Platforming Work (June 20 2025)

I’m going to try something different for the platformer game. I’m going to put it online, but secretly. You can try it here, by using the password “secretgame”. https://dz-tt2195.itch.io/puzzle-platformer. Right now there’s 1 very short level that can be beaten in under 30 seconds. It does have all the core game mechanics though if you want to try it out. 

Admittedly I didn’t actually work on the platforming game much this week. This is because I’ve started a secret project that I can’t reveal right now. It’s an online card game, that’s all I can say. It's made a lot of progress though, to the point where I won't need to work on it every single day anymore. Which means I can now devote more time to the platforming game by adding more levels and traditional mechanics you see in platformers. 

Since the platforming game is also a resurrection of the platformer game in the 2024 Collection, I now realize that basically every game in it has been developed in 2025. Which also means that collection didn’t age very well, as I’ve done better with all of them by spending more time on them. Depending on your viewpoint this means that collection was either a good way to experiment with ideas, or it means that it was pointless to spend only 1 week on each game and I should’ve immediately gotten to working on each game full time. I’m now leaning towards the latter viewpoint, which also means that a 2025 collection may or may not happen later this year.

Admittedly I’m starting to get a little tired of doing even weekly posts. I have a notes document where I put thoughts into, that later get elaborated into paragraphs for the friday post. But a lot of times recently that document is completely blank when it comes to writing posts, which is why the posts have gotten shorter and shorter. I don’t know if spreading the posts even further would actually fix anything though.

It’s been a while since I’ve shared music. There’s only been 2 new ones, but I’m liking them a lot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERo-sPa1a5g&pp=ygULZ2ltbWV4Z2ltbWU%3D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klIxS5o65C4&pp=ygUYZGFpIGRhaSBkYWkgZGFpIGRhaWtpcmFp 

Card Game Review (June 13 2025)

I’ve decided what my next game will be. It’s an expansion to Shelf Puzzles, that game I mentioned a while ago. The motivation is wanting to take a break from card games, and also because that game’s not on my website. (Meanwhile making another game like Sky Attack isn’t too enticing, as you can already play Sky Attack). Plus I could reuse some platformer code from that 2024 Collection game, which makes the setup work easier. Currently I just have most of the mechanics from the original game: you can pick up boxes and they can’t move through purple barriers. One new thing is that you can throw boxes into the air, that could be fun. There aren’t any new levels so far.

Since it’s a brand new project, that means it was time to try out something new for me: test cases. They’re pieces of code that, with a click of a button, can make sure parts of my code work properly. They’ve required some work to get started, but I’ve developed some systems to make things easier. It turns out I can create little scenes with the bare minimum required for a test to work, and the test case can load that scene and perform the actions needed. I feel that test cases that check for simple things like “did this UI thing show up” or “did this function return the right thing” aren’t very useful, but things like “did this specific set of actions do the right thing” are more worth the effort.

But also yesterday mom had me play a card game with 2 other people. I don’t know what the game is called, but I’ve definitely played it years ago. It seems like it’s a Chinese folk game with 2 decks of traditional playing cards, where you try to get rid of all your cards. As the least experienced player, and the one who understood the rules the least, I expected to lose a bunch of times. But I actually won my fair share of games somehow.

It was fun but there are things I didn’t like about it. It was difficult for me to learn all the different ways you can string together cards, which is why I usually stuck with the ones I knew. I didn’t even know you could put out 2 pairs or 2 triplets for a long time. There was also nothing to remind you of what you could do, which is what makes Chess awful for me. That’s why I like my card games to have instructions written on the cards.

Another thing I didn’t like was what happened after a round was over. The winner gets to give the loser their worst card, while the loser has to give them their best card. When I was younger and I’d play this game this was very frustrating as it just meant you’re more likely to keep losing; nowadays I still don’t like it. But also in this game the best card constantly changes, which doesn’t really change anything. All it does is force players to ask/memorize which is the best card. Even mom constantly forgot about it, and they’ve played the game way more than me. In general I’m not very interested in mechanics where one round affects the next round, you don’t get anything out of that. A much better way to mix things up is like Dominion, where you play with different cards.

Relentless Waves Update (June 06 2025)

I finished the update for Relentless Waves. It now has 3 extra levels: 2 tutorial levels that are only 2 waves, and an enemy rush level that’s 10 waves. I could have gone for more but decided this was good enough for now. The first 2 tutorial levels are supposed to be easy and they explain parts of the game (and some trickier enemies). The enemy rush level shows off all the enemies in the game in a row. My first attempt at making this level was way too hard and some specific waves took way too long, and I made it easier. So easy that I can beat it at 150% difficulty pretty easily (the random level though, no luck).

In addition to the ball juggling challenge (which at 150% difficulty is super difficult), I added a cheat: infinite bullets. Now you no longer need to pick up bullets from the sky. I didn’t add a cheat for enemies no longer attacking if they’re defeated though. It’s fine for cheats/challenges to change the game, but I don’t want anything that completely throws away the main concept of the game. I kind of wish I could have added more cheats/challenges, but this is all I have for now.

Now there’s still the pressure of figuring out what game is next. I did more research into the tarot card idea I had before, and realized that the idea of a card doing different things was something I had thought of before. I think I just like the idea that something can be good or bad. Many years ago I had the idea of cards being named after weather and natural phenomenon. A card like Snow’s Beauty would show kids playing in the snow or something, while Snow’s Wrath would show a blizzard, and the card effects would mirror each other. Anyways back to the tarot card thing. It seems hard to pull off, as several tarot cards have abstract meanings that would be hard to communicate on a card. Plus what would the main gameplay loop be? I still haven’t figured this out.

I also had another idea that I sort of like but also not really. Basically the game lasts several rounds, and in each round there are 5 prizes. Players secretly pick one of the prizes and apply a bonus to any of the prizes. The bonuses are “multiply by -1” or “multiply by 2”. For example if you pick +$50, but someone added -1 on it, instead of getting +$50 you get -$50. Whoever has the most amount of money at the end wins. The problem is, it only works with many many players, and it may just be completely luck based. Maybe there’s a different way to make it work.