One day games

One day game (continued)

Posted in Ideas, One day games, Programming on June 5th, 2009 by Mat – Be the first to comment

Game 1 ended up being a huge failure. I think the main reason for this was a lack of experience in game development in general, and a poor choice of programming language, which I didn’t really know how to use properly when I started (flash/actionscript). As a result I wasted a lot of time trying to learn stuff and wasn’t able to put together anything playable within the time span I set myself.

Trying to come up with good ideas in so short a time was challenging, but I think I did have some workable ideas. While the obvious interpretation of “space” is a broad enough theme in itself, I decided to explore other meanings rather than immediately settling for some kind of spaceship game. Some of the ideas I had -

  • An abstract game where the player manipulates empty space somehow, by rearranging or destroying things
  • A tetris variant
  • Human expansion has left the solar system overcrowded and you have to destroy things to make space, possibly related to the Vogons in h2g2 (reflecting the theme in two ways)
  • Something related to recycling and consumerism (not enough space for all the garbage we produce?)
  • Any kind of space in the mathematical sense
  • Something related to the concept of personal space. e.g. avoiding other commuters on a crowded train (I rejected this but kept the general idea for my final game)

The idea I went with was a game in which you have to maintain a certain amount of space around you to survive. The player is a boy who is trying to avoid catching “cooties” from girls who run at the player from offscreen. Also the player is armed with a baseball bat.

This is as far as I got:
Failed game

24 hour game

Posted in One day games, Programming on June 4th, 2009 by Mat – Be the first to comment

This will be the first of hopefully many small games. Me and my friend Ben will both be attempting to design and make fun, playable games within a one day time frame. Each time, there will be a theme chosen at the start by one of us (the theme chooser will change each time) which both the games will have to fit in with. At the end, people will be able to vote on which is the best over at Ben’s blog.

The theme this time is “space” (chosen by Ben) and the challenge ends at 19.00 23.59 UTC+1 tommorow (5th of june).