “Why Godot and not X” question, if you’re curious about that.)

The BEST Godot tutorials I’ve come across, though, are Miziziziz’s series on youtube. I normally find video tutorials excruciating – but these are about as to-the-point as you can get. To an extent that’s actually hilarious – be prepared to pause every five seconds to check what he’s doing. These are probably no good if you’re an absolute beginner, but if you have at least some experience with other gamedev tools, they’re amazing.

For Blender:

Man, I wish I’d just learnt Blender sooner. Blender used to have a reputation for being impossible to learn, but these days it’s actually great, and really intuitive to use.

The thing about Blender is; it’s an extremely powerful piece of software, and you can do a lot with it – but to actually make 3D models for games, you only really to need to learn like, 8 things, and then you can ignore everything else.

Everybody recommends the Donut tutorial, and everyone is right: it’s excellent. That’s my donut in the gif at the top of this section! (edit: not everyone – turns out donut guy is a bit of a dickhead. That link has some details, as well as some alternative tutorial links.)

The first couple of parts cover the basics of mesh editing, and from there, it goes through a bunch of advanced features like shaders and geometry nodes and lighting. None of that later stuff is useful for what I actually want to make, but I found it fascinating to see the zoomed out view of what’s possible with the tool – somehow it made the basic stuff less scary. The tutorial starts here!

For TrenchBroom:

TrenchBroom is my big discovery this month. It’s an open source level editor for making Quake maps!

There is a plugin for Godot called Qodot, which lets you load in Quake .map files directly into the editor. Getting it all set up is unfortunately a little bit of a faff, but it’s worth it because then you get to use TrenchBroom, and TrenchBroom is incredible. It’s so much fun to use, and it’s super fast to iterate on your work.

For actually learning to use TrenchBroom, you should check out the dumptruck_ds tutorials on youtube, which are a series of nice short 5 to 10 minute tutorials on getting up and running. It opens with the most reassuring 15 seconds I’ve ever seen in a tutorial, highly recommended.

(You can actually mostly skip through the first dumptruck_ds tutorial, since it assumes you’re trying to make maps for Quake and mostly talks about setting that up.)

That about covers it! Hey, if you’ve got any other 3D tutorial suggestions, please drop em in the comments! I’ve still got a lot to learn here!

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