Mario Maker: Know this about bad levels

Image courtesy of IGN

Mario Maker recently released for the Nintendo Wii U, and dang do I love games like this!  Even back to when I bought the PS3 for the express reason of playing Little Big Planet, or further back when the only thing on my 3rd grade Christmas list was Jazz Jackrabbit 2 so I could play with the Jazz Creation Station, my love of level editors would likely receive a large chapter in the biography that nobody is going out of their way to write about me (yet).

Putting game design in the hands of the player gives the actor the chance to play director for a while, and I feel like this gives a great deal of perspective to gamers that they don't always get.

And sometimes it just results in terrible levels.  What gives?

What's it like to live twenty years with undiagnosed ADD?

That's Attention Deficit Disorder to those who don't know.  I've had it forever and wasn't diagnosed until a couple years ago.  I've only taken my meds for it for a year now and wow there is a huge difference.

So what's it like?  I'm here to try to put the often joked about and somewhat actually really scary disorder into an understandable perspective.

Trying Out Inklewriter

So, lately I've been trying out Inklewriter, a free Choose-Your-Own-Adventure creating tool on the internet.

I thought I'd write a bit about what I've been doing with it.

Amazon's Fire Devices: What The Heck Happened?

Something has been bothering me: Where did Amazon go wrong with their Fire devices? I'll tell you, and it's easy to explain.

Image courtesy Geekwire

Cookie Cat: Redux

Testing out my newly purchased HTML5 module for Game Maker Studio by remaking a game that I had made in highschool.  This remake only took me roughly 6 hours to make from the ground up, so be gentle.

Edit: My free web host decided to up and delete the file. In the meantime, you can grab a Windows downloadable version by clicking here.

Want to help me keep making free games?  Try checking out my art shop and buying some cool merchandise with my characters and designs on it.  It helps me stay alive long enough to make stuff!

Halloween 2015 Update: Captain Fleshmost the Talkmost

I've been working on my Halloween game for a few weeks now and haven't updated much.  This is because I've been working much less on features of the game and more of the meat of the game itself.  Since I recently included two interesting characters, I thought that I'd share them: the first is Captain Fleshmost, the fleshless pirate drunkard who will drone on for forever if you let him about his days as a swashbuckling pirate.

The second is the talking floppy diskette, who acts as your save station.  To save the game, you must bring it a floppy diskette for it to write your progress onto.  Don't worry, your floppy disks are rewritable.

Don't worry, I should have more to show off soon.

Want to help me keep making free games?  Try checking out my art shop and buying some cool merchandise with my characters and designs on it.  It helps me stay alive long enough to make stuff!

Feeling Your Game

Anybody who graces themselves with the title of "gamer" knows a thing or two about the term "game feel," or at least have heard it mentioned.  Game feel is a pretty apt name for the concept- literally, how a game feels when you are playing it.  So, how does your game feel?

No, no... not like that

I want for this blog to be more than just a promotion for my projects, but a chance to discuss some ideas about developing games, so I'm going to initiate that conversation by talking about game feel a bit, as well as how I think that it really impacts a gaming experience.