Ludum Dare 36

Terry Aug 31, 2016 5 Comments

Heya blog! Been a while, hasn’t it?

Last weekend I had a go at Ludum Dare 36, and for some reason thought it might be a good idea to try making an RPG. It went ok! Better than my weekend RPGs usually go, anyway. I’ve got the bones of something good here, I think, but it’s pretty far from actually being coherent or anything. Oh well! Another one for the backburner. (there’s a gameplay gif here if you’re curious how it plays)

So actually, the reason I’ve been so quiet is because I’ve been doing quite well at the whole sticking-with-one-project thing lately. I’ll have more to say about that soon, no doubt.

Maybe I’ll actually finish this one

Terry Dec 31, 2015 8 Comments

Happy new year!

Here’s a little thing I started for Ludum Dare which turned into a bigger thing and… well, you’ve heard this before. It’s a survival game about programming robots to help you colonise a planet. (Er, maybe I need to start thinking smaller for Ludum Dare.)

Was hoping to get it finished this side of 2015, but that’s not going happen. Ah well – it’s looking like it should be ready early next year!

Busy making other plans

Terry Jan 7, 2014 27 Comments

Hello 2014! Don’t worry, I’m not making any public new year’s resolutions – I never keep em anyway.

I was just thinking that I haven’t been posting much here recently, you know? Actually, it’s been a while since I’ve said much at all about what I’ve been working on. So, here we go: a snapshot of projects I’ve been working on recently, projects I’ve been thinking about working on, and projects I’m planning to come back to:

Untitled DarkSoulslike

Last time I mentioned this, I was looking for an artist. Well, I found one! A very talented London based comic artist called Cristian Ortiz, aka CROM, creator of Golden Campaign.

Collaborations have a way of getting a little out of hand, but I’m still hoping that this one will come together as a small, contained world to experience. Realistically, I think it’ll take another month or so.

Halting Problem

I took a complete break from this game just before the IGF submission deadline last year. I haven’t worked on it since. I needed some time away from it. Still do. I wanna finish a few small things before I take this on again.

Halting Problem is a big, scary game. There are a few ideas at its heart that I think have potential to be very, very special, if I’m good enough to bring them to life. I haven’t forgotten about this game. It feels the way Super Hexagon did, the way VVVVVV did, and the way At a Distance and Nexus City did – that idea that won’t go away.

When I come back to this game, I don’t want there to be any distractions – I can feel that working on this one is going to be all consuming, that’s it’s going to take everything I have.

Untitled Roguelike

I worked on a game for last year’s 7DRL that I still think about a lot. I dunno when I’m going to find time for it. Maybe it’ll resurface at some point, as something else.

NewCity RPG

I moved to London at the end of last year, and spent my first month here making an RPG about it. It’s a game about a place, and mostly about getting across what that place is like – lots of distinct areas with their own personality, based on whatever alien impression a brief visit with them left me with. There’s a shoreditch level, an islington level, a few other places – and an underground system that links it all together.

I’m long enough here now that it doesn’t feel alien to me anymore, so I’m not sure where to take it. Maybe that’ll come to me, as I get to know the city a bit better.

Vector thing

Really, it’s just tech at this point, and an idea. I owe Stephen a fan game…

VVVVVV is always going to be really damn important to me. It’s my final fantasy, the game that changed everything for me.

I’ve had an incomplete iOS version of the game working for over a year now, but other projects have kept me from finishing it up. I’d really like to get that out soon, though. Over Christmas I spent a little time finishing up the port, and I’m happy to say that the really hard stuff is done, now. I just need a week or two to sort out the details.

In addition, Nicalis have been porting the 3DS version of the game to PS Vita, and it feels wonderful on it.

So here’s an announcement of sorts, then.

This year, I’m going to release VVVVVV on PS Vita, on iPad, on iPhone, on Android, on Ouya. And, if I can manage it, all at the same time. This will very likely be the last thing I ever do with VVVVVV, and I wanna go out with a bang!

