In 2015, I decided to keep a record of what media I consumed, with a short record of my thoughts about each (one or two sentences only).
This is every boardgame and real world game I played. Partway through I started recording how many players each game was played with.
The complete 2015 review:
In 2015, I decided to keep a record of what media I consumed, with a short record of my thoughts about each (one or two sentences only).
This is every videogame I played for longer than 30 minutes, and some of the games I spent less than that with (I was very inconsistent recording brief play sessions or prototype/game jam games).
The complete 2015 review:
In 2015, I decided to keep a record of what media I consumed, with a short record of my thoughts about each (one or two sentences only).
This is the list of all the films I watched, and also the very few TV shows I watched more than one episode of.
The complete 2015 review:
In 2015, I decided to keep a record of what media I consumed, with a short record of my thoughts about each (one or two sentences only).
First up is the shortest list, all the books I read this year.
The complete 2015 review:
2015 has been a pretty good year for me! I started it ready to release a long-term project, and I’ve ended it not hating that game and having released it on multiple platforms. I haven’t starved, run out of money, or died while travelling, and I’ve been able to hang out with old friends and meet new ones.
This is part one of my 2015 retrospective. The other parts are available here:
I love puzzle games. But it’s not beating them that’s the exciting part: it’s understanding them.
Whether mulling over a cryptic crossword or somersaulting through Portal’s portals, there’s a moment of epiphany which, for me, pretty much transcends all other moments in gaming. But how do you design a puzzle to best provoke that eureka moment? What gives a puzzle its aesthetic, its pace and texture? Why does one puzzle feel thrilling while another feels like a flat mental grind?
Marsh Davies interviewed me, Jonathan Blow, and Jonathan Whiting about the art of good puzzle design. It’s a good read!
This has really been the year of the snowman, this game bookending everything I’ve worked on this year. Back in February, we released A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build for PC with our “pay what the temperature is” sale gimmick. The response to the game was very positive, though sales weren’t amazing.
This game is as cute and charming as it is only due to the hard work of Benjamin Davis - who, it should be noted, not only did all the artwork but most of the programming too. Many thanks also to Ryan Roth for composing the beautiful soundscape for the world.
Also worth thanking: Droqen and Ian Snyder for a late night conversation that led to the bonus dream world puzzle. Hannah Nicklin and Adam Dixon wrote tweets for the @AGoodSnowman Twitter account. Jake Strasser made the well-received launch trailer. Noyb came up with the name of the game very early into development: it was perfect and stuck instantly. And many others besides! True story: one of the reason there’s no in-game “thanks to” section is because the list would be really long and I knew there would be a good chance of unfairly forgetting people.
It was maybe not the wisest decision to do a game jam with limited internet the day after releasing A Good Snowman, but regardless I’m happy with the game that came out of it.
My first thought when sitting down to make a puzzle game about trains was “but Cute Train already exists!” So I stole the art from that game but made something different with it.
The end result is my least block-pushing-like game in several years, though it’s still a rock hard puzzle game so it’s not so different in the end.
This is from 2014 but it wasn’t posted until this year because Harry wanted to edit it (n.b. it has not been edited). You can watch the two of us chat about our game Sokobond, at the time recently released on Steam.
I know I keep pushing this back, but Sokobond will be coming to iOS and Android in early 2016.
Staying in Toronto during Ludum Dare, I tried two collaborations which both fell through (though both people made something: Lalyvilley & The Rod of God). I then decided to make something on my own, and happily that turned out better.
This is a short, solid experience. An observation I’ve made in the past is that gravity is a fantastic game mechanic for tile-based puzzle games (see Jelly no Puzzle, Tetrobot and Co., and my own You’re Pulleying My Leg), and this further confirms my theory.
Despite the familiar 5x5 pixel graphics, this game isn’t made in Puzzlescript - it significantly predates it. I made it waaay back in November 2012, and then sat on it for two and a half years because it was never as good as I knew it could be.
The difficulty and complexity ramps up incredibly quickly - something which I think I could do a better job of now. However, the only way to improve that would be to redesign the level from scratch, which would be a massive amount of work. Eventually I admitted to myself what I always knew on some level - that I was never going to go back to it and that it’s better to have an imperfect version released than a perfect version no one can play.
Thanks to Michael Brough and others for repeatedly poking me to release it. And thanks to Bart Bonte for choosing it as one his top 10 web games of 2015.
This is the best free thing I’ve made in ages, and if looked prettier I would probably make it not free. However, I think there’s something about the low-res graphics that help sell the weirdness of the mechanics - what’s with these skipping stones that are almost the size of a person yet can be bounced along the water with ease?
I started it at the Develop game jam in Brighton, with the theme of “pebbles”. It owes an lot to the background inspiration of being around people making throwaway comments, and initially I didn’t think it was going anywhere. But each time I tested it I found something new that was catching people out that I’d previously dismissed as trivial, and eventually it grew from a small 24-hour-sized thing to an all-consuming month-long project.
My main regret here is that it looks so similar to Mirror Isles. I’m not sure how I’d best distinguish them though - I can’t make the islands grassy because I have green lilypads that need to be visually distinct, and in any case sandy desert islands just look right.
