People often complain that my games look "too retro", and yet, this mostly-monochrome game with a seriously shitty sprite, is getting lots of attention. .. You can't please everybody! Seems to be going fairly well, and is relatively popular, but the exact same issue seems to be cropping up over, and over, and over and over again.. The helicopter only ever faces Right, and the planes only ever face Left. "OMG!! It doesn't turn around!!" "Why can't I turn round!?!" "It should be able to turn!!!" P...

I'm sick to death of, every single day, deleting buttloads of spam-comments from my Jayenkai Archive. Every day, mountains of the stuff.. And practically no actual comments, whatsoever. I think I've had 2, so far, this year.. .. and one of those was me replying to the first!! Ludicrous amounts of spam, zero actual usage. I figured, for every bit of spam, there's a half-a-second of CPU usage going to waste, even if nobody ever saw it. So, they're gone.. All of them.. Every single comment that th...

A lovely little flying game, this week, as you take control of a friendly little chopper, and try to save all your pals. As you race about the landscape, you'll meet plenty of enemy aircraft, hellbent on stopping you. Attack, Defend, and Survive!!

I woke up late, this morning, and felt somewhat lethargic. I tried doing a bit of coding, but nothing seemed to fall into place, and I couldn't really be bothered to tackle anything. I closed the laptop before dinner, and opted to give up on the day. Here's what happened on my day off..

I love my iOS devices, and I love the iOS Ecosystem. I also love that iOS has (so far) been the only bloomin' way that I've managed to sell my games in a fruitful manner. (Android sales have been.. *shrugs* Pisspoor!!) In order to get a Monkey-x game onto iOS, I first need to transfer the code to the Mac (Drag 'n' Drop over the network) then recompile with a few choice tweaks along the way. The game then needs approximately 738 different icons, which all look the same, but are marginally different si...

Coming up on Tuesday, "My Little Rescue Helicopter!", a nice retro game with a helicopter, and some evil enemy aircraft! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ssc.jpg"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ssc-1024x576.jpg" alt="ssc" width="590" height="331" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-3516" /> A lovely little shoot-em-up/rescue game with good old-fashioned old-skool graphics. Then, next week, relax wit...

When I first bought my iPad, I never imagined the amount of "work" that I'd end up doing on the thing. The fact is, it's SO much easier to have your iPad on hand, than it is a giant laptop. That's not to say I don't use my laptop. It's pretty much an essential part of AGameAWeek. You can't exactly do your coding on iOS, so the laptop is there for the majority of the things I do, but over the course of the last year-or-so, I've found myself doing smaller bit-tasks on my iPad. I figured I should probab...

In the first of a (hopefully) full year of monthly Platdude related releases, Platdude gets to wander through a giant forest, battling enemy creatures, and avoiding deadly spikes! <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Platdude_in_The_Endless_Forest_20140127B_thumb.png"> <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Platdude_in_The_Endless_Forest_20140127A_thumb.png">

This week we're going to be doing the first part of something that may or may not actually happen!! Since last year was Nintendo's Year of Luigi, the guys over at RetroRemakes have decided that this year oughta be the Year of Horace. I challenged site-admin RobF to attempt to create a different Horace game every month, and post it to OneGameAMonth. I'm not sure he's going to do it, if I'm honest. But the challenge was set, and although unspoken, I figured it would only be fair to challenge myself to t...

I don't normally do "Postmortem" type blog posts, but figured I might as well start. Not sure whether this will become a regular thing, or not, but I thought it'd be nice to keep track of what happens after I post each game. In future I might leave it until a good few days have passed, but the world of AGameAWeek tends to flow fairly rapidly. We'll have to judge it as it happens. Anyway, welcome to the newest section of AGameAWeek, where I take a look at the stats and things, to help figure out if the...

Welcome to the wonderfully colourful retro-styled world of Retroball! A spectacular remake of the bat and ball classic, but with all new rules, combo scoring, and even a few powerups along the way. ( width="480" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/uOwyUEbf994" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>>

There are hundreds of great sites that I should probably link to, and much like linking to my hundreds of games, I've always found it a bit of a mess once I start trying to cram it all into a small sidebar on the right of the site. As such, I've finally opted to create one great big link-page, full of everything I could think of within the short hour or so that it took to add it! If you're missing from this page, let me know!! <table border="1px" cellpadding="2" width="100%"> <t...

After this week's dire disappointment, I decided to go ahead and try to make something a little more.. um.. Gamey!! So, I went way-way-way-way-way-way back to basics, and made a Pong game.. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/added_2_scores.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/added_2_scores-300x225.png" alt="" title="added_2_scores" width="300" height="225" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-3430" /> ...

