Operation K.A.T.B.

Me and my friend Polly teamed up to do a game for Ruin Jam! It's a sorta-DOS-y 2D platformer about exploring a planet to find your lost crew, with a satirical edge befitting the Jam's theme. We spent about two weeks on it, and I think it turned out really well!

I did most of the code work since I have a lot of experience with that sort of thing, but the main idea, the structure, the art, and a lot of the level designs were all Polly's. I had an absolute blast working on it, and I hope to do more co-op projects in the future, with Polly and with other artists.

You can play it for free over on my games page or at Itch.io. Give it a look! (Also maybe take a look at the other Ruin Jam games!)

ANTS: A Love Story

I made a new game for the Ludum Dare 30 three day jam, and this time I actually finished it on time! It's a really cute, small-scale block pushing game with a deliberately tiny verb-set and pleasantly lax difficulty. It shouldn't take too long to play through (maybe five or ten minutes), although there is a "high score" of sorts that can be improved with more efficient play. 

Give it a look over on its Ludum Dare page, and I hope you like it!

#welovegamedevs

There's a huge upswell of positivity on Twitter right now in #welovegamedevs, so I'm gonna take some time to name some of the developers (and a few of the critics) whose work and presence I'm especially thankful for. 

Before we start, note that this list is not exhaustive! There are many, many more amazing people fighting back against all of the horrible toxic evil bullshit in this culture and creating beautiful experiences. The best thing we can do is express these sorts of sentiments all the time. So maybe next time you find a cool game on itch.io or GameJolt and really enjoy it, take some time to send a nice note to the person who made it. It really does make a difference!

So! Thanks to anna anthropy, for changing the way I appreciate video games with Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, ZZT, and A Game Design Vocabulary. (The last one was co-written by Naomi Clark, so thanks to her too.) Your games have made me smile, better understand my kinks, and be a better human being. Thanks for pointing me at a ton of amazing games with your criticism, and thanks for maintaining Annarchive and preserving this medium’s history.

Thanks to merritt kopas, for literally every single game you've ever made, because I love all of them. Thanks for Forest Ambassador, my favorite games curation page on the web. Seeing me and my fiancée’s game there was a tremendous honor.

Thanks to Jesse Venbrux, for helping me realize that individual human beings could make video games. He was the first auteur I paid attention too, and after playing Karoshi 2.0 when I was 14 I went out of my way to find everything he’d ever released. It made me more sensitive to the way people can use games to express their own unique voice. I have a feeling a lot of people figured this out with Seiklus, so thanks to Clysm too.

Thanks to Stephen Lavelle for crafting literally hundreds of perplexing, profound experiences.

Thanks to Mark Overmars for developing Game Maker, the software I’ve used to make games since I was twelve years old. It really is a great program, and I’m content to use it it for the foreseeable future.

Thanks to Liz Ryerson, for making great art. Everything you touch -- music, games, blog posts, let's play videos, glitch art -- is imbued with tremendous compassion and honesty.

Thanks to Amy Dentata for your fearless and transgressive game design. Thanks for having a nice chat with me on Twitter about how many indie games end with the protagonist jumping to their death. Thanks for Rock Bottom, the ultimate indie game about the protagonist jumping to their death.

Thanks to Aevee Bee for your amazing criticism. ZEAL is so damned incredible and important, and I’m honored to have been a part of it. Thanks to Arden for making Kindness Coins, and thanks in advance for Date or Die. And thanks to both of you for being so cool and fun to talk to on our panel for IndiE3. I feel like we could’ve chatted for ten times as long and not run out of interesting things to talk about.

Thanks to Christine Love for one of the best Twitter feeds out there. It’s actually appalling that I haven’t played any of your games yet, and I intend to rectify that before too long.

Thanks to Nina Freeman for making cute, human works of art. How do you do It and Ladylike are especially wonderful, and I can’t wait to see what else you make in the future.

Thanks to Daniel Remar, mostly for Hero Core. God I fucking love Hero Core.

Thanks to Loren Schmidt for making one of my favorite platformers ever, Star Guard. Thanks for all of your other work too!

Thanks to Eva Problems for making Sabbat, which is literally a masterpiece and all of you should buy it right now. Her Symphony of the Night fan story for ZEAL is transcendent.

Thanks to Nicklas Nygren for the dozens and dozens of wonderful Knytt Stories I’ve played over the years. He made a tool that gave people a voice, and that’s the most valuable thing in the world.

Thanks to Andi McClure for making so many weird and beautiful experiences. 

Thanks to Michael Brough for being the best game designer in the world.

Thanks to Leon Arnott for your work on Twine, because Twine is so damned important and everyone involved in its upkeep is giving so much to the medium. (Also thanks for making Tiny Sorceress, one of the funniest games I've ever played.)

Thanks to Paul Hack for letting me know what it feels like to have my game covered by the press. I literally ran around in circles in my front yard shouting in celebration when I saw Quarantine on the front page of IndieGames.com, so rest assured it was very meaningful to me.