The main game is satisfying on its own, but I think the hidden treasure is what makes this really special. If you enjoyed the dream puzzles in A Good Snowman, or metapuzzles in general, it’s worth trying your hand at a bit of treasure hunting.
Made for Ludum Dare (theme: “you are the monster”), I was inspired by Aaaah! I’m Being Attacked by a Giant Tentacle! to make something similarly tentacle-y.
It’s playable: you can move yourself around and it has a goal state. However it’s incredibly unintuitive, and labourious once you’ve worked out the controls. I didn’t see how to turn it into something good, so I left it at this prototype.
After scrapping the tentacle idea, I instead decided to make something inspired by Ben’s game about being a gelatinous cube (which he didn’t end up finishing unfortunately).
The art isn’t as squishy as I originally intended, but I think the sound effects make up for it.
This has a more gradual difficulty curve than most of my other Puzzlescript games, which is maybe not a bad thing. After submitting the game to Ludum Dare I made a few more levels, which I initially kept as bonus content exclusively for Patreon backers. These are now included in the game for everyone.
I spoke about A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build at Fantastic Arcade. Topics of discussion I ramble through: how the game works, a science lesson about snowballs, the importance of hugging, some tools we used to make the game, and secrets (ooh). It’s fun, mostly unplanned, and worth a watch if you want an idea of the weird vibe of Fantastic Arcade.
Getting the game properly optimised for mobile and getting the controls to feel right was a hefty amount of work, but it all worked out nicely in the end. We came out just in time for Christmas, less than two years after starting the project in the first place.
Player feedback is positive, generally people like the controls, like the puzzles, like the atmosphere. We tweaked the post-ending hints towards the dream puzzles so that more people would realise they were there, so I think there’s even fewer “this is too short to be worth that price” complaints.
Mobile sales have been good; we’re not millionaires but we made more on mobile in a week than we did on PC in nine months. Word of mouth has been pretty good to us, though of course the bulk of those sales came from storefront features.
Exciting news: just in time for Christmas, A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build is finally out for iPhone, iPad and Android devices!
It’s available now worldwide for $4.99, with no ads or in-app purchases.
I hope you enjoy making snowmen as much as we’ve enjoyed making the game!
The other announcement is that we’re permanently reducing the price of the game on PC to $10! While we still firmly believe it’s worth $12, there seems to be a big psychological difference between the two prices, which will only be exacerbated by the existence of a $5 mobile version.
Think of it this way: instead of a temporary sale, this is a Christmas gift to all PC gamers - a gift that’s not just for Christmas. As ever, you can buy the PC version at this new lower price from agoodsnowman.com, Steam, or itch.io.
I’m happy to announce that A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build is coming out on December 10th for iPhone, iPad and Android devices!
It’s been a bit of a wait, but I promise it’ll be worth it. We’ve put a lot of effort into making the game look and feel just as good on phones/tablets as on PC.
I have a favour to ask: if you’re already a fan of the game, it would mean a lot if could write a message to be shared with your friends when we release. We’re using a service called Nouncy for this: it’s a service for scheduling a tweet or facebook post for the future, and won’t post anything except what you write yourself.
Regarding Sokobond: I don’t want to announce a specific date in case I need to push it back, but it should be January 2016! Watch this spot.
Skipping Stones To Lonely Homes is my latest game! It’s also the most ambitious and hardest game I’ve made in a long while.
If you’re looking for a challenge, there are rumours of buried treasure scattered across the Lilypad Isles. Will you be the first to find them all and sail away with them?
As ever, if you want to support me making more free games like this one, you can support me on Patreon.
Monstrous Mini Mazes is a game that I made two and a half years ago but never released until now.
People kept telling me that it’s cool and that I should release it, but I’ve always resisted - I know that the level design needs to be better, I want to improve the graphics, maybe there could be some optional/secret goals that make it even harder, etc., etc.
I’ve known for a long time that I was unlikely to do any of that, of course. To make a game like this you need to be able to keep every piece in your head at once, and that knowledge hasn’t been in my head for quite some time now. Trying to resume working on it now I’d be basically starting from square one as far as level design goes. I suppose it’s a testament to the idea that until now I’ve never brought myself to rule that out.
It’s not perfect but it is interesting (and it is hard) - here it is. I hope you enjoy exploring the Monstrous Mini Mazes!
Notes:
If you’re in New York, there’s a couple of chances coming up to play A Good Snowman alongside some other cool games!
Tonight, Killscreen is running an event called Playlist. It’s a free monthly curated arcade in central Manhattan, a chance to play some weird and interesting digital experiences including A Good Snowman.
And this weekend is the Different Games conference, all about diversity and inclusivity in games. It’s an honour to have A Good Snowman selected as one of the games they’ve curated for the arcade.
If you’re in New York and don’t have plans for Friday/Saturday, Different Games looks to be a brilliant and friendly event. I can’t make it there but Benjamin Davis (co-developer of A Good Snowman, responsible for most of its cuteness) will be around so do say hello if you meet him!
