Blog - Top 10'ish of 10 - 2014

28th December 2019

A decade is over, and what have I done?
373 games, created a new blogging script for here, rewritten the Socoder forum, started a few new sites and more!
Oh, and a brain tumour!

It's been a wild and crazy decade, and over the next few days I'll be looking back at the best (and worst) games from the decade.

2010 - BlitzMax
2011 - Touch Control
2012 - The Bad Year
2013 - Monkey-X
2014 - OUYA!!
2015 - The Gap Year
2016 - Forget-V
2017 - Cuddle Me
2018 - Ringing the Changes
2019 - Overload

2014 - OUYA

By 2014 I'd picked up one of those funny little OUYA devices and discovered that it was super-easy to compile my Monkey-X games onto the system.
With some great feedback from Team OUYA, I fixed up my framework to function smoothly with the system, fixed up some nasty issues with the menu system, and added things like Overscan and the like so that everything flowed much more "professionally"!
The suggestions that I recieved from Team OUYA was some of the most important feedback I've gotten, and with a new OUYA Audience to play my games, I found myself learning some really interesting new developer skills.
Not necessarily code related, but instead some Common Sense rules that I hadn't previously considered when making games.

-=-=-

Some of the Best

(in order of release)

Greenies MiniQuest

Starting the year with a bang, a great big RPG-esque adventure!
Help Greenie find his friend Dave within the dungeon.
Shoot at enemies and use TNT to blast your way through unpassable areas.
Your inventory will rack up as you play through the game, so use items sparingly.
.. Although, if I'm honest, the item balance isn't quite what it should be, and you'll easily end up with way more items than you need after just a few levels.

Spiky Tower

Another reitteration of the SpikeDislike concept, this time with the ball bouncing its way up an endless tower.
Move the ball left and right as it bounces endlessly, and try to avoid the spikes along the way.
I thought this was a nice twist on the usual SpikeDislike gameplay, but feedback on iTunes was usually of the "Hey, This isn't SpikeDislike! What a rip off!!" variety.
Silly players!!

Disc Blaster

I'd previously done a few iterations of Microbes, but could never quite find the right balance when the player is too good and empties the playfield.
This time around, I opted to make a "clear" end up moving the game to new level.
The result is much more playable, but the game still has that issue where a simple mis-step ends up clogging the level up in an unbeatable way.

Every Good Bird Deserves Flappyness

The world went Flappy Bird crazy for a while, so I made my own little twist on things, in that special AGameAWeek way.
This is one of my favourite games, but it's not something I can keep repeating without it looking really out of place.
Very much a game of the moment.

Boxsplodings

I've often tried to make "Chain Reaction" style games, but they all end up looking the same.
This attempt ended up with a really unique style, and with a collection of levels to beat, everything feels a little more organised.

Alien Spindome

For this game, I took the "spinning level reels" mechanic from the Arcade Slots game, and mixed it with the gameplay of the Amiga classic Super Obliterator.
Running through the playfield, jumping on platforms, shooting giant asteroids that are floating around.
This game's really quite a lot of fun, and probably deserves a remake.
I could really do with making the collision detection a little more precise, though.

Munky Blocks (dx)

I do really love the Munky Blocks concept, but much like Puzzobomb, I haven't yet found the perfect way to create random levels for the games, so they've always been really limited in terms of how many levels are available for them.
Still, this is a great little rendition, and everything flows well together.
More of these, please, Jay!!

Alpha Collexion

At the end of the year, I released a brand new Advent Calendar, with a nice collection of 26 alphabetically organised games.
A bunch of little minigames, intended to spark ideas in the way that the 2010 Advent had created SpikeDislike.
The resulting list of games has some nice little ideas, some of which I haven't ever revisited..
Maybe it's time I did that?

The Best Platdude Games

After Nintendo's 2013's "Year of Luigi", I decided to try my hand at doing my own "Year of Platdude", and every month I released a new game starring my favourite hero.

Platdude in The Endless Forest

The first of these was a simple little stroll through an endless forest with balls to throw and enemies to avoid.
A nice enough game that launched the Year of Platdude in the right direction.

Platdude in Space

A simple "Bounce on the Baddies" game, but on spinning rotating planets in space.
The gravity and floatiness makes this game a lot more fun than it oughta be!

Platdude in Battling Ostriches

A simple little Joust remake with Platdude.
This works well enough, but could probably do with a multiplayer mode.
Still, a nice little game of hopping, flapping and bouncing.

Platdude in Swamp Golf

This is a great little game with you thwacking balls at crocodile-like creatures in the swamp.
It's a fun little game but I often wonder how much more interesting it might be with powerups, different clubs and more.

Created with Survey Creator

A Few Failures

(in order of release)

UVB - Unfinished Vortex Blaster

An attempt at a different graphical style with oldskool Sprite Sizing to create a 3D effect.
The game almost works, but the effect was far too processor intensive to be a good game. (Although it seems to run nice and smooth on more modern systems)

My Little Rescue Helicopter

This game was intended to be similar to the old 8-bit game Harrier Attack (and even has the Harrier's Carrier if you fly far enough through the level.)
The gameplay isn't quite as good as I'd've liked, though.
There's plenty of enemy vessels, and lots of little characters to save, but the gameplay still seems somewhat stunted.
I recently did a remake of this on Petit Switch, but instead made the game time-limited. It ended up being much more playable.

Blockman Worlds

This game is nice, and colourful, and the sprites are textured and lovely, but the Blockman concept feels like it works better when confined to the screen instead of scrolling around.
You can't always see ahead when it really matters, and it's much harder than it should be.

JNKBombers

A good old fashioned Bomberman clone!
Nothing magical here, but the result was a nice and playable local-multiplayer game on OUYA.
Unfortunately, when Razer bought OUYA and changed the controller functionality on the later ForgeTV, I had to rewrite the controller code and could never get the multiplayer component to work properly again.
Booo!
Still, it works well enough as it is, and the AI Enemies aren't terrible... All the time..

ChuckABall

This is a curious little puzzle game where you throw a ball down a tower, and try to hit all the points along the way.
It's a game that seems to work well enough, but isn't nearly as puzzly as I'd like. It feels like its missing something, but I'm not sure what.

Space Rocket Adventurers

Another game that "almost" works, but is missing that special something.
Guide the starship crew through the alien environment, back to their rocket.
I tried to make the game feel like the reverse of a Tower Defense game, and if you play it as that, it feels more or less like what I wanted.
But as an action game, it's definitely lacking.