The other week I exhibited my games at Owls Interactive, an eSports event hosted at the Sheffield Wednesday Football ground. Whilst eSports was the focus, they also invited some indie game devs along to showcase their work and chat to the guests about game development in general.

This was my set up for the day. I primarily had Gravoor Infinity set up for people to have a go on but I also had Sunday Drive and a version of Pumpkin's Sky Tea which was just the shooter sections available for whenever I got sick of Gravoor and needed a break from talking about it haha. We'd been told to keep the content family friendly so that took some games off the table, but later in the day I decided to put on Politics anyway which got some huge laughs from people.

Those who follow me on social media might have seen that I posted some images of games I'm working on before the event. This was mostly so I had things to talk about for the future on the day, but I figued I would also share those plans here with you guys and talk a little about each project...

First up is Pumpkin's Sky Blast!!

This game will be a sequel to Pumpkin's Sky Tea which is more of a traditional horizontal shooter than the first. Instead of randomised enemy spawning the stages will be designed and there will be new elements such as weapon upgrades and boss fights. I also intend to implement a 2 player mode.

Politics 2 is due out before the US Presidential Elections. @hs2band have more songs we did not implement into the original title, and with the US elections coming up this year too it seemed like a no-brainer to develop a sequel.

MÆRE II is the project I am most excited about this year. It is a sequel to MÆRE except where the original was a jam game made in a week I'm spending some time to really polish this one. For starters, the game will not be scripted this time and the ghosts will appear at random. This means that no two play throughs will be the same. You can also lose in this one, so its less of a "ride" this time.

One of the things that I think makes this game so scary is that the nights run on a clock, rather than skipping forward when you fall asleep. When you sleep in this game, time still moves forward, just the player's perception of time speeds up. So whilst this is going on you may still be visited by ghosts you don't even see.

I think this has real potential to be my best game over all.

The final game I'm working on this year is Crackhouse of Illusion, the sequel to Mazza. This is half done and has been parked for some time now. I do hope to get back to it at some point soon though.

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This is probably not an exhaustive list of the games I'll be making this year. I intend to participate in ScreamJam again this year and will be making something for that in October provided I'm not burnt out from MÆRE 2. No idea what this will be yet though.

If you haven't played them, check out the original versions of the games talked about above:

and let me know which of these projects you are looking forward to and would like to hear me share more about over the coming months. :)

Sunday Drive was the first game I posted to Newgrounds in about 15 years back in February 2023.

I made it for a couple of reasons;

1. I wanted to make a project I would actually finish. So I decided to make something with a really small scope that I could complete in a couple of weeks max.
2. I wanted to learn my way around GameMaker.
3. I wanted to be able to point to a project that wasn't a decade old when I talked to people about making games.

Because of the learning aspect of this project, it is a little clunky but this morning I spent a little time just fixing the major bugs. There is a lot that can still be improved on here but I didn't want to tweak the whole game and I like this version as it is because it demonstrates my progress as a developer. I just wanted to fix the parts that made it unplayable.

I think the game is still quite fun. It also features what I consider to be a bit of an early version of the comedy later featured in Mazza and Politics although much tamer. I originally was going to call the game Twatmobile but ultimately decided to go with something a bit cleaner haha. I think if I made this game today I would have just gone with the original title and ramped up the comedy aspect. Maybe I will do a Sunday Drive 2 at some point and correct these wrongs. :)

So today is voting day here in the UK. Perfect time to play Politics before the content becomes dated haha. Its amazing to me that this game has had almost 20,000 views so far. So thanks to everyone who has supported it.

But if you've already played that or aren't a fan of political humour, maybe you'll be interested in my newest game Pumpkin's Sky Tea...

This is a simple game I made last week for Black Cat Jam, a new game jam where people have made games focused around black cats. I have my own black cat so figured it'd be a nice pallete cleanse project to make following the crude political humour displayed in Politics.

In the game you are tasked with buying and selling teas from other cat to turn a profit. You can then use your earnings to buy photos of cats. Its basically that old drug dealing game except with cats and family friendly content.

Theres also a horitizontal shooter segment where you fly between locations.

its a simple but chill game and its doing really well currently in the game jam it is competing in. Fingers crossed it might even win!

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In other news I've been invited to show off my work at Owls Interactive's Game Developers Expo in a couple of weeks. So you can expect to see some photos of my stand following the event. I'll be showcasing some of my previous games as well as some things I'm currently working on.

