The engine's working nicely, an art style has been defined, and things are getting put together. I've started building some proper levels, now, but already the game's feeling like it's still missing something. At the moment, I'm attempting to add wandering bad-guys into the levels, which should help make things a little less lacklustre, but trying to get them to wander nicely within the areas is proving to be much more complicated than I thought, especially when the levels are build up with nothing more t...

Tentatively titled "Invisible Munky 2 - Happy Banana Land!" because... why not! ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nOvzVa-4EV4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> So, um.. Yeah.. The engine seems to be working well, although I've not added too much yet. I need to design proper levels for this one, and I also have an object limit, which will be odd to have to deal with.. Curious! Anyhoo, the game's been started, and assuming ...

I've had a fair amount of fun playing with Unity, but in all honesty, I haven't progressed far enough to make it worth the switch. I'm at the point, now, where I really need to make the big decision. Making the complete switch to Unity will require heavy work, recreating my entire framework, and getting everything up and running smoothly enough that I can rapidly cobble together AGameAWeek. And it's the "Rapidly cobble together AGameAWeek" bit that puts me off. At the moment, and I'll admit I am still t...

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 even randomly spawnin...

Since I'm spacing out my dev-time, I should hopefully have more time to do Dev-Diary type posts, as the games progress. Hopefully, this will give you a little more insight into the sort of decision making that goes into AGameAWeek. I'll also try to take the time to add odd bits and pieces of craptastic-useless-trivia whenever I get the chance. As frequent players will have noticed, I've been using a strange secondary numbering system for a long while. (Check out the Windows-Downloads to see them!) Th...

OK, I still have lots of stuff to work out in my framework, but I've managed to get the important stuff into the engine, and everything else can be added and tweaked as we go. Although the "Online Scoreboards" aren't even barely started, I have at least made it work in such a way that, in future.. it "should" be pretty simple to head into my old code and bring the stuff to life. .. Hopefully! Anyway, that's all background stuff. What you're really here for is the games, and I'm happy to report that I'...

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=347">Alpha Collexion</a> was AGameAWeek's 2014 Advent Calendar. You can <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=347">Download it Here</a> for Windows, OUYA or playable in your browser using HTML5. All games are now unlocked, and will remain playable forever! woot!

(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=347">Alpha Collexion) is AGameAWeek's 2014 Advent Calendar. You can (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=347">Download it Here) for Windows, OUYA or playable in your browser using HTML5. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/AlphaCollexion/400_Q.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/AlphaCollexion/400_Q_thumb.png">

Quriously Qubic

Concept Light up the arena, by h...

Each year, time dependent, I like to do something special over Xmas, and this year I've opted to start early. If I want a whole Xmas Collection ready on the OUYA (And possibly iOS Store) in time, I need to get onto it quickly enough to have it finished, uploaded, and passed through review, in time for Xmas. And, if it's an Advent Calendar, then it needs to be ready even earlier, for Dec 1st. Yikes!! I started the planning stages of this thing a couple of months ago, when I asked folk on both Socoder a...

It's time to revisit the world of Munky and his many colourful blocks. Take control, and match three! <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Munky_Blocks_(dx)_20140908A_thumb.png"> <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Munky_Blocks_(dx)_20140908B_thumb.png">

You might've noticed odd outages and curious tweaks and changes over the course of the last week.. Last Wednesday I decided it was finally time to upgrade the server, and the switch went "mostly" smoothly. There were quirks along the way, and the Wordpress didn't enjoy the shift at all. I've spent days trying to reconstruct the AGameAWeek blog using various bits and pieces, from raw database sql, to having to redraw bits and pieces.. As well as all of that hassle, I've had to completely move everything ...

Last month, I set aside the whole month to create a nice and lengthy month-long project. Blockman Worlds surprisingly took just a week to create, and then I was right back to the regular AGameAWeek schedule!! This month, I opted to delve into something even bulkier, and the resulting game is really quite nice. Oddly, it took alarmingly longer than expected, so isn't quite as chunky as I'd like it to have been. As it is, though, it's a wonderful little highly playable local-multiplayer edition of DynaBla...

