Blog - Top 10 of 10 - 2017

29th 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

2017 - Cuddle Me

This year went pretty smoothly, to be honest.
I used the same framework, carried on making games on Forget-V and making them available as OUYA downloads, and carried on posting them for Windows and HTML, too.
At the end of the year, however, Razer decided to kill off .. Everything..

OUYA, Forget-V, the lot.

Meanwhile, Mark Sibly was killing off support for Monkey-X, and my whole devkit was breaking down.

Next year would need a rethink.

-=-=-

Ten of the Best

(in order of release)

Cuddly Cuddly Bears

A lovely little game full of cuddles!
A remake of the classic Ork Attack from 8-bits and beyond, this game sees our hero (who later got given the name Roland) dodging an onslaught of happy huggings.
An example of how to change the dynamic of a game from evil monster attacks to a happy love fest, just by tweaking the sound effects!
#BenHug

Clusters of Hex

Roland returns with hexes in hand.
I often wonder about ways to do "falling block" games a little bit differently, and this one takes the form of my Mum's favourite game, Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust a Move)
Grab Hexes from the side and jump up with them aimed at matching colours.
The collision can be a little tweaky at times, though.

The Dangerous World of Castles

A game of exploration and fighting evil demons.
Explore a huge vast area, storm the various castles and kill off all the creatures within.
It's a shame that this isn't a more expansive RPG-like game, and is instead one of my usual "Random world each restart" sort of things.
Having the world be persistent, might've made for a more interesting game.

Shelley the Frog

A game not much more impressive than a standard Painter clone, but with a couple of powerups, different level graphics, as well as some nice sneaky evil AI to catch you.
This game turned out rather nicely.

Quadoban

A fun little Sokoban clone with a difference.
Taking a cue from the earlier Kee-Bo-Ard titles, this game sees you trying to move all four blocks at once.
With hundreds of levels to play through, and varying degrees of complexity, the game scales up fairly well, instead of just being "A collection of random levels" like I normally have.
Having 5 difficulty levels to beat in each set is also quite a nice way to do things, but leaves that quirky "Skip" thing in the way of the game.

Read Error A

A collection of WarioWare style microgames. Short and sweet, with a lovely glitched style.
I do love making microgrames, but I often struggle to come up with so many, especially when confined to a week!

Flappadiddle

A recreation of one of the games from a previous Collexion, this game saw you flapping across the screen and stopping at little platforms along the way.
The game works well enough, but looking back, the "Normal" mode is actually a little too easy. You need to play it on Hard mode to get the game playing fast and furious!

RetroRaider - Three Crystals

A platform game with entirely random levels? Surely not!
The third edition of RetroRaider sees our hero having to complete the map by visiting all the levels.
The random generation doesn't seem too bad, and has crafted some fairly decent paths along the way, but I have been informed that one of the upper left levels is impossible to beat.
Other than that, it worked out great!!

Thwackity Puttz

Continuing to at least TRY to put things onto iOS, I posted this lovely little Golf game onto the AppStore, and it died a death, which is a shame, because I happen to think it's a fun little adventure.
Thwack your balls towards the hole, and see if you can hit a birdie or two along the way, for bonus points.

Sheep Goes Right

A game that gets oodles of praise for its graphics, which is an absolute rarity for one of my games.
This game's core art and gameplay were originally made for the OUYA back in 2014, but the framework was old and things were quite broken when I came to rereleasing it on iOS.
I could've fixed it up, made it work a better, bit by bit..
.. Or I could just make it a normal AGameAWeek and redo from start.

So, taking all the graphical assets from the original game, I recoded the entire thing from scratch!
The result was finished off nicely, a Windows and HTML edition were posted, and a larger iOS edition was placed onto the AppStore.
And failed to sell anything.
Because .. of course..
*sigh*

Created with Survey Creator

A Few Failures

(not counting Sheep Goes Right)

Mini Clampett

Definitely a case of "Almost", here.
The core "clampett" mechanic works well, but the onslaught of enemies definitely doesn't.
Clampett would need a rethink before getting a second outing.

Monsters Ate My Cheesecake

A very dark game that surprised me with an insta-death when I tried replaying it just now.
It's a lovely graphical effect with little or no interesting gameplay!

Oh, What a Dungeon

This game tries to be something, but doesn't quite land it.
The monsters attack too quickly, the character wanders around mostly aimlessly.
There's not all that much going on.
I've done this better, before. It really doesn't work like this.