Posts with tag 'Happenings':
Neltris & stuff Tags: Games, Nordic Game Jam, Ludum Dare, Small games, Browser games, Happenings, Plans, Streaming Monthly update: Marchpril 2024 Tags: Games, Pets, Happenings, Small games, Nordic Game Jam, Ludum Dare, Other, Plans, Regular updates, Covemountlikes, Browser games World Puzzle Championship 2022 Tags: Paper puzzles, Other, Happenings 2022 in review(?) Tags: Games, Small games, Baba Is You, ESA 2, Happenings, Plans, Other, Old games, Browser games, Paper puzzles, Streaming, Article, Art The Plumber Thing Tags: Games, Happenings, Other jams, Small games, Plans RUDE CHESS Tags: Games, Small games, Covemountlikes, Happenings, Nordic Game Jam Corner meeting + what’s going on Tags: Happenings, Paper puzzles, Other, Plans Oh! My Roommate Is a Lasergun?! Tags: Games, Small games, Other, Happenings Progress post #143: GDQ!! Tags: Games, Baba Is You, Happenings, Other Baba & Pride Month & Racial Injustice Tags: Games, Baba Is You, Art, Other, Plans, Happenings
Posted on 2024-04-21 15:49
I didn’t end up finishing anything on time for either Ludum Dare nor NGJ (not that I tried, either, for the latter) but I did start a little side project that feels promising, so I guess I’ll be tinkering with that a bunch for a bit. I’ll post more about it when it gets to a slightly more complete state.
However, unrelated to either jam, I made a tiny silly browser game called Neltris and put it on Itch on the Thursday-Friday night! It’s… silly but I quite like it.
You can play it here!
I’ve been failing to get the weekly streams going this year, first due to being sick, then due to Fondue arriving, then due to laziness, then due to moving and then due to Nordic Game Jam [plus some other reasons not listed here]. I have some more stuff in the horizon that’ll affect my ability to stream, but outside of specific events preventing me from streaming I need to step up the game a bit, especially ESA2 really needs that.
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 2023-08-08 20:24
Last year I was given the opportunity to make some paper puzzles for the World Puzzle Championship, held in Poland. It was suggested that out of the genres I’ve come up with, Celltinels and Limited Alike might be the best suited for the job, so I ended up making 4 puzzles of varying difficulties for both genres (and an extra Celltinels puzzle for reasons I’m slightly hazy about – I think it was an alternative version of the 3rd puzzle in the set in case the first one was too hard or too easy?) This was really cool and I’m happy I was asked to make them! Thanks! I also do hope that my kinda happy-go-lucky approach to puzzle design didn’t cause too much stress…
There was a one-year embargo on releasing the puzzles outside the event, and that has now passed so after seeing the fellow puzzle designer Menderbug release theirs, I thought I’d go ahead and do the same.
First, here are the rules for both genres as reminders:
Celltinels rules, formatted in a very awkward way because this was one of the first paper puzzletypes I ever made. Click for big.
Note! The clue numbers block the “vision” of other clues!
And here are the puzzles:
Posted on 2022-12-30 03:27
Ok! I’ve been promising a general “what’s going on” post for a while now, and I guess it’s time to write exactly that. When this year started, I had a couple specific plans for how I’d handle my game development throughout the year (and in some cases onwards from there):
- I intended to start a more structured weekly schedule, sleeping times included, in an effort to both differentiate my free and work time better and to get my terribly unstable daily rhythm under control.
- I planned to make a small game every month for a total of 12 small games, both as a way to try out this system I had first seen used by Petri Purho in… 2007, was it? and in order to take a mental break from Baba Is You and other large, multi-year projects that had been on my mind over the past years.
So how did all this turn out? Not very well. The structured schedule and the monthly game system both fell apart already in January. I couldn’t get myself to stay awake long enough if I woke up early, and preferred going to sleep when I felt tired, sleeping through the day and then being awake overnight. The first monthly game I had planned, a refined version of my earlier Ludum Dare #47 entry Keke’s Underwater Adventure, turned out to be way too large in scope (and most of the other ideas I had picked for monthly projects had the same issue, I suspect) and while I did get some stuff implemented, by the end of the month things were way too unfinished to call the result a success.
So yeah, not great. I don’t remember the exact order of events at this point, but I think I decided pretty quickly to try to make 12 small games over the year in total instead of trying to make one game every month. As for the weekly schedule, it seemed that since the issue was mostly feeling tired (and a decade of getting used to being a night owl), I was better off trying to live with it for the time being, especially because on top of tiredness I was noticing a slightly concerning lack of energy to make things. I did eat more than a half of a Carolina Reaper chili, though!
I had a plan for an April’s Fools game (two, in fact!) but the aforementioned lack of energy posed a fairly serious obstacle because I couldn’t muster the will to make either game happen on time. Luckily later in April I participated in Nordic Game Jam, which allowed me to actually finish a project, RUDE CHESS. I guess this triggered further productivity, because over the weeks following RUDE CHESS I managed to also finish It’s A Me, Baba Is You XTREME (one of the two April’s Fools games), Baba Friend and Keke in the Caves of Peril. Yay!
Before NGJ I started having constant restless leg syndrome, which further caused trouble with sleeping and keeping my daily rhythm straight. I often had to tire myself to get any sleep at all, and after the above burst of productivity, over the Summer I fell into a serious lull in motivation, resulting in me stopping bi-weekly gamedev streams and not really feeling like working on games at all for ~3 months. Ugh!!! I did manage to do some paper puzzle design and comics drawing in the meantime, but something was seriously not right.
October drawing close, I was contacted about a plan to make a small bundle of Halloween-themed games. This seemed like a potentially good way to get back on track gamedev-wise and I agreed, deciding on a whim on my game idea (or maybe it was more than a whim, I can’t remember. I think I had come up with the idea slightly before and decided to use it because it seemed funny?) Around this time I also had some blood tests taken and it turned out that I had a serious iron deficiency both in terms of hemoglobin and body iron reserves. And would you believe it, this turned out to have been the issue all along: getting some extra iron gave me motivation & energy back, and the restless leg syndrome went away, too! What’s funnier, a friend had recommended having my iron levels checked just before this (advice which I didn’t heed). Lesson of this story is: don’t get iron deficiency.
With the iron issue sorted out, I managed to finish The Plumber Thing, and this then led into a bunch of unrelated small games: Mamono Mower, Cavern Sweeper, Babataire, Babataire EX, a rerelease of Cavern of Flight, a rerelease & update of Once in Space, a holiday update to The Plumber Thing, some paper puzzles and finally It’s A Block-Pushing Game, fulfilling the goal of the year (or not, depending if the rereleases count). Overall I’m really happy with this year’s productivity, which is a bit surprising considering the iron deficiency. I also recorded a playthrough of a game I liked as a child, Lost Valley.
There are a couple things that were left somewhat or entirely unfulfilled over the year:
- Most of the games I did end up making weren’t part of the original list of monthly games. As stated, most of those were too scope-creepy for this project, but nonetheless.
- My sleep schedule is still mostly terrible, and I didn’t get enough exercise this year, spending most of the time sitting at my computer.
- I didn’t paint almost at all! And I mostly drew just the usual 4 comics I make annually for the student magazine. I mean, that’s definitely something, but I’d want to do some watercolours again.
And now, what’s planned for the next year?
- I’ll keep making some smaller games, although this time without an explicit count I’d aim for. There are a couple ideas I think I should be able to get done with semi-limited trouble, so hopefully at least some of those can become reality.
- It has started to feel that working on ESA2 might actually be fun again. Maybe? We’ll see! I’ll try to make ESA2 my main project next year, and actually get that thing somewhere instead of it staying forever in a limbo of sorts.
- The weekly streams will return; hopefully this time I won’t lose steam halfway through.
- I think it’s time to move on from Baba Is You, at least for the time being. Next April I’d have spent about 6 years of my life around Baba, and while it’s been largely an enjoyable ride (and I do have Baba-related ideas for the future, about which I’ll post when they’re ready to be revealed), it’d be nice to feel that the game as it is now is more or less a “finished” product. Note that this doesn’t mean that I won’t do anything more with/to BIY, but rather that I’d wish to mentally move on from the game and get the feeling that it’s where I want it to be.
- My internal deadline for getting my master’s degree in Psychology has been set to the beginning of April. There’s so little left!
- I’ll try to exercise more.
