Gametober (31 very tiny games in October)

[droqen]

My partner is getting into digital art (finally! lol) and she's doing Inktober this month. I thought I'd join her, since I'm feeling a bit lost and would love nothing more than an excuse to not finish 31 'proper' games.

Day 1. Something you Love/Hate

This immediately made me think of the pleasure of grinding to unlock things, and this reddit post I saved a long time ago called "Looking For Game With Slow-Paced Combat And Depth". That'll be how I interpret today's theme.

[droqen]

Idle Failure game. You set something in motion and then step away from the game. Go do something else for a while.
Oh, I guess you can watch, but it won't do anything... maybe you can gather information about why things are failing. That's about it. But you'll be able to see it all at the end anyway.

[droqen]

A scenario that you can hold fully in your head very easily, and run over and over mentally in order to arrive at the solution.

[droqen]

Nope, keep it simple. Grinding.

[droqen]

I could make it a collection (Droqtober!) and allow you to 'buy' games (just pick a fixed number to unlock), and lock future games behind beating ones you already have -- or waiting a fixed amount of time. Could be a fun bit of metagame friction.

(I'm already doing them in one Godot project so that I don't need a launcher.)

[droqen]

wip. the basic idea is: push your luck, get deep into the woods without running out of stamina. cut through plants. but: plants are growing behind you!

[droqen]

Gametober Day 1: Allergy Souls
https://twitter.com/droqen/status/1444077328875802629

post-mortem
The design went through a lot of changes from what I was initially imagining, lol. I wanted a bit more of a 'metagame', a loop, where you go back to 'town' and like, improve your stats. I was busy with other stuff all day and I didn't want to be working on Sneeze Souls into the night, lol, so I stripped the game of many of its moving parts.

Originally there was going to be a destructible plants and re-growing plants; I even have much of the spritework done for the 'growing' animation. (I say "much of the spritework" but it's literally just two extra frames of greenery, hahaha.) Instead, I employed a very simple static tile solution with some bars and stuff. I'm happy with it.

[droqen]

Tomorrow's theme is "Line".

[droqen]

Line = Subway Line



WIP. I almost called it done at this point but I realized I could take another hour to polish it up and juice it and oil it etc. The game right now is way too fast to feel good (it's slippery and horrible; getting a bike feels like a punishment) and it doesn't have any kind of coherent aesthetic. It took me about 3-4 hours to get it to this point.

[droqen]

Okay, a very casual, distracted 3-4 hours.

[droqen]

Unfinished tileset. Took another 2 (very casual, distracted) hours to get here.

[droqen]

October 2 tweet

[droqen]

"Haunted Hedge Maze Maker" or just something really on the nose like PAC-HEDGE-TRIMMER or something??? Jeez. Who knows.

[droqen]

It's been nice making little arcadey games. I've really loved making each and every one of them! Also: playing them!

They also all have interesting room to make level design... maybe a new game+ mode where every game gets a new level???

[droqen]

Day 4. Rock Blaster! Happy with how I imagine this game can be approached by a beginner without feel-bads. I regret the death hole though.

Tweet

for posterity, the note on my computer:

form
sculpture?
stone
rock formation.
army formation.
pushing units into formations?

and tho i had the idea of being a 'sculpture-carving wizard' my first idea that i really made any sprites for and gave serious thought to was 'a game where you push an army into shape to see it fight against another army'. but i realized that was more of a system to design and wasn't sure iw as up for the task.