Bloodjak v1.3

As I continue to update old games in preparation for potential showcasing, the next one to receive a revision is my old shmup, Bloodjak. 

I ended up making slight changes to the difficulty, something I've generally tried to avoid in a game with persistent competitive high scores. The first is a bug fix. Spawn rates for the larger ships would cease to increase as they were supposed to later in the game. While fixing this bug means that the player will encounter more powerful enemies in the late game than before, this is how the game was originally meant to be played.

The second is that I've overhauled the sequencing of enemy waves in the early game. Now, the player is introduced to all of the standard enemy types sooner. While this makes the early game harder, it won't only make it more varied, but also make the first two minutes of the game more engaging to a casual festival-attending player

Overall, I think these adjustments to the difficulty are justified. Early game changes to difficulty are slight, and only a handful of players so far have made it to the late game. As long as the scoring system itself is unchanged, the competitive metagame should remain fair between versions.

Parents will be pleased to know that the game now has a pause feature so their kids can run to eat dinner without losing their precious high scores.

Finally, while this feature is currently absent from the publicly available versions, the biggest addition I made to the game is local high score support. As awesome as Gamejolt's online high score tables are, I shouldn't take them for granted and expect that they will exist forever. Furthermore, having internet access at Artscape (and other festivals and conventions) is never a certainty. So, I've got a secret version of the game that records high scores to your computer's very hard drive instead of recording them online. It'll be there when we need it.

YINZ CAN PLAY THE GAME ON GAMEJOLT BY CLICKING ON THIS HYPERLINK.

Here's  the complete list of changes:
v 1.3
Changes:
-Wave sequencing redesigned. Generally, different enemy types are introduced sooner!
-Pause functionality added, at the request of my sister-in-law, so my nephew can now stop playing to eat dinner. Press 'P' or 'ESC.'
-Player must now wait upon jacking out to submit score.
-Local high score support added (festival version only).
Bug Fixes
-Fixed a bug where medium and large ship spawn rates would cease to increase after a time.
-Fixed bug where game would crash if you tried to load highscores without an internet connection.
-Fixed muzzle flash rendering bug.

April Update: Gewgawlicious v1.1, Monsterpunk Devlog #14, Music

In a Nutshell

If I've gone dark from the dev blog for a few months, it's because (surprise) I've been busy. Part of that busyness can be attributed to game development, primarily to two large projects. The first of these has been my application to Artscape, Baltimore's big ol' arts festival. I've been collaborating with another local game developer (Let-Off Studios!) under the moniker "Baltimore Game Collective" to exhibit a collection of eight short games during the festival, and while our acceptance status is pending, I am feeling confident this year! I've made a short demo reel for our showcase that will function as a promotional video if our acceptance is confirmed. 

The games I am contributing to the collection are Gewgawlicious, The Morphine Western Revenge, Bloodjak, and Digital Toilet World. While I am feeling good about Revenge in it's current state, the remaining work demands some additional polish before being publicly exhibited. 

Changes to Digital Toilet World will be minimal (in fact, I'll be reversing some unnecessary changes I made in the last update), while changes to Bloodjak will be a bit more extensive to make it more accessible to casual members of a festival audience. As for Gewgawlicious...

Gewgawlicious v1.1 is out! Now with audible music!

As is the case with most jam games, Gewgawlicious was rushed, and benefited from some minor revisions. Namely, there were three issues: 1) The music was too soft. 2) The bomb beeping was too loud and 3) People were confused by the user interface and basic rules of the sandbox. The first two issues required straightforward solutions, the third required a bit more care. I made a number of subtle changes to the game's user interface that will hopefully provide sufficient guidance to the player and keep them playing up through the game's punchline.

As always, you can play Gewgawlicious at itch.io and Game Jolt.

As for the other project that's been occupying my time...

Monsterpunk Devlog Update #14! Now with character portraits!

After spending nearly a year on The Morphine Western Revenge, I've been able to return my focus to Monsterpunk. For those of you who are newcomers, it's a survival action-RPG inspired in equal parts by virtual pets, punk games, and queer games. I've been working on it on and off since... 2014? Gosh.

I started off by finishing off drawing portrait art for all of the game's characters - a task I had left unfinished about a year ago - and since then have mostly been making fundamental changes to the game's mechanics. I'm always growing as a designer, and that has been especially true over the course of Revenge's development. One of the most frustrating aspects of working on a large, long-term project is that there's a mismatch between the initial quality of the work and your current ability, and taking a lengthy hiatus from a project only makes that difference more obvious. So, I'm making changes to some of the game's most fundamental aspects. I've slowed character movement speed in order to better control the overall pacing of the game, while lowering adversary health in order to make combat faster and snappier, among countless other changes.

For those of you who just got here, this is also a game about flirting and pooping.

At this point, I'm aiming to release the game by this summer. While there is much about it that I find endearing, I've been working on it long enough that it is, admittedly, beginning to feel like a burden! It is already playable from start to finish, and has always been even after the first week of development. The question has never been whether it can be released at a given moment, but whether it should. I don't know if the game will be the best it can be by the summer, but as time goes on, that question becomes less important.

I want this game to be great, but I'm also looking forward to being able to chill out, make jam games, and hack Pokémon roms again.

Here's Some Music, Too.

Finally I threw some tracks up on the Soundcloud - the music from Gewgawlicious and Darcy's Yurt Adventure, as well as two unused tracks - one from a collaboration that fell through, and another that was written for Revenge, but ultimately didn't fit the mood of the game, although I think it is rather good. Enjoy!