Finishing Up (Sep 19 2025)

I finished 2 more minigames, and possibly the last 2. For these ones, I decided to try and look back at some previous games I liked and see if I could remake them. The first one is based off one of my games, Sky Attack. This time it's single player and you have to avoid skulls flying across the screen, while bouncing on the clouds. It wasn't really my plan to remake old small games for this, but since the original was 2-player and this isn't, I let it slide. I don't think I want to do that for other games though (like Chaos Pong).

The last minigame was inspired by a minigame in Epic Battle Fantasy 3, a JRPG I played many years ago. Epic Battle Fantasy 5 would later go on to inspire Randomly Generated RPG. But the important part is the 2nd minigame where you play as a narwhal to collect coins. The most interesting part were the jump physics, the more momentum you gain when swimming upwards, the higher you jump. I had to experiment a little to get that in my game. I decided that, whenever you weren't holding the up arrow, the game keeps track of your Y position, and when you leave the water the game uses that number to determine your jump height.

Since this game is close to done (except for some extra testing), what's next? I have a couple ideas for online card games, but still need to think about them more. One idea is, another game like Fortress Siege where you play cards to attack the other player. This time I have a solution to make it simultaneous. Which is: your turn has 2 phases. On the first phase, you can only play cards / activate abilities that affect you and your troops. On the second phase, you can only play cards / activate abilities that affect the other player and their troops. Now there's no more: what happens if a troop gains health and loses health at once, or what if a troop tries to get moved into 2 different columns. But I don't know if I want the new version to keep the column part, maybe that can be different to feel more like a new game.

But before I hop into that, I want to improve on my system for handling online games. The current version is working fine, but it'd be great if it could handle disconnecting / reconnecting. I've been experimenting with that a little bit, but there's still more work to be done to make it compatible with other systems, like undos (and AI opponents). This also means that the next online card game may want to be simpler if possible, because immediately incorporating all of this experimental technology into a larger game could be very difficult and time-consuming, and I want to make sure everything is stable first.

I also finished my digital version of Pacific. It only took 3 days of work, which is pretty fast. I don't know if I want to make it public though, chances are Donald X. wouldn't be interested in that.

Pacific (Sep 12 2025)

Another 2 minigames for the memory game. Probably within 1 or 2 weeks I'll call it done and release it. The first minigame this time is simple. You get shown a random number, and you must press space in that amount of seconds. The closer you get, the better. It can sometimes be difficult to make my brain think of simple minigames like this, because they aren't exactly super engaging to play. But minigames with a bit more going on require more testing and then they make me think, maybe this can be expanded into a full game, and I don't want to add it to this game.

Then I made another memory game. This one you have to remember numbers, and repeat them back later. Another thing is that the way to input the numbers gets shuffled every time, which forces you to spend time and mental energy to find the correct number, which then makes it harder for you to remember what's next. Again I don't really like memory games, so it's hard for me to want to make a bunch of them, but they do have the advantage of being simple.

Earlier today I looked at my copy of Pacific and thought, this game doesn't look too hard to program. I took a few hours to try programming it, and while there are some cards that will be tricky, a lot of it was super easy. I already finished 60 / 80 cards (although the actual gameplay isn't done). The hardest parts is probably the UI, as there's a lot of stuff to fit on the screen. I don't know if I can / will release it, it'll just stay private on my github for now, but it's a fun distraction from things.

Finally here's a fairly old song I recently found, and I almost immediately added it to my playlist, I like it a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaqpQ1UNzeU

Trying New Games (Sep 05 2025)

This week only got in 2 minigames. The first one was inspired by a minigame in Mario Party 4 actually. It's a game where there are bob-ombs walking on conveyor belts, and you have to change the conveyor belts to make the bob-ombs walk towards the enemy team. That was a 2v2 game, but this is a single player game. Right now there are 4 conveyor belts that get faster over time. It's possible it needs to be more complicated, like there are barriers in the middle of the conveyor belt, that randomly turn on or off, and if the bomb hits the barrier you also lose.

The other minigame is very simple. There are tiles on the floor, and you must move around avoiding tiles that turn red. What was sort of fun to do is that tiles that can be different sizes (e.g. one takes up an entire row). I think my initial plan was instead of avoiding tiles, you avoid different objects flying at you, but this was easier to do. I also first tried it at 45 seconds to get the best rank, but it was way too long and difficult, and I reduced it to 30 seconds.

But also, this week I played some more games irl with other people. The first was that card game with mom, Christie, and some others. I still don't know what this game is called, but it's the one with traditional playing cards. Again the flaws I have with the game are still a thing here. The rules for levelling up are confusing (and the fact that the adults kept arguing with each other about the rules only confirms this for me) and add nothing. If there was no leveling up, no "check what the best card is every round", it would be better. Also I had forgotten how slow turn-based games are. Games where you don't have to constantly wait for everyone in the table to do their turns are much faster.

Christie also bought a game called Stone Age for me and we played it. It's a resource management game with no text on any of the cards. While it was fun, there were parts that I didn't like. Again the game is turn based and not simultaneous, which I don't like as much. This also ties into another issue, which is that the game takes way too long; I think I can only sit through an irl board game that's 1 hour at most, and this was approaching 2 hours. While not having text on the cards was mostly fine, there were definitely some cards that should've just printed the instructions on the actual card instead of in the rulebook. Looking through the rulebook to figure out how one specific card works is not a good use of time.

Earlier this week, I also ordered a new board game. It's Pacific by Donald X.. It was supposed to come out in July, but due to a minor misprint it got delayed to September (which also means if you want it, you can get it soon). The order I got was the one with the minor misprint but I can live with that. I haven't really played it but I think it's a cool game. I didn't playtest this one; when I became a playtester in 2023 this game was already done (and yes it took 2 years for it to come out).