Wednesday Workshop #164 suggested we should make a game using vector graphics. I took this opportunity to remake the fantastic Dos game, Boogaloopers!

Move the ship around with your mouse, and trap enemy within it's trail. Nice and simple gameplay-wise, but a complete git to get working code-wise! Not only did I have to figure out the points that the mouse crossed the trail, but then do that whole polygon-shrinking thing, too!
Not easy! And I even accidentally left a little gap at the opening point! (oops!)

Still, that's only a graphical issue, and the game works exactly as expected.
There are 4 enemies of varying speeds, but I've not added pickups, or weapons, or anything like that.
Lazy? Maybe!
If you'd like to see more added, let me know, and I'll see what I can do.

In the meantime, you can Download Space Loops, and have a bit of fun!

This week, Socoder's Wednesday Workshop (#163) challenge was to create a game with Money in it.
I initially was going to create a top-down dungeon romp, but as the plan grew and grew in scale, I scrapped it and just ended up making a nice quick platformer instead!
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Mr Money Grabber features you rushing through the level collecting all the coins you can.
You have 5 lives, and lose them if you touch the red monsters.
Nice and simple, but quite fast and frantic!
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You can Download Mr Money Grabber here.

Wednesday Workshop #162 asked for folk to create a game with a big-ass timer.
My entry was simple.
Open a vault, Grab the loot, Run for your life, Drive to escape, have a gunfight, sorted!
All with a timer in the corner, and all played with the mouse.

The game's mostly all Left clicks, but the short driving scene requires you to right click occasionally, too.

Download and play The Heist.

I tried to keep a blog. It didn't work.
It's no surprise, though. I've never been one to keep a working active blog.
No matter, I'll try something else.

Welcome to A Game A Week.com

I'm pretty much already producing games at a fast enough pace, what with the Wednesday Workshop and all. So I figured I might as well get a bit of publicity out of it by adding a nice shiny noticeable domain name!

Will it work? We'll have to wait and see.

Here's the rules of this site.

1. When I make a new game, I put it on here.
That goes for Really Really Good games, like Retro Raider, Puzzobomb, JNKPlat, Centipong, Alien Deathmatch, and all the rest.
It also goes for the extremely bizarre games that don't really make much sense! Hey, it's a Game a Week, what do you expect!

2. If I don't make a new game within a week, I'll head into my collected archive of gubbins, pluck out a rare specimen, and give it a little shout out. That should at least give you something to play that week!

3. If the folk at Socoder make a great game, I'll plop that on here, too. That goes mostly for Workshop entries, but will also count if there's something really good, too.

And, I think that's about it.
There won't be posts about what new games are coming out in the shops, or things about new hardware, or other non-related garbage. Although there may be the odd occasional rant, and I'll probably still post "Me in a magazine!!" type things if they ever happen again

So, pretty much the same as it ever was, then.
But, hopefully, with a tiny bit more content.

I've still got to work out a nice layout, though. .. But it'll do as it is for now.

Puzzobomb gets a place in WebUser, issue 189.
That's exactly 20 issues after Horizontal Shooter was in.
And, if you're counting, it's exactly 2 pages earlier.. I've been bumped up to page 38, now! Woot.

2 pages in 20 issues..

Hmm..
By issue 549 I should be on the front page!
Woohoo! That's only 13 years away!

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Puzzobomb rears it's head once again, this time in a Junior capacity.

Puzzobomb Jr DS is basically just Puzznic! But, hey, there's nothing wrong with that!
Just because the titular "Bomb" is completely missing, doesn't mean the game's not fun.
And with over 2000 levels to work your way through, you'll be playing away for quite a while..
..
Or giving up!

This game might end up with lots of extras, some time in the future. For now, though, it's just a big collection of levels!

Hurray!

You can Download Puzzobomb Jr here..

Should be in every format necessary!

Tomb Raider meets Pitfall!


Retro Raider took a few days to get into a decent build, and then over the course of a few weeks I added lots of extra little chunky bits.


Recently I've been tweaking it even more.
There's now a handful of levels, a few collectables, doors, keys, and even a little Ghost Replay/Time Trial mode.


Good, clean, retro happyness!
There's even a level editor to keep you entertained even longer!

You can Download RetroRaider here, and have some fun! As usual, that link will be the most up to date version, and if there's any major changes, I'll let you know.

Puzzobomb, a mix of Puzznic and Bombs.. (For Jericho!)

