Psychon 2

As is my prerogative, I've decided to do another side project before undertaking Pixel Station II.

While relaxing on holiday I realised it was time to revive an old game of mine and give it a decent sequel.

During the winter months of 1994/95 I wrote "Psycheual" for the Amiga and released it as shareware. Three years later, the game was remade for the PlayStation Net Yaroze and renamed "Psychon". For some reason, it gained a cult following, despite having been thrown together in 10 days.

I'm planning to spend a little longer on the sequel and hopefully iron out some of the issues present in the original.

Once again, I'll be using the Defold game engine - I really like Defold; it's perfect for this sort of game and allows releases on multiple platforms without any great hassle.

I've committed a couple of days to it so far and have a working prototype with the player navigating a test level decorated with some graphical ideas. These will be developed further and some new elements added - one of the issues with the first game was the repetition. The levels all looked the same and there wasn't much to do other than try and stay alive long enough to reach the deck lift.

It's still going to be a simple game so I don't anticipate more than a few weeks development time. One challenge will be making a touch screen version of the game for release on Android - and maybe iPhone if that's feasible.

For now, here's an early screenshot:

Psychon 2 - currently in development

Pixel Station II

While I wait for some assets to appear for the collaboration development I'm a part of, my time will be spent creating the sequel to Pixel Station, which was released on Android in 2015.

Although the first game fulfilled most of what I'd imagined for it, I lost interest near the end of development and felt the game underachieved in a lot of ways. It was too repetitive and there wasn't enough to do. I'm still attached to the concept though and want to give it a second shot.

An early test level

This time, I will be using the Defold game engine and targeting Android primarily, though other platforms may get a release as well depending on how I feel about the game when it's ready.

It's early days, so there's not much actual progress to report yet. Given the speed with which Defold gives to developers, I anticipate fairly quick progress in the next few weeks.

The overall gameplay will be similar to the original but there will be more variety in what the player can do and more interactive things to enjoy while playing.

Cosmic Clash Demo

After a week of hard slog learning Defold and Lua, I'm releasing a short demo of Cosmic Clash.
Play in browser (HTML5)

Download
Windows | OSX | Linux

Have fun!

Cosmic Clash

A few weeks ago while researching 2D game frameworks, I stumbled across a new one on the scene called Defold. The philosophy behind it is a little different to the norm - it's been in use for several years by the developers at King (the Candy Crush people) and they have recently opened it up for everyone to use for free. The idea being that having many more developers using the framework, it can be improved more effectively.

As I've got a few days off my day job, I've been working on a simple game to learn how to use both Defold and the scripting language Lua, which is the coding part of the framework. It's been tough going as I've never used a framework before and Lua is different to every other programming language I know - most of which are 'C' based. So pretty much every small step has required research.

Pew pew pew

After a few days I've managed to produce a simple playable shoot 'em up game with spawning aliens and a basic laser weapon attached to your ship.

Over the next few days, I'm intending to develop the game further and learn more about how to make games using Defold.

Probably the most advantageous thing about using a framework, is that you're targeting multiple platforms. Previously, all my games have been for specific systems - the most recent stuff targeting Android. So, I can now build applications for Windows, OSX, Linux and both Android and iOS platforms. I can also build packages in HTML5 so the games can be played in an internet browser.

I'm excited about this new framework and the opportunities to reach a much wider audience than with previous projects.