Manipulating SVG for fun and profit

Game devlog and postmortem

In the beginning Having done the traditional “canvas + sprites” rendering last year, this time around I decided to try something different. Again I decided to go with a “80s arcade” feel, this time going for old vector based games like the classic Tempest. I decided I wanted to learn more about how SVGs work, and after a little research, I had a basic glow effect and some animated boxes moving around [Read More]

js13kGames 2020 Submission - The Legend of Yeti 404

My second year in js13k

As with last year, I entered the #js13k competition again - this time it’s another retro inspired game, taking cues from Tempest, Captain Blood, and Rez, among many other things. Again it was tough to cram in everything I wanted (I came very close to skipping the ending entirely, and just ramping up difficulty instead!) Great to have another game actually out there in the wild. https://js13kgames.com/entries/the-legend-of-yeti-404 As with last year, I’ll write up some notes on the development of this soon! [Read More]

The Trouble with Tile

When your Thing Finder gives a false sense of security

I’ll be the first to admit I have a terrible memory. I can put something down, and thirty seconds later will have no idea where I put it. Because of this, I’ve always loved the idea of Tile. However I was deeply sceptical about their original offerings - these early devices were designed with planned obsolescence as part of their business strategy - they only had a year’s battery life, after which point you’d be offered a discount to buy a new model for the next year. [Read More]

Fitting a quart into a pint pot

A js13kGames postmortem

The game concept I’d had an idea of making an 80s style arcade platformer for a while now - something in the style of Bubble Bobble or Rainbow islands, where you have to clear a screen of enemies to progress to the next stage. Being not that great at producing graphics on my own (or at least anything animated), I started with the 1-Bit Pack from kenney.nl as it contains a good selection of tiles, and most importantly an animated main character. [Read More]