full diet of anime and games over here

Back on my bullshit.

Best Games - The Fighting Fantasy Book Series You ever play a roguelike? A game where you have one run through a gauntlet of obstacles. When your character dies you go back to the start and try again, using what you learned on previous runs to get further and further each time. Imagine that, but a book.

https://eturnip.itch.io/anything This weekend was Ludem Dare 45. Ludem Dare is a long running series of semi-annual game jams. I did the same thing that I do every time Ludem Dare rolls around. I forgot it was happening. It wasn’t until quite late on friday night that I noticed that the theme had been announced. I thought about it for a bit, started a new Godot Project, made a GitHub repository, and then thought maybe I would attempt to make the thing I was thinking about on Saturday. Maybe.

did some work over here. Only a very small amount of changes got into the actual story. I wrote 2 scenes that happen nearer they end, but I haven’t written any of the stuff in between so I opted to leave it out. As always, this story is in development so it won’t make much sense if you try to read it right now. Still, you know, if you want to, click that link and read away.

If there is one thing I am truly terrible at (I know, I know, it’s more than one thing) It’s self promotion. I will, from time to time, point at a sign or logo while out in the world and say to whoever I’m with “hey I made that”, but that’s about the depths of my braggadocio. I have had animations I made in TV commercials and up on billboards. I never saved any of them for a demo reel. I have made logos and designs for products and companies. None of them are in my portfolio. I don’t really even have a proper portfolio right now. There are a few videos of me making some old models and doing some quick paintings, but that is about it. I should probably look at changing that.

During the last weeks of their summer vacation, my kids and I started up a small game dev experiment. I described it as an extended Game Jam. We only worked on in a couple hours a day at most. The project is on a small hiatus while they got back into the regular rhythm of school again, but we still talk about how to solve certain problems and what we still need to do on the game.

One drop at a time Devouring solid stone A slow creek flows on ​

https://itch.io/jam/albertagamejam/rate/473595 ​Over the weekend I joined 19 other devs, artists, and musicians here in Calgary to participate in the first Alberta Game Jam. Almost 80 more game makers in Edmonton and Lethbridge came out to build something fun. The results are the 27 games posted here https://itch.io/jam/albertagamejam/entries.

Small bits of movement have been going on over here. I don’t have much to say about it other than I am slowly, steadily moving toward a story that might be good for people to read, but as before, that time is probably not now. I mean I took out a half chapter chunk and haven’t filled it back in yet. Not the sort of thing that makes for enjoyable reading. Anyway if you choose to follow that link, you do it with my warning.

Best Games - Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution DS Sometimes constraints can drive the best designs. Necessity being the mother of invention or whatever. I am here today to argue that not only is Civ Rev on the Nintendo DS a good port of the game, I’m going to say that it is one of the best Civ games in the series.

Very early on in this blog, like 2013 early, I wrote about wanting to switch from Maya to Blender. It was a long and frustrating process. For quite a few years I suffered from a sort of software phantom limb syndrome where I would continually hit the wrong hotkeys or search for tools using the wrong names. While it ain’t busting rocks, there was a certain amount of psychological pain associated with the transition.

Best Games - UNO I don’t think I will get much into the rules of UNO. If you are reading this, you have probably played the game and you already have a pretty good idea how it works. You know that it is a card shedding game where you have to match the color or number of the last played card. You and the other players keep taking turns slapping down cards out of your own hand while trying to make everyone else hold onto as many cards as possible. If you win a round, the cards your opponents are holding count toward your point total. You know that you have to call out ‘UNO!’ when you have one card left. The game almost demands that you and every member of your family / friend group unearth their most ruthlessly nitpicking selves, ready to punish anyone who forgets to call out ‘UNO!’. You know that it is like a lot of other card games, but it is also strangely more accessible than most other card games. You have probably been beaten by an 8 year old.

More changes and edits over here again. next week will be a longer post.