First up: The Maze of Madness (2.0), by Phil Hassey. This is one part text-based choose-your-own-adventure and one part pixel art. Players themselves build the world, by creating ‘locations’ which consist of a pixel art image and a series of actions or exits. It also has inventory, where you draw the objecs ! I can remember when this game first started, with just the original Maze, but since then Phil has expanded things to enable people to make completely new mazes too. It can all get a bit crazy and psychedelic, but it’s worth a look.

Second, and more recently released - PlayPen, by Farbs. Similar in many ways to The Maze of Madness, but with higher resolution images and ‘hotspots’ for navigation between locations rather than simple text links. Pretty cool that it has been based on the MediaWiki codebase too – it could basically be used to create Pixel-pedia. There is even a Tumblr blog of the Best of PlayPen. This make me think I should probably do something like a “Best of GrandMasterPixel” tumbelog highlighting the best pics in GMP, but I’m hoping the the rankings pages will mostly fulfill that role once I overhaul them to include more than just best of all-time overall rankings.

Both these games are really designed for desktop browsers, and while they kinda sorta work on the Android browser to play the adventures they won’t work very well if you want to contribute content by drawing. I’d stick with the desktop browser if you are checking ‘em out.

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Download GrandMasterPixel (beta) from the Android Market

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Also, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, to the people who have been play testing. I really appreciate that you’ve taken the time to try out the game, even though it is still evolving and a little unpolished at this stage. While I’ve only been given a little bit of feedback so far (nods to @kelseyhigham), I’ve seen (and judged *mwahhahaha*) the pics that a few of you have submitted when I’ve been playing the game myself. It’s been a great encouragement to keeping banging away at making GrandMasterPixel more playable as a social game. I’ve released a new version (1.0.6), and if everything is working as planned. existing users should get an update notification on their mobile device.

Next on the list is implementing ‘notifications’, so you can easily see when one of your pics has been defeated, or if you have levelled up. And then some optimization of the Arena judging interface, which I don’t think is quite snappy enough. And then more types of Rankings lists (daily, weekly, all time etc). And then … and then … and then. Lots more to do !

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Introducing …. (drum roll please) … GrandMasterPixel !

GrandMasterPixel is essentially a low-res pixelart competition, with light combat RPG elements.

GrandMasterPixel Arena screenshot (Android emulator)

The basic gameplay is as follows:

• Draw a pic. Make it look good. Submit the pic to the Arena – this costs ‘submission credits’.
• Judge some battles in the Arena between other artists pics by touching the one you think should win – judging one battle costs one ‘judging token’, and earns you one ‘submission credit’.
• ‘Judging credits’ recharge over time, so if you run out, just come back later.
• Pics have ‘hitpoints’. Losing a battle loses the pic hitpoints – when the pics hitpoints reach zero, that pic is dead and can no longer battle.
• Artists (that’s you) begin with only limited colors in their palette. You earn more colors based on (a) the number of pics you have submitted (‘leveling up’) and (b) how successful your pics have been in battle (eg, ‘achievements’ earned based on the number of wins before dying).

GrandMasterPixel drawing mode screenshot - me drawing an 8-bit Mario-like guy, with blue skin since that's all the colours I have at this level.

The idea behind this system is that players need to use all their creativity to make interesting pics, even with limited colors. Credits to submit new pics are only earned by judging, and judging is rate limited – this means players should be encouraged put some effort into each pic they submit, since submissions are a somewhat limited resource. In the current design, only half the colors are accessible based on number of submissions (eg, quantity) – the other half can only be earned by submitting pics that are successful in battle (‘quality’, as subjectively judged by other players).

I think some interesting dynamics may emerge here, but I’d rather not speculate too much before letting a bunch of players loose with the game.

Check it out and give me some feedback on FriendFeed, or tweet me @OMGWTFGAMES ! Download a time-limited alpha version of GrandMasterPixel for Android with this link. Or scan the QR code below with the Barcode Scanner app using your phone. In order to install it, you will need to allow applications from “Unknown sources” under the Settings->Applications menu.

There are still lots of features left to implement to make it more game-y, and a few bugs to swat, but I’ve spent a surprising amount of time developing and polishing this little game so far already, so I thought it was time to put something out there and get some feedback.

