Hello everyone! Before anything else, I wanted to tell you a little bit about who I am.
I am a teenage indie game designer (and author) from the USA. I have been homeschooled all of my life in a good Christian home. I really believe that God has blessed me with a creative mind and I hope that shines through in my work.
So far I have made 12 full games, most of which will eventually come onto this site for download. (Under my belt as of the time of this writing: 6 arcade-style games, 3 puzzle-platformers, two true platformers, and an interactive music visualizer.) I’m planning to do a lot more, though!
Every game that I’ve made so far was designed with the Game Maker software. I’ve been working with it since late 2005 and I completed my first full game (“Snackman”) in April 2006. Over the years, I’ve learned several tricks of the trade so my newer products are a lot better!
Now for my other hobby: writing. So far I’ve written 34 chapter books in a series about my dog, as well as 2 short stories and a poem or two. A lot of this will probably never come onto this site, but you never know.
I finished my first chapter book back in December 2004, and at one point I remember writing two or three in a day! (They were about 20 pages each, but still…) My most popular books in the series about my dog were numbers #1 and #30, the latter of which involving a rhyming goose named Mother. I sent them both to a well-known author and he responded back positively! Not too shabby for a ten-year-old, huh?
Well, that concludes my introduction. I hope you keep reading my blog. I’ll regularly update it with game/literature news, game design tips, and occasionally just some random musings. Hope you like it!
NOTE: All of my games require Microsoft Windows 98 or later to run!
Okay, my idea from yesterday evening didn’t work out. I’m not entering the Ludum Dare after all. Oh well.
I have learned quite a bit from this, though, plus I’ve animated a cool player sprite that looks better than any previous computer-drawn graphic I’ve made. Also, working on this little project has gotten me a bit more motivated for game development. So maybe you’ll see some awesome stuff from me soon.
Until I have something to say again…farewell, readers.
So after a day of designing, what do I have to show for it? Surprisingly little.
I managed to draw and animate a player sprite, and that little feller has been in a bunch of different protoypes today. I didn’t like / couldn’t do any of the gameplay styles I tried out today…until tonight, when I whipped up a small prototype that might manage to work itself out into a cool game tomorrow. We’ll see.
I’ll post again tomorrow on whether or not this new idea of mine was an epic fail.
And sorry for the lack of screenshots. There just wasn’t anything to really show.
EDIT: There is now.
Not a great shot (reduced a bit for blog layout reasons), but good enough for a demonstration.
I’m in the process of working on a game for the Ludum Dare 16 contest – theme being “Exploration”. Whether it will get finished or not, it’s still a good opportunity to actually work on something.
As for progress on the game I mentioned in the last blog post… there’s almost none. Ran out of new ideas for it, but I still plan to return to it at some point.
If I get any decent amount of work done on my contest WIP, I’ll post some screenshots later on today.
It’s almost been a month since my last post. I just hadn’t had anything to say. But now at last, I return with news — I’m working on a new game! *applause*
The new project is actually something that I was working on back in August, but got so frustrated with a coding bug that I just gave up and moved on. However, recently I decided to return to the engine and see if I could fix that nasty little bug. And I did. So now with that out of the way, I’m going to do my best to finish this game.
Back when I was originally working on this, I spent a large amount of time working on developer tools for the game, just for my (nerdy) personal enjoyment. So now I have a considerably impressive level editor system designed that will probably help quite a bit in the development of the game. (And I’ll probably include it in-game for player use as well.)
What is this game, you ask? I shall not say. You’ll have to wait and see…
Remember that short story I wrote early this month? Well, it recieved a 1st Place Blue Ribbon (for my age group, anyway) in the Fine Arts showcase, despite being a stupid story about narwhals and weasels. Pretty cool!
In other news, I was looking through some old game-related stuff I had drawn a few years ago and got several game ideas. We’ll see how they work out.
I wrote a short story yesterday for a local Fine Arts student showcase and thought I’d share it with you, my readers. Let’s hope that the judges have a sense of humor. xD
Blog updates have been slow as of late. It’s mainly because I’m not working on anything. I desperately want to make something but I’ve got no inspiration. I might make a sequel to an older game or wait until a new Game Jolt contest comes along. I dunno.
So tell me, readers, if I were to make a sequel to one of my games, which would it be?
Flip the Bear, PLUG.it.IN, Vertiglow, Psycho / Psycho2, or Suntime Mirage?
But on the bright side, the website hosting the contest (Game Jolt) launched a public beta of its advertisement revenue sharing, which means that I am now making money off of the site! So far I have made a grand total of $0.42. I’m aiming for a pack of gum by the end of the year. xD But still, that’s 42 cents I didn’t have before.
I’m indirectly making money off of my free-to-play games…who woulda thunk it?
Oh well.
