Archive for the ‘Game Design’ category

Snake Game Prototype

February 24, 2015

This little prototype began as an idea for a twin-stick shooter in the vein of Super Stardust HD. But while the action in Super Stardust HD takes place on a sphere, I wanted to see if similar gameplay was possible on implicit surfaces. The idea was that the movement of the surfaces would supply a […]

To illustrate the creation of a game, I made this video of Retrobooster’s development process. Enjoy. There are a couple versions of the game that have been lost along the way, and I wish I could have included them. In particular, version 0.0.1 was even more bare-bones than version 0.0.5. It was before I had […]

Retrobooster is coming along nicely, and I am now deep into level refinement based on tester feedback. There has been plenty of subjective feedback coming in, but there isn’t enough objective data yet. Objective data comes in the form of files that record things like where players die, how many tokens they collect, and how […]

Death Ray

June 18, 2013

It’s been a long time coming. There are ten weapons in Retrobooster. One was the mine, which released from the stern of your ship and moved toward enemies before exploding and dealing vast amounts of splash damage. Unfortunately, it was difficult to place where you wanted it and just wasn’t any fun to use. It […]

Inventing Puzzles

June 5, 2013

Inventing puzzles is one of those things that is seriously difficult and fun at the same time. It’s also satisfying to see a player fiddle with your puzzle for the better part of an hour and get a big smile from finally solving it. After building several of them I really want to make a […]

It’s update time again. I’m still full-time on Retrobooster, working hard on getting a complete set of levels built. By “complete set” I mean that I’m trying to bring enough levels to a state of functional completeness that I can say I have enough content for a full game. Once I get to that point, […]