Latest gomepost
- -Abysmal project completion rate
- - -What even is the purpose of side projects?
+ +My game graveyard, part one
+ + +This might become a series, we’ll see
My game graveyard, part one
+ ++ Yesterday, I posted about how I start so many side projects and finish so few. + Today, I wanted to follow up with a review of just some of the projects I haven’t managed to complete so far, a tour of my “side project graveyard”. + I quickly realized I would have enough to say about each project for its own separate post. + So to keep the scope limited for today, I’m just going to focus on video games I’ve made or wanted to make. +
+ I should clarify at the start, more for myself than the reader, that I don’t consider all of these projects truly “dead”. + I reserve the right to “resurrect” them at any time, and indeed I hope to return to several of them. + Others ones I’m fine with consigning to the graveyard indefinitely. + I might be more or less vague on the details of a game depending on how likely such a return is. +
+Vernal Luncheon
++ A cute little 2-dimensional platformer with a bear character. + The bear’s name is Vern. + The idea is that you would jump around collecting food. + Each type of food would grant you a different temporary ability, such as a double jump or a wall grab. + If you’ve ever played Celeste, the dash crystals from that are a similar idea. +
+ The prototype was made in Godot, and it’s probably the most extensive thing I’ve made in Godot to date (which isn’t much). + In the prototype, I got the player character’s movement fine-tuned and several foods are operational. + I made all the pixel art myself, and I also gave it a soundtrack (music I had previously written) and designed all the sound effects myself. +
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+ Vernal Luncheon soundtrack
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+ Tungolcweorn
++ A top-down “galaxy crawler”, where you play as a legendary, planet-sized, planet-eating monster called the Tungolcweorn, Old English for “planet grinder”. + The monster, which would look something like a round anglerfish made of volcanoes, flies around solar systems, eating up planets and absorbing energy from them. + You would have to contend with space-faring civilizations of varying sizes trying to defend their home planets and resources. + At the same time, I wanted the game to have a sort of medieval mythical theme to it, a mix of sci-fi and fantasy. +
+ This idea never made it too far in implementation, but I had some good ideas sketched out for the various in-game quantities you’d have to collect, like matter, energy, lifeforce, and exotic forms & states of matter that granted various abilities. + I wanted the game to be based on a relatively accurate gravity simulation, so you could do things like gravity slingshots, and planet collisions would be realistic. + The difficulty of implementing that was the first hurdle, and the one I never ended up getting over. +
+Standing Wave
++ A musical tower defense game inspired by the flash game GemCraft. + Each tower would emit a single musical pitch, but in order to do damage to passing enemies, you would need multiple towers to create certain combinations of pitches (e.g., a major chord). + Different combinations would do different amounts of damage, and the game would require some musical background and reasoning to play well. + I built a little bit of this one, but dropped it due to insufficient knowledge of Godot. +
+ Well, I didn't make it through all the games I wanted to talk about, but I want to wrap up the post for now. + I could talk a lot about my fun ideas for games and other things. + Maybe I’ll keep going with this as a series, either this week or spread out intermittently. +
+ Have you ever tried to make a video game?
+ Which of these ideas do you think sounds the most fun?
+ Would you like to hear about more of my ideas and abandoned side projects?
+ Let me know your thoughts at my Ctrl-C email: gome @ ctrl-c.club.
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