If last week was an example of a good week, then this week is most definitely the polar opposite! Welcome to a failed AGameAWeek!!

Forewarning : I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to finish off this week's game in time! For one thing, it feels like it should be a little more complex than it currently is. Loads of extra stuff could be added, but I probably don't have the time to add it all in. Secondly, however, is the current issue I'm having, health-wise. All of 2012's nastyness has left me slightly off-balance, and kinda queazy a bit. For the most part, I'm managing quite well, but this week's game.. (URL "https://AGameA...

Or, as the titlescreen would have you call it, "Greenie's Little Adventure" Feel free to use either of the two titles! Welcome back! AGameAWeek starts anew, this week, with a nice little remake of a game I made a good 7 or 8 years ago. My original "The Quest" game took a board-game-style approach, but never really got very far due to the limits and oddities of trying to play a board game on a computer. It felt strange to have to roll dice all the time, and the battles were never that great. I'm not ...

(URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/image-28-12-13-02-53-30.jpg"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/image-28-12-13-02-53-30_thumb.jpg"> Hmmm....

NeonPlat Extreme appears to be following the same path as BlastTrax, and gaining a nice bit of attention. Knowing my luck, this will probably result in an equally similar amount of sales. ie, bog all!! Folk seem to love my games, but getting them to try them is a bitch!!! You can (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=311">Download NeonPlat Extreme here) for all kinds of devices!

This week, Platdude gets his first real outing for about 3 and a half years!! Poor fella's been cooped up for so long, he's started to go a bit doolally! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=312"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/JNKPlat_-_Xmas_2013_20131219B_thumb.png">

Welcome to the Top 13 AGameAWeek Games of 2013 No other Top-10 lists appear to want to give any of my games any recognition at all, which kinda sucks since I've made a whole bunch of REALLY great games, this year! I don't even get a token "Made a shitload of games, this year" mention! Sucks!! So, sod them all, I'll make my own Top-10 list. And it'll be all my games, and I'll even add a few more just to make it a bit more 2013 relevant. That'll show 'em!! Mwa-ha-haaa!!!

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:left;"> AGameAWeek Gold looks back at some of the best, and worst, games that have been previously released on this day in history. Today's game from the archive is a lovely little arena battler, with lots of weapons and things to shoot!

(URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Accumulative_Stats_15_Dec_2013.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Accumulative_Stats_15_Dec_2013_thumb.png">

Over on the Monkey forum, a discussion about level data set me off thinking about making this post. Whenever I put levels into my games, I tried to keep them as small as I possibly can. I've been doing it this way for years, and always figured it's nice to compress my data into something that's easily shareable. .. True, I rarely ever get around to actually making these things easily shareable, but for the most part I try to keep things as minimal as possible.

NeonPlat Extreme sees most of the elements of the NeonPlat series of games, all cobbled together into one great big lump sum. There's lots of fun little things to play around with, and for the most part it's the same single-screen platforming action you've come to expect. ( width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/D1dkbggU6kU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> NeonPlat Extreme is now available on iOS, Android, OUYA and Windows! (URL "https:...

Sheep Goes Right, or at least a minor version of it, is now (URL "https://www.ouya.tv/game/Sheep-Goes-Right/">available on OUYA.) It isn't finished. There's a lot more of it that I've made, and a lot more I've yet to add, but something annoying has happened in the past few days. (URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/image-10-12-13-09-34-51.jpg"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/image-10-12-13-09-34-51_thumb.jpg">

My first experience

Me and Spinal were discussing OUYA. He'd just bought one, and was trying to get Monkey to work with it. I dared to mention OUYA in a tweet, and so was instantly followed by OUYAForum's tweetbot, @OUYAForum_com "Nnngh. A generic bloody tweetbot. Can't these companies behave properly?" I thought, and I otherwise ignored it and carried on. A few days later, another minor mention of OUYA on Twitter sparked a second following by OUYAForum's tweetbot. "Hmmm.. Didn't they ...

Last March I was taken into hospital with a brain tumor. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/2012/08/home-again-home-again-jiggity-jig/">There's a lengthy blog about that, here.) Since then, although I'm "mentally" fine, I'm all sorts of physically screwed up! I can barely stand in one spot without wobbling about, and trying to have a short stroll outside is somewhat chaotic. In general I tend to stumble around, and can barely look around me, so have to always have someone with me incase I randomly wand...