Yesterday I attended GaMaYo (Game Makers Yorkshire) in Leeds, UK where I spoke to a bunch of cool game dev people. I directed a bunch of people back here to check out my games and I just thought I'd make a quick post here for anyone who actually follows up on that to highlight some of my projects.

Horror Games

Horror Games were a popular topic people wanted to chat about last night. So here are links to 4 that I have made.

MÆRE and MÆRE 2 are two of my more successful games. You play as a person trying to sleep in a haunted house. The goal is to close your eyes and try to sleep, whilst ignoring the different hauntings that are happening around the room. Both games were winners in Newgrounds' annual Spooktacular event, and MÆRE 1 was awarded the Host's Choice in Scream Jam 2023, as well as ranking 2nd place for best horror game.

Stay Indoors and The Children Under the Bed are two loosely related analogue horror games about "found games" that are haunted by an entity. The premise of Stay Indoors is that you live in a town where noone leaves the house at night following an incident which you, a young kid, have not been fully made aware of the details. One night your dog escapes and you decide that if its really that dangerous out at night, you need to find him as soon as possible and so you venture out to find him.

The dog (and other entities) will wander around the map and your job is to find the dog and get back before whatever it is thats got the adults so spooked finds you. There are 5 endings, and clues as to the nature of the incident that led to this situation happening to find.

The Children Under the Bed is an expansion on the meta story, being another game "developed" by the entity responsible.

Arcade Games

I've been making a few arcade-style games recently. These games are designed to be something you can pick up and play quick sessions on and regularly come back to.

Sunday Drive 2 is possibly my best game. It is about trying to drive as far as possible down a chaotic road whilst drinking beers to extend your score multiplier. The more you drink however the more difficult it is to see straight. Its a game aobut doing as much damage as possible.

Bastard Aliens is a typing game about preventing UFOs from stealing your cattle.

Gravoro Infinity is a game where you use your mouse to guide Gravoor through a procedurally generated labyrinth without hitting any walls or obstacles. Players score points based on how far they able to travel in each run.

RoboNips is a simple game I made during my time off of over Christmas last year. Its a hybrid Brick Breaker / Platformer. RoboNips is getting a hugely expanded sequel next month!

Mazza

Mazza is a parody of the Super Mario series and British Stereotypes and asks the question: "What if Mario was an alcoholic low life living in the UK?" The games are extremely profane.

Politics

The Politics games are rhythm games where you play as a farting ass. They're also satires on last years elections in both the UK and the US. These games have amassed the most views out of any of my other work this decade.

Hopefully some of you guys that I gave hand outs to yesterday will actually come and check these games out. If you do please let me know below what you think of them! Also stick around and check out games by others around here. Theres a huge amount of creativity on this site!

I am 35 today.

I don’t usually do a lot for my birthday because I always find it awkward having people fuss over me, but I saw Sinners last night which I really enjoyed and now I’m sat about waiting for my copy of Doom The Dark Ages to arrive in the post lol.

Got the week off work so I’ll be getting some time in on some game projects I’m working on. I’ve got an arcade game and a visual novel in the works. The visual novel I’m still writing the script for, it could be considered a horror story but it’s completely based in reality with no supernatural elements.

The arcade game is RoboNips 2. Which expands on the original in a number of different ways with the aim to make it really polished and replayable. I’m also working on making it into a multiplayer game.

I’m not sure which game I’ll have done first. I’m taking my time with these to get them right.

I’ll be attended that Newgrounds London meet up next month. So I’m looking forward to meeting a bunch of you in person then.

I have just released my latest game:

Sunday Drive 2 into the portal

Sunday Drive 2 improves on the original in many ways, such as better graphics and music, but the biggest change in this game is in the gameplay. Sunday Drive was always about dangerous driving, but the sequel takes it a step further by introducing a drink driving mechanic. The more beers you drink the higher your score multiplier, but the trade off is it becomes incredibly difficult to see the more you've had to drink.

As before, points can also be earned by running over pedestrians. Its their own fault really for wandering around in the middle of the motorway!

Sunday Drive 1 was my first developed game after taking a break, so playing both back to back is an interesting look at how my skills have improved over the past two years.

As for my future projects, my next couple of games will be a bit more serious, along the lines of Robot Factory or Loch Crystallo. I am also planning to make a few more short cartoons as I had a lot of fun making The Little Man Who Lives Up My Ass earlier this month.

Let me know what you think of Sunday Drive 2!

I usually just make games, but I decided to try something new and made a short film. I haven't made a cartoon in over a decade so it was fun to open up flash again after all this time and get back into it. The film is a comedy about a man who discovers that there is a person living up his ass. The film stars @stevemaddenfootball who did a great job of it I think. His performance adds a lot to the movie.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Just released my new game. It’s another horror game using the ZX Spectrum visual style. It’s much bigger and more complicated than Stay Indoors was.

I'm currently working on a sequel to Stay Indoors which is approaching completion.

The story of this game is that the kid becomes trapped in a world inhabited by monsters, and must find a way out whilst rescuing other kids who have also been taken there. The game features a wider variety of monsters than the first game and a number of other traps to watch out for.

Peanut the dog returns in this game, and can now be used to fight back against some enemies.

The Children Under the Bed is probably my biggest game yet, and I expect it will come out in early March.

Happy new year everyone!

