Developments

Lots of background work, yesterday, as I continued to work on the menu system.



The two circles on the right currently show the topmost highscore of the level selected, as well as the last score.
Now you can either tap the circles, hit a shoulder button on your controller, or hit the B button on your keyboard, to slide that section across, revealing a better scoreboard, alongside other stats like the most spikes you've passed, best combos, and things like that.

Over on the left, you'll not notice a good old-fashioned zig-zag, which does a fairly decent job of separating that tenth level, which will be the all-important "Infinite" stage of each theme.

The menu's coming together nicely, and is much more manageable than either of the previous two games' chaotic sprawling menus of insanity!
I kept it simple!! If that doesn't generate buttloads of sales, I don't know what will!!!

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Daily Doodle : BINGO!!!

Occasionally, Platdude likes to keep the old folk entertained, by helping out at the local Bingo hall.

Mailbag

Today's mail comes from DrunkPunk, who's popped over from OUYAForum


Over the many years of doing this, one thing that's stuck out is that I'm absolutely AWFUL when it comes to planning ahead. If I have a plan in mind, the game will usually end up being insanely different to that plan.
Take "NeonPlat Adventures" as an example. I knew what I wanted to create. A simple 2D MarioLand styled platform game. I set myself a two month deadline, and started building a game engine.
Then I decided "Hey, I should make each character it's own powerup!"
and
"Hey, I should make 50 characters!"
and
"Hey, I should make an infinite number of levels!"
and then..
"Hey, I should build a calendar system to keep track of all the levels!!"

... and then I had to somehow cram that whole lot into the space of two months.
CHAOS!!
I'm still not entirely sure how I managed to do all of that, if I'm honest!
But that's how it goes. Ideas form as I'm creating, and anything preplanned tends to get thrown out along the way.
I much prefer my freeform style of creation, though, as it's led to loads of quirky unusual gameplay elements, many of which could never have been planned out from the start. It's kept AGameAWeek interesting, to me, and hopefully has entertained you, too.



If you'd like to stuff my mailbag, you can do so right here, at https://bit.ly/AGAW_Mail . Send comments, questions, game ideas, thoughts and more, and they'll probably turn up here, eventually.