Blog - Top 10 of 10 - 2016

29th 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

2016 - Forget-V

With the chaos of the OUYA Buyout done, and the silly notion of Gap Year behind me, I went back to full-speed AGameAWeek game making this year.
Otakupunk's LetsPlay videos kept me entertained, player feedback was at an all time high, and things flowed really well.
2016 was a good year!

... Of course, Razer continued to dissapoint, failing to bring new and interesting features to their system.
The entire OUYA community seemed to disband within a few short months of the OUYA Buyout, and things never got back to the way they were.

The NVidia Shield was "winning" the Android TV war, and it was almost like Razer had given up trying.
To this day, they haven't released (to my knowledge) any new Android TV gaming devices, and the Forge-TV soon became the Forget-V..

That didn't stop me making games for it, though!

-=-=-

Ten of the Best

(in order of release)

Space Station A6-100

An attempt to make Alien Deathmatch a bit more Alien Breed-like, with explorable levels and such.
I think this edition actually turned out rather well, and it's great to revisit it from time to time, but I often get the feeling that it could've been even bigger if I added a few more elements.
The end result is actually a little more like the Greenie's MiniQuest game, and if I'd have added keys, ammo and other persistent RPG-like elements, then maybe it could've expanded to be an even bigger game.

Army of Flags

A lovely little Cannon-Fodder style game, spawned from the previous year's Beta Collexion.
This game was almost good, but without proper Mouse controlled aiming, it was certainly no Cannon Fodder.
The shooting only occurs in two directions, and that led to a lot of frustration for players.
It's still a fun little game, though, as long as you can get past the shooting thing.

Spikes Have Rage

I hadn't made a beat-em-up before. Due to my lack of decent animations it never seemed to be a good idea.
I finally dared to attempt one!
It didn't go particularly well, but I thought it was a nice fun little oddity in amongst the usual standard collection of games.
Kick your little stumpy spikes for all its worth!

PlatCross

An entire Picross game, with over 200 levels, made in the space of a week!?
Sure, why not!
This game made use of my Daily Platdude Pixelart, but I still had to go in and redraw a little picross puzzle for each and every pixelart in the game.
It wasn't too hard, though, and the result is .. well, it's Picross, isn't it!!

8-Bit Boulders

Taking the concept of Boulderdash, and adding rocks that "fall" in different directions, this game required even more levels to be made by hand.
The resulting game is quite nice, has a variety of graphical styles, a bunch of music and more.
I pat myself on the back for having managed so much in a single week, but if I'm honest, a level generator would've made it even better.

Geartography

Getting sick of making all these levels by myself, I placed a tiny pixelart doodle tool on my site for a few days, and asked people to doodle and submit some little shapes and icons.
This game gathered up the results, and generated little Gearworks style puzzles with them.
I do like this game!

Letter Lattice

A wonderful wordsearch.
I know people don't like wordsearch games, but I do, and this concept's been one of my favourites for a while.
Jumble up only the letters in the word, and it makes a crazily difficult wordsearch.
This, and other unpopular puzzle games like it, would eventually end up in the unpopular Foldapuz site, all gathered together into an unplayed cluster!

Snake on a Moving Plain

The age old game of snake, but with a dangerous moving floor!
Taking the scrolling concept from the old 8-bit title "Splat!", but with a little more warning, and adding in the complexities of the snake's tail, the game takes on a much more playable style.
With a little more tweaking, this game might be worthy of a remake.

The Cube Gatherer

A great style and a long time figuring out how to animate the cubes without needing to do "realistic" rolling.
Dice rolling logic can be rather confusing at times, so I simplified it down to a 1-2-3 mechanic, and everything became a lot more playable.
The game could still do with something a little more .. exciting.. Maybe a better level generator or something.
But otherwise I think it's a nice little concept.

Gamma Collexion

The third Advent Calendar in a row, and this year I decided to try making lots of little multiplayer games.
Every single game in this Collexion has a four player option, and each game also contains AI to keep single-players from getting bored.
A lot of odd little concepts in this gathering, as I struggled to come up with ideas that were playable with many, but that I could also somehow manage to make a working AI for, as well.
It didn't always work out, but in a lot of cases, the results are nice and playable.

It's a shame that I couldn't figure out a good Android/OUYA/ForgetV multiplayer controller method before releasing this, though.
But at least that bit still works on Windows.
.. Sometimes!!

Created with Survey Creator

A Few Failures

(in order of release)

Penguin Parade

A lovely concept for a game. Almost Lemmings-like, but with a set of levels that chain together.
Guiding all the penguins, and keeping them alive throughout the levels seemed like a great idea, except for one slight issue.
I had to make all those levels!
And to ensure they all worked together, I had to play them all from scratch, all the way through, over and over and over again!
Every little tweak to one level, meant having to play through the rest to ensure things still flowed well.
This was a terrible decision, and the game suffered a lack of levels as a consequence.

Jumble Blocks

This is me trying to make a block-falling puzzle game, and overthinking it.
I thought it might be fun to have two different coloured sets of blocks falling, and try to create rows of a single colour.
It wasn't.
The proof is in the gameplay.

Deflektivity

If ever there was proof that Deflektor needs properly made levels, this is it!
Trying to make the game more abstract and randomly generated, ended up in a disaster of a game.
It's still playable, but it's nowhere near what it oughta be.

Blobs Boxes

A Sokoban style block pushing game, but with Pengo rules (in that you push the line of blocks and they wrap around the screen)
The basic idea of a game is here, but the execution makes it rather repetitive and dull.
This game could probably be a lot better..