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:

Mazza Claus is coming out on Newgrounds around mid-December. It started out as a single level Christmas themed Mazza game to round out the year but its ended up ballooning into a game thats just as big as the original game.

As you'd expect from a Mazza game, Mazza will travel through The Rotherham Kingdom on Christmas Eve encountering a whole host of outrageous characters. The game is probably more crude than the original game, and hopefully just as funny.

The game is still in development, so should look a lot more lively when I'm done. Look out for the game next month (Probably around the 13th)

Been thinking a bit about the different projects I want to work on in 2025. I've got a big notebook full of things I want to do but I'm also wondering what kind of games users on here would like to see more of?

This year I've put out 8 games so far, have 2 I'll probably wrap up before the end of the year and have parked like 4 that I aim to get back to at some point. Next year I think I might put out less but bigger games.

As for the remainder of 2024, I have a couple of things on the go. I've got that Pumpkin GameBoy game I'm making which is pretty clunky if I'm being honest. Learning my way around the hardware and its limitations is making implementing simple functions quite time consuming and those who know me know that I like to get things done fast. I don't know if GameBoy dev is going to be something I get deep into haha but oh well it was a nice change of pace and its been fun to load it up on a flash cart and show people. I'll probably stick that up here at some point along with the ROM.

The final thing I have is a Christmas Mazza game that I'll release in December. Its not Crackhouse of Illusion, but I still intend to finish that game at some point.

By the way, I'm going to try to make more of an effort with my social media going forward, I've said this before and its something I really suck at but if you'd like to follow me on BlueSky I'll be trying to post more updates on my projects over there as well as here on Newgrounds. Follow me here: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgray.bsky.social

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Some final questions then for you to help me with:

1. What kind of games would you like to see more of on Newgrounds?

2. What is your favourite game that I released this year?

I’m making a handheld port of Pumpkin’s Sky Tea for GameBoy. I’ve been thinking a lot about how back in the day with a lot of games you’d have the main game at home on consoles and then a handheld version that captured as much of the essence of that game as possible but with smaller resources to work with. I’d like to try making a few of these handheld companions for my own games that I’d be able to distribute as a ROM for you to play on emulators or if you have access to one a flash cart like I’m doing here.

Its fun trying to get the most out of the limited resources since thats not really something I have to worry about with my bigger games.

Here is Pumpkin as he appears on the hardware.

What with tomorrow being the election and all, now seems like a good time to check out Poltiics USA if you haven't already. It was voted 4th best game of the month in September and works on both desktop and mobile devices.

In other news, I've been trying my hand at a bit of GameBoy dev. I haven't got a lot to show for it at this stage, but I'll hopefully be able to deliver a completed project on the format at some point in the near future. Not promising it'll be anything particularly ground-breaking though haha.

Stay Indoors has placed 18th out of 560 entries in ScreamJam 2024.

Given the number of entries this was a great result!

If you've not played it yet, play the latest version here on Newgrounds. Perfect gaming for Halloween!

If you're looking for further Halloween games to play, check out my MÆRE series if you haven't already.

This month I released two horror games. MÆRE II and Stay Indoors. Both received a really positive response and I’m extremely happy about that! Horror is one of my favourite genres and I thought I’d take some time to share some of the horror media that influenced and inspired these games.

Ghost Watch

Ghost Watch was a British TV movie that was made to look like a real live broadcast. This was before Blair Witch had come out and made the concept of found footage was widely understood. The plot is that recognisable British TV presenters at the time are filming a live investigation on Halloween night into a reportedly haunted house in a British suburb, only for the ghost to wind up being both real and extremely dangerous.

Ghost Watch’s strength for me is that it’s a haunted house movie set in a very typical British home rather than a mansion or some other location.

When the movie first aired in 1992 it triggered a bit of a War of the Worlds moment and the BBC were hit with thousands of complaints because viewers believed the events were real. Apparently my wife's step mother even called the cops when it was on trying to get them to go over to the house in the movie she was so convinced that people were in real life danger.

One of my favourite things about the movie is how they explain the increasingly horrific events. A character figures out that all of the people watching at home are feeding the ghost energy through their fear. Originally I wanted to do something like this with Stay Indoors. I wanted to give the impression that this haunted game finding its way onto the internet has resulted in the entity behind it becoming more powerful as players playing the game was serving as a global séance. This would be conveyed by having the game become more and more distorted and disturbing in the week’s run up to Halloween before ultimately on Halloween night the game was essentially set in Hell.

However because it was for a game jam I didn’t really have the time to implement this, or figure out how to make the audience understand that they should keep coming back for the full experience without giving the game away. Perhaps next year after I've bottomed this out a little further I’ll revisit the concept for Spooktacular 2025!

Suspiria

This is one of my favourite movies. Its about an American ballet student who gets accepted into a prestigious dance academy in Germany and finds that the academy is a front for a coven of witches. The 1977 version is best but the 2018 version is a good movie too and equally worth checking out.

Paranormal Activity

When it first released, and before they watered it down with about 10 shitty sequels the original Paranormal Activity was a terrifying experience. It wasn’t afraid to make the audience wait for things to happen and to me this is scarier than constant pay offs as horror is in the anticipation. Paranormal Activity gave me the confidence to allow the MÆRE games to be as slow as they need to be.

I think the studios completely destroyed this movie with all the sequels delving into the lore and the new ending they added in (The alternative ending on the DVD was the original ending I believe, since its the one I saw at a festival before the film got picked up for wide release). I learned from this that sometimes its best to leave some questions unanswered or you risk taking away what makes them interesting in the first place.

The Nightmare (2015 Documentary)

This is a documentary about sleep paralysis. When I was younger I had an experience with this myself that really shook me. This movie helped me to understand what exactly I’d gone through when this had happened. The movie reenacts people's accounts of sleep paralysis and the entities that they meet in these episodes. The documentary examines how many people's experiences are similar. This was another major influence on MÆRE.

I-Mockery – www.i-mockery.com

Ok this isn't a movie, but when I was first getting into horror I would basically get all my recommendations from the articles on here. They’d do deep dives into more obscure movies and had articles highlighting their favourite scenes. The site really showed me the fun side of horror and I think I’ve watched basically every movie they ever featured at this point. Thanks for the education @Mockery !

To a lesser extent, Yahtzee from Fully Ramblomatic used to do a lot of articles on slashers before he became the Zero Punctuation/Second Wind guy full time. This was also a big education for me for horror movies.

The Nightmare (Painting)

This is a 1781 oil painting by Henry Fuseli. Looking at this painting was I think what gave me the final idea for MÆRE and where the title comes from. The painting shows a demon sitting on a woman's chest whilst she sleeps. This demon is called a Mære, a malicious entity in Germanic folklore which walks on people's chests as they sleep bringing on nightmares.

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If you read this far then thanks for reading! I hope you’ll check out some of the movies I listed above and if you haven’t played them yet check out the games I’ve made. These were only some of the major influences on my work but there will be a lot of other things that I learned from.

I’ll be making some more horror games next year so be sure to follow if you’d like to stay informed of what I’m working on. I’d like to tackle the slasher genre at some point soon, as I’m a big fan of that. It will be a big undertaking but I have an idea for a sandbox slasher game. Sort of like Hitman meets Friday the 13th. It’ll be the biggest game I’ve made so far.

Which of my two games released this month did you prefer? MÆRE or Stay Indoors?

Also what kind of games, of any genre, would you like to see more of on Newgrounds? I’ve been thinking a lot about this as we get closer to the end of the year.