Thanks to TheCatamites for making ten million billion cool, weird games. I still remember how humbled and honored I felt seeing Quarantine on a list of recommended freeware games alongside Lake of Roaches.

Thanks to EJRTairne for all of the fantastic chats on Twitter, for writing some truly wonderful criticism over the years, for making Builder, and for pointing me at some really great games!

Thanks to Rhete, Polly, and Frezno for being my friends.

Thanks to Jake Clover, Hubol, Aaron Steed, Ian Snyder, and Noyb.

Thanks to Ben Esposito, Tim Rogers, Mattie Brice, Daniel Benmergui, Terry Cavanagh, Matt Thorson, Droqen, Jeff Minter, Amon26, and Molleindustria.

Thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto, Reiko Kodama, Keiji Inafune, Yuji Horii, Yasumi Matsuno, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Nobuya Nakazato, Yoshinori Kitase, Daisuke Amaya, KIKIYAMA, and Gunpei Yokoi.

Thanks to my fiancée Anna, love of my life and game designer extraordinaire.

Thanks to all of the game developers, and all of the players and critics who support them. Thanks to everyone working to make this medium worthwhile, even when every facet of this toxic industry is designed to reject them.

Thanks to all of the people carving out a space in this wasteland and making it their own.

And, obviously, thanks to Zoe Quinn.

General Update! (IndiE3 Panel, IGDA Article, Let's Play Videos)

Here's an update on some of the stuff I've been up to as of late!

I'm getting married! That's pretty fantastic!

Secondly, Dance Party, the game I made with my bride-to-be, got featured on Forest Ambassador, one of my favorite game curation sites (updated by one of my favorite game designers, merritt kopas.)

Third! I participated in the Effective Drama in Video Games Panel for IndiE3 with Aevee Bee and Arden. It went exceedingly well, and I'm very happy to have gotten the chance to talk about video games with some really smart people! Later on I got the chance to write up a summary of the panel for the IGDA newsletter, which you can read here. 

And lastly, I took part in a Let's Play competition for the Sliders 'n Socks web forum. I wound up recording four Let's Plays that I'm really proud of:

• All five of Matt Aldrige's La La Land games, a collection of surreal fever-dream fables.
• Amy Dentata's apocalyptic and uncomfortably mundane A Night in the Woods.
• Rhete's arcade opus Super Xalaxer.
• And my favorite game (and video) of the bunch, Liz Ryerson's immaculate, agonizing Problem Attic. (Content note: this one goes to some pretty dark places, since the game deals in part with sexual assault and I try to engage with it frankly.)

As for the competition, I got second-to-last place, and I'm not at all bitter about it thanks for asking. 

IndiE3 Week and anna anthropy's emotica

It's Monday (sort of) which means it's officially IndiE3 week! This new event, seemingly brought into existence by sheer force of will by TronMaximum, promises to highlight over a hundred interesting new indie games and host over thirty panels by a variety of distinguished game designers and critics. Check out the full schedule! I've even got a panel in the works myself for Wednesday night at 9PM, cohosted by Aevee Bee and General Ironicus. Be there or be square!

Anyway, as a way to celebrate this whole enterprise, I want to make a point to celebrate some free indie games I really, really like this week. I'll be posting a new one each day during IndiE3, so be sure to check in if you're looking for some rad games to play.

Entry number one: anna anthropy's emotica. It's framed as a modern play on ZZT (the subject of her new book), with emoji instead of ASCII art. There's no goal; all you're meant to do is walk around and enjoy a lovingly crafted world. There are gnomes, demons, casinos, petting zoos, mushrooms, secret castle torture chambers, art galleries, and all sorts of other delightful sights, all rendered purely in emoji. It looks really nice, and the attention to sound is excellent as well. It's a very happy game, and that's something that's especially pleasant to see during E3's endless coverage of morose manshooters.

This game is also special to me because it's what inspired me to get off my butt and finish the dance game I've been working on and off on with my girlfriend since January. I'm extremely happy with the final result, and in a way I have emotica to thank.

You can give emotica a play right over here. While you're at it, why not pick up her new book? I haven't picked up my copy yet, but if her other work (Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, Star Wench) is any indication, you're in for a wonderful time.

John and Anna are having a DANCE PARTY and it's pretty fun I guess??

The love of my life and I just finished putting together a new game for all of you! It's sort of the best thing I've ever worked on ever? Give it a play!

Nintendo Project Resumed - Mega Man 2

I wrote another guest piece! This one's on Mega Man 2, and it's hosted by Nintendo Project Resumed. It's sort of a companion piece to my Fugitive article for ZEAL, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

You can read my piece here.

Nintendo Project Resumed is a blog series by my internet buddy Frezno, and it's a followup to Phil Sandifer's The Nintendo Project. Both are devoted to playing and writing up every game for the original NES.

My article is part of a series on the original three Mega Man games. The first was written by Frezno, the second by me, and the third which has yet to be posted is by Phil Sandifer himself! It's really cool to be in the company of such talent, and I hope to work more with Frezno in the future.