In future posts I may detail some of the lessons I’ve learned about developing Android applications, social games on Google App Engine and some general game design issues I’ve come up against in this project.

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This is the product of about two laptop battery charges (~2.5 hours), and one hour to polish, fix the odd bug and package .. so in total it’s about a ~6 hour game. It’s based on the garbage compactor scene from a particular space opera that had it’s heyday in the late 70′s and early 80′s. You could imagine it was one of the ideas that was considered, then discarded, before the early arcade developers went “Nah, we should do a 3D X-Wing game with vector graphics. That would be much cooler”.

You are the (inexplicably) green hero. You play with the arrow keys. You move bits of junk (grey) such that you can jam the compactor before it crushes you. Some bits of junk (white), are too large to move. There is only one level and no sound.

Play it here (Java applet, requires the Java plugin that you most likely already have installed).

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Phobocore is a two-player hotseat game, where the aim is to capture all the planets onscreen by shooting them. It’s sort of a cross between Asteroids and Risk/Galcon, with a respectful nod to open field overhead shooters like Robotron, Bezerk or Gauntlet.

Download Phobocore (v.09 for Windows & Linux) [10.3 mb]

The experience of creating this game has been quite enlightening so far. It really got me thinking about aspects of game design I hadn’t thought deeply about. I threw around lots of ideas relating to ‘resources’ and ‘defenses’, particularly thinking about how RTSs like Starcraft require balance in play style between defense building, offensive maneuvers and resource gathering. Good players must multitask and proiritize to get the upperhand on their opponents. Key questions like “Should captured/neutral/enemy planets be solid objects or unhindering ?” occupied more than one dinner time conversation, bearing out all the ways these would changed the game. I had great fun testing the effect of different game rules, and how these changed the dynamics of the gameplay (with huge thanks to my long-suffering girlfriend for playtesting. The next best thing to writing an AI player ). If you are keen to fiddle with these game rules yourself, you can throw various flags in the phobocore.py sourcecode to test how these variations change the play style required to win.

I also spent considerable time tweaking things like fire rates and the “planets-held to ammo recharge rate” ratio to try and make the game somewhat fun. It works pretty well for players that are equally matched, but much like Galcon, once one player gets an edge, it can be hard to recover and things are over pretty quickly.

Big features I’d love to add in the future: an AI compurer player for single player mode, and maybe network play. I need to work on the collision detection, improve the graphics, add background music, and add a help screen / tutorial screen and slap on a license (probably GPL for code and Creative Commons for audiovisual assests).

Have fun & feedback is, as always, welcome !

Here’s the README.txt

┏━┓╻ ╻┏━┓┏┓ ┏━┓┏━╸┏━┓┏━┓┏━╸
┣━┛┣━┫┃ ┃┣┻┓┃ ┃┃  ┃ ┃┣┳┛┣╸
╹  ╹ ╹┗━┛┗━┛┗━┛┗━╸┗━┛╹┗╸┗━╸
Copyright Andrew Perry, 2008, 2009.

A two player hotseat game of screen domination.
It's pink vs. blue.
Boys vs. girls.

┃: GAMEPLAY :┃

Phobocore is a a simultaneous two player game. The goal is to capture
 as many planets as possible.
* You capture planets by shooting them - eventually they will turn to
  your colour.
* If you shoot a planet enough, it becomes locked to your colour -
  these planets cannot be re-captured by the enemy.
* The more planets you capture, the faster your ammo refills (orange
  bar). The more locked planets you hold, the more powerful your
  bullets become.
* You can fly through neural (white) or enemy planets. You cannot fly
  through your own planets.
* Shooting the enemy freezes them momentarily, however they also
  absorb your bullets for their own ammo store.
* Powerups occasionally appear - these give you more ammo, and can
  provide the vital edge you need to capture more planets than your
  opponent.
* The red bar goes up the more planets you lock. Once you have locked
  30 % of the planets on screen, you win.

┃: CONTROLS :┃

Player 1 (pink, left ammo bar): W,A,S,D and space
Player 2 (blue, right ammo bar): Arrow keys and right-CTRL

┃: OPTIONS :┃

Commandline options:

-f          run the game in full screen mode

┃:   TIPS   :┃

Early on, every bullet counts. Fire accurately and efficiently.

