Kloonigames

The Global Game Jam ended yesterday. So far I’ve seen few really interesting games surface from the what was probably the biggest Game Jam ever.

I participated the Nordic Game Jam again, second year in a row. There were a decent number of indie friends there and we had a blast. This year was way more stress free than the last one. Most of us took things a bit less seriously this time around. Which was a good thing. Here’s a photo from our cubicle in the sky:

We tagged the white board and claimed the cubicle with drawings of us and male reproductive organs.

One of the reasons why my output of prototypes last year was so slow was that I’ve become somewhat scared of publishing my games here on this blog. After releasing Crayon Physics Deluxe I realized that a lot of people where reading my blog. Lot more than before. When I started out making prototypes there was literally no one downloading my games. I felt more liberated and creative. I had the license to suck, I could swear, do games about any subject I wanted to without worrying that there is some mom who wanted to buy Crayon Physics Deluxe clicked on the blog only to be surrounded by profanity.

So to give you all the metaphorical finger here’s the game me Jonatan “cactus” Söderström did during the Nordic Game Jam.

I was responsible for the graphics and Jonatan did the coding. Our game turned out to be an “interesting” one. To be honest it’s pretty bad as a game. But the concept behind it was somewhat interesting and the execution is certainly disturbing. I’m kinda glad we decided to go all the way with the game. Literally.

You can go and download the game from GlobalGameJam website. BE WARNED THE GAME IS SOMEWHAT NSFW (there’s a penis in the game). Here’s link to the game

The theme of the jam was to make games about deception. We decided to experiment again with what defines a game and ended up with an interesting experimentation.

I recommend that if you’re interested you try to the game and don’t read the spoilers hidden underneath:
So our idea was to do game that didn’t really have any real rules or a goal. It’s all deception. You can interact with the game and you’ll get points randomly from doing things. There are no real rules to the game. It ends at a random point. The game is open to any interpretation and we’d love to hear yours.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is now 1 year old. I can hardly believe it.

In October Kyle and Ron did this experimental pay what you want sale for the 1 year birthday of World of Goo (most excellent game btw.). In the results of that sale they pointed out that they would like other developers to try this model as well to get a bunch of different results. I thought the 1 year birthday of Crayon Physics Deluxe was as good time as any to do this so here it is:

Pay what ever you like birthday sale for Crayon Physics Deluxe. You’ll get the full game if you pay anything. We accept all amounts of money. Pay 1 cent and you’ll get the game. Pay 5 dollars and you’ll make a me slightly happier man and you’ll get your game. Pay the usual 19.95$ and you’ll make me as happy as the chimp in that photo. The sale ends January 15th.

The good folks on Steam have bundled up a bunch of indie games and are selling them for ridiculously low price of 29.99$ (or 19.99$). Crayon Physics Deluxe is one of them as is World of Goo, Braid, Audiosurf, Blueberry Garden, Everyday Shooter and more.

In other news, I’ll upload the improved No More Sweden game on Monday. In the mean while you can download it from here.

Splash screen by Hideous

Last weekend I traveled to Malmö Sweden to participate a game jam called No More Sweden. This was the second time the jam was organized and it had grown from our humble begins of 10 people to a party of 40 or so. It was a sweet jam and I had a lot of fun, meeting old friends and making new ones. And making games as well.

We had a web-camera that was broadcasting video from the party place to the internets. So now thanks to advanced technology you can experience exactly what No More Sweden was like if you were a web camera running at the speed of 1 frame per every minute.

Big thanks to Martin “grapefrukt” Jonasson and other organizers for the work they did to make this happen. As a sign of my appreciation I’ll post an image of Martin with his mustaches on.

Photo credits to Data

We also made a game together with Martin. I was responsible for the coding and Martin played the part of a graphics designer. And he played it well, going as far as to demand such features as: “You have to use the color burn filter when you render this sprite” and “We have to have dynamic lightning effects in our game”. The game design fell into place pretty nicely, even though when we created a quick a mock up of our original idea we had to scrap it, because it sucked hard.

Here’s a pic of me battling with some bugs in the code of our game:

Photo credits to Data

We’ll release the game after I’ve fixed few things with it. I’d expect it to be out on the 1st of August 🙂

Here’s what No More Sweden looked like from the point of view of my laptop’s desktop.

Ever wondered how to prototype a game really quickly. I decided to record my work progress with a tool called ChronoLapse. So here’s what it looks like when I work on a prototype.

The game that I created can be downloaded from here: https://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/sticky_notes