I'm very excited to be a part of the event. I'm told to expect a lot of students and indie game developers looking to make a name for themselves, so I hope that if they do jump on here to check out my work later they'll stick around and share their own projects themselves. I'm of the opinion that Newgrounds is the best platform for indie game devs and hobby developers, simply because the community here legitimately wants to interact with each other and grow together. To me its our greatest strength and a support network like this one is one of the most important things you can have with this hobby.

This morning I released my latest game, Politics. Which is a rhythm game where you play as a farting ass.

I used to have this vague idea for a game where there was just an ass on the screen and when you click it it farts, but I couldn’t really figure out what the game actually was beyond this small visual. The idea of turning into a rhythm game came out of wanting to do another project with my friend Ash who I used to make games with following University. Ash has recently started a new band and was looking for interesting things to do with the music outside of the typical marketing strategies. So making a rhythm game felt like a no-brainer. We decided to make it politically themed to parody the UK general elections which are currently taking place, and as we feel a lot of our current options for leaders talk out of their ass the fart theme just seemed like a good fit. 

One of the first things we did was sit and sift through a fart audio pack trying to pick out ones that sounded like specific instruments. Admittedly I wasn’t quite sure it would work, but when Ash delivered the first track with the vocals removed and the farts inserted I knew we were probably sitting on something special lol. The game contains 6 songs but we have plans to expand on this in a sequel based on the upcoming US elections.

All in all the game took us about 2 weeks of late nights to make, which is a long time to sit listening to fart music lol.

Up next I have a couple of short mini-games I want to make, as well as finishing Mazza 2 which is about 60% complete and I need to get myself back on with.

Check the game out and let us know what you think of it.

This weekend I took a break from making Mazza 2 to participate in a game jam, for which I made a new Gravoor game. Despite only being made in a handful of days, I tried to really re-invent the series with this one.

I decided I wouldn’t make another Gravoor game until I could think of something different to do with the series. Aside from a few improvements to the way the game runs it’s basically been 20 years now (holy shit lol) of solving short labyrinths but I don’t think that this is what makes Gravoor fun. I think Gravoor is at its most fun when you’re moving quickly, not when you’re trying to squeeze through tight tunnels.

Because of this I decided I’d experiment with taking the core gameplay and applying it to an endless runner. In this game there is only one endless stage that is procedurally generated and your goal is to travel as far as possible before your time runs out or you crash into a wall.

I’ve also included some new moves for Gravoor, such as drifting on sharp turns and shooting bullets to take out enemies.

I've just put the new game in the portal, so please check it out and let me know what you think, especially if you have played the old games. Do you prefer this kind of gameplay or the traditional gameplay as seen in the previous games. Would you prefer I just stop making these altogether haha?

Here is a link to the new one:

and here is the previous one to compare:

If enough people like the game I’ll continue to update it with more stage segments and power ups. It’s something fun I can just dip into every now and then when I’m taking a break from my bigger projects.

First of all I’d like to thank everyone for the great response that Mazza has had.

I don’t often talk about projects I’m working on until they’re done, because I like to have the option to drop them without anyone asking questions haha. But this year I’ve decided I’d like to try and change that mindset and open up a little more. So here I am doing just that! People who completed Mazza 1 might have noticed that I announced that Mazza will return in a game called Crackhouse of Illusion. This is what I’m currently working on.

Crackhouse of Illusion sees Mazza’s Mum sending him out on another big adventure. This time he has to bring his brother Lewie G home from the local crackhouse because his tea (thats his dinner if you’re unfamiliar with the term) is nearly done. Things aren’t so simple though as the crackhouse holds portals to a variety of enchanting locations such as a town made entirely out of fruits, Castle Knobferatu and the local industrial estate which Mazza will have to traverse in order to find his brother.

Here are a few work in progress screenshots from the game. These represent an in-development version of the game, so expect them to look a lot more polished and with more detail in the final game:

Where the first game took Mazza through primarily British locations, Crackhouse will not be limited by a basis in reality and the game will see him visit some more fantastical locations and other parts of the world. But don’t worry, as the people of South Yorkshire will be right there along with him chiming in with their opinions and the game will keep its crude sense of humour.

Since the launch of the first game I’ve made a few engine updates based on people’s feedback in the reviews. I’ve tried to address every reasonable criticism thats been thrown my way and a lot of them have already been implemented back into the original game. So thanks to everyone who has fed back! Neither game would be as good without your input.

