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">

.. Sorry, I haven't suddenly added them. Instead, I've made this post in the hopes of starting a discussion on the feasibility of adding scoreboards to future AGameAWeek titles. It's something I've attempted in the past, and old versions of Microbes, Spider and others still kind-of, mostly, sort of work. But there's a few issues that are stopping me from integrating it into the current framework.

The year of Platdude continues, as we head into Platdude's garden to collect all the lovely fruit that's been growing, in this heavily AGameAWeek-ified remake of the classic Mr Do! <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Platdude_in_A_Bit_of_A_Do__20140225A_thumb.png"> <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Platdude_in_A_Bit_of_A_Do__20140225B_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 Builder here). R...

A lovely little flying game, this week, as you take control of a friendly little chopper, and try to save all your pals. As you race about the landscape, you'll meet plenty of enemy aircraft, hellbent on stopping you. Attack, Defend, and Survive!!

In the first of a (hopefully) full year of monthly Platdude related releases, Platdude gets to wander through a giant forest, battling enemy creatures, and avoiding deadly spikes! <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Platdude_in_The_Endless_Forest_20140127B_thumb.png"> <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Platdude_in_The_Endless_Forest_20140127A_thumb.png">

(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/20140124-160843.jpg"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/20140124-160843.jpg" alt="20140124-160843.jpg" class="alignnone size-full" /> A simple little retro platformer. Nothing magical, just a neat little run-and-jump game.

I don't normally do "Postmortem" type blog posts, but figured I might as well start. Not sure whether this will become a regular thing, or not, but I thought it'd be nice to keep track of what happens after I post each game. In future I might leave it until a good few days have passed, but the world of AGameAWeek tends to flow fairly rapidly. We'll have to judge it as it happens. Anyway, welcome to the newest section of AGameAWeek, where I take a look at the stats and things, to help figure out if the...

A brand new site has just been launched. Interview an Indie does exactly what it says on the tin. Blog creator (URL "https://Twitter.com/g_unitt">George Unitt) sends email questionnaires to indies, and posts the replies Simple and effective! First up, ME! O/yeayo/!!! You can (URL "https://interviewanindie.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/an-interview-with-jayenkai/">Read it Here).

There are hundreds of great sites that I should probably link to, and much like linking to my hundreds of games, I've always found it a bit of a mess once I start trying to cram it all into a small sidebar on the right of the site. As such, I've finally opted to create one great big link-page, full of everything I could think of within the short hour or so that it took to add it! If you're missing from this page, let me know!! <table border="1px" cellpadding="2" width="100%"> <t...

Sorry, been FAR too focused on coding to have thought about the monthly wallpaper's, so we'll start the year with a nice simple Platdude wallpaper. *shrugs* (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Desktop_Jan_2014.jpg"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Desktop_Jan_2014-1024x1024.jpg" alt="" title="Desktop_Jan_2014" width="590" height="590" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-3423" /> Click for INSANELY OVERSIZED!!)

Or, as the titlescreen would have you call it, "Greenie's Little Adventure" Feel free to use either of the two titles! Welcome back! AGameAWeek starts anew, this week, with a nice little remake of a game I made a good 7 or 8 years ago. My original "The Quest" game took a board-game-style approach, but never really got very far due to the limits and oddities of trying to play a board game on a computer. It felt strange to have to roll dice all the time, and the battles were never that great. I'm not ...

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.

Karl's Tiny Adventure was created way, way, way back in March of this year. You can (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=288">Play Karl's Tiny Adventure here). The game was my first true test of proper "Image Data Loading", and my first proper lesson in Android Fragmentation. Annoyingly, because different Android devices operate in slightly different ways, the Image Data Loading wasn't occurring in an accurate manner, and as a result, the level data was getting all screwed up. As well...

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...

This is a quick and simple tool to take OUYA.tv's "Unique Download.csv" file, and convert it to a raw .html file, which you can either look at and admire, or upload to a server for other folk to equally look at and admire. This tool is only useful for folk who A) Have an OUYA dev account, and B) Know WTF it is!!! You can (URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/OUYAStatConverter.zip">Download OUYA Stats Converter here) You can (URL "https://socoder.net/OUYAStats.html">see the resu...

Since I just answered this on the Monkey Forums, and created a nice little image to illustrate it, I thought it might be useful to repost my description here. Here's roughly how I achieved the Glow effect on NeonPlat. First, draw your sprite in a RAW form, then make a copy, make it bolder, then blur it all up a bit. Finally, load both the RAW and the BLUR into your game, draw the Raw first, then draw the blur over the top. It really is a simple effect, and depending on how large your blur-sprites ar...

Late last night, NeonPlat Raw appeared on the OUYA Dashboard for the very first time. This is kind of a big deal, in that it's the first time one of my games has officially been released on an actual physical home-console. True, it's not a "PROPER" console, but .. Hey, it's a box with a controller that plugs into my telly. And it's got my games on it! So, Hell yeah, It's proper enough to me!! If you have an OUYA, you can grab (URL "https://www.ouya.tv/game/NeonPlat-Raw">NeonPlat Raw) for it. It's...

Sorry folks, I appear to have gotten bogged down with Sheep Goes Right. Although I figured it'd be a nice simple little project that I could work on "behind the scenes", it's once again proved that I never can plan ahead!! Sheep Goes Right has now become a much bigger project, and as I'm currently working on a way to make level building easier, I'm having to deal with all the testing that goes with it. I'd forgotten how much time proper level building actually takes up!! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/w...

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...

To mark five whole years since (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/2013/09/agameaweek-gold-jnkplat-ds-08/">the release of the greatest JNKPlat game, EVER), I've decided to do a JNKPlat themed desktop this month. Nice and simple! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/out.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/out-1024x1024.png" alt="" title="out" width="590" height="590" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-3142" /> Click for MASSIVE!) (Only 2048x2048,...

For the past week, I asked people on Twitter and Socoder if they'd like to join in with a silly new game by drawing costumes onto a sprite of Idigidragon. The results came fairly slowly, but a number of decent attempts were made. .. Then Rockford over at Socoder sent a HUGE batch of stuff, and I had to spend a good hour or so cutting them up into little parts! D'oh! Anyway, this is the result.

I'll try not to make a habit of making iOS Pay-For apps the "Weekend Retreat" thing, but there's something to be said for having decent iOS games that charge you upfront, rather than slamming adverts into your gameplay, and IAPs all over the damn place.. So.. Yeah.. If a game's good, it's good!!

As we near adding game #300 to the Archive, things are getting a wee bit chaotic in my Dev-folder. Games are being started, then largley ignored, as I constantly jump from project to project in a desperate attempt to find "That special something" which will do for #300. So far, nothing big has turned up, so, with only a few weeks until we get there, I've still no idea exactly what that game might end up being. Hmm.. Still, it's a fun trip, and this week's game idea comes courtesy of Twitterer (URL "ht...

Although this week seems like a quick re-use of old sprites, I can assure you that they are in fact a completely different set of sprites!! Brand new Puzzobomb sprites, ready for an all new Puzzobomb game! But before I tackle the lengthy process of making a whole bucketload of levels, let's see what it's like without any levels at all...