Posts with tag 'Boardgames':
Portal Field & Doooors update
Posted on 2024-11-17 19:48
I've had Portal Field pretty much finished for months now, but I've been thinking that I'd like to refine it just a *smidge* before putting it out there; ultimately I ended up not worrying about that after all and just released it, warts and all. The rulebook has gotten some good criticism already so I'll be refining it post-release sometime soon, but it's nice to have the game available in any case.
Download the rules on Itch.io!
I also realized that I could refine Doooors, the puzzle game I released in 2010, fairly easily and did just that! The game has suffered from extremely annoyingly floaty physics and various other nuisances that I for whatever reason never bothered to fix and that take away from the puzzle-solving experience; with this refining I tried to finetune the physics and do some mostly-minor adjustments to make the gameplay feel better. I also added the game remembering your progress. Hopefully Doooors is now a better game to experience, awful title aside.
Check out the new version!
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Tags: Games, Boardgames, Small games, Old games, Ludum Dare
Monthly update: November Tags: Games, Small games, Boardgames, Covemountlikes, Browser games, Regular updates, Other Monthly update: September 2024 Tags: Other, Streaming, Regular updates, Games, Boardgames, Social media, Plans, Planet Keke, ESA 2 Monthly update: July 2024 Tags: Games, ESA 2, Planet Keke, ESA, Boardgames, Regular updates Porti, Baba vinyl & more Tags: Games, Boardgames, Baba Is You, Other 2023 in review Tags: Games, Baba Is You, ESA 2, Planet Keke, Small games, Boardgames, Paper puzzles, Noita, Other, Regular updates, Pets, Article Monthly update: December 2023 Tags: Games, Small games, Planet Keke, Boardgames, Baba Is You, Regular updates Monthly update: Sectovember 2023 Tags: Games, Baba Is You, ESA 2, Boardgames, Other, Regular updates DIAGORT Tags: Games, Boardgames Gnome Thicket Tags: Games, Boardgames
Posted on 2024-11-16 23:41
The year is nearing its end, but there's still time for some more Covemountlikes! Enter Cellmount, a very clunky puzzle concept test that might be too annoying to play to be really enjoyed but that in my opinion nevertheless showcases some interesting design space. The count is now at 28, so only 2 of these to go!
Check it out on itch.io!
I've also added & adjusted a couple things on the game page: new additions are Mekaaninen Mies, one of my first finished games from 2002, and Pilari, a No More Sweden entry from 2014 that I'm somewhat fond of despite its shortcomings. I also edited the Boardgames section to have a separate link for each game, instead of linking to the collection on Itch.io. I have one 2-player abstract pretty much ready for release so maybe I'll get to do that too before the year ends.
Posted on 2024-09-30 23:58
As mentioned earlier, I didn't make a monthly update in August due to there not being much to report outside of steady progress on my existing projects. The same has mostly continued this month. The art gallery and reaction faces are the big unusual things, but I already posted about those; same goes for the new covemountlike. Darn!
I've been visiting our summer cottage a bunch and foraging mushrooms while there, mainly with my mom; it's been a really good foraging year. Consequently I've been also pondering about various mushroom-themed games, mainly in the boardgame department. I think I have one pretty neat idea related to this, but we'll see if it ever becomes anything. Mushroom-themed boardgames seem to tend to concentrate more on the "picking" part, and I'd want to involve the "identifying" part more in a hypothetical dream foraging game.
Speaking of boardgames, I realized just now that I did forget to post about a new release here! I put a new abstract boardgame on Itch, called Royal Jelly. I posted a picture of it earlier, but it required a bunch of polish and playtesting before I felt happy with it and so the release happened only now. I'm pretty happy overall with the result, though!
Check Royal Jelly out on Itch!
I also submitted another boardgame project of mine, Stroll & Hike, to a design contest on BoardGameGeek due to encouragement from quantumpotato, who has playtested and given feedback on a lot of my boardgame projects over the years. I designed most of Stroll & Hike earlier this year, but it being a contest entry has meant that I've now polished it up a whole bunch. I'll make a formal-er post about the game when the contest is over and/or I feel that the game is ready for release.
As for the longer-term projects, ESA2 and Planet Keke have progressed ever onwards, although I did take a break of several weeks from them due to various factors. Planet Keke has been gaining form in a really nice way, I'm much happier with the engine now than I was some time ago.
As a funny side thing, I sent boxes of Finnish candy to 4 people from the Crew (i.e. streamers I've been doing some game streams with this year) and we did a stream of them trying them out. Sadly none of the others liked salmiak (salted licorice), but Saane ended up enjoying the tar-flavoured candy!
This ended up being actually a whole lot more substantial than I initially expected! That's nice, I was assuming that I'd have kinda low-content updates for several months here.
