Okay, plot twist: after a few years of hobbyist game development, I finally took the plunge and became a game design student. Who knows if this was a bright move- like I plan that far ahead anyway. Like I would want a boring normal job anyway See me becoming a lawyer? Or a surgeon? That's what I'm talking about.
But that means more games to play for you guys, so what am I complaining? Let me all tell you about my first project- a board game. A fairly open assignment where you can create pretty much anything you want as long as it's possible to play analogically. So I went the way and created an Carcassonne inspired board game which I dubbed Edge of the Sky. In a world of island floating above the clouds, a contest is held to decide the next ruler of the kingdom of the Sky. They need to find islands with strong elemental power. However, part of the rules it that you can't bring a map, so they'll need to do it with what you can spot from inside your air balloon.
But that means more games to play for you guys, so what am I complaining? Let me all tell you about my first project- a board game. A fairly open assignment where you can create pretty much anything you want as long as it's possible to play analogically. So I went the way and created an Carcassonne inspired board game which I dubbed Edge of the Sky. In a world of island floating above the clouds, a contest is held to decide the next ruler of the kingdom of the Sky. They need to find islands with strong elemental power. However, part of the rules it that you can't bring a map, so they'll need to do it with what you can spot from inside your air balloon.
In terms of game mechanics, players roll a dice each turn, which decides the amount of fuel that can be used for that turn. Plain sky tiles are cheap to travel through, while land is costly, but on land you can find those elements. At the end of the turn, if you are on the edge of the current map, you must place tiles around you to grow the map. When land tiles are placed, they are 'unexplored', and list what element it *could* contain if that tile was to be explored. If you move over it, you flip the tile, revealing the actual element. You get a point by finding three of the same elements on the same floating island, but here's the tricky part: the one who finds the third one gets the point, without credit to the player(s) who found the first two. This will allow you to play the Indiana Jones antagonist, swiping the golden statue out of his hand just as he's about to claim it!
There's a lot more to it, like teleporting, attacking, and strategy, but I hope this is a good summary of what to expect! I'll throw it live on GameJolt and itch.io after final playtesting. Remember that this is a analog game, so you'll need to switch your printer on and get some scissors. And some friends, of course!
But I haven't been sitting still on the hobbyist front! Specifically, I'm working on porting jumpNULL to Android. It's a bit of a experiment, trying to get stuff working & published on mobile, and jumpNULL was the best candidate for the port, with most of my other games requiring too specific controls or too much work otherwise. I'm trying all sorts of cool stuff, adding some secrets, optimizing it and adding Google Analytics so I can exactly see which rooms everyone visited. This game just needs some final polish before you can enjoy it, so please, do stay tuned!
There's a lot more to it, like teleporting, attacking, and strategy, but I hope this is a good summary of what to expect! I'll throw it live on GameJolt and itch.io after final playtesting. Remember that this is a analog game, so you'll need to switch your printer on and get some scissors. And some friends, of course!
But I haven't been sitting still on the hobbyist front! Specifically, I'm working on porting jumpNULL to Android. It's a bit of a experiment, trying to get stuff working & published on mobile, and jumpNULL was the best candidate for the port, with most of my other games requiring too specific controls or too much work otherwise. I'm trying all sorts of cool stuff, adding some secrets, optimizing it and adding Google Analytics so I can exactly see which rooms everyone visited. This game just needs some final polish before you can enjoy it, so please, do stay tuned!
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