There are some new systems being introduced into the new game as well which haven’t been back ported, such as a new dialogue system and a few new moves for Mazza.

I’m making great progress on the game, and I would expect to see it in the portal sometime at the end of April or at the start of May. The game is much more ambitious than the original, with more levels, a couple of planned boss fights and at least one mini-game. As such its taking me a bit longer to make than I typically try to spend on one project, even with the original game’s engine and assets to use as a starting point.

After this I have a few ideas I’m kicking around as potential follow up projects. I was considering a third Mazza game where Mazza goes on a British caravan holiday and has to track down a rogue seagull who has stolen his fish and chips but in all honesty I think I'll want a break from making platformers after I'm done with this one.

I’m also experimenting with some GameBoy game development which I thought might be fun to get into. But then I also want to make Mære 2 and a couple of other things haha! As you can tell I’m not short on ideas.

Anyway, hope you’ll play Mazza 2 when it comes out. I’m really looking forward to getting it in front of people. I’ll hopefully keep posting updates and try to build a habit of sharing with the community. So keep an eye on here for further news.

Took a short break from working on Mazza 2: Crackhouse of Illusion today to try experimenting with getting something compatible with a mobile device. The two most recent Gravoor games seemed like perfect test subjects for this. Both of these games should now work on your mobile or touch screen devices.

I first started making videogames in the early 2000s, using software such as The Games Factory and Flash to develop short games that I'd distribute either amongst my school friends on burned CDs or online via Flash game portals. Back then I'd make about a game a month. Almost all of them were terrible but I had fun making and sharing them.

One of my earliest games was a top down shooter called "The Arnold Schwarzenegger Tree Game" that I made with the stock sprites that came with Games Factory. Quite frankly, the game was terrible. In it you played as a generic action hero who just happened to look a little "Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque" battling an oak tree which would fly all around the room firing bullets at the player. If you got hit you died, if you shot the tree yourself it would lose health and eventually be defeated. 

Noone that I know of ever defeated the tree, but me and my brother still had a great laugh trying. The game was broken, I doubt it would even pass the judgement process on here, and yet over 20 years later I still remember it and the great time we had playing the ridiculous thing. My games eventually became bigger and better (but no less broken), especially as I moved on to Flash.

"Time War" - A Flash game I made in 2005.

Sadly (or perhaps fortunately) the vast majority of these games are now lost to time, either because I didn't have to foresight to back them up or because I purposefully scrubbed them from the internet for the stupid reason that I did not want the older ones to bring down my more recent work. A decision I regret as an adult because now I understand that: 

1. Everyone makes terrible shit when they're starting out,
2. No one cares that you made a few bad games.

My output came to a stand-still when I went off to university, but when I graduated I started my own game studio with some friends so we could make games full time as a job. We managed about 2 years of this, and even had some relative success, but ultimately the money we were making was not enough to sustain us so we ended up packing it in and getting "proper jobs".

Me and one of my old business partners, when we went on the radio to talk about game development and our Gravoor iOS game. (2013)

After that up until last year I didn't really make anything anymore. I had a lot of ideas for games and projects I wanted to make, but the way I thought about game development had changed. To start with, my time trying to do my hobby professionally left me with this mindset that my games NEEDED to be successful and make me a lot of money. Otherwise whats the point of putting in all the work? 

I'd be too busy worrying about industry trends and the games I thought audiences wanted to see to even get started. I was a long way from the days where I was happily sat there making "The Arnold Schwarzenegger Tree Game" for an audience of about 6 people. My mindset had sapped all of the fun out of it.

I found myself having conversations with people about game development where I'd say "Oh yeah I make games." and they'd say "Really? What have you made?" and I just wouldn't have an answer because the last game I made was 6 years ago and currently delisted from stores. 

I'd become one of those creative types who never makes anything, and I didn't like it.

How I got past this

As I'm sure you can all relate, in 2020 lockdown ground my social life to a halt. With all the extra time on my hands I decided I might as well try to make a game. After a couple of years of stopping and starting I think at the end of 2022 I came to the realisation that I was going about this all the wrong way. I was still trying to make something that might sell and appeal to a wide audience. I remembered that I didn't get into games for that, I got into games just for the fun of making a game. I didn't want to just make whatever was currently popular, I just wanted to satisfy a creative itch.

So I decided to set myself a few basic rules that would help me actually deliver a product.

Know what I'm making before I start.

