Blog - Top 10 of 10 - 2013

28th December 2019

A decade is over, and what have I done?
373 games, created a new blogging script for here, rewritten the Socoder forum, started a few new sites and more!
Oh, and a brain tumour!

It's been a wild and crazy decade, and over the next few days I'll be looking back at the best (and worst) games from the decade.

2010 - BlitzMax
2011 - Touch Control
2012 - The Bad Year
2013 - Monkey-X
2014 - OUYA!!
2015 - The Gap Year
2016 - Forget-V
2017 - Cuddle Me
2018 - Ringing the Changes
2019 - Overload

2013 - Monkey-X

A fresh start.
After 2012's horrific year, I decided to restart things in an all new way.

I stopped using Desktop PC's, and to this day, all my coding has been done on a Laptop.
I own a MacMini, but it's not even on a Desk. It's on the end of a shelf, with a small monitor attached for emergencies, but most of the time I Remote Desktop to the MacMini from my Win Laptop.
Everything is done on either the Laptop or the iPad.
No sitting at a desk for me!!

With the change to using a laptop, I also opted to try changing my entire devkit, too.
I dropped BlitzMax and opted to try out Mark Sibly's new Monkey-X language.

-=-=-

Ten of the Best

(in order of release)

Cardagain (Again!)

I'd spent most of November/December the previous year retraining myself in the art of coding, and managed to get a brand new framework up and running in Monkey-X.
The first test game was Cardagain (Again).
Things seemed to work fairly well on the PC, so I got the iOS edition up and running, too, and uploaded this edition as a replacement to the old half-broken version from 2010.
The game's missing a TON of features from the original, though, as I didn't bother adding all the nice different card styles, or the backgrounds either.
It's quite blank by comparison, and is rather obvious that it's a quickly made test version.
It doesn't have anywhere near the love, care and attention of the original.

Blockman Gets Hungry

A recreation of the original Blockman Gets, without any added silliness.
Just you, the pellets, and a couple of powerups too.

The rules aren't quite as apparent as I'd like, and in future itterations I made things a little more obvious, but at this point everything was a little bit cluttered on the screen.

SpikeDislike2

The original iOS Classic just HAD to be remade using the nice new framework, and I spent a good number of weeks tackling this project in the background.
There's lots of little background themes to play through, a proper token/unlock method to open them all, and this version seems to be (overall) the most popular of all SpikeDislikes.
I'm currently (very slowly!) working on getting this up and running on iOS once again, but am having some odd issues getting old code to run on new hardware.
Apple are constantly moving the goalposts, and it's rather difficult to keep up.

Arcade Slots (AGAW Edition)

A set of lovely little Slot Machines made in the style of some of your favourite AGameAWeek games.
There are 5 little spinning games here, with a few different mechanics.
I've previously done an Arcade Slots with tons of Sprite-ripped sprites from old arcade games, but figured I should probably avoid doing that, this time around.
As such, all games are AGameAWeek related.
I should probably revisit this, and do a new version with Spikes and Roland and more.
Perhaps something to think about in 2020.

Bean Bag Tanks

This is a fun little game. Each tank starts off with two bean-bags, and you have to shoot each other.
Gather up any fired bean bags off the floor, and then shoot again!
A fun little game, that might work even better with multiplayer, and some nice maps and things.

Kee, Bo and Ard Makes Three

Continuing the adventures of Kee, Bo and Ard, this version requires you to drag the three characters around a map.
The maps are a little haphazard and quite obviously randomly generated, and each character has a specific path.
This is "Almost" right, but the zooming and mouse controls aren't quite what they should be.
The recent game HomePath in the Shoebox of Games is a recreation of this game, with better controls and a much more organised set of levels, and a much less garish look to it.
It's missing all three of the title characters, though!

Hoppy Bobby

As I continued to bulk up the One-Button-Gameplay styles within SpikeDislike2, one of the modes saw you jumping across gaps in the sky.
I enjoyed playing this mode, but it felt "too" different to the normal SpikeDislike game style, so I never actually added it to the unlock menu. (It is still hidden in the code, though!)
Rather than break the logic of SpikeDislike, then, I opted to copy+paste the code into its own thing, and the result was Hoppy Bobby.

Blockaid

I DO like this idea. A slow paced Snake game, with object appearing and disappearing based on your moves.
This isn't quite right, but I definitely think there's a fun concept in here, if only I can find it!!

BlastTrax

A game which, during development, got everybody excited.
People really liked the neon, the colours, the space, the shooting.
Everything seemed ripe for a wonderfully selling game.

It failed miserably once released.
An all too familiar feeling, but I still enjoyed the game.

NeonPlat Extreme

Taking the original NeonPlat concept as the base, and adding in lots of little gameplay mechanics, Extreme ended up being fairly popular.
I also released this on Android and iOS, but the touch controls weren't anywhere near as precise as I'd've liked.
Still, the game ended up being quite popular, and I really enjoy the Gems mode, where you don't get any points without taking the little gems home!

Bonus Game

JNKPlat - Xmas 2013

A lovely little Platdude Xmas Adventure.
There aren't many levels in this game, but it's a nice Xmassy sampler for those who hadn't played any previous JNKPlat game.

Created with Survey Creator

A Few of the Failures

Karl's Tiny Adventure

The general idea for this was "Approximately random version of Karl's Treasure Hunt" but it ended up a bit more Manic Miner, with it being a single-screen game style.
Adding analogue control to this was HUGE mistake, especially when jumping.

All New Stringy Things

This game started off well enough, and the plan was intended to be a case of "New game every week".
Instead, the first release ended up playing REALLY strange on some Android devices.
Analysis showed that, the way I coded the wordlist as part of the image data, ended up breaking with the way that cheaper Android devices ended up dithering the images.
Bah, humbug!
This broke the Word List, and everything came crashing down soon afterwards.
This also broke the way that my "JMTrackr" music data was being interpreted, too, and even that had to go.
This game was a revelation as far as "Things I can't do" was concerned.

Puzzobomb Endless

I've often wondered how to make a Puzzobomb game with random levels.
This is not the answer.
This is slow, dull and boring, and it didn't work out well at all.

OneDee

What kind of game can you make if you only have one dimension to play in?
I attempted to make such a game, but it wasn't as much fun as I expected.
It's a nice enough concept, but my mind wasn't being imaginative enough to make anything better than this.