I tried and tried, but with the title of this game being what it is I just couldn’t make a game that was not this game. That being the case, you will not be getting any apologies from me – it was simply not possible to prevent this game from being itself, so I did my best to make this game the game that it wanted itself to be. So go forth and vex already.
This game’s title was provided by cp.
I knew conceptually what I wanted to do with this game, but it took me a fair amount of work to find the fun. While I had game mechanics percolating in my head, I worked on making a funky background effect for the game instead. The end result is that this is a game about a funky background effect, and also you dodge and collect stuff. So yeah.
This game’s title was provided by Nathan Wilson.
Somehow you’ve gotten yourself stranded on an island surrounded by lava. Meteors are raining down upon you. All you have to defend yourself with is a limitless supply of hand grenades. Things really couldn’t get Much Worse.
This week, as with many weeks, I started with a mechanic I wanted to explore – in this case, surviving by finding cover. The obvious scenario that lends itself to this mechanic is, of course, rocks and bombs tumbling down a waterfall. And naturally with a premise like that, you simply can’t name the game anything other than Waterfall Bomb. (Yes, it’s been a long week.)
I suppose this game could be thought of as the opposite of last week’s Core Breach, in a way. But this is not last week. This is this week, and that means you get to play Waterfall Bomb.
This is another fine example of what happens when the game I’ve been working on turns out to be fundamentally Not Very Fun, and so I need to make an abrupt course change at the last minute. The other game had some interesting ideas, but it just wasn’t coming together, so I grabbed a mechanic from it (that I hadn’t actually implemented) and built an entirely different game around it instead. This is the result. Blast your pulses through the gaps in the shielding to destroy the things and get points.
The game I was working on for this week involved a fair amount of algorithmic complexity behind the scenes, and I wasn’t going to be able to do the concept justice by the deadline. You’ll be getting that game next week. This week, you must instead endure the simpleminded silliness of AVOID SPIKES!
Our expert team of archaeoludologists has pored over the historical record, piecing together and translating ancient artifacts. We are pleased to finally be able to present a scientifically-accurate reconstruction of one of the very first forms of electronic entertainment, in a playable form for the first time this millennium: SPACEOUT COMBREAK VADERMAND!
On a less absurdly counterfactual note, this game is a classic example of what happens when my game-designer instincts seize upon a goofy “what if” premise and run with it. In this case, “what if someone came across a description of several classic arcade games, mistook them for a single game, and tried to make a game that fit that description?” Something like a round of Telephone as applied to game mechanics, I suppose. Anyway, you should probably just try it and see what I mean. Go play Spaceout!
This game’s premise was largely inspired by games like Ikaruga and Giga Wing – I’ve always found the ability to turn your enemy’s attacks against them to be very satisfying in games, and so I decided to make a game that revolved centrally around that concept. Given the time constraint (and the amount of time taken coding the engine), it seemed best to go with a procedural difficulty curve rather than trying to orchestrate proper levels.
Sound effects were made with sfxr (except for the 1up jingle, which I did in PXTone). Code-wise, this game’s a bit cleaner than the last one, but there’s still some things that are rather boneheaded in retrospect.
Join us next week, when NMcCoy attempts to make art assets out of something other than ellipses! Until then… Go play Stargrazing!