Sounds obvious but what I mean by this is; when I start a project I like to know exactly what it is and the scope of it. 

In 2021 I tried to make an metroidvania version of my Gravoor games. For those who haven't played those, they are simple maze games where you navigate a character through courses. In my head it sounded amazing. One big map and you had to go around collecting crystals, which functioned like the stars in Super Mario 64. You'd go around picking them up, collecting power ups that you could activate at your leisure, this would open up new areas of the map to explore.

I started to make it, everything was going well but as I'm developing questions started to come up like:

• What happens when you collect all the crystals?
• Why are we collecting crystals?
• Maybe there could be some traditional courses in this game as well?
• Do we have enough enemy types? No? Well then should we go back and retroactively fit some in.
• Shall we change the art style? Yes, because I'm sick of looking at this one!

The "open world" Gravoor project from 2021.

It was a very aimless project that I ended up just losing interest in. I'm not saying that there isn't room to be creative as you go. But I find I have a much better chance of finishing a project if I know all the basic building blocks of what it is before I even write the first line of code. The skeleton of "heres what it is", "how it starts" and "how it ends" helps me to see a project through to completion. I allow myself to be a lot more loose with adding the "flesh" so to speak.

Don't spend too long on it.

I try to make my projects from start to finish in around 1 month give or take. The reason I do this is because I know that if I take any longer I'm going either going to get bored or the next big exciting idea will come along and I'll end up shelving what I'm working on to work on that instead. This has been a huge issue for me over the years, where I'd start a project one month and then scrap it the next to go do something else. Only for THAT project to get binned too and the cycle continues.

I figured that rather than kid myself that my next great idea is going to be the one I stick to, I should just accept that this is how I work and plan my projects around a 1 month development cycle. Sometimes I go over, or sometimes I have a tighter window such as if I'm participating in a jam. But when I'm planning projects I will aim to spend a month on each game.

If noone likes the game, thats ok.

I'm not going to say anything stupid like I want to make a game noone likes, but if I make a game that I wanted to make, and it turns out I'm the only person who thinks its a good idea then I'm ok with that at least I made it.

I'm sure its a controversial stance but I don't really think I'm big enough to be worrying about things like market trends and consumer research. If I was back at my company trying to make games to earn a living then yeah I'd probably better consider that sort of thing. If I'm just making a game to drop on Itch and Newgrounds for free, and I'm only commiting about a month to it anyway then I figure may as well just make whatever the hell I want. It'll either be something that people really enjoy for its novelty or it'll be a steaming pile of shit everyone will have forgotten about after a week anyway.

Robot Factory is a rather depressing game I made in 2023. It deals with issues such as cost of living crisis, AI takeover and paying bills. Whilst the game was well recieved, I don't think I would have taken the risk on this if my ability to put food on the table that month was resting on it's success.

Keep it fun.

When I made my first game back in 2002 it wasn't for the acclaim, nor was it to make money. It was for the pure exhilaration of having made a video game. Somewhere along the way I lost that.

There was a quote I always remember from Trey Parker's foreword to the book Make Your Own Damn Movie by Lloyd Kaufman. It was:

"If you want to make a movie because you want to become rich, go put a thousand dollars down on black instead. Your odds are way better. You could also try law school or medical school; it will take the same amount of time to see any profit from your film. You may even want to try selling your sweet ass on the street, odds are you will make more money doing that. If, however, you want to makea movie because you want people to laugh, or cry, or puke - then read on."

Trey Parker

I appreciate that quote is ironically from a guy worth half a billion dollars but I do think hes right, and in my experience I think what hes saying here also applies to games. For every indie success story there are hundreds of thousands that never find an audience. I bet there will be some of the greatest games ever made right here on this very website that have gone undiscovered. I can't really see the value in spending months or maybe years making a game thats tedious hard work in the hopes it'll make me a pile of cash just for it to be a drop in the sea anyway. 

All projects have their difficulties of course, but if I'm making a thing I don't really care for then I might as well not bother because the potential return on investment is miniscule anyway.

The Results

Using the principles I described above I went from making no games in about 10 years to making 7 games in 12 months. These games were Sunday Drive, Bang!!, Robot Factory, All-New Gravoor, Super Gravoor, Mære and Loch Crystallo.

I don't know that I'll necessarily make that many games this year too, but I will definitely be making some. I have a game I'm currently working on, and some ideas I'm cooking up for later in the year. I hope you'll stick around and play them.