It may seem frustrating at first, since you can't shoot very fast.
Early in the game, aim to quickly but efficiently capture as many
planets as possible, and pick up powerups if you can. Don't waste
ammo locking too many planets early in the game - it's more about
quantity not quality at this stage. As you capture more planets,
your fire rate will go up.

Once you have a reasonable fire rate established, start focusing
on locking planets too. This will increase your bullet power,
meaning you can also capture/lock planets faster.

Take opportunities to steal any weak planets owned by your opponent
(the smaller ones) with a quick circular spray of bullets - this
will seriously impact on your opponents fire rate, frustrating
their efforts to capture/steal/lock more planets.

Try not to fence yourself in. Keep in mind that planets you capture
become blockades for you, but become open space for your opponent.
Rather than spraying a whole 360 degree circle of bullets to capture
all the planets in your vicinity, try doing 270 degree sweeps,
leaving yourself a exit small hole of neutral or enemy planets.

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(Thanks to Mike Kasprzak of Sykhronics Entertainment for hosting this monstrosity. Respect to the other Fathers and Mothers of Towlr’s)

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Bad Ass Frog Escapes from LA

The Hollywood-script-worthy Backstory

The year is 2010. You are the last Frog in LA. Your name is Kurt Russell, but you are no relation to the actor, and you’ve never met him.

Controls

Arrow keys to move.
Space to restart after the game ends.

The Game

This browser does not have a Java Plug-in (or you are using a stupid browser.
Get the latest Java Plug-in here.


(if it looks broken, you are probably using Internet Explorer. Try the applet here)

Downloads

Download standalone version of Badass Frog Escapes from LA for:

• Windows
• Linux
• Mac OSX
• Mobile Phone version (MIDP 2.0, largish screen phones, 240×291) … short link: http://is.gd/aDRQ
• Source code of the Applet version, ready to be loaded into Processing
• Source code of the mobile phone version, ready to be loaded into Mobile Processing

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Here’s a video:

[youtube BgBuIJsjpuM]

That’s some freaky, freaky drunken AI.

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Download: maximalist (maximalist_0.12_miniLD5.zip, 4.6 Mb, md5: 68ada72418f029f9d7f5e81ca4792863)

(see below for the README)

Gameplay video

[youtube i8gTYMhBjv8]

You may wonder why the fullscreen resolution seems strange (800×480). Well, if you owned an Asus EeePC 4G Surf (701), you may not wonder so much.

Libraries used:

• Pygame
• Rabbyt (including the pygame_font.py font rendering code)
• My (alpha) simplemenu library

Tools used:

• The Gimp
• Sfxr (DrPetter saves the day, yet again)
• Audacity
• oggenc

I used a scanner to ‘photograph’ various items around the house (including myself) to provide source images for further manipulation.

Assests:

• “Squealer” font by Ray Larabie
• A scan of my face
• A carved wooden ‘skull’ box on my desk
• Some hand drawn sprites (exit and glowstick)
• Me screaming into the microphone

All in all, I had a fun, relaxed weekend making this game. I’ve got to remember to relax a little more during Ludum Dare competitions, it really seems to help.

The README

Installation, playing

On Windows, run maximalist.exe .

On Linux or other platforms, run:
$ python maximalist.py

Dependancies (Linux or other only):
Python (2.5 +) ( http://www.python.org .. you probably already have it)
Pygame 1.7.1 ( http://www.pygame.org )
Rabbyt 0.8.2 ( http://matthewmarshall.org/projects/rabbyt/ )

(hint for Debian/Ubuntu: $ sudo apt-get install python-pygame python-setuptools; sudo easy_install Rabbyt==0.8.2 )

Backstory

You are venturing into a dungeon or something. You think.
Actually, to be honest, you don’t know how you got here or
what you are doing here. All you do know is that there’s
something nasty lurking in the dark. The big bag of glowsticks
slung over you shoulder is your only friend.
All you want to do is Exit. And keep Exiting, until it’s safe.

Gameplay

There are 25 levels. Using a glowstick costs 5 points. Exiting a level gets you 10.
Getting your brains chomped by a nasty halves your score.
Try to get the highest score you can.

Controls

Move the mouse. Click the mouse buttons.

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