Week 1 - Arcade game - Space Boulders

 The first game I made as part of the challenge was Space Boulders, which you can find on my itch.io page. It's just a straight Asteroids clone, with some features missing, as I ran out of time, but with pretty cool vector graphics and lots of screenshake. 

I've never remade Asteroids before and I always wanted to try. It's a nice arcade game, so you don't need to create any levels, or "content", and since I've made arcade games before, I was pretty sure that I could pull it off, so it was also a good warmup project. I also decided to try microStudio, a browser-based game engine/dev environment I stumbled upon a while ago. So, how did it go?

The game turned out okay. I managed to implement most features that make it feel "whole", such as extra lives, multiple waves, title screen, game over screen. I really enjoyed writing the vector routines (weird fetish, I know), even though the engine did a lot of the work for me, such as rotating objects (not much extra trig was needed). It also felt very refreshing to work on something from start to finish. I like that about game jams, they force you to observe a deadline, and somehow I was able to recreate that sense with a self-imposed deadline as well. As many, many developers, I struggle with finishing projects, and making such a small game in a short period of time gave me a much needed boost of confidence that I can actually pull it off.

I also really liked working in microStudio. The environment is very snappy, even on crappy machines, and it's really well designed in terms of the UI and the overall feel. I was skeptical about using another custom micro-language (which they call microScript), but in the end I quite liked it, it felt like a mix of the better parts of Lua and Javascript. Recently they also added the ability to code in other languages, including my beloved Lua, so I might give that a shot as well. The best thing, however, was that I was able to seamlessly switch computers and work on the project from anywhere I wanted, on anything I wanted. Specifically, I was able to code most of the game on my garbage chromebook, which is tiny, light and completely silent (no fans) - all very important for me, especially the last one, as noisy computers drive me nuts. So this engine will definitely become a major part of my toolbelt. Oh, and it's also free and open source, and has a standalone offline app if you need it. Neat.

One part of the challenge will be to try themes and genres I wouldn't have normally picked. Therefore, next week I'll attempt something I've never done before - a puzzle game. Should be fun - or at least a good learning experience.