Posts from year 2024:
Monthly update: Marchpril 2024 Tags: Games, Pets, Happenings, Small games, Nordic Game Jam, Ludum Dare, Other, Plans, Regular updates, Covemountlikes, Browser games Monthly update: February 2024 Tags: Games, Other, Pets, Regular updates, Streaming, Small games, Social streams, Covemountlikes, Browser games Monthly update: January 2024 Tags: Games, Regular updates, Pets, Streaming, Small games, Covemountlikes, Browser games 2023 in review Tags: Games, Baba Is You, ESA 2, Planet Keke, Small games, Boardgames, Paper puzzles, Noita, Other, Regular updates, Pets, Article
Posted on 2024-04-09 04:11
I haven’t updated the blog in a bit, but this time there’s actually a reason for this! I’ve been intending to eventually migrate my blog away from WordPress, and have been setting up a homemade thing for viewing posts & then migrating old posts into the new system. I vaguely thought that after starting this process, the next blogpost would already be in the new system and as such didn’t log in here for a bit. But it’s been long enough (partially because I don’t entirely trust how good my PHP/PDO code is) without the new blog coming online, so let’s make a normal update here instead.
First of all, A Solitaire Mystery is now fully out! It boasts 23 solitaires at the moment, but we do have plans to add more at a later date. You can get it for USD $3 on Itch.io:
That’s my first proper Löve2D release, too! There are a lot of little odd spots in the codebase, but overall I think I’ve built a relatively nice basic system for future lua games. Thanks to Hazelstorm and knexator for the guest solitaires & to Hazelstorm for the excellent music!
In other news, the number of Covemountlikes has reached a whopping 16! All of them (plus RUDE CHESS and IT’S A BLOCK-PUSHING GAME) can be found in this collection!
Also, I’ll be moving to a new apartment soon! It’s exciting although I worry about the cats a bit, both in terms of logistics and especially Fondue getting used to the new place. We’ll see.
Ludum Dare 55 will be at the end of the week, and Nordic Game Jam a week after that. We’ll see what happens with those…
Posted on 2024-02-27 11:56
nother month, another… month. Things have progressed mostly in quite a similar manner as before, but there have been some changes as well. A major thing is that I managed to finally restart my weekly streams, after failing to do so for the entirety of January due to Cat Reasons (and various others). At the moment Planet Keke has the main Tuesday development slot, while ESA2 stays as the Thursday game.
In other streaming news, MelonyPepon‘s crew of mostly-vtuber streamers kindly invited me to play games on stream with them on the weekends, and for the past three or so weeks we’ve had a good time playing Among Us, Jackbox & Gartic Phone. I haven’t really done this kind of social streaming before so it’s been a fun change of pace.
The covemountlike series has also continued, and I’ve now released 9 of these in total this year. The ones released after the previous monthly update are:
- Powermount
- Ueqouow
- Covejank
In non-computer news, the cats have been getting along really nicely. Fondue still needs a bunch of time to be comfortable around guests, but Vilma’s and Fondue’s playing now ends in hisses much more rarely and there was even a recent instance of Vilma climbing onto the sofa and the cats sleeping there together!
Posted on 2024-02-01 10:56
The year has started with a lot going on. Games-wise, the important thing is that I’ve released 6 little browser-based block-pushing puzzle games. It all started with being inspired by a discussion about movement counters in puzzle games in the Thinky Puzzles Discord server, and at this point I’ve actually managed to get out a couple longer-time puzzle ideas that have occupied my brain but not felt inspiring enough to implement. I’ve some more ideas for tiny browser puzzlers, so look forward to that, I guess. Here’re the current ones, in order of release:
- Covemount
- That’s a Warp
- Pultimush
- Lorgeban
- Nabogorf
- Mountinuum
In other news, I adopted a second cat, Fondue! A lot of January was spent on getting her more used to the house, me, and Vilma, and while there’s still ways to go especially when it comes to playing with Vilma, she’s progressed amazingly!
I also recorded a series of videos on Youtube about her process of getting used to her new home. You can watch them from the start here!
Due to me being ill, having some worries, and taking care of Fondue-Vilma relations, I failed to start my weekly streaming. I’m currently trying to get that sorted out but my daily schedule has been even more chaotic than usual due to the cats so it’s a work-in-progress.
Posted on 2024-01-07 08:17
So! Another year has passed. After 2022’s productivity, 2023 followed more on the footsteps of 2020 and 2021 in that I got very very few games released. However, this comparison feels somewhat unfair because I was still working on multiple projects throughout the year, and Mobile Suit Baba was the fruit of those efforts, ending up being quite a bit more ambitious than I initially planned. I also worked on Noita again, adding some more content. Thanks to Petri & Olli for letting me do that!
2023 also saw me getting into boardgame development more seriously. I’ve been dabbling with trying to make my own boardgames/cardgames since childhood (I have about 5 different imitations of Magic: the Gathering & the Pokémon Trading Card Game I made back then stashed in a cupboard), and Petri Purho (from the Nolla Games team) and Erik Svedäng (developer of Blueberry Garden & Else Heart.break()) inspired me further by making boardgames at various game jams. However, during adulthood I’ve never really gotten past the initial stages of design due to impatience, lack of skill, and other factors. Me and Petri developed 2 boardgames together somewhere around 2013, but the first time I got close to actually releasing something was with Piiri in 2020, although that too went unfinished at the time.
Considering the above, me being able to develop so many boardgames to a state where I felt confident enough to put them available online last year felt really nice! Mostly the boardgame design motivation came from procrastination regarding videogame development, but I can’t complain too much about that since the end result was still creative work being done on something I was happy with. The impatience and lack of skill are still present, though, and as such my boardgames have stayed very carefully in the land of 2-player abstracts. Maybe this year I’ll go further?
2023 was also the year of books for me. I started trying to read more in 2022, and once the habit was formed, it was great to get through a lot of new stuff after years and years of re-reading the sam books over and over. In total I read 24 titles last year, although some were very short affairs.
Anyway, here’s the total list of stuff I released last year:
- Baba Files Taxes
- Cylinders of the Wise
- Obsidian Sentinels
- Malsymmetric (technically unfinished because I wasn’t happy with the design)
- Equal measures (paper puzzle)
- Piiri (mostly designed in 2020)
- Kepi
- Elder Dance (technically unfinished because the rules were broken)
- Kurote
- Gnome Thicket
- DIAGORT
- Flatdog Scuffle
- Mobile Suit Baba
- LITSilly (paper puzzle)
Last but not least, 2023 was also the year I finally got a pet, although a better term might be that a pet was got-ed at me. Vilma has been getting more used to me and my apartment, and lately I seem to have figured out what kind of scratching she likes, and she has also started to spend more time lying next to me while I sleep. It’s funny how years-long plans to get a dog turned out like this. Oh well!
For 2024, I have plans to try to release more tiny games like in 2022. However, ESA 2 and Planet Keke are on the table still and especially ESA 2 needs all the attention I can give, so I’ll have to be mindful of that when I decide to dedicate time to sideprojects. I’m sure something’ll work out, though.
Off to a new year we go!
[Wait, nothing about the graduation in this??]