Introducing Game Pages

Games are back!

If you just want to get to the games, jump down to the Current Game Pages section.

The sections before that are a bit of an explanation of what's going on with the website and some plans, which of course, are always tentative.

But I'm excited to get these pages with games (free, playable in-browser) back on the site!

A Bit of Background

The whole purpose of this site initially was to share little games that I've created. In the past I've had playable games uploaded to the site, and you may not even have noticed they were gone, but I basically redid the website from scratch, for two reasons:

1. Switched hosting providers and wanted to setup the website in a different way (behind the scenes) so I couldn't just transfer the content and pages.
2. What I had previously was very disorganized so wanted to start fresh

Also, I was working to release Dave-Man at the time. The Dave-Man page was the main focus when redoing the website and could work out the rest later. Next, I wanted a system for blog pages set up so I could share whatever I want at the time.

Now the focus is getting game pages back up on the site.

The Vision

I want everything up on the website.

When I say everything I mean anything from fun little free games, demos of commercial games, prototypes, and even just concepts (for example: here is a game I'd like to make but don't have a prototype yet; just a story and concept). Even prototypes or projects that I've been like "oh this is garbage" and quit.

Why?

Well, maybe one man's trash is another's treasure? Maybe another dev will find something interesting or useful, as in learning from my mistakes. Maybe I'm mistaken and it actually is a good idea!

It's not like I'm putting these lower-quality projects on Steam, promoting them, or even putting them front and center. I think it can be a mistake to hide your failures (or what you consider a failure) all the time.

Filtering Through the Garbage

A little self-deprecating there, but if I am putting EVERYTHING on the site it could get hard to find the fun, free games from the garbage bin games.

So I'm planning on creating a sorting and filtering page where you can sort or filter something like the following:

• Playable: Yes or no, and playable in browser on the website
• Price: Most will be "Free" but will provide a filter to hide commercial games . . . which is just Dave-Man.
• Project Type: There will be different project types but the purpose here will be to easily filter out projects like prototypes, if looking for a full(er) game.
• Finished: Yes or no, so would rule out any prototypes and scrapped projects.
• Lou's Rating: Worried this might sound a bit prideful or something, but what is the easieast way to sort to find the best games? How about I just rank them myself. So this is a scale from 1 to 10 and obviously games that were scrapped or a simple prototype will be given a score a the bottom while the more complete and free, fun games playable in browser will get a higher rating. It's a rough estimate though as I'm not trying to overthink it, like game A is better than game B, etc.

This is NOT implemented yet. I'll look to do that once more games are uploaded.

Current Game Pages

Get to the Games! Get to the Games!

Alright! Alright!

Just want to do a quick intro to the games currently on the site:

Survive The Day Level 2: Donut Perp!

This was one of my most popular games. To be honest, though, it could have been some luck with the Itch algorithm, but it got something like over 2000 plays or page visits in the first week.

Nate brings a box of 6 donuts to work. He steps away for a minute and when he comes back they are all gone!

There are only 6 people in the office right now, including Nate, so someone took 2 donuts!

Can you help Nate track down the double donut eater?

This game operates like clue, so you need to accuse the correct person, in the correct location (that they ate the donut), with the correct utensil. Note that you have to find the utensil around the office before you can accuse someone of it.

If you are getting serious you may want to grab a notepad to keep track lol.

One last tip, every "round" (between accusations) the dialogue changes for all the characters and one character per round has a tip for you. Such as they saw someone eating a donut somewhere or with a utensil.

The game is randomized each time. Therefore, each time you play the person that ate two donuts, where each character ate their donut and with which utensil changes every time.

Play Survive The Day Level 2

Space Out

Space Out was created for a game jam within a team of 4. So this is one of the only games you will see on here that doesn't feature my art.

The Pixel art was created by @PowLow_Paolo and @PixelShorts. Sound created by @scowsh. Dev by yours truly.

Space Out is a mash-up of inspiration between Break Out and Space Invaders. Your ship is traveling up the screen with solid layers of bricks coming at you. Touch a brick and your ship is lost!

Use the mouse to control the ship. Left click fires lasers, which are easy to use but overheat when fired too quickly (bottom right of UI). Right-click will launch a ball to break bricks. Move your ship to bounce the ball in different directions like break out.

Each ship has different stats, which can be upgraded when you return from a trip. One has a lot of balls but its laser overheats quickly. One has a lot of laser firepower but only one ball. The other is a mix, or average, at everything.

The main goal is to actually rescue the spacemen from their pods. Shoot the pods with lasers to open them up. To return home bounce a ball several times off a portal . . . which we probably could have made easier to use!

