I’m currently in the process of arranging testing for the latest game I’ve been working on with Brad Barrett and John Oestmann called The Cave. It’s a short game that started as a 7DFPS entry but wasn’t finished within the week.

We are entering our third pass of play testing and are looking for several people to help us test the game. It only takes about 15 minutes to play through. If you’re interested then drop me an email and I’ll fire off a build to you.

I just thought that I would do a quick post to say that I’ve added Matt and Chris, Left Right Pong and You Want The Money to a distribution client for games built on the LÖVE framework called Vapor.

In preparing the games to run on Vapor I made changes to both Matt and Chris and You Want the Money to allow players to swap between keyboard and game pad controls. You Want the Money now also has a screen that displays the controls before starting the game.

If you’ve made a game using the LÖVE framework then I recommend getting it onto Vapor. The process is pretty straightforward and it helps you get more people playing your games.

Over the past few months Izzy, John and I have made slight changes to our Global Game Jam entry Murder101. An updated version of the game is now available to download under the name And Then There Was One.

The notable changes from the Global Game Jam version are:

• Bot Support which allows for 1-4 Human Players(not just 4)
• Keyboard Controls
• Replay Support
• Feigning Death Move
• Level Selection
• Interactive How to Play Screen
• Improved Introduction Screen

I prepared a video that runs through the game and provides tips to new players.

Be sure to download the game and let us know what you think via our IndieDB page.

I usually like to post about each of the games I develop on my blog. I haven’t done that for about a year. So let me run through what I’ve missed.

Java Script Teaching Games

When I started teaching at the university we were introducing the students to programming using Java Script. At the end of the semester students had to work in small groups to complete the internal logic of one of three games. We showed students the completed games to give them an idea of what they needed to do and then we provided them with some skeleton code of each game. I developed the three games being Recursive Blocks, Reversi and Connect Four.

Jumping Cubes

I developed another game for teaching purposes called Jumping Cubes. This game is based on the game by the same name developed for KDE and Andriod. None of the students had seen this game before and the algorithm involved is quite interesting so it makes for a good practical exercise. The version shown here was developed in ActionScript 3 and FlashPunk but the students had to develop a running version using Qt and C++. One of the things I like about this game is how it requires a bit more thinking to determine who has the upper hand at any given time. The playing field can change drastically in one move and so players need to consider not just the territory captured by each player but how well that territory is captured.

Murder 101

Murder 101 was a game that I developed along with John Millard and Izzy Gramp for the Global Game Jam 2013. It’s a local multiplayer game in which you have to blend into a crowd of people and slowly murder several targets. What makes this interesting is that three other players are trying to do the same thing and if you spot them then you can murder them as well.

We have decided to continue to work on Murder 101, adding in replays, new levels and the ability to feign your own death. The updated version is called And Then There Was One. It will be playable at this years Indie Games Room at AVCon. The final game will be downloadable via IndieDB, we are hoping to have it out by August.

Left Right Pong

One day I was thinking about simple modifications that can be made to existing games to give them more life. In Pong, you only move up and down. I decided to change this around and only allow you to move left and right. The interesting consequence is that most players will tend to miss the ball more often because it becomes harder to judge where you need to move the paddle. As a result I made the game vertically shorter to give the players more opportunities to hit the ball. This led to two consequences, firstly you could ‘dribble’ the ball across the top screen, which is neat and secondly you could score an own goal by knocking the ball back into your goal. I allowed players to become transparent and let the ball to move through their paddle as a way to recover from scoring an own goal. The game is only supports keyboard controls but I may go back and add controller support later.

Chalk Steps

Chalk Steps is the first physical game I developed. You can think of it like hop scotch sprints. Players lay out a series of hand and feet placements onto the floor. They copy these placements alongside the existing placements. Then two players race try to complete all of the hand placements, the first person to do so is the winner.

You Want The Money?

You Want The Money? is a short game I developed with Izzy Gramp for the second Adelaide Game Jam held by Jamalaide. Originally we were developing another game but it looked like it wouldn’t be finished by the end of the jam. So we changed gears on the last day of the jam and cranked out this game in only a few hours. I look at this game as being a humorous take on capitalism.

There you have it. These are the games that I’ve worked on over the last year alongside Expand.