2012 miscellany

Terry Dec 28, 2012 7 Comments

I like the idea of starting fresh each year – ever since I went full time indie five years ago, I’ve kept annual pages on the sidebar of my blog of the creations I’m happiest with. I think it’s creatively healthy to start fresh, bury old things away, prepare for new things.

2012, mostly, is defined for me by Super Hexagon, a game I started this year. Which is odd, because when this year started, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to work on anything new at all. Things didn’t work out that way. My plans never do, apparently. I think I’m ok with that.

Where that feeling was coming from, though, was a desire to work on less small, incidental things. To take more control of my work, to really focus on something bigger, something more ambitious. That’s something I actually did this year – as well as making Super Hexagon, I worked long stretches on several other projects – a roguelike, an FPS, an RPG.

As a result, I released very few smaller games this year. There were a few things I was sorta happy with, though, so I want to make a place for them, in this small collection:

	Harmonilr is a puzzle game inspired by the Towlr approach to puzzle design. Play Online
	Griefer is a multiplayer experiment that didn’t really work out. Play Online (Kongregate) (Original Post)
	Notsnake is not snake. Play Online

Dog Game

Terry Dec 16, 2012 10 Comments

Working on something for this weekend’s Ludum Dare – not sure if it’s gonna go anywhere…

10 Comments

App Store best of 2012

Terry Dec 14, 2012 9 Comments

Bloody hell – quite unexpectedly, Apple just featured Super Hexagon as a runner up for this year’s game of the year! (In the UK, at the very least.) That’s pretty cool of them! 🙂

Anyway, I figured to celebrate, I’d put the game on sale on iOS for Christmas. If you happened to miss the launch sale, here’s another chance to pick it up for 99c/59p!

Thanks, everybody 🙂

Super Hexagon now available on steam

Terry Nov 27, 2012 83 Comments

Super Hexagon is now available for PC and Mac. This week only, it’s on sale for just $2!

See you on the leaderboards!

I am really, really happy with the store description they let me use, heh.

Mixtape 2: Obscure

Terry Nov 21, 2012 5 Comments

My last mixtape was intended for non-gamers – this one is more of an insider thing.

Over the long term in this medium, I think people tend to only remember the highlights. The best games on a system. The best games in a genre. The best games in a given year. A developer’s best game. In the process, a lot of flawed, interesting games get forgotten.

We’re long enough into this whole solo-indie developer thing that there are now quite a few prolific developers out there with a substantial body of work – in many cases, a body of work that includes extremely interesting games overshadowed by more famous productions. You could make many mixtapes like this one.

This mixtape is a collection of early or lesser known works by designers I like. (The title, “obscure”, wasn’t quite the word I was looking for, but I struggled to find a better one.)

Click here to download the entire collection for windows, or play the games individually below:

Super Hexagon coming to Steam next week

Terry Nov 20, 2012 43 Comments

You’ve no idea how happy I am to finally be able to share this news. Super Hexagon is launching on Steam next Tuesday the 27th of November, for PC and Mac.

It’s going to cost $2.99 (the same price as the iOS version), but I’m hoping to launch with some sort of discount (still talking to Valve about that).

I’m sorry this has taken so long. I appreciate your patience with me! I wanted to launch much sooner than this, but ultimately I just wasn’t happy with the performance of the flash version. So, I knuckled down and rewrote everything in C++ – this new version of the game runs at a higher resolution than the iOS version, and runs fast and silky smooth on every machine I’ve been able to get my hands on – a very important thing for a game like this.

I’m very excited to finally be able to share this game with more people. See you on the leaderboards! 🙂

Wanted: Coder

Terry Nov 16, 2012 0 Comments

EDIT 21st Nov 2012: This position is now filled! Thank you.

Hey all! I’m looking for another coder for a contract job. Here’s the deal:

I recently ported Super Hexagon from Flash to C++, using the cross platform openFrameworks library. That port is now finished, and the game should hopefully be launching on PC and Mac very soon.

I’m looking for a programmer to port this new version of the game to Android, and then later to iOS (as an update to the existing version there). The library I’ve used is supposed to be cross platform, so I don’t expect it to be a huge job – but there are enough complications with it to make it a job for a more experienced coder than myself.

Part of the job will be to implement Scoreloop on Android, and Gamecenter on iOS. (On iOS, you’ll also need to write some code to pick up the old flash save files.) You may also need to optimise the code to make it run at 60fps at retina resolutions.

You don’t necessarily have to use openFrameworks if you’re more familiar with a different C++ framework on Android/iOS (it should be relatively straightforward to swap oF for something else).

If you’re interested, please get in touch, and we can discuss rates, deadlines, and more about what’s involved. Thanks!

Hyper Mode

Terry Nov 1, 2012 21 Comments

It’s been a while since Super Hexagon came out on iPhone – I guess people might be wondering what the hold up is with the PC and Mac ports. Well, long story short, I wasn’t happy with how the game was running on some computers, so about two weeks ago I started porting the game to C++.

What does this mean for Super Hexagon? Well, exciting things! A linux version is now possible! Leaderboard issues aren’t a hold up on Android anymore! Maybe even retina support is possible on iOS! I dunno. Right now I’m just going to focus on getting the game out on PC, but this is a good thing, overall. Wish I’d done it before launch.

I think I’m done with Flash, now. I’ve used it for about four years at this point, and gotten very comfortable with it – but I think I’ve gotten to the point where it’s holding me back. It’s time for a change!

Don’t Look Back now available for iOS and Android

Terry Oct 17, 2012 25 Comments

About a week ago, I took a day out from working on Super Hexagon stuff to do a fun side thing – I ported one of my old games, Don’t Look Back, to mobile. It’s available now on both iOS and Android. (It was a pretty simple port, thanks to Adobe AIR’s mobile exporter.)

The game initially failed review on the apple app store, for a somewhat bizarre reason (some people are taking this weirdly seriously; I’m not, I think it’s hilarious). Thankfully, it got sorted out pretty quickly.( But yeah, it’s probably worth pointing out that the game is totally free, which is all I was really trying to express with that description.)

Revisiting Don’t Look Back was a pretty strange experience. It’s quite old now – I made it in January 2009 – and I hadn’t actually played it in some time. Despite numerous flaws which are glaringly apparent to me now, it remains a game I’m extremely proud of making.

2009, incidentally, is also the year that I made almost all of VVVVVV. One of the reasons I thought this port might be fun to do is that I’m considering an iOS and Android port for VVVVVV, so I’m seeing it as kind of a “trial run”. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen, and I’m not promising anything – but I’m definitely thinking about it.

Mixtape 1: Introduction

Terry Oct 15, 2012 5 Comments

A little while ago on twitter, some people I follow were putting together themed mix tapes of games they like. I think it’s a cool idea, so I’m going to try putting a couple of them together myself. Here’s the first one.

This mixtape is for people who haven’t played many games, and think they won’t like them.

All of these games are controlled with the mouse, arrow keys, and space bar. They’re all free.

Click here to download the entire collection, or play the games individually below: