Kloonigames

This is the problem with making games extremly quickly (in less than 48 hours): you miss some obvious stuff. Thanks to Hamumu’s (aka. Mike Hommel) suggestions (over at the Ludum Dare site) I made some changes to M3 - Molesting the Match-3 Market.

The most drastic change is in the way the checking for matches works in the game. Now the game lets everything fall down first and then checks for matches (as suggested by Mike). I also changed the colors of blocks so that the contrasts between them should be higher now.

You can download the new version from here: M3_release2.zip (2.3 Mb) (Release 2).

Continuing my Ludum Dare progress report.

4 hours to go: So I ended up implementing the animation system. It turned out to be a really good thing. It helped me out a lot… I even managed to constrain myself from over engineering it.

Overall things are looking pretty good. I have still some small things to do (tutorial screen), but I could probably “ship” the game as it is. Some more polish would be nice and sounds would be really cool (I’m looking at you SFXr) . I’ll probably have to sacrifice a hour to add them. It’s really hard for me to say how well the gameplay works. It’s interesting, but I’m not sure if it’s compelling enough. And now that I think about it, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else came up with a very similar game mechanic…

Here’s a shot from the current build:

The game will be released couple hours… If you’re in a hurry you’ll probably download it faster from the Ludum Dare blog as it will take me a little while to add it here…

And now for something completely different… I ‘m taking part in the 10th Ludum Dare competition. It’s a 48-hour solo-game-development-challenge-competition-thing. And here’s a little progress report on my game.

Now it’s the beginning of the second day. Morning so to speak. I still have something like 15 hours to go, which should be plenty, if I don’t end up wasting it by doing something idiotic. Like starting to build this elaborate animation system, which seems really tempting… I sense the presence of a Programming Succubus.

Yesterday I got off to a really slow start. I over slept and lost something like 10 hours. But I got a lot done. The gameplay is pretty much there already (little tweaks here and there) and today should be all about the “polish”.

Here’s a screenshot of the game in action…

Yeah, it’s a color matching game… I feel so ashamed.

This interview and a mod thing is becoming my new post standard. I can’t post about a mod without posting about an interview at the same time. It’s just impossible.

Crayon Physics Deluxe interview at Binary Joy.
Ben had a change to play Crayon Physics Deluxe and he asked me bunch of questions about the game, my prototypes and about hot beverages.

Apparently this is some kind of an indie interview season: Phil Fish was interviewed at Arthouse Games, Kyle and Ron were interviewed at TIGER Sauce, the Tim has a huge number of indie interviews… Maybe it’s the IGF Buzz.

Bloody Potter
Bloodyhoody created a total conversion mod for Bloody Zombies and it’s set in the Harry Potter world. I’m a total Potter noob so I have no idea how accurate the mod is (I think there isn’t quite that much blood in the books), but the number of new levels in the mod is impressive. There’s over 15 new levels in that mod, so if you’ve played through the original game give Bloody Potter a try.

The Amazing Flying Super Mario Brothers
Zelos has created the first The Amazing Flying Brothers mod and to much of my surprise it’s a Super Mario mod. Well it wasn’t really that big of a surprise, because the first mod of my games always seems to be a Super Mario mod. It’s crazy. Well the mod is a whole lot of fun, with new sound effects and graphics. Check it out.

I got a lot of comments saying that playing Crayon Physics on a tablet PC was loads of fun. I never had a change to test it. Until now. I got my hands on a tablet PC and while it was fun to play Crayon Physics on it, it was way more fun to play Crayon Physics DELUXE on it!

Here’s a little video of me playing Crayon Physics Deluxe on a tablet PC.

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The game is still very much in development and the levels here are in a random order. I’m not even sure if these levels will make it to the final game.

I got interviewed. Again. Read it over at the Gamasutra.com: Road To IGF: Crayon Physics Deluxe.

They interviewed me because a little over month ago I submitted Crayon Physics Deluxe to the IGF. I mainly did it to get even with Jetro; my goal is to beat Cinnamon Beats with 10 points (no more, no less). They asked me what was my motivation behind creating the game. I had to lie, because I was afraid they might disqualify my game if I told them that I only did it to get back at Jetro.

In the other news there’s another mod for Bloody Zombies. It’s called Bloody Halo and (surprise surprise) it’s set in the Halo universe. You play as Master Chief and slash through enemies with your power sword. It’s not as “professional” mod as Bloody Goombas, but still it’s fun and very playable. It was done by juju02 over at the fun-motion’s forums.

Download Bloody Halo from here: Bloody_halo.rar (0.5 MB).

Well, it’s only been four days since I released Bloody Zombies and ShortStuf7 aka Tom Carroll (from fun-motion forums) has already managed to create a total conversion mod of the game. And it’s a pretty sweet Mario themed mod with modified levels.

Play as Mario in an epic quest to save the princess!
Kill Goombas with your turtle shell to collect coins and go through the pipes!

You can download the Bloody Goombas mod from here: Bloody_Goomba.rar (0.5 MB). It’s a stand alone mod, so it’s pretty easy to get working.

The first custom levels to Crayon Physics were also Mario themed. I’m not sure why is this, but apparently everybody thinks my games would be much better if they featured Mario. *Hint* *Hint* *Wink* *Wink* to possible Nintendo managers reading this. Oh and please don’t sue me or Tom.

The secret project that I’ve been working on for a little while is called Crayon Physics Deluxe.

The name kinda spoils the surprise, but I’ll explain it anyway. Crayon Physics Deluxe is a “sequel” to Crayon Physics (a prototype of a 2D physics game), but I’m not sure sequel is the right word here. It’s more like Crayon Physics Deluxe is the real game where as Crayon Physics was just a prototype. Real game at least in the sense that I’ve spend way more than 7 days on this one.

There are already a bunch of cool new features. Probably the biggest one being that now you can finally draw any shape you want. And they will behave physically as you would expect them to behave. There’s also a easy to use level editor in the game. Actually all the levels in the game have been done purely in that level editor.

The game is still very much in development. I don’t dare to give you any kind of official release date, but you can trust me that I’ll release as soon as it is done. Which could be a little while.

Here are couple of more screenshots from the game, so you don’t have to visit the game’s “official” site.

In a couple of days I’ll try to post some video from the game so you can see it in action. I’m really excited about the game and I can’t wait to let you guys play it. I think you’re going to enjoy it very much.

There’s been a bunch of cool stuff I meant to write about, so I figured I’d slap them all together and post them here.

The Kokoromi posse is organizing the second Gamma -event. This time it’s called Gamma 256 and it’s about creating games with the minimum amount of pixels (max resolution is 256×256). The submission deadline is November 1st. The games are exhibited (and played) November 28th at a party in Montreal (with free booze for developers). It also happens to be the Montreal International Game Summit’s closing party. I think it’s a great way to promote experimental games and I’m planning on submitting a game myself. Unfortunately my pixel art sucks so I guess I’m trying to squeeze the game into as small amount of pixels as possible. There’s an official Gamma 256 thread over at TIGSource’s forums.

Speaking of TIGSource, the B-Game competition is now open for voting (at least for 10 days still). The B-Game competition was inspired by Jazzuo’s Sexy Hiking game and was meant to celebrate the unpolished gems of indie games. There are total of 29 entries, which is quite an amazing amount. Much more than I expected. This proves that the internet is a wonderful place, there are even people out there who enjoy bad games.

Over at Gameproducer.net Juuso finally opened the Game Producer forums. I registered and noticed that there seems to be a bunch of familiar faces there.

As I explained couple of blog posts ago Kloonigames is right now officially on a break or between seasons to be precise. So that’s why there’s no game today.

I’m sorry if I let someone down. I was hoping of getting one game done, but unfortunately that game just didn’t work. It was a social game, very much in the vein of Mafia. I did a very early testing of my idea and realized there’s no way I can make that game work, because the design was too flawed. I’ll write a blog post about the game and the experience of testing it, because I while the game didn’t work, I learned a lot from the testing process.

And to be honest I did get one game done. But unfortunately I can’t publish it yet. I’ll write about that too in the near future.