Double Post (Jun 19 2026)

I wrote a post for last week, but it failed to get published. Which means this week will be a combination of last week’s post and the new one.

I went back to Relentless Waves, and this time I feel like I’ve got a better idea of what to do. First is I’m reverting the idea from before about how shooting also drains your health. It seemed confusing and I found a more interesting way to attack instead. The game is back to having health and energy, except that you start with 10 heath and can never get more.

I decided not to have multiple weapons, because most of them would just be variations of “which direction does this shoot.” I instead have a way to cover all of them at the same time. The player is now a clock, it spins both its clock hands, and the direction those hands are pointing at is where your bullets will shoot at. The game will also get renamed to Time Attack, to fit with how you’re now a clock. I have made a new logo for this too.

The enemies are mostly similar, except one changed fairly significantly. The crane didn’t play too well when it can move around, and the player shoots at angles. I decided to try something much simpler: a castle that has 3 walls around it. The walls spin around the castle, and you shoot through the opening. Another fun thing about letting enemies move around is that I can have them spawn at different parts of the level. I changed the enemy rush a lot and created lots of unique spawn patterns for each of the enemies.

Originally I thought rules would have to affect how you gain more energy. The problem with the ones I tried before is that the game is more fun if you can easily get more, and those ones were too hard. I eventually realized that the current way is fun and doesn’t need variation. I then tried the idea of 2nd weapons again. Instead of costing energy, they take time to charge up, and you use them by right clicking. This worked, but then I realized I could have rules instead, and they can just do something every X seconds. This also allowed me to have multiple rules per game, allowing greater variety. This allows more options for what they could do, and should be more fun. 

All the audio stuff is done, which means all that’s left to do is add more rules. I also made better code and UI to handle choosing what rules you’d like to play with. I have also put this code into All Shapes and Sizes, and you can now choose what bonus shapes you want to play with. I don’t know why I didn’t add that in originally, I guess it didn’t feel important.

I thought of another potential game idea. You have 12 slots to put cards into, and once you place a card there, you can never move it out. After you’ve filled all 12 slots, you resolve all of those cards in numbered order. The strategy is figuring out what order to put your cards in, and gambling on what cards other players will make you play. I thought the idea of having to organize your cards could work for Trade Secrets, but I don’t think it’s a good fit for that game, as several of your cards will be face down. That game also has some cards that care about all your cards, and there’s no point in organizing them. Which means I’m not combining this idea with that game, it’ll be its own game if I do go for it. 

Another game idea I had was when I was brainstorming alternative weapons in Time Attack. Instead of shooting, when you walk, you create a trail of fire, and any enemies that touch the fire will take damage. This doesn’t work in Time Attack, because the player follows your mouse, and if you move your mouse really fast you create fire everywhere. It’s possible this idea just isn’t interesting at all, because you’re not actually doing anything other than walking around. But maybe there’s a way to make it work.

Trade Secrets and Moving Enemies (Jun 05 2026)

The new Flower Draft game is out, which also means the old Flower Draft is gone. When naming the game, I tried to come up with a name that suggested offering cards, and some of them are hidden. When I came up with Trade Secrets I knew that was too funny to not use. As for the game itself, part of me wonders if I could have been more innovative with the gameplay, rather than having it be a slightly tweaked Flower Draft. But I do have a soft spot for Flower Draft, and I think it was worth the time and effort to polish it.

I also put some of the extra polishes (audio, settings) in Crafts Fair. While doing that, I considered a rules change to how the twists worked. Previously, you removed a counter from a twist when you chose that token. Now you check if anyone had chosen that token that round, and if someone did, a counter was removed. At first I thought this new rule would be simpler. If there was 1 counter on a twist, you knew that if anyone chose that token this round, it would trigger. It answered the question of, what if a twist has 1 counter, but 2 players chose that token? Finally the old rule has this problem: if everyone chooses a different token every round, it would take many rounds for a single twist to trigger, which is a lot of turns of very little happening.

But as I was typing this, I realized that maybe the new rule wasn't as clearly better as I thought. If 2 players choose a token, it does seem intuitive that 2 counters are removed. Besides, writing out the rule of “check if anyone had chosen that token that round, and if someone did, a counter was removed” makes it seem way more complicated. But also, the new rule switches the previously mentioned problem into something else: if all players choose a different token every round, multiple twists could activate on round 2. Meanwhile in solitaire there’s no way to activate multiple twists by round 2. But I think I’m ok if the game makes it easier to activate twists, as it speeds the game up and they’re fun. So I’m sticking with the new rule anyway (plus I already programmed it).

I do have one idea for what I could do for a new Battery RAM, but I think I want to properly update Relentless Waves instead. After some time away, I realized one thing I struggled with was that enemies in the game tend to stay on the top of the screen. If they were at different positions, that would let me do more things with weapons and stuff. This makes it hard to make weapons, because they have to shoot upwards. Then I realized, what if all the enemies could move? The easiest way for them to move is like the planet, which follows you. I gave this a try and quickly realized that it meant all the enemies would group up in the same spot, since they’re all trying to go to the same spot. My next solution is, instead of going directly towards the player, they pick a spot around the player and go there.

Quick Flower Draft Update (May 29 2026)

This will be a short post. Work on the new Flower Draft has been going well. I’ve programmed all the cards and turn structure, which were easier than I thought it would be. I decided that 28 cards is good enough, I don’t particularly need to go for more. I also had the idea that there would be Twists, that would basically be the Rules from Randomly Generated RPG. But I’m not sure if there’s anything too interesting there. This game is a lot simpler, and the player cards themselves are already doing the variety thing.

Just like Randomly Generated RPG, I also added some settings to the game. At the end of your turn, the game pauses to either: give you one more chance to undo; or to give you time to read new cards. I added settings that let you disable those prompts, because I can see them being annoying. There are also situations in the game where the game makes you choose something, but there’s only one thing to click (for example: you choose a card in your hand, but only have 1 card). There’s now a setting for: automatically click that card, don’t ask the player to click on the one option.

Things I haven’t done yet are: a name/logo for the game, adding sound effects, and multiplayer testing. I should be able to get everything done in a week. I will also add all these miscellaneous quality of life features to Crafts Fair, even though I’m not adding new content to that game.