itch.io

Ah, an old-style point and click. That's my jam! Speaking of jams and point and clicks, my studio (Dog and a Half Entertainment) is working on a series called "The Occultist," and the first game in the series (Old Growth) just got released for a 10-day horror jam. Check it out and rate if you can! 

I will be keeping an eye on this... I really can't wait to try it out. It has a very Maniac Mansion vibe. I almost tried it right now, until I realized it wasn't released yet. If you like my work and need any help on it, please let me know. The more retro adventure games out there, the better!

Hey, I just had to switch to a Linux computer after my PC died. I'm trying to compile a test build for my game using WebGL, and I'm getting some error messages that, when Googled, seem to be something that no one has ever been able to answer... most people just said they ported it to a Windows machine to build.

That isn't an option for me right now. 

Is there anyone who might be able to, once I'm done and have a finished and functional Linux build, take my files and compile to WebGL for me? I would greatly appreciate it, as I'm assuming the majority of people won't be able to play it with such a limited platform release.

Thanks in advance!

I'm thinking about making a supplement for one of my already-existing TTRPG's, so that way I'm promoting my own (free) work  while also creating something new for the jam (a post-apocalyptic world to match the jam's theme, but also one I've been wanting to make for a while). You might think about doing the same thing... you have a whole month to work on it and it will be a good way to promote your already  existing work. Just make sure you have a free "quick start rules" available so people can try it for the jam. 

There doesn't seem to be a way to get back to the title screen from any screen except the game itself. It's often hard to read the text (white instructions against a light-colored sky, covered by dominoes, clicking skips completely instead of finishing typing text boxes out). Furthermore, despite the instructions it isn't clear exactly how the game is supposed to work, and you can seemingly place pieces anywhere without a problem.

I'm not even a fan of sokoban and that's still a nice looking, sounding, and playing game! 

Yeah. It takes me about five minutes to switch back and forth between Visual Studio and Unity, another five if I made a single change to anything, and twenty to run in test mode. It was a long week full of wanting to hurl my laptop in a river, but I live in a desert, so there aren't any around. Also a bit disappointed that my computer runs so slow that the game other people are playing is not the game I thought it would be. I beat the game to make sure you could, but on a regular computer it's so fast that you die in a second or two.

Hey! I had a lot of fun with this jam, but I didn't have the time to finish :(

I'm a single developer working on a 12-year old laptop I bought at Wal Mart for $150.00. I'm also a hermit, living out of a broken-down RV in Arizona's Sonoran desert where I worked 12-16 hours a day outside in 110 degree heat. My computer died at least four times a day, and I barely made it in (41 seconds) before the deadline. 

When my game got played by people on regular computers, it was WAY too fast.

I submitted to this jam hoping to find some people interested in my work. I provide everything free... I ONLY make money by donations. It isn't fair to have turned this product in and expect people to want to see more of what I can do, but everything else I have are almost all demos and small games made for jams for the same reason... all of which suffered from the same problems.  I've lost all my worldly belongings several times in my life, including all my old work, so I really have nothing to show that I've been making games for the past 33 years.

This is the closest game I've come to finishing very nicely that I could make into a complete product. I was wondering if anyone would be willing to take a look and follow my progress until it's something more presentable.

Thanks for having a look!

It looks like a pretty nice game, but my computer is too crummy to run it at a decent speed... that's why my game seems so fast to everyone else LOL.  

Very nice, the look of the game is really appealing, and it's pretty enjoyable as a casual game. I like the clever twist on the theme, too... I was originally going to do a game based on Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind about a plague of spores encroaching on a valley where the wind has mysteriously stopped blowing by bringing the wind back but I couldn't figure out exactly how to work that into a quick casual game. You did a great job nailing the same idea, of using Re-Wind.

I applaud you... I've been wanting to make a rhythm game for a while now. I've been a musician for twenty years and a programmer for 30, and I do not even want to begin to have to figure it out. 

The game was very pretty, too, but my computer is made of dog crap, so the lag was rough.  

Are we allowed to put up a project, do devlogs, and release daily builds, or do we have to keep it under wraps until we have a finished project?

I don't want to speak for anyone else, but if it isn't allowed, submit a game anyway. It's incredible that there are so many young people in this jam (I guess we have Brackey's videos to thank for that, so a special shout-out to the man), but unless the jam calls for specific engines, which this one doesn't, if someone tries to discourage you from participating because you're using Scratch then they should be flung out a series of windows. 

Making games is kind of like being a Wizard, or a little God, creating your own worlds and inviting people to enjoy them. No one should be discouraged from being the master of their own Universe. If you do get discouraged... do it anyways.

Here's how that worked... When I was a kid I had a Commodore 64, and it was way expensive to get any of the media devices like the 1541 disk drive and the cassette deck, so you had to type in your games every time you wanted to play them.  In the comic book section of my local corner convenience store they used to sell these books that were something like "Marvel Super Heroes Games You Can Program in BASIC!" I would get those, type in the program, play it, then alter things little by little until I figured out what they did until I could make my own games without looking at a book. From there, I've learned around a dozen programming languages (although I need refresher courses every time I switch).