I made this small game over Christmas break. It’s a brick breaker/platformer hybrid where your goal is to clear the blocks up top but not allow them to destroy the platforms you’re standing on.

Have a go and let me know what you think of it!

In 2024 I made and released 9 games. I also started work on but did not finish about 5 that I can remember.

Compared to 2023 my games in 2024 were a lot more comedic, with two Mazza entries and two Politics games. It’s safe to say I got a lot of mileage out of fart jokes this year. Out of the 9 games, 8 scored above 4.00/5.00 with only Politics USA letting the side down. That said, it was still voted 4th best of the month for September. On that note, 3 of these games were voted by you into the top 5 games of the month they were released (Mazza, Politics, Politics USA) and MÆRE II placed 2nd in the Newgrounds Spooktacular.

I think my favourite games I’ve made this year are the Mazza ones. Those were a lot of fun to make. Stay Indoors was my second favourite.

As much as I like the Politics games the issue is that these are going to age terribly. I can’t see anyone picking this up again next year for example.

MÆRE II is an interesting one. I think I improved the gameplay significantly but the ghosts themselves are not as scary as in the first game. I think in MÆRE III I’ll aim for a combination of the two styles and hopefully get it perfect.

Stay Indoors I love the atmosphere I made in this game. The problem was emulating the ZX Spectrum style and trying to follow the limitations of that hardware. Which was not as easy as it sounds.

Bastard Aliens I made in just a few hours and it’s my highest rated game on the site haha. I’d like to make more arcadey experiences in 2025. Games similar to this.

I also made a new Gravoor and Pumpkin's Sky Tea this year. Gravoor Infinity is the best one I think but I'm kind of done with this series I think.

Heres a breakdown of what I was working on but didn’t finish:

The Have-a-Go Exorcist

In this game you played as a Dad whose daughter has been possessed by a demon and because of all the rigmarole involved in getting an exorcism from the Catholic Church you decide it can’t be that hard and will have a go yourself.

The gameplay was split into two parts. Investigation and exorcism. In the investigation phase you would use a computer to look up how an exorcism is performed and order or collect tools from around the house to perform it. The better the tools you get and the more research you’re able to do the stronger you will be in the exorcism phase. However the longer you spend prepared the harder the boss fight with the demon will be.

The exorcism stage was a boss fight against the demon using the tools/knowledge you’d acquired in the previous stage.

I parked the game for a very sad reason, we had a suicide in the family whilst I was making it and when processing that I decided I wanted to make something much more light hearted and silly. That game was Mazza.

A lot of the assets I made for this ended up getting used in MÆRE II.

Crackhouse of Illusion

Crackhouse of Illusion was the original Mazza 2. It involved Mazza exploring the titular Crackhouse looking for his brother Lewie G as it’s almost time for him to come home for his tea.

The game was a parody of Castle of Illusion and in the game the Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse was the landlord. A running joke was that he was grumpy about people making cheap horror movies about him now that hes in the public domain, before immediately doing something profane such as asking Mazza to help him boof cocaine (complete with minigame were you thumb it into his ass.) The game would have probably required an A rating.

As in the real Castle of Illusion the rooms in the crackhouse would take Mazza to different fantasy worlds. Such as a medieval world where Mazza would have to fight a shit breathing dragon to save a Princess, Castle Knobferatu and an Egyptian themed level (because in the 90s it seemed like every game used to have a random Egypt level thrown in.) Along the way of course, various British characters would show up so the series didn’t lose its character.

I was making this immediately following Mazza 1 and the game was huge, with 10 levels and boss fights. At one point I decided to take a break and make something else, but then I never went back to this version of the game. I will probably finish it one day, but I’d want to introduce the engine improvements I made in Mazza Claus so at this stage it might just be better to remake from scratch.

Hooligan game

This was a game about setting up units and watching them fight. It was a pretty passive experience and I didn’t spend a lot of time on it. I’ll probably do something with it one day.

A Moment of Silence

This was a game about holding in a fart during a moment of silence. It’s basically done but I decided to park it because that would be yet another fart game I’ve made this year. Also @Sjhillustration is working on something similar except that its a thousand times funnier and more clever. So I binned it.

Penny Farthing Bicycle Race

A remake of a game I made 20 years ago. It’s essentially just track and field but you’re cycling penny farthing bikes. I didn’t do much with it and the game is very basic. I’ll use it for something at some point I’m just not sure what yet.

Pumpkin’s Sky Blast

This was a port of Pumpkin’s Sky Tea for GameBoy. I was making it to experiment with GameBoy development. I found that GameBoy dev probably isn’t for me haha.

I have ideas for other Pumpkin games I’d like to make in different genres. So even if I never finish this game it won’t be the last Newgrounds sees of him.

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I already have a rough idea of the games I am going to make in 2025 but plans can definitely change. So keep up with me on here and BlueSky if you want to stay up to date: https://bsky.app/profile/chris.newgrounds.com

Also if you've not played it yet check out my latest game Mazza Claus! Personally I think its very funny but I'm biased. Let me know in a review or in the comments on here what you think of it.

Oh yeah and one last thing, there MIGHT be one last game I release before the new year haha.

Mazza Claus is out now!

If you play it be sure to let me know what you think of it! I've pretty much been tied to the desk for a month making it so I'm eager to hear people's thoughts!

Mazza Claus is a Christmas themed sequel to Mazza, one of my most popular games released earlier this year.

Heres a link to the original: