Kloonigames

When I started Kloonigames I promised myself that I’d do monthly games at least for one year. After that I’d decide if I wanted to continue or not. Now that year is almost complete (the birthday party of Kloonigames is 8th of September) and it’s time for me to make the decision. It’s not that difficult decision to make. Of course I to want continue making games. The real question is do I want to continue making them in such a hectic pace. Making a game a month is pretty tough. So I decided that I’ll keep a small break from the game making (two months) and return to the monthly games with a new enthusiasm.

To commemorate the first 12 games I decided to dub them the Season 1 of Kloonigames. That name also cleverly indicates that here will be more games to come.

The Season 2 of Kloonigames will begin in the couple of months, but in between I’ll try to release some updates to season 1 games or do something completely different. Maybe I’ll do a board game or I’ll collaborate with someone or something.

This might a good spot to go over the games, that I’ve created this far. So here they are.

Season 1 overview

Jimmy’s Lost His Marbles
Of all of the Kloonigames’ games this one is closest to my heart. Not because it’s the greatest in terms of gameplay, originality or fun, but because it’s the very first one I did. It was so great to notice that I can actually do games in under one week. It totally changed the way I great games and that’s why it has a special place in my heart.

Slimy Pete’s Singles Bar
Don’t download or play this game. Ever. It’s the worst of the bunch. Sure it has really nice graphics, but the gameplay is so rotten that it’s not fun. It isn’t even especially innovative. This game proved to me that crappy gameplay can’t be replaced with beautiful graphics.

Pluto Strikes Back
Pluto was my first game that I really feel has a great gameplay. Something just clicked with this one. It’s still one my favorite Kloonigames’ games. Definitely worth downloading. Unlike Slimy Pete.


Cacodemon’s Barbecue Party in Hell
Game about a Cacodemon and kittens. What else do I have to say. It’s a really fun game for something that was put together in such an extreme time limit. There are some design mistakes and the graphics could surely be much better, but even so it’s still amazingly fun game. And luckily for Cacodemon, it actually found an audience for itself.

Druid Soccer
I always felt that Druid Soccer never got the attention that it deserved. For me it’s one my games I’ve enjoyed most playing. And some people have told me that all my other games are total crap, but Druid Soccer is really fun. On the other hand there have been people who told me that it’s too simple and there is not much to it. Druid Soccer is definitely one of those games I’d love to do a remake of.

The Truth About Game Development
TAGD was a hit at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC 2007. It’s a game that began it’s life as a joke and that got me a little worried about the gameplay. But in the end the gameplay worked out pretty well also.

Moo at the Moon
One the games that was a complete pain to do. Mainly because of an extreme time limitation. Last day of the development I had to change the theme, because I couldn’t do the graphics for the original idea in one day. Also this was one of those games, where the original gameplay mechanism didn’t work at all, which meant I had to come up with something else. For such a hectic development progress the end result is OK.

Forbidden.exe
This one had a really cool idea behind it, but unfortunately I didn’t get the gameplay working as well as I had hoped. And I tried to compensate the sort comings of gameplay by doing a more elaborate story than was necessary. It’s a flawed game and if I had to do it now, I’d do with a completely different approach.

Daydreaming in the Oval Office
This game is as incompetent as it’s main character. Oval Office and Slimy Pete are two worst games I’ve ever created. Even the Divorce is better than this. I don’t know what I was thinking when I was doing this.


Crayon Physics
The game that caused my monthly traffic to go up ten times. It’s been an amazingly popular game. And I thought it would be one of those games that was just a little fun to play around with.


The Amazing Flying Brothers
I wasn’t so trilled about the initial idea of Flying Brothers. I seriously thought that the game wouldn’t work at all. But I didn’t have any better game ideas, so I went ahead and created an early prototype. And to much of my surprise the game turned out to be pretty fun. Lesson learned: Never discriminate your gameplay ideas (you never know which of them work).

A Tribute to the Rolling Boulder
My Assembly 2007 gamedev combo entry. It’s something that I have mixed feeling’s about. Even though lately it’s been getting some nice attention.


So that’s all the games I got done in a year (actually there’s one hidden extra game). At the same time I feel like I’ve accomplished awfully lot and also I feel I haven’t done all that much. Funny.

I’ll do a proper birthday party post after 8th of September, with cake, tears n shit.

Summer Assembly 2007 is over and I’m finally returning to my normal sleeping schedule. Assembly has the same effect on your body as a really bad jet-lag.

This year I participated in the gamedev combo with A Tribute to the Rolling Boulder. My first Assembly combo entry ever. And here are the top 5 of asm gamedev combo:

1   2844p   Centripetality by Aroppuu, huamn, juhovh
2   2334p   Zompie by Fingersoft
3   2099p   Cinnamon Beats by tAAt 2007
4   2089p   A Tribute to the Rolling Boulder by Kloonigames
5   1974p   Sylph Wind by Pieslice Productions

As you can see I was fourth. I lost by mere 10 points to Cinnamon Beats by tAAt / Secret Exit / Skinflake. It’s a bit of a shame, but I’m happy that Cinnamon Beats got the prize because it’s much better and more innovative game than Rolling Boulder. You should actually download the game and try it out (You can download it from pouet.net).

Btw. I own a big thanks to Jetro Lauha (who is the other guy behind Cinnamon Beats) for making my Assembly gamedev presentation video (which unfortunately wasn’t shown on the big screen). And I’m not praising his game because he made my presentation video, but because it’s actually a great game. I hope Jetro and Jani continue the development of Cinnamon Beats.

And my congrats to Aroppuu, juhovh and huamn for winning the competition. And congrats to the guys of Fingersoft for the silver medal. I’m sure next year, we’ll have an even more fierce competition.

And now for some completely random links. This has nothing to do with Assembly what so ever, but it has something to do with Rolling Boulder. During the weekend I bumped into this youtube video. It demonstrates how to “cheat” in Rolling Boulder. It’s actually pretty fun to watch, but I recommend testing the game before watching this über technique. I found the video from fun-motion’s forums (thanks to Amynue for sharing his technique with us).

This is my 12th done-in-under-a-week game. It’s also my Assembly gamedev competition entry. Which means it was published on the Assembly website a bit earlier than it is published here. And thus it “leaked” to the internet and was blogged already by the2bears, indygamer and soldat movies.

The game is open to harsh critique and wish me good luck at the Assembly gamedev combo.

A Tribute to the Rolling Boulder (from Raiders of the Lost Ark)

Download
Boulder_r2.zip (5,1 Mb) (Release 2)

Instructions
You play as the infamous rolling boulder. Roll over the archeologists and protect the honor of the golden idols of fertility.

If your honor drops to zero (honor is indicated by the bar in the bottom of the screen) the game is over. The honor will decrease if there are archeologists touching the golden idols.

Arrow keys will move the boulder.

Esc – will quit the game.
Alt + F4 – Will quit the game.
Alt + enter – Will toggle fullscreen.

Credits
Game Design, Code & Gfx: Petri Purho ( petri.purho (at) gmail.com )

Music: Der Plan – Jungle Village. The song is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 1.0 -license.

The graphics are under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

The intro background image was created by modifying the following images: Big Rock by buhny used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
Jungle by daveypea used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
Jungle by jamesfarnham used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
First letter from Madeleine by bryan campen used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 license.

The background image was created by modifying the following images: Batu Caves, 16 of 17 by kian esquire used under the Creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0.
guarding angkor by shapeshift used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0.
Jungle Temple by Ianz used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0

Some modified textures from Image After were used.

Sound effects: Tire rolling.wav by Pfujimoto,
rockmisc.wav by mystiscool,
rustle.paper_3.aif by batchku,
Funky Screams -pack by Lithe-Fider,
neck_crack.wav by Halleck,
neck_crack_pure.aif by Halleck,
Bone Cracking.wav by DalomarGrimm,
bookslapthud2.aif by buzzbox,
whip,slap,belt,punch.wav by scarbelly25

All sound effects are used under Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License.

The game uses Erin Catto’s Box2D physics engine.

Inspiration source: Experimental Gameplay Project.

A Tribute to the Rolling Boulder (from Raiders of the Lost Ark) uses: SDL, SDL_Image, SDL_Mixer and SDL_RotoZoom

A Tribute to the Rolling Boulder (from Raiders of the Lost Ark) was created by a fan of the Indiana Jones films, and is in no way affiliated with Lucasfilm or Paramount Pictures.

Edit 01/08/2007: Sorry about the missing download link. Right now I’m in France and I had the blog post on automatic publish so I totally missed the missing download link.