2016 was a relatively unproductive year - only two games released as opposed to five in 2015 and seven in 2014. The first half of the year I spent procrastinating from one project, and the second half I spent focusing on another to the exclusion of all else. That said, what I did work on I’m really happy with.
This is part one of my 2016 retrospective. The other parts:
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.
To celebrate the launch of A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, Sokobond is 50% off for the next week.
It’s also newly released onto GOG, if that’s your store of choice! Read more about that over on GOG.com.
Get Sokobond for 50% off from:
If you’ve enjoyed the wintry puzzling of making snowmen, try mastering the bonds of chemistry. What Sokobond lacks in adorableness and hugs, it more than makes up for in elegance. No chemistry knowledge required!
The pay what the temperature is launch sale for A Good Snowman is still ongoing also! The temperature today was 10°C, so the price today is $10: 20% off!
You’ve got until March 10th to take a gamble on the weather before the game goes back to its normal boring price of $12. Follow @AGoodSnowman on Twitter for daily price updates if you’re looking for a bargain!
itch.io is the most indie-friendly game store out there, so it makes me very happy to say that you can now buy Sokobond there, for the usual price of $10.
You can also still buy the game via the Humble widget on sokobond.com and from Steam.
The game has also been updated on all stores with a few improvements. In this version:
Controller support on Mac
Controller support on Linux
Improve stability of Linux installer
Tweak level ‘Playful’ to reduce likelihood of unintended solutions
Stop repeated lagging on some machines
Various minor improvements
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(Source: draknek.itch.io)
So with the recent Steam release of Sokobond, a few people were comparing it to Atomix, a game from 1990 about moving atoms around to make molecules.
The first thing to say about this is that it’s totally understandable! They’re both tile-based puzzle games about moving atoms around to form molecules. What could be more similar?
Well it turns out they play incredibly differently, but that’s not even the point here.
Sokobond is now available on Steam! Get it now!
You can pick it up for 20% off for the next week, or if you already own the game, you can go here to find your Steam key.
It’s also now available on the Humble Store, or as always, from www.sokobond.com.
If you enjoy the soothing soundtrack, Ryan just made it available on BandCamp.
Sokobond is an elegantly designed puzzle game about chemistry. It’s logical, minimalist, and beautiful.
Anyone who buys the game between now and the 21st, or who already owns the game, will receive a Steam key when it’s released.