Starting with the Wednesday Workshop base from the other day, I decided that yes, I would build it up a bit.
 
So, I opened up the Amstrad CPC game "Puzznix" which, since I was a kid, I'd always assumed to be "the original game".. Turns out it wasn't...Read More

I don't normally post individual Workshop entries. They're not usually good enough to make it to single-post-worthy status!
This week's workshop is a Jericho-based "Explosive" challenge, and so I made a small puzzle game with Bombs.
It's quite an interesting puzzle game.
Take the basic rules of the classic Puzznix game, add bombs, and score it all on a Golf-style scorechart.

The game looks quite nice, nicking the "chunky" block style from Blockman, and there's some half-assed sound effects.


Essentially though, it's a nice puzzle engine that I think I'd like to build upon.
Quite where it'll end up, I'm not sure, but for now it's got a nice 18-puzzle level set, and a few of them are vaguely puzzley!

Left mouse to move, right mouse to explode bombs, and that's pretty much all you'll need.
You can download Puzzobomb here.

For now it's Windows only.

Last month I got my Samsung U600 phone.
On Sunday I decided to get Java installed, and give it a go.
Today, I'm releasing Centipong Jr.
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You should know how the game goes, but this one's lacking in a few features.
1. It's not got any audio, 'cos I haven't figured out how to do that yet!
2. There's no Levels structure, just more and more centipedes.
3. There are no powerups.
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Will these features be added?
More than likely.
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Will they be free?
We'll have to see.
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I might try to make a bit of cash from my Mobile developing, but we'll have to see how good I get at it first!
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In the meantime, you can download it here.
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It may or may not work well on your phone!
Let me know how it goes, along with your phone type, and any other info you can pass along.
Thanks.
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Enjoy.

For starters, let me just point out that Alien Deathmatch has still been slowly updating over the past couple of weeks. It's strange that a single game has taken up so much of my time. I guess that once you find the right type of game, you're more motivated than usual.
Still, more weeks playing with 1 game = less time to get some actual new games coded.
As such, there's not really been a whole lot to report over the past week or so.
No new games, no new ideas, nothing.

I had initially planned to do an Asteroids game, after Alien Deathmatch, but once I got going with simple asteroids, it turned out to be a "run around, shoot the bad guys" type affair.. .. essentially it would've just turned out like Alien Deathmatch, only with a slightly different control scheme.Read More

Last year I drew some graphics!
A set of sprites and background tiles for a DS game based on the classic Alien Breed on the Amiga.
The plan fell apart soon after.

Last week I decided to resurrect it on the PC.
Sorry! This is another none-DS game, folks!
Read More

Not as many fun little games, this time around, but weeks 61 through 90 brought about a few changes.
For starters, Coders Workshop closed down in week 64, which meant the whole Wed.Workshop thing was without a home. Consequently, I spent most of this period building up the whole Socoder website.. from scratch.. in notepad..

It took a while!
So, I missed a few workshops! As such there's only actually 14 games in this selection. There are some super special games, though.

The "CodersWorkshop" game is a miniature Top-down, Romp-around, Dungeon-esque game, only without much of the needed gameplay elements! There's a decent Picross game, with included Level editor. There's experiments with transparencies, tests with strange window resolutions, and there's even a backwards game thrown in for good measure.


You can Download the Collection here, and for more of the same, check out Weeks 01 - 30, 31 - 60 and my complete entry list.

Imagine if all your favourite Arcade games were in fact Slot Machine games.
Arcade Slots reproduces a handful of games in this style. With games ranging from Frogger to Hogan's Alley, there's plenty to keep your playing.

Download Arcade Slots.

	Pacman Spin the slots, and hope that Pacman can get across the level without hitting any ghosts. Eat the power pellets to give him more of a chance.
	Frogger Pick one of three positions to set Frogger off, spin the slots, cross your fingers, and hope for the best as he hops his way across the roads and rivers.
	JNKPlat OK, so this isn't really a classic arcade game, but it's fun to see Platdude run along the levels anyway! Expect even more finger-crossing, as he tries not to run into any spikes.
	Hogan's Alley In this game, the reels automatically spin. You have to hit the three buttons to shoot the bad guys. Try not to shoot the goodies!
	Simon Wait for the reels to stop, then hit the four buttons in the order shown in the center of the screen.
	Columns Using only three nudges, try to line up as many horizontal lines of gems as you can. A nice slow-paced thinking game.