This week sees our intrepid hero running around a house, capturing ghosts. In many ways, this is a bit of a departure from the intended game.... <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Platdude_in_The_Spirit_Collector_20140325A_thumb.png"> <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Platdude_in_The_Spirit_Collector_20140325B_thumb.png">

It was somewhat inevitable that we'd have to revisit the world of SpikeDislike, and since the last game was released around about a year ago, I might as well treat us all to a brand new release! <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Spiky_Tower_20140304A_thumb.png"> <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Spiky_Tower_20140304B_thumb.png">

Due to unforeseen circumstances, my entire Cable service is currently down. The engineer's due to show up on Wednesday, but until then I'll probably be offline. I can just about get online via iPad, but that's no way to upload AGameAWeek!! This week's release will, hopefully, be on Wednesday, unless I somehow get online any earlier. Grrr...

This week, Platdude gets his first real outing for about 3 and a half years!! Poor fella's been cooped up for so long, he's started to go a bit doolally! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=312"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/JNKPlat_-_Xmas_2013_20131219B_thumb.png">

Welcome to the Top 13 AGameAWeek Games of 2013 No other Top-10 lists appear to want to give any of my games any recognition at all, which kinda sucks since I've made a whole bunch of REALLY great games, this year! I don't even get a token "Made a shitload of games, this year" mention! Sucks!! So, sod them all, I'll make my own Top-10 list. And it'll be all my games, and I'll even add a few more just to make it a bit more 2013 relevant. That'll show 'em!! Mwa-ha-haaa!!!

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.

Neovember is a month in which I'm taking the engine from NeonPlat Raw, and playing about with it to create a bunch of different gameplay styles. Once we're done, I'll bundle everything back into a package, and pop it up on all the different systems. This week's experimental gameplay mode comes courtesy of Blockman. Not the hungry-pellet-eating version of Blockman, the classic platforming/collection form. You start the game as you normally would, with you, some balls, and some bad guys. There's also a...

Welcome to Neovember, the month of NeonPlat, where I take the original NeonPlat Raw engine, and gradually upgrade it, adding new gameplay elements, features and modes. By the end of Neovember, we'll have a lovely big Extreme version of NeonPlat, and we can all sit around and play it for days/weeks/months at a time! In this first week, I've decided to tackle the task of bringing over the NeonPlat Adventures enemies, and popping them into the new gane. So far I've managed the first 35 enemies, ranging ...

Right, time for a new plan. The last plan fell apart, and I'm struggling to come up with new games that work with all the possible targets, nicely. Grrr! So, instead, I've opted to do something that I initially planned to do months and months ago. When I created "NeonPlat Raw" back in June, I purposely gave it the name "Raw" so that a future (premium?) expansion could be called "Extreme!" For Extreme, I'm thinking something along the lines of how NeonPlat 2 was a HUGE leap from NeonPlat 1. Different...

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 the 99% of the ...

People keep asking about how I manage to code AGameAWeek, and one thing they all eventually pick up on is that I'm currently doing it all with Monkey. (URL "https://monkeycoder.co.nz">Monkey) is a fantastic language which allows for all manner of different targets, and does a great job doing what it does. It isn't perfect, and it's not for everyone, but it suits me down to the ground. As with any development tool, it all comes down to preference, and whether or not you agree with the methodology o...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:left;">It's been a while since I did an AGameAWeek Gold. There's not been a lot of stand-out stuff popping up on the old time-machine. Sure there's been a whole pile of games, but nothing that's really been noteworthy, so for the most part I've kind of been ignoring this section of the site. Today, however, a lovely little game popped up, and I spent a good hour playing the thing! Whoops!!

Every Single Week

Not Good Advice

The following is not advice, and should not be taken as such. People often ask me how I manage to do AGameAWeek. Particularly, how I manage to cram everything into a single week, and then somehow manage to do exactly the same thing every other week, without going crazy. What follows might possibly help you understand a little more of what goes on in the world of AGameAWeek. Or it might just be a whole bunch of rambling waffling text. Not sure!! ...

Another week, another sequel. This week, we're revisiting the puzzle-maze world of Kee, Bo and Ard (Occasionally spelled "Key, Bo and Ard" due to me forgetting the spelling of the green character's name!) I also need a couple of features tested, so there's quite a bit of rambling included below this post!

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;">AGameAWeek Gold is our daily trawl through the Jayenkai Archives, to dig out any games that might have been released, on this day in history. For the most part, there's some real stinkers in amongst this lot. But every so often, we'll come across a real gem.