It's been a long long time since I did a bog standard Snake clone, and yesterday's code session reminded me of just how utterly simplistic a snake clone can be. Today I'll be making the tail follow the player, as it currently doesn't clear out as it goes, making things much harder for the player. Once that works, I'll be adding more tail-pieces as the player eats more, and then coming up with a soundtrack that matches the presentation of the game.

With any luck, assuming I have the time to cram it all into the space of just a week, and that my programmering fingers don't fall off from all of the difficult coding that lies ahead, by next Monday you'll be able to play a fun and exciting game that I have decided to call "Generic Snake Clone". It will be super and fun and exciting. You will be able to eat the green dots. Amazing gameplay lies ahead. Please be excitementing.

As each game is released, so begins the influx of feedback from players. Let's see what @RSKGames thinks of a bland looking ball in a bland looking maze! You can Download Might of the Balls here.

@RSKGames

Overview: Roll the ball and color more tiles than the AI opponent within the given time limit without falling of the edges. Easily one of the least interesting descriptions of recent months! This game is certainly not the best selling point for AGameAWeek.

Two balls in a maze! What could possibly go wrong?

I was doing the compiles for this week's game late last night, and as I sat in front of the Mac I figured I might as well try to do the trailer on there.

Still oodles to do on this week's game, and it's already Sunday, but it is at least coming together.

I think I've got the enemy ball AI working to a moderately decent degree, but of course I can't be 100% sure until the rest of the game is coded, and I'm actually facing him as an enemy. Most of the day's coding was focused on making the enemy do corners a little better. Even with padded out corners, it was still managing to fall into the abyss much more than I'd like. In the end, I got it balanced reasonably well. It still frequently plummets to its death, but then so does my ow...

100 NOW compilations, and what do we get?! Track Listing That's a bit of a shit selection, isn't it..? I mean, I can understand why they did that. Every NOW needs to have modern tracks, and this one additionally has to celebrate the past. .. But.. Really.. Would it have killed them to have got a selection of modern artists to rerecord the original track listing of the original NOW 1? ..? That's what I'd've done. *sigh* What a wasted opportunity.

"I know", says I, "I'll write tomorrow's SoCoder newsletter now, so that I don't have to do it in the morning, and can instead get right back to doing the important coding!" Nope.. Instead I was up until 3:30am doing the newsletter, and then didn't wake up until after 10, thus completely losing all the time I'd managed to save! D'oh!

With so many games to play, there's oodles of feedback for each. Let's see what RSKGames thought of this week's game!

@RSKGames

Overview: A fast paced circular bullet hell game. I liked it better than the ''Orbital Projections'' and ''The Trouble with Vents'' which till day I can never play properly. (I had to look both of those games up! I've made too many games!!)

Seems like @RSKGames has helped to uncover the reason the leaderboards are so bloomin' empty.