Windows

H~S
Horizontal Shooter


Cowbell Hero



Retro Raider



Alien Deathmatch



Blockman



Centipong



Puzzobomb



JNKPlat



Munky Games

Nintendo DS

JNKPlat DS



Arcade Slots



Platdude's Retro Collection

Mobile/Java

Centipong Jr

If Centipong was a simplistic looking game with added 3D, Blockman would be the exact opposite. With levels so colourful they'd poke your eyes out, Blockman comes hopping along to rescue all the Blocklets.

It's a rather simple game. Grab the Blocklets, take them to the door. You can bring as many as you can to the door at a time, but the more you get safely home in one go, the more points you're awarded.
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Over the past few days, I've been building up Centipong bit by bit, and it's now become a much nicer game to play.
There's levels to beat, pickups to collect, and more centipede pods than you can shake a paddle at! If you enjoyed the previous version, give the new version a try. You'll love it!
Download it here : Slowly getting bigger! Just over 2Mb

What happens when you take 2 classic Atari 2600 games, and stick them together?

Centipong mixes Centipede and Pong to create a really weird almost-psychedelic game.
Smash the ball at the Centipede repeatedly.
Read More

The DrunkenCoders Christmas Compo finishes tonight.

I bothered to enter the new JNKPlat Xmas Special (You can download that here) but it's nothing too special..
So, this morning, at around 8am, I decided to get my arse in gear and actually make something nice and snowy for the compo.
Around 5 hours later, give or take, and Snowman Attack is the result.

Run around and shoot the snowmen before they get you. You have 5 bits of health and a constantly running countdown. There are 4 powerups available, for health, extra time and weaponary.
A nice simple game, made quickly!
No hiscores, no online abilities, and not even any music.

Enjoy

Note : This is much more Game-Specific than my regular posts!
Bombliss is one of my favourite alternate Tetris games. It has all the playability of the original Tetris, and it also has bombs, and chain reactions and things, too.

Last night, I opened up the Tetris sourcecode for the Retro Collection, and started hacking away for it's Xtra Mode. (renamed so it looked more obvious on the menu) For reference, to start a Xtra Mode game, either hit X to start the game instead of A.. OR tap the far right of the menu item, where the new X's are.

So, starting off badly, things got progressively worse! First up, not only did the blocks have to rotate shapewise, but they now had to rotate "bit"wise, too. That is to say, once you start adding bombs to specific parts of a Tetris block, those bombs have to rotate into the right places as the pieces spin. That was awkward enough, and took quite a rewrite of my spinning routines to get it going right.

Happy that it now worked, I started adding the bombs into the play area. That was easy enough, since they're just layered over the standard array, and drawn on a foreground layer. Nice and easy to keep track of. Unfortunately due to the fact that I have no "Big Circle" sprite, I haven't added in the "2x2 Big Bomb" object. If I can figure out how to do it in the next few days I might add it back in. For the meantime, it's MIA.

Then came the time to add detonations. At this point I had to play Tetris Blast on my old Gameboy several thousand times to work out exactly how it all worked! I think I got things pretty similar, although minor differences will probably be noticable.

Detonations over with. I was starting to feel proud of my tweaks, and replayed the game in classic mode to be sure I hadn't broken the original Tetris game in the process.

Next up was the new falling mechanism. Since there are explosions throughout the playfield, the remaining bits no longer fall Line by Line, but instead Clump by Clump, with each seperate grouping dropping as it should. This bit has taken by far the longest time, and probably much longer than it should've done! In the end it was easier than I thought it would be.. (I was over thinking things again!)

If anyone else is recreating Bombliss, perhaps this might help. Do the checks line by line. For each line, find each group of blocks. If any block in a group has a block under it, hold the group up, otherwise drop the group. Much easier to do it line by line, than having to check every possible "under" block of every brick within a whole multi-line group!

And so, there it is.. Bombliss. It's done and dusted, and I'm pretty happy with it. I still have to tweak that 2x2 Bomb in, somehow, and I'm sure the scoring's totally off by this point, but it's at least playable the way it should be, and I'm happy that I can finally play a decent Tetris AND Bombliss on something other than my aging gameboy! Long live Tetris+Bombliss!

Oh, and I got ship-diving and power ups in the Invaders Xtra game, so it plays a bit more Galaga-Like.. Yeay!


Not sure when this next release will appear. Maybe once I've added plenty of Xtra modes.. But more than likely once I've added another 6 brand new games, instead!