Here’s a list of the games released this year, alongside the source of inspiration for them (if I can remember it):
- RUDE CHESS (A combination of pondering about randomness as a puzzle mechanic and my earlier No More Sweden 2018 entry, Chnakess)
- It’s A Me! (A joke I made in AuthorBlues‘ Twitch stream chat and then realized sounded actually funny)
- Keke in the Caves of Peril (My entry for Ludum Dare #48 finished and polished)
- Baba Is You XTREME (Idea for an Aprils’ Fools version of Baba Is You)
- Baba Friend (Based on that old desktop sheep toy, I’ve wanted to make one of these since forever)
- The Plumber Thing (Can’t remember the exact thought process leading to it)
- Mamono Mower (Exuno, Goost & Maurice from the Mystery Tournament community joked about odd combos of genres + the community has an inside joke about Lawn Mower, a NES game. Heavy inspiration from Mamono Sweeper)
- Cavern of Flight rerelease (A 2016 Ludum Dare entry, which I edited slightly to remove some game-breaking bugs and rough edges)
- Once in Space 2022 (Updated version of Once in Space from 2011, which in turn was a remake of Once in Space from 2007)
- Babataire (An idea borne out of Cluj solitaire, which I saw in the Zachtronics Solitaire Collection)
- Cavern Sweeper (A separate concept for Mamono Mower that I wanted to explore but removed from the lawn-mowing theme)
- Babataire EX (A serious attempt to combine Baba Is You and solitaire)
- It’s A Block-Pushing Game (Possibly started as a chess-themed sokoban idea? Can’t quite recall)
Maybe that’s enough of that?
Posted on 2022-10-29 12:20
I made a small puzzle metroidvania as a part of the Click-or-Treat Halloween bundle this month! It was fun to make a silly side thing, although I did end up crunching a bit to get it done in time.
You can find the bundle here ($9): https://itch.io/b/1601/click-or-treat-2022
The game itself is here ($2, Windows only): https://hempuli.itch.io/the-plumber-thing
There have been some other new things I should make a blog post about! I’ll try to get that done eventually!!! Anyway, happy Halloween and whatnot.
Posted on 2022-05-04 03:12
Heyy, after a long while I’ve actually finished a small game! My dreams of releasing a small game every month this year have shattered already but at least there’s this (and should be some more before the year ends).
I was at Nordic Game Jam last weekend; it was great to be at an event like this for the first time in 3 years, and due to recent mistakes with game jams (don’t try making menu-heavy games at game jams) I was kind of hankering to make something small. I had this funky puzzle idea in my head, and thought it vaguely fit the themes I drew (“Schadenfreude” and “Matching”), so decided to go with this concept instead of thinking up something new. It’s nice to get some of these ideas out without too much effort.
I’ve now polished the game a bit; it offers 14 levels of somewhat mysterious puzzling fun.
Look at the game here!
Posted on 2021-11-06 03:15
Hi! It’s been almost 6 months since I last posted. I intended to do a general catch-up post a long time ago, but life happened and has since kept happening.
The main thing keeping me busy right now is that I’m doing a psychology internship at a psychosis ward in a hospital. It’s busy and often stressful work, but also very intriguing and often rewarding! I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly, but it has done a number on my ability to stay up to date with videogame & blog stuff. So there. But it’ll end at the end of this year, after which I’ll return to usual(?) business.
Since now is not the end of the year, I’ll refrain from trying to force myself to write a longer post, and instead retreat to posting about this new paper puzzle type I came up with (there might be some others coming, too):
Corner meeting! It’s a pretty simple concept; I have spent some time pondering puzzle types that are built around turns/corners in lines (I think?), and this was the outcome of those ponderings.
Rules:
Puzzles:
Posted on 2020-09-18 07:31
The blind speedrunning community (i.e. people who speedrun games they haven’t seen before, prima vista) had a showcase of their Mystery Tournament last weekend on the Games Done Quick Twitch channel, and as a special thing I made a small game for them to speedrun. The game I made is called Oh! My Roommate Is a Lasergun?!, and it’s essentially a remake of GENERIC Platformer, which I made in 2009. The game utilizes old things in other ways, too; the background art was originally made for… Timerocketxby? Or maybe GENERIC itself? It’s hard to remember. Anyway, I recycled the assets here. The music was also originally made as little Shovel Knight -inspired test tunes in 2016, but with a little touching-up they made for very fine in-game tracks.
CHECK THE GAME OUT
Posted on 2020-08-26 08:55
Baba is still coming along; a lot has happened in terms of e.g. bugs being fixed and so on, but at the same time those large milestones of 1) finishing the editor and 2) finishing the upcoming extra levelpacks are still yet to be achieved. But we go forward, and lately I’ve streamed more often and that has been very helpful for progress.
Baba Is You was speedrun by Succinct_and_Punchy at the Games Done Quick online event last week, 21st of August. It was really cool! People seemed to be very excited about the run and in general were extremely supportive. Thank you!
As seen above, among other changes I’ve added two new characters to the game: Fofo and Jiji. I feel that one more character might be warranted but I’m quite happy about these two for now.
Posted on 2020-06-17 23:30
I made a whole bunch of Pride flags in Baba Is You! If you’re interested, you can see & download them here (imgur album)!
Baba Is You is also part of the Humble Fight for Racial Injustice Bundle, along with games such as Spelunky, FTL and Hyper Light Drifter! Click the image below to check it out :)
