It’s been a while. My latest non-work obsession is trying out various game ideas. I’ve always had an interest, and a few ideas, but getting proficient with a game engine like Unity or Unreal seemed a daunting task.

I did start a few years ago with Videordle, a Wordle ripoff where you try and guess the “video of the day” with a super zoomed-in clip. Each wrong guess zooms the clip out a bit. One of the goals was to have it all self-contained, and only vanilla javascript. So you could technically download it and run it all locally.

Last year, I had the idea for an Android “word game”, and I created Word Stars using React Native. I utilized my Laravel skills to create an API auth and backend for the game. That went very well, so I kept going with React Native and ported Videordle to an Android app/game, also using an API to deliver the data. I haven’t touched them since release… but also, no one is playing them. Also, also, I’m horrible at marketing, so I doubt anyone knows they exist.

I also got interested in bigger games, so I started learning more about Godot, a free game engine I’ve toyed with, on and off, for a few years. That led to My First Game. After that, I started working on another platformer type game in Godot… one that I would eventually like to release on Steam at some point. That’s going to take longer, because it’s bigger in scope, and I don’t have a lot of dedicated time.

In the meantime, I want to actually “complete” something, so I’ve entered a few itch.io game jams. The first one I did was an RPG Maker game named Anxiety. I bit off more than I could, with an ambitious idea and a game engine I never used before… so it’s only about 1/3 of what I envisioned. But it’s submitted. So that’s a win.

I have a few more of just me playing around with things, and experimenting with quick ideas. The next jam I’m signed up for is Bullet Hell Jam 6, which could be fun. I’ve been playing around with the logic in Godot, so once it starts, I can hit the ground running. The next jam after that is for GDevelop, another engine I only just downloaded last week. I’m tempted to use THAT for the Bullet Hell jam, so I can learn. We’ll see.

The most recent thing I’ve completed, and fairly happy with, is Idle Hands. It’s an “idle clicker” game where the goal is to collect demons and traverse the circles of Hell. Visually, I’m happy with it… up next, I need to add some music and sound effects. This is also a game that’s vanilla javascript. It’s literally just index.html, index.js, and styles.css … plus assets. I added a package.json just for minification, and I think I’m going to release it on mobile using Capacitor.

The future: I remember having a Palm Pilot in the early 2000s, and there was a game called “drug wars” or something, where you bought goods in one place and sold them in another to try and make money… and random events would happen that could either help or hurt your profits. It was fun. I have the idea of doing a similar concept, but for music – like you’re trying to put a band together and you have to change it up as musical tastes change, so you buy and sell things like a “fiddle player” when country music becomes popular or something. I still have to work it out.