game dev

Made a Playdate Game with My Kids

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment
screenshot of a bitsy game that has a duck, owl, and caterpillar inside a tree

Hope that you all have been having a good and relaxing holiday season. Mine has been a bit weird this year but there’s been some good parts. I got to make a very short Playdate game with my 6 and 8 year olds and that’s now available for free. They did the design and writing and I helped with the coding and art. It’s my first Playdate game so even though it’s very small in scope, I still learned a lot. We used Pulp, their version of Bitsy, and I think their ideas pushed me to learn a little more than I would have if I just made a tiny thing by myself. As you can imagine, a game by a 6 and 8 year old may not be the most focused thing but I still think it’s cool and it made me really happy to make something with them. Without getting too mushy, I’ll just say I love them and their little brother very much.

If you’re a parent with kids that like video games, consider making a game with them too. We all had fun making this Playdate game and it’s just a blast listening to them coming up with ideas for stories, whether it’s for games, seeing the comics they make, and everything else they do. My oldest already has an idea for a short point-and-click adventure starring a comic book character she made up a few years ago and I’m always excited to see what they do next.

Microsoft, Pay Me to Remake King’s Quest

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Had a crisis, started remaking King’s Quest with clay

animated gif of king graham from King's Quest made out of clay and walking around in front of a castle

I absolutely half assed this clay model and the photos and it still took hours to digitize. All for a 15 second shitpost gif. It was really more of a proof of concept for myself and even with the very ugly clay model (or because of it?), I think it’s an interesting look. I also just wanted to see what the process of doing something like this would even be like and now I know. Had a lot of fun learning this stuff. All it really was was photographing that King Graham model and then using Aseprite to clean it up and digitize it. I also used Retrospecs to make it look a little more like the VGA era. Even though I rushed the model and photographs, it still took forever to import into Adventure Game Studio because I didn’t photograph it against a green screen.

I do like working with clay though and kinda want to make a game using it, just maybe a tiny bit more effort put into the models. Picked up more clay yesterday so we’ll see what I come up with after more practice.

That said, huge “could a depressed person make this?!” energy* coming from this gif, haha.

*I’m doing fine

I’m still working out what to even make with this knowledge so if any friends want to make a weird clay game (I can probably do better art than this) let me know.

Read This: The Generous Space of Alternative Game Engines

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

With Unity doing all of their nonsense lately, I really enjoyed this post from Nathalie Lawhead about alternative game engines. Of course not everyone can switch game engines but with a lot of people considering switching to something else, or even writing their own, I thought this was a nice list. Even if you weren’t using Unity, or you are and have no plans to switch, it’s worth reading. Sometimes it’s nice to just make a tiny game in another engine, just to try it out and possibly make something outside of your comfort zone, without the pressure of it having to be something amazing.