<3

Works in progress

Terry May 21, 2013 6 Comments

A little while ago on twitter, inspired by Andi McClure, I recorded some vine videos of some of my unfinished games. Here’s Vine 1, Vine 2, and Vine 3. It’s far from comprehensive, just a couple of random things I cared about and didn’t mind showing.

My approach to making games means I work on lots of different things, most of which end up going nowhere. I have the attention span of a four year old. This is probably a good thing!

However, sometimes it can be kinda frustrating. As time goes by, I’m accumulating a body of unfinished work that I will never be able to complete, at least some of which I think has the potential to be very special, better than stuff I’ve released. I don’t know how or when, exactly, but there’s a lot of stuff here I really believe I’m going to finish someday. And I know I probably never will.

When I posted these vines on twitter, Jordan Mallory from Joystiq got in touch to ask me to talk about them. So I did! Here’s part one, here’s part two.

Unfinished things

Terry Apr 4, 2013 8 Comments

[click to watch]

Saw Andi post a vine of her games on twitter and thought it was a cool idea, so I figured I’d make one too. Some unfinished games here that I’d like to finish sometime.

Please Finish Your Game

Terry Jun 8, 2010 8 Comments

Without a doubt, this was the most intense jam I’ve ever been to. I ended up working on a total of eight games, only one of which I’ve managed to finish. And at this jam, all eight of my games were made for three hour challenges – compare that to Berlin last year, where only four of my games were made that way. (And I didn’t even do all the challenges this time!)

What I could, probably should do is just take a couple of hours tomorrow and finish up all the other games, but what I think I’d actually rather do is spend the next two weeks finishing up the games properly, maybe taking a day or two for each.

Here’s a few screenshots from the rest of my jam games:

Here’s the themes I used for my games, by the way : “The Dead“, “Finnegans Wake“, “Fish, Summertime and Heat“, “White Hole“, “Sega Dreamcast VMU“, “a game called Garden of Delight“, “Photographs“, and “Escape“. Try matching the screenshots to the themes! 😀

Most people were far better at finishing stuff than I was! Check out the rest of the games from the jam at the Official Cambridge Friendship Club website!

TIGJam Projects

Terry Jun 5, 2010 7 Comments

TIGJam UK 3 is underway 🙂 I’m having lots of fun and working on cool stuff! Sadly I’ve yet to actually *finish* anything, so what I’m probably going to do is quickly finish up all my half finished games next week and release them all together. Here’s a few previews!

Oh no

Terry Jun 2, 2010 6 Comments

Negative Capability

Terry May 28, 2010 10 Comments

So! Probably time for an update on what I’ve been working on.

For the last three weeks or so, I’ve been making a game for The Games Collective‘s Negative Capability pageant (which has been finished for about a week). It’s a game idea I came up with over a year ago, but hadn’t really the time to explore until recently. It’s almost completely text driven, and involves a lot of writing, which puts it a bit outside my usual comfort zone…

I’ve virtually nothing to show for my weeks of work, which is kind of depressing. As much as I like the concept behind the game, I think at this point I just want to move on. 🙁

Anyway! This weekend I’m going to recover by jumping right back into a new project. The other day I had this game idea which is literally the stupidest game idea I have ever had, and it makes me giggle every time I think about it. Let’s work on that instead!

Unfinished RPG No. 327

Terry Apr 24, 2010 7 Comments

Ludum Dare 17 is this weekend! The theme is Islands, and for some bloody reason I thought it would be a good idea to try making an RPG. It actually went quite well, well enough that by 8pm or so I had a project that I wasn’t going to be able to finish without scaling it back radically and compromising what I wanted to do in the first place. So I’ve put it to one side – I’m going to start something totally new tomorrow and try to finish that by the deadline. This RPG thing I’ll try to finish up next week, along with that two player shooter from last weekend.

I tried making a timelapse this time, by the way! Think of it as a teaser, I guess: