Developments

OK, I *think* I managed to post Invisible Munky 2, correctly, to iTunes Connect!
Unfortunately, due to the world in which Apple operates, we're going to have to wait just over a week to know for sure, as we wait for it to get through the stringent Apple Review gubbins.
No doubt, even if it's as broken as Cardagain is, it'll still get through, so I'll be counting on the masses of Twitter-folk to let me know if it works on all the different types of devices that are ou...

Developments

Continuing with the new edition of SpikeDislike, and I'm still adding basic elements into the engine.
I've a whole lot of work to do on the game, including all the graphical styles and things like that, but for now I'm happy that it's totting up the combos in the way it should be.
( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YIwcx9Gcbfs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>>
Scoring and Death are now b...

I say "slow", but of course, I mean "Slow in the realm of AGameAWeek!"
I've been working on Invisible Munky 2 for nearly THREE WEEKS, now! Blimey, that went fast!
I'm currently working on building levels, and trying to keep the momentum of the game flowing in a decent manner. I'm also trying to add a decent mix of music, but it's all kinda samey. I might have to head in a completely different melodical direction, or something. *shrugs* Not sure!
Anyway, the game currently contains 9 leve...

Today, I added Barrels into the mix.
I figured it best to hide the disks somewhere safe, so I put them inside barrels.
A pile of barrels will appear in each and every room, so you'll have to do a lot of blasting to try and find the three disks.
( width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/leuTP0ZOUf8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>>
I'm also considering putting other items in the barrels, such as extra lives, weapons and eve...

Things I should be doing.
1. A new Alien Deathmatch
2. A new RetroRaider
3. A new JNKPlat

Another epic space based blaster. Complaints about control scheme were all the rage for our last game, so this week I've opted for something a little bit simpler, and easier to control. Especially since it shoots for you!!
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Space_Clusters_DX_20140617A_thumb.png"> <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Space_Clusters_DX_20140617B_thumb.png">

(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/JNKBombers_006.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/JNKBombers_006-1024x605.png" alt="JNKBombers_006" width="590" height="348" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-3795" />
Here's how the game currently looks.
The game will be a generic Bomberman clone, but with as many AGameAWeek characters in that I can think of, assuming they're vaguely recognisable. Feel free...

Do you have an iOS device?
Are you sick to death of seeing nothing but clones of Flappy Birds and Threes*!?
Want a little more variety on your iPhing?!
(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Jayenkai-Bargain-Bucket_1600.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Jayenkai-Bargain-Bucket_1600-1024x1024.png" alt="Jayenkai Bargain Bucket_1600" width="590" height="590" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-3675" />

This week, I started out with a severely disturbing game idea, and ended up with a nice happy colourful arcade puzzle-type thing!
Hurray for colourful splodges!!
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Boxsplodings_20140401A_thumb.png"> <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Boxsplodings_20140401B_thumb.png">

If you, like me, get sick to death of resizing images to 75,000,000 different sizes, just so that iOS can show a tiny icon on your game, you'll probably love to have some kind of little tool to do it all for you.
When I first started my development in Monkey, I created a little tool to make a bunch of icons.
Over the course of the past year, the tool has expanded to cope with all kinds of other challenges.
You can (URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/IconBuilder.zip">Download Icon Builde...

I'm sick to death of, every single day, deleting buttloads of spam-comments from my Jayenkai Archive.
Every day, mountains of the stuff..
And practically no actual comments, whatsoever.
I think I've had 2, so far, this year.. .. and one of those was me replying to the first!!

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:left;"> AGameAWeek Gold looks back at some of the best, and worst, games that have been previously released on this day in history.
Today's game from the archive is a lovely little arena battler, with lots of weapons and things to shoot!

Over on the Monkey forum, a discussion about level data set me off thinking about making this post.
Whenever I put levels into my games, I tried to keep them as small as I possibly can. I've been doing it this way for years, and always figured it's nice to compress my data into something that's easily shareable.
.. True, I rarely ever get around to actually making these things easily shareable, but for the most part I try to keep things as minimal as possible.

The internet is a place for trolls and complainers (like me!) who like to gripe at every opportunity.
For the most part, we tend to ignore these types, which generally means that comments sections have become largely ignored.
Here at AGameAWeek, the opposite has happened. There are apparently no trolls daring enough to even attempt to play my games! I seem to have scared most of them away.
As a result, there are no trollers or complainers here, and since those are the types that make up ...

BlastTraxFAQs

What's with the track?

BlastTrax was originally devised as a classic Retro-styled GrandPrix-like racing game, with weapons.
You would drive through the course, shoot the other drivers, and make your way through to the end.

Over the years, @Spinal_Cord has continued to perfect the stylings of the top-down maze genre.
Taking his cues from an old C64 game he once played, Sensitive, he has created a whole host of variations on the theme over the course of his time doing game-dev.
His latest effort in this genre sees him using the Monkey language, along with some lovely simple 2D commands, to generate a faux-3D look, which wouldn't look out of place in an old-school tech, or scene music demo.

For the past few years, I've been building and rebuilding a silly little experimental shooter thing called "Horizontal Shooter"
The basic gist is that it's a bog standard horizontal shooter, but with a weird control scheme, and a tail to catch things in.
I also tend to use Horizontal Shooter as a simple testbed, to see what a language can/can't achieve in the realms of simplistic blurry lovelyness.
This time around, since we're also focusing on mobile devices, I've decided to flip things a...

Although I am sort of planning things ahead of time, I'm not really doing a good job with the things I'm planning.
In the majority of cases, the better AGameAWeek games seem to be those spur of the moment games that I cobble together fairly quickly.
Anything over-planned seems to die a death, halfway through!
At the start of May, I planned to do two fairly large projects.

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;"> AGameAWeek Gold is a daily trip through the Jayenkai Archive, to see if I've previously released any games on this day in history.
Sometimes the day is uneventful. Not even I have managed enough to pad out every single day of the year!
Oddly, though, other days contain more than one game.
And today's one of those days!

SpikeDislike2 has just had a nice big update on the iOS AppStore, and I'm now thinking about what to add next, so I figured I'd make a nice rambling blog about it.
That's what this is!!
You can buy (URL "https://itunes.apple.com/app/id604867277">SpikeDislike2 in the AppStore)! It's nice and cheap, and full of lovely juicy stuff!

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;">AGameAWeek Gold peeps through the Jayenkai Archive to see what games I've previously released on this day in history.
Occasionally we'll pluck out some real gems.
Today's a cracker!
.. or rather, today's TWO crackers!!

A good old fashioned old-skool platforming game, harking back to the good old days of Manic Miner and that sort of thing.
This week is VERY Manic Miner esque.
Collect the items to open the door, dodge the baddies, jump around, die a lot, get to the exit, sorted!!
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ssa1.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ssa1-300x225.png" alt="" title="ssa" width="300" height="225" class="alignnone size-medium w...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;"> Sometimes, stripping things back to their simplest mechanics makes for a strangely more interesting game.
Other times, however, it just makes an otherwise vaguely interesting game a little more dull.
This is a great example of the latter.

So, here we go again.
We're up to Year 5, and hopefully we'll get a full year out of it, this year (nnngh).
With Monkey, we get a chance to go back over our previous games, and remake them for a new audience, with iOS, Android and Browser based versions. I expect this will prove to be an exciting year.
Given that we can play at showing off, what games do you think would work best, and adapt well to the new touchy/mouse based gameplay options?
Or, what games could prove to be an obsc...

It's been over a year since the Platdude Retro Advent Collection had a bizarre game with a ball and some spikes in it, and as much as I've attempted to get on with other games, that one little game keeps on getting dragged back out again!
Last week, SpikeDislike won an IndieVisibility award, for being the best game to have with you on the toilet!
This week, the guy who nominated it for that award has written a great big sprawling mass of text, all about SpikeDislike! (Link no longer avai...