trying to write about Hernhand

with hernhand I was mostly interested in sound and space. I was inspired by spaces in oldish 3D sci fi games and sort of wanted to have similar places but where you didn't need to shoot the enemies or find gregory's old phone and return it to him etc, and instead you could just stroll through and listen to the various ambient sounds. I like the bad loose look of hernhand. I was very slack with it, throwing a few cubes around with ms paint images on them. it makes everything feel dirty and unappealing which I can thoroughly enjoy and appreciate. I enjoy the blurry texturing and very angular models in dated 3D graphics, so luckily that wasn't hard to create for the Hernhand. Also, Jpeg files added noise to the MS paint images I made for textures, it's like free HD detail on my simple drawings. I was interested in using a variety of sound effects and ambient hums to make up for the simple/rough look of the game. I'm happy with how the game has turned out, I can enjoy walking through it myself which seems like a good sign.

While starting out making the game I had been watching gameplay videos of Star Wars: Bounty hunter and The Neverhood, their sounds and spaces were a strong influence. star wars bounty hunter has cool levels with nice sounds and little creatures running around, but it's constantly disturbed by endless noisy laser firing. Although I do love laser firing, I think the laser firing in that game is a god help me awful design decision, especially against the really good environments. anyway it was still a strong influence for space and ambience + little creatures on the ground. The Neverhood has really nice sound design too. I really like the spooky ambience during the outside scenes, they influenced the open plain areas and ambience in hernhand. Also the ridiculously long background story of the Neverhood really appeals to me, I wouldn't mind writing some ridiculous nonsensical context for hernhand, maybe like an encyclopedia. Anyway, these games and a few other sci fi games were the main influences for Hernhand's sound and graphics and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Tom's Bernband was definitely another influence. I really like the style, quite strong in the style department I reckon. when I first saw a video of his game, when he turned the camera to reveal the 3Dness of his game it just looked so good. I also think the sound in his game compliments the visuals really well, everything feels solid. It feels like it's made of stuff. Hopefully hernhand feels like it's made of stuff too. Hernhand is much more of a 'walk this way for ages' genre while Bernband has a lot of corners and turning and small tight spaces. Bernband is quick to race through, you can take different routes and be real quick. I can appreciate the run around the game real quick style, but I also love long boring wastelands to walk through. So I guess the games work well together, maybe?

anyway check out Hernhand and Bernband, give them a rate comment subscribe and click the like button and comment + subscribe

links: Hern http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/hernhand/34868/

Bern http://gamejolt.com/games/other/bernband/34864/

blurry trctyures

Blurry textures are so exciting imo, I mean they just get me so excited. it's like the texture is keeping top secret information from me. somehow They is more realistic than HD texture. I mean I can tell that this is blurry texture is wood... hey no need to go all HD on me I can work the rest out myself. I was pretty astonished to be able to use ms paint textures in a 3 dimensional game of my own, my was it exciting or what. Imagine if we lived in a world where blurry textures required more computer power over HD textures... So we'd all be fighting for who can get the most blurry texture, and you'd need the latest computer to be able to process all that untold information hiding in the wood, the concrete, the space_technology textures. And then when you're driving in vice city, everyone would be complaining about the ugly HD fully realised textures coming into view before eventually, phew, popping into the blurryness we're all after.

sanctuary2 platformer

I made this platformer a few months ago called sanctuary 2 which was once again inspired by young developer's first game maker creations, and a few of mine as well. My first few games I made were platformers, they were very dull, not much happened and they were glitchy and did strange things. Because of the looseness in their programming and design random things would occur in the game such as enemies falling off platforms to their death and space ships touching one another and exploding. When I look back at these games now I really appreciate the naivety in their design and the randomness that happened each time you played. With sanctuary 2 it's another of my attempts in trying to capture at least a bit of these elements I like about beginner game maker games.

One of my early platformers was Super Army Dude, it was a very slow and boring game. You would spend most of the time walking across these huge empty levels with a few buildings scattered around, and you played as this Super Army Dude and would shoot aliens. There were a few kinds of enemies like glitchy green humanoid alien people, flying saucers and groups of mud people that would throw mud at you. All the enemies would get stuck in the ground or in a building before long, and if a flying saucer exploded near the aliens it would throw them dead aliens across the level and they'd be airborn while still in lying down position. This would happen mostly off-screen and would completely ruin the enemy set-ups I had made, so by the time you'd reach a group of enemies they'd probably have their heads stuck in the ceiling or be walking mid-air and the ufos would be getting stuck and exploding. This is what made the game interesting though, it felt a bit like other things were going on and it wasn't really about the player at all.

One thing I've tried to do with sanctuary 2 is to make kind of a 'better' version of super army dude, but because the good thing about super army dude was in the terribleness and basicness of it's design I haven't quite got the same effect. it seems to be hard to try and goodify that badness without just making a bad game. But this is another of my attempts and I am quite happy with how it's turned out, it's not too bad but it's not too good either. Check it out!!!!!!!

Gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJSVWNwQD4Q&list=UUdHYgVqhh1ioQ7E1yWhn9IQ

You can download sanctuary 2 from Gamejolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/action/sanctuary2/29084/

dr candle

so I made this point and click adventure called dr. candle, I really enjoyed writing the notes left by the scientists. that was the best part. I added the combination lock part because i thought you have to put that in the games, but I don't like it. i've been playing a lot of thecatamites game recently and felt like I had permission to make some bad not much happening style games in a similar manner to 50 short games, not that they'er bad but you know like effortless and not carey appearing. unfortunately I lost interest in the early stages of development with Dr. Candle, and the game doesn't progress any further once you get to the room at the other side of the spikes in the Outside Level with the nature's sounds. The long text box thing was inspired by yoyogames games from the 'Most Recent' category, Most Recent is like a game maker game genre. There was this one game, Fright House. or, woops, Fear House, and it had theis introduction with default game maker text boxes with the really small default game maker font, and they look really ugly and you don't want to read them. Enjoy playing Dr Candle.

http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/dr-candle/31577/

FP Diamond Finder

Based on 'Aline Connection', the 'First Person Diamond Finder' puts players in a new scenario, fully rendered 3D environments happy / churpy or reluctant excess wildlife. Known to have a foot sound glitch in caves described "sounds like older duck or a duckling", which has already been noted in Aline Connection but may have become an focus. It proved players disappointed with the series but discovers new people, a new beginning perhaps? Take hand and seek the Diamonds. "My name is Phillip Finder and I am your alongside" the iconic quote has begun the series off on previous occasions, Diamond Finder takes a new perspective from the beginning allowing player to respond out of multiple answer boxes e.g. "Yes" / "Ok" to adjust narrative outcome, players can realise the story on themselves and from the start will have a different in-hand alongside their avatar as a Diamond Guide. Diamond Interns will now have interactive Artificial Intelligence and will no longer follow a drawn path but will "walk around and unpredictable outcomes", as described by the author. Diamond Finder will give players a new look at flushed out 3D Environment and Sound Effects to realise the potentioal of the Computer Medium.

Death of the Augnob

A strange adventure involving eye socks, wiggly worm creatures, mushrooms, green liquid and some other things.

So I started out making the scene with the church building and the bridge, I thought it might just be all set in this area. The rest of the game world was built out from there. Although I really liked making it, it started to make me feel a bit sick. It was like making nuign specter, it was like a bad dream. I think I'm happy with the game now though.

The game draws inspiration mainly from The Neverhood and Jacob Buczynski's games. It also ended up reminding me of Space Funeral when I added the weird creatures moving around the levels. I wanted the game to appear to have more depth than what the player might expect, because it looks pretty ugly and bad. I put a bit of thought into the world and tried to keep a few things consistent. Some of the detail and mini narrative ideas were inspired by Hotline Miami. The sound of the world plays a big part of the game too, like with most of my games. Angus Mckie's science fiction illustrations were an influence on some of the visuals, like the mushrooms and yellow and red balloon things, they pretty much directly reference some of his work.

Thanks for reading!!!!!!!! Have a good one!

Download: http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/death-of-the-augnob/26524/

Space Pirate Dernshous

Dernshous was basically what I liked from Escape Velocity, which was seeing little spaceships flying around and shooting and docking at space stations, and the idea of going aboard other ships. So that's pretty much what Dernshous is, but I feel like it's still too much of a conventional game that it doesn't work how I'd like. I think I would've preferred it narrowed down more with a stronger focus rather than being half a normal space game. Dernshous was almost meant to be a much smaller version of Slumos, my other space flying game, but it got out of hand as well. I included an old version of the game because now I feel like it didn't need to be expanded on from that version, the new version just looks and sounds better.

Still trying to figure out what it is I want to do with this idea. I'm not really interested in making a big game that stands on it's own, maybe a bunch of small games that accompany eachother. Well I guess this is two games working together; flying around, then walking around on ships. But still, there's a lot stuff going on mechanics-wise. Rather than pouring my hours into the mechanics and the game working on it's own, I like the idea of making simple representations of these things happening, sort of like how you see background activity that isn't 'real' in some games, [thinking of Halo Reach background battles] they're only dummies to give the impression of things going on. I like the idea of a game that is basically a bunch of those moments. if you watch a video of say, Escape Velocity, you could pick out any few seconds of a space battle and write hundreds of words on the decisions being made/ could be being made by those little space-ships, like why that one is fighting and why that one is now warping away. and then how those small things have an effect on the rest of the entire game. But while you're playing the game you don't really care as much, you just want to get that ca$h over there to make the numbers climb. So much is going on in a game like this that, especially if you're the one playing, you tend to glance over most of it. I guess it's noticed mostly on a sub-conscious level that makes the game feel good, sort of like what Vlambeer talks about. Each moment is a story in itself. I like the idea of taking one of these moments and making that into a very small game itself, and making a bunch of these games that work together.

download the game: http://gamejolt.com/games/action/space-pirate-dernshous/25460/