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).

Making Minigames (August 29 2025)

Over the course of the past week I got 3 minigames done, which is about what I expected. After all of them are done I'll have to playtest all of them to make sure that it's even possible to get the best possible score, as some of them may be too hard. To summarize the 3 I made:

1) a level where you have to move around collecting coins and dodge the skulls that will send you back to the start.

2) a combination of memory and cursor movement. you have to touch the orbs in the correct order, while avoiding any other orbs with your mouse.

3) you have to protected your rockets from bullets until they're ready to launch, but while a rocket is protected it's launch timer will no longer tick down.

Each minigame didn't take long to make, and since each game doesn't need that much code that also means I can get away with some slightly sloppy coding. My biggest worry is that I may run out of ideas too quickly, as I've only got 4 out of many games done so far.

Another thing is this blog. Will it end one day? I'm approaching the 2 year mark, and I think it's more and more likely that after Dec 31 this year, things will come to a close. I've gradually had less and less to talk about, even when posts are a week apart from each other.