Wow, is it already May? I was thinking about how I was going to have to do a progress update soon… and then two weeks just blew by! Things have been very strange lately, as I think just about everyone can attest.
I went into April with grand plans, and then spent most of it doing (online!) game jams. It was a lot of fun, and I got to try some interesting new things. In total I’ve made three games since the last status update, which is probably a record for me.
Toilet Paper Panic wasn’t made for a jam, but was thrown together in two days as a last-minute April Fools project. With everything I’ve done for CommonCore, it went relatively smoothly especially since it’s so similar to Ascension III mechanically. Making it was intense, but a lot of fun, and it’s one of my favourite April Fools releases.
Heavy Metal Slug was made for the Old Games Remaster jam. Unfortunately that jam was a bit of a flop with only two entries. I had two weeks, but burned out after a week and a half despite starting off trying to keep it a relaxed jam. I ended up leaving several features out, including big things like selectable characters and two-player support. It was really interesting to try to build something quite a bit different than my usual FPS/RPG fare. I also maintained a devlog of sorts, which is something I don’t usually do. I classify this as a prototype rather than a finished game, and the source code is available.
Shattered – Why Not Me was made for the Magical Girl Game Jam. It started off as a visual novel but I ended up adding some first-person shooter/brawler gameplay as well. I ended up using almost all the two week jam period, though I didn’t run out of energy this time. I’m actually totally unfamiliar with the magical girl genre (and in fact misunderstood it almost completely) and joined this jam to do something different. I’m mostly happy with this one despite the awkward title. Like Heavy Metal Slug, it has a devlog, including some in-depth postmortem posts.
This month, I’ll be once again merging the changes and folding the lessons from the jam games back into CommonCore and Ascension III. I’ll be getting back to the latter project, though I’m not sure exactly which part I want to tackle next. It’ll definitely be one of the big dreaded things I’ve been putting off, either taking a step toward implementing mod support or finally building the Frangis demo in earnest. Most likely, I won’t get to that until the end of the month.
I’ve already gotten back into the Neo Geo project, and I’m hoping to get that wrapped this month (though I’m still waiting on a few parts). Unfortunately, I didn’t make any progress on newip. I’m hoping to announce it this month, but I said that last month and the month before so I really don’t want to promise anything at this point. In general it’s difficult to say what May will bring.
Stay safe out there.