Monster Masters

Yesterday I released my latest game, Monster Masters, into the portal. It is a collectible card game and monster battler based on the old Triple Triad mini-game from Final Fantasy VII. In the game you collect cards and build decks to battle other characters in order to rise through the ranks and become the Monster Master.

The actual coding of this game didn't take long but the character art took me a while. I tried to make the characters look "sketchy" as if they had been hand painted in what is already a drawn medium. I think I just about pulled this off. One thing I did to do this was make the outlines have varying line weights as if they'd been drawn with a pen, and used the spray can tool to give the images a "blotchy" colouring style.

The game has 84 cards to collect and 36 opponents to battle with. The game takes about an hour and half to complete and even longer if you want to 100% it and collect all the cards. Check it out and let me know what you think! :)

Monster Master is played on a 3x3 grid and players take turns playing one card at a time from their hand. A coin flip decides who will play first.

Each card has four numbers, one for each direction (up, down, left, right). If one of the card's numbers is higher than the neighbour card and it belongs to the opponent, the card captures it when played. The cards' sides rank from 1-9, with X being higher than numbers and the highest possible rank.

At the end of the game, the player with the most cards is the winner.

Whats next?

Up next I am getting stuck into my Halloween projects for this year. Last year I made MÆRE II and Stay Indoors and the year before that I did the original MÆRE game. I won't be doing a MÆRE this year because I have a new idea I'd like to explore as my main October game. I think this new game will be just as scary if not scarier than the MÆRE series. I have another smaller idea that I'll do as well hopefully if time allows. I've actually already made one horror game this year already, The Children Under The Bed was released back in March.

Last week I walked 20 miles for neurological disease research. Thanks to everyone who supported me on this. We raised £400 for the cause which is double what my goal was.

I thought you guys might like to see some photos from the day.

This was the route I walked. As you can see by the photos I looked progressively more shit as the day went on lol.

That part at the beginning between the green point and the first blue point, and the area between the 4th blue point and the 6th were both extremely steep hills. The first one was a bit of a shock to the system and had me thinking I might have bitten off more than I could chew on this one. But this was mainly because there wasn't really much to ease you into it. When I got up onto a bit of flat land I wasn't too bad.

The second hill had quite a lot of rocks scattered about that either needed climbing over or were just generally a nuisance to step across. The long stretch between BP6 and BP7 was basically a cliff side walk with loads of scattered rocks and a tiny bit of a climb in the middle. Once you got past this area though it got a lot more walker friendly.

I took this photo from the first hill. As you can see it was proper wilderness.

We walked through a lot of fields with livestock wandering about. We met this herd of cows. There were also a lot of sheep and rams about.

I took this one again closer to the start, this was us coming down on the Lady Bower reservoir.

We've had a bit of a dry summer this year in the UK. The water levels in the reservoir are not looking too good!

Took this from the top of that second hill I talked about. the Red arrow points to the valley where we started. I think this might have been about a quarter through the walk and I was already knackered lol

Mate took this one. This is me lagging behind somewhere along the route.

More hills, this was near the bottom of the map before the route makes a V shape.

I think this forest was closer to the end of the route. We went through a couple of them along the route. I really liked how the trees looked here though.

This was towards the end of the route when I could finally see the city, and the end point, on the horizon. A real sight for sore eyes. Unfortunately for me I think there was still another hour and half of walking to do lol.

When we finally arrived at the end of the route I felt like my legs had been run over. The last stretch was a real challenge. I'd also gotten good and sun burnt on the route. Which certainly didn't help things. At the end point we got a free pint and a plate of lasagna. After about an hour sat there I ended up walking an additional mile to get to the tram stop. So I guess I ended up doing 21 miles that day in the end. according to my phone I did a total of 50,097 steps but this is just off the phone's accelerometer rather than a smart watch or anything so I dunno how accurate the figure is.

Either way I went home, showered and was in bed for about 7pm. It was a tough challenge but I'll probably do it again next year just to help out the cause.

On Friday, 27th June 2025, I will be walking 20 miles (32.8km) through the peak district in support of neurological disease research at University of Sheffield!

Neurological diseases include conditions such as dementia, stroke, Parkinson's, Motor Neuron Disease, multiple sclerosis and more. These diseases are all extremely difficult to treat, with current treatments that often only mask symptoms rather than addressing the root causes. According to statistics, one in six people, and one in four over the age of 80 will develop a significant neurological disorder in their lifetime. This is obviously quite a high number, and something that is highly likelihood to affect us all one day either personally or through a family member or loved one. It is my hope that University of Sheffield's research will help fund new treatments that may lead to transformative breakthroughs leading to cures within our lifetimes. My Grandmother is suffering with dementia, so I've seen first hand how awful these conditions can be to live with.

The walk I will be undertaking is a 20 mile trek through the peak district towards Sheffield. The route and elevation is shown below. The route starts from Ladybower Reservoir and takes the high ground via Crook Hill, along Bamford, Stanage and Burbage Edges before finally returning along the Porter Valley and ending at Endcliffe Village.

Its going to be tough because early weather forecasts seem to indicate its going to be roasting hot that day, so fingers crossed that changes. But I'll document the walk as I go on BlueSky and after I'm done I'll also do a post on here letting you all know how I got on with it.

If anyone would like to make a contribution to the fundraiser then there is a JustGiving page set up here. Any amount no matter how small will be hugely appreciated and if you do choose to make a donation please let me know so I can say thank you!

Wish me luck!

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.