Each ship has a capacity. So once you fill up you might as well start looking for a portal. The more spacemen you bring back the more resources gained to upgrade your ship. Also, if you lose a ship you can rebuild one but it is very expensive and upgrades are lost. Lose all three ships and game over!

It was a great joy to work with these fellas! The game jam was a week and we were proud of what we ended up with. It fared pretty well in the game jam!

Play Space Out

Lou Bagel's Waffle Bar

Lou Bagel's Waffle Bar was my very first game jam and propelled me to take game dev more seriously!

The theme of the game jam was "Waffles", which had me reaching since I'm a bagel!

So I figured Lou Bagel could be trying to get people not to eat him by serving them waffles! At Lou Bagel's Waffle Bar you need to serve them or be eaten! Breakfast is life or death!

In this Tapper inspired game you will need to cook your waffle to perfection to get the biggest tip! Use your tips to upgrade your waffle shop!

Actually, each customer enjoys them to a different degree. The intro screen will give you a hint on how they like it but after that watch the tip amount to find the best way to cook it!

The cues for the state of the waffle watch the light on the waffle maker and listen for the SFX. It is a timing game, but when push comes to shove, give the customer any kind of waffle to avoid getting eaten!

Oh, and don't forget the syrup! The syrup bar at the end of the counter will get lower and lower as customers use it. If empty, the customer will refuse the waffle you give them - like it didn't even exist! So run down to the end of the bar to fill it up. When out the customer will actually start carrying it towards you, but best to try and avoid that!

Cave Monster drinks the entire bottle of syrup every time. That Monster!

Use your tips to add new bars, get bigger syrup bottles, or buys roller skates to move around quicker!

See how far you can get and how much dough you can rack up! (pun intended)

Some of these characters were borrowed from friendly pixel artists. I transformed them into 1-bit and animated them, but some colleagues were happy to have their creations cameo in my game:

• Cacti Couple: AceWayDev
• Gerry: PixelShorts
• Fighter Guy: AceWayDev
• Cave Monster: CaveMonsters
• NLD: Naked Little Dude by PixelShorts
• Dave: Dave-Man
• Zombie: Survive The Night

And once again, music by the talented Scowsh! This was actually my first time working with him!

Play Lou Bagel's Waffle Bar

Fish Motel

Fish Motel was a game I created for Ludum Dare 46.

This was very challenging as you basically have only 48 hours to create something, as I chose the "Compo" portion, and everything had to be created by me. So this is the first time making music and sound effects, ever!

Amazingly, my entry won 6th place in the humor category! And that is with over 4,000 games submitted!

Though the extent of the gameplay is lacking, as you can play for about 30 seconds and get the gist. After that, it pretty much just repeats itself but with more fish each round. Ridiculous amounts of fish eventually, ha!

I actually meant to add upgrades to make it easier to keep the fish alive and other features. But with the lack of time available, I decided to focus more on the polished aspect of that functionality.

You are a bear that builds a fish hotel as a clever trick to bring your dinner to you. But you didn't realize you built it in a pond without many fish!

So the fish have to cross dry land to get to your hotel where they will dry out and die! In your bellman's outfit armed with a red Solo cup, splash the fish with water on their journey across to keep them alive!

The theme for the Game Jam was "Keep it Alive", which might make a bit more sense how this ludicrous plot sprang forth.

After the game jam, I decided to test out the process for getting an app into the App Store (iOS). So you can actually give this one a try on your iPhone as well:Fish Motel on the App Store.

Play Fish Motel

Dave-Man

Dave-Man is a bit different than the rest as, one, it is the only commercially released game so does not have it playable in the browser, and two, I made the page custom so does not follow the template and format of the other pages.

Though I would like to add the demo to the page. Not sure why that was never added - a major oversight . . . you know me.

Dave is constantly late for work and always has to get his coffee once he arrives.

The only problem is Chatty Cathy. Always on the prowl to dish the latest gossip, she will pounce on anyone she sees! Dave is not a chit-chatter, especially before he gets his morning coffee!

Get Dave his coffee and he has a productive day and gets paid. Run into Chatty Cathy and Dave is bound for a bad day, and with a results-oriented pay scale, he gets no pay!

Use the money received every day to shop online when you get home. Don't forget to take care of the misses! She wants to upkeep the home, such as getting new wallpaper.

Dave-Man is available for purchase on Steam. You can play the demo there as well!

Dave-Man Page

What's Next?

I'll be searching through my computer for more projects to upload, so keep an eye on the game page!