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Posted on 2024-07-28 15:58
Another month gone, this time with more action on the gamedev front! Mainly on ESA 2 and Planet Keke, of course, but it's been nice to have more motivation again after the slump of June.
Especially ESA 2 has benefited from me having more interest in it again - some long-term points of uncertainty have been cleared up (hopefully), and as a result I have a better grasp of the structure of the game. There are some rooms that I'm somewhat unhappy with that I had made during a time of very low motivation, though; we'll see if I'll rework those or not. Recently a new room had the game slow down from 60 FPS, which is a first and quite worrying. I managed to optimize things a little bit, but I really really hope this won't become a more regular pattern because I'd really rather concentrate on developing the game itself rather than hunting down sources of slowdown.
I also implemented a "planner" of sorts for Planet Keke, to help me keep my ideas for the game together. The game is going to be a lot about moving items between planets and otherwise dealing with inter-planetary light puzzling, and as such having a grasp of what my plans for each planet is has become increasingly crucial as I've gotten closer to actually making gameplay content for the game instead of dealing with the engine.
As for other games, there was a bunch of progress on various side things this month. This includes multiple boardgames - I've had more boardgaming meetings this month than usual, and those inspired me to think about my own designs again. Yay! Still 2-player abstracts, though, I'm afraid.
Somewhat unusually, ESA 1 also saw some work done on it! I'm not sure if I've posted about it here, but ESA 1 has been in a bit of trouble lately in that the Mac version has stopped working entirely, and the Windows build has also been crashing for some players on Windows 11. We've been working on addressing these issues with MP2 Games (thank you!) and the work should be nearly finished at this point. I'll announce more stuff when that becomes relevant.
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Posted on 2024-06-20 14:58
I released the first boardgame of the year - Porti! The game's actually been in development since last year, I think, but there was a lengthy timeframe when I wasn't really paying attention to it while it was pretty much finished. It's a tad messy but overall I like the unusual qualities of the rules.
Check it out on Itch!
Also, the Baba Is You OST vinyl has been released by Channel 3 Records as a limited run thing! Happy to have that out.
US: https://ch3records.com/products/baba-is-you
Can: https://www.veryokvinyl.com/products/baba-is-you
EU: https://blackscreenrecords.com/products/baba-is-you
Also, the Google Play Store issue with Baba Is You has now been resolved, so you're able to purchase the game there again. That took a whole lot more time than expected, blah.
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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??]
Posted on 2023-12-23 07:01
Hey look! I didn’t miss the timing!
Anyway, big news first: Mobile Suit Baba is out! Really glad it didn’t take a year, but it got close. I want to add a bit more in terms of modding support and such, but after that it’ll be time to return to Planet Keke.
You can find the game here!
I also finished Flatdog Scuffle, another 2-player abstract boardgame! The rulebook will need some clarifications and illustrations, but the game seems to work pretty nicely.
See the rules here!
Posted on 2023-11-30 23:18
Sectovember! Gotta love that month!!
To be honest, not too much has happened over the past three months. Mobile Suit Baba trudges ever onwards, Planet Keke has been on hold to give more time for the former, blah blah. The most significant change over here has been Vilma’s introducton to the ecosystem. This has gone mostly fine, I’d say.
I ran playtests of two more-than-2-player boardgames; one is a more eurogamey deal, while the other is a roll-and-write. Unsurprisingly the eurogame design didn’t work very well on the first playtest, while the RnW showed more promise. I’ve been excited abour Ledergames‘ Root again, and pondered about something inspired by it and My City.
I removed Elder Dance from Itch.io since it turned out that the design had some very glaring issues. I have an idea for how to address them now, but said ideas need more testing.
ESA 2 has also progressed at a ponderous but nonetheless existent pace. I’ll need to refactor the moving platform code sometime soon, and this prospect isn’t one I look forward to.
I decided to finally record a playthrough of the old 2006 demo of Spud’s Quest by Chris Davis. It’s a klik-based game that’s close to my heart and virtually impossible to find online anymore, and as such showcasing it to a larger crowd seemed like a fun idea. I’ll do a playthrough of the full game as well at some point.
Watch the Spud’s Quest demo playthrough here!
Posted on 2023-09-24 12:40
Finished yet another abstract boardgame! This one is especially abstract, but seemed quite fun during playtesting. Not sure about the name, though…
Download the rules on itch.io!
Posted on 2023-09-22 03:05
Would you look at that, it’s another abstract 2-player boardgame! This one has been cooking for a while, and I’m still not 100% sure if the design works, but the playtests I did have (thanks quantumpotato) were promising.
Check it out on Itch.io!
(I really need to set up a boardgames section on the main website…)