I taught myself to read at five through almost the same method, by listening to Little Golden Books on Tape over and over again, rewinding them continually until I knew how letters worked. I did both of these entirely on my own without any kind of adult involvement. I say this not to brag, but for the exact opposite reason: I'm not some kind of super genius, I'm trying to make the point that everyone CAN be if they have the desire to be.   

If you're new to game development, don't try to win... focus instead on making sure you come up with an idea you believe you could conceivably do and focus on getting it done.

That's a pro-level tip. I've been teaching people to program games for decades, including teenagers, college kids, and younger kids (I taught myself to program when I was 7, and I've taught kids that young, and kids with learning disabilities... programming isn't as hard as everyone thinks, it just takes a love for doing it and having a hand in creating something ex nihilo).

But a lot of my students get discouraged and quit because no matter how much I try to warn them against it, they can't help themselves but to try to get an end result that takes teams of hundreds of people years to make. So, please take it to heart when I say don't strive to win, strive to get a good main game loop that you really have fun with yourself and want to expand on it, and use the rest of the time to make a short secondary loop (if it's just a very simple game, use that time to polish it). Just make sure you get it done. Let yourself learn what it takes to do things on a steep deadline that may mean days of sleeplessness. Those are traits highly sought in the industry.

But then forget the industry. It's stupid. Take what you made that you really learned to enjoy and continue to develop that on your own. Make something big out of it, spend time working on it, build up an audience, and then you have one of two paths available to you...

(there's obviously many more than two, but here are two examples)

...either use it as a portfolio game to get into the industry, which I don't recommend, but you could, because showing you have the ability to create a whole thing from scratch is infinitely more useful than a piece of paper saying you got good grades in a school... or put it up on a crowdfunding site like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Patreon, or whatever else, and be your own boss. You can't expect that after just one jam, but if you try, that's where it would ultimately lead if you decide to keep with it.

Just don't bite off more than you can chew and you'll do fine.

Very nice. I say either make a game with half as many room screens so you can have a selectable Mac version, or a game where you  travel back and forth between realities and your world is the regular color version but you travel to one where everything including the UI becomes Macventure style... because this style needs to be seen.

Yours looks AND plays a hundred times better than the NES versions (controlling them with a controller was absolute trash back in the day, and it's even harder  with an emulator and a keyboard). Your game actually seems much closer to my favorite versions, which were on the Commodore 64 . The graphics and animation, like yours, were far superior.  There's something to be said for the black and white Mac graphics, too, which looked like pencil sketches. Really good job here, very well done and super nostalgia-inducing.

Ooooh boy I'm sorry for you if you only ever got to play them on NES.

That worked, thank you! Although oddly enough it worked before and I don't remember changing the name. Oh well, it works now, thank you!

I'm trying to upload an executable version of my browser game, but for some reason each time I do, it deletes the original file. I had it before where the browser version and a downloadable file was available, but after I updated the game with some bugfixes it started only allowing one file at a time.

Any help would be appreciated.

That was pretty much it, and it was primarily because each weapon is good for certain situations, but each requires a particular strategy and approach to be used to maximum efficiency, so that's kind of what leads to it being a hassle... especially when you find yourself in a situation where the gun you have isn't particularly useful. For example, the basic gun is worthless if you enter a room with four or more people, and the minigun leaves you without offensive capabilities more frequently than the other guns. I spent most of my time with a shotgun, but it still would be nice, if I had the regular gun, to be able to switch if I find a room that my current weapon doesn't prepare me to deal with.

I did have a great amount of fun with it, but I can't see myself able to get particularly far in the game without being able to use the right weapon for the right job.If you only did it to comply with the theme, I think you should make an edit after the jam is over, because that could be the thing that makes it more playable/replayable.

I thought at first the graphics were too simplistic, but as I played more I found it really worked quite well, especially the gas clouds and the bright white lights. Those two things, plus the gun effects, make the game's minimalistic aesthetics come together nicely. 

I've done the same thing, and I've already played all the in-browser games. Good job, everyone, it looks like a lot of fun and interesting ideas, and many of the simpler graphics are actually really nice, clean, and appealing in a lot of these games. I feel like I keep posting the same comment on everyone's page but most of them are all really good and fun and aesthetically pleasing.

That's very fun, and the graphics and music are very appealing. The slipperiness of the controls in the physical world make it really difficult to control, and one time I died right off the spawnpoint because my character still had some inertia and fell in a pit. I love how your "alternate reality" is like an astral plane type thing. Overall, I'd pass lots of time with this one. 

You need to zip the entire folder containing all of the files created when you built your game into one package.

Not an altogether bad game, but the controls are horrific, there is almost no way to control that thing on level (four, five? I lost track) and it vibrates like... well... a vibrator, I guess.

Well, I went to check it out but comments seem to be closed there. It was fun, and I played it a few more times than I played most of the rest of the games in the Jam. I wish it were possible to switch weapons after the game begins, but other than that it's very challenging and a fun way to pass some time.

The graphics are really quite nice, but the portal doesn't seem to do anything at all. Too bad, because the game handles quite nicely and looks like a lot of fun. Also, if you only just now found out about Rick and Morty... enjoy.

This was a really fun little game. I had the problem of not being sure what would kill me, like the red blocks and the floor on the room after the long fall, but overall I enjoyed trying to figure out how to get through each room.