Recently I’ve had some massive upheaval in my life, and I’ve decided that instead of just doing little projects to keep myself busy and in practice, I am going to actually try to finish and publish something. I think it will be a pen and paper RPG rather than a video game. In other news, I’ve also bought a domain name for my RPG publishing. As soon as I have a skeleton site set up I’ll link to it from here. This will continue to be my game development blog, however.

It’s the end of the quarter at school, and I’m incredibly busy. Luckily my final project for my programming class and the May entry for my Year of Games overlap. And by overlap, I mean they’ll be the same damn thing. 🙂

Or in this case, I should say “Arrr!”

The last few weeks I’ve been on again, off again, sick as hell. I haven’t had time to catch up to my schoolwork, let alone work on my own games.

However, I’ve spent the last year or so working on a set of pen and paper RPGs, using a few variants on one central system that I’ve called the Knucklebones© system. I’ve divided it into two versions, a ‘simple’ version, which has no levels and uses experience to buy skills and stats directly. The two games that I’ve made that use that version only have six stats and don’t have any additional quirks like the ‘feats’ in the D20 system. I’ve been working with a couple of other people on the ‘complex’ variant of the rules, which has more stats (one game has 15, the other has 12) and is level based rather than point buy and does have other quirks similar to the feats in the D20 system.

I’ve reached a point where both of the games using the simple version of the Knucklebones© system are playable, although only one has enough of a sourcebook written out for me to post it here. So, I’m posting the bare bones sourcebook to the first game I made with the simplified Knucklebones© system. Avast, and heave to!

Gallows and Glory version 0.5 – unfinished sourcebook

I’ve been a bit busy lately so I haven’t been able to do much other than finish the little Space Invaders demo up. So here it is. This one has three different kinds of ship to play as.

To download the executable version, click here. To play a full-sized version in your browser, click here.

For this first month, since I’m using a language that I’m not well versed in at all, I decided to start simple. Back to the basics. With a simple game to do a simple test to play with the idea of touchscreen controls. Obviously this one uses the mouse, since it’s the PC version. But the idea is there. Hover the mouse over the little control bar at the bottom to move around, click on it to send the next wave of enemies in.

To download the flash version, click here. To play a full-sized version in your browser, click here.

I have decided to challenge myself. Starting on New Year’s day, I am going to start working on one game a month. I will have something to post on the first of every month. That may not be a finished game, but it will at least be a demo or working concept. Since I am working on learning Actionscript 3.0 and I have access to Flash at my university, I will be more than likely posting things that can be played right here on the website.

I see this challenge to myself as a fairly similar one to the 300 challenge that Sean of squidi.net challenged himself to, only instead of coming up with a metric crapload of game mechanics, I will be coming up with a metric arseload (that’s 1/25th of a metric crapload) of actual playable games. Some may be unoriginal, just attempts to see if I am capable of making it. Some may be completely original ideas or original takes on an older idea. But I will do my damnedest to make sure that SOMETHING is published on the first of every month.

I have officially retitled it Break Invaders: The First Invasion. It has been turned from a simple no-options, no-frills arcade style game into an arcade style game with at least the most basic of options. Music and sound can be turned on and off. The game can be paused. The graphics and levels have been updated a little bit from their original state. Difficulty levels have been added. The cruddy title screen has been replaced with a more presentable one (with the new title of course).

I would like to hear back from Steam, because adding Steam achievements would be fantastic. And being able to actually distribute the game and earn at least enough money to justify the time I’ve spent on this game would be even better.