Welcome to the middle of September 2024, where I realize I have an update I haven’t posted, dating back to… December of last year. Oops. I think my plan was to record some stuff, but the holidays came and I checked out, and by the time I got back in action I’d forgotten about it. Welp, better late than never? I’m posting that basically undedited just to archive what I’d achieved by then. Stay tuned for the end, where I’ve included an additional update over what I’ve been up to thus far in 2024.
As we near the end of the year, I thought I’d give y’all an update on the various projects I’ve been working on for the past half a year. Some good news, some less good news.
To start, I believe I haven’t mentioned me participating in this year’s GMTK Game Jam? On the day the theme was revealed I spontaneously decided to participate. The theme was ”Roles Reversed”, so I developed an inverse shoot’em up where you control the bad guy. It’s relatively simple as it was developed solely by me in about a day’s worth of dev time, but I’m happy with what I managed to accomplish considering it was developed from scratch. If you want to check it out, you can download the game, titled Shoot ’Em Down, here.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about Nonogos. I last updated you on it back in March, before Xbox Game Camp started. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot to update you about, but what there is is good. Controllers can now be used throughout the game, from the menus to the actual gameplay. The pause menu properly works now, at least for the functionality there is. Some improvements has been made on the backend of things as well, so that’s a plus for me working on it. Finally, I’ve implemented the most important feature aside from the gameplay… the hint system! If something can be done on a line, that line is highlighted. If the line’s impossible, it’s marked as such. If the line’s complete, the hints are faded a bit, and if nothing else can be done for now then the hints doesn’t have any special colors. Check it out below!
!FILE MISSING! SCROLL FURTHER DOWN FOR A REPLACEMENT FILE.
This was by far the most I’ve struggled on this project so far, I just couldn’t figure out how to implement it for the longest time, which stopped me from working on other aspects of the game for a while. It’s finally been implemented now, however, and if you don’t want to use this feature, I plan on implementing a toggle to turn it off. Anyway, with that out of the way, I can finally progress with other features, such as crossing off individually completed segments per line in a way that makes sense.
For the final update of today, I only have a brief update on Alien Bakery. I continued work on the game for the week or two after Xbox Game Camp ended, and then I spontaneously participated in GMTK Game Jam. Since that ended, I haven’t been able to make myself work much on either of my current projects, those being Alien Bakery and Nonogos. The times I have been able to sit and work on the projects have been dedicated to fixing Nonogos’ hint system as I figured that game would be finished in a shorter amount of time than Alien Bakery. As Nonogos still hasn’t been completed, Alien Bakery has gone on the backburner for now. What I managed to fix with it before GMTK Game Jam was pretty significant, however. You can now see button prompts for the functions you have, and if you change your controller input from keyboard to gamepad, the button prompts will display the correct images.
Happy new year! It’s time for the September 2024 update. The last update ended abruptly, sorry for that. I think my plan was to record some footage to show, and then the holiday season started and I took a bit of a break, and after the new (current) year began I guess I just forgot. Let’s hope you aren’t reading this as part of a March 2025 update post!
For the first update of today, I only have a brief update on Alien Bakery. Sorry, but I haven’t made any progress. I still want to continue working on it, but at the moment Nonogos is my priority when it comes to game dev, so AB’s still on the back burner for now. Apologies to anyone who’s looking forward to it. At this current pace, assume it’s never coming out until I have some good news to share about it.
Next up, Nonogos. I’ve made some significant updates to the game! I’ve implemented all of the settings I planned to implement, like changing the volume, resolution, turning on/off helpers, things like that. I’ve also polished a lot of what was there, so there’s less bugs and inconsistencies than there were last time. I’m doing my best to get this game out the door, so be patient! Check out the latest update below! For real this time!
Thirdly, I took part in GMTK Game Jam this year as well! The theme this time was ”Built to Scale”, which I decided to interpret as building something you then scale, assembling something to ascend… introducing Assemble & Ascendle! Yeah, by now we’re a month away the start of the jam, but whatever. Assemble & Ascendle is a game that does what I described above: Using a simple editor, you can build a structure of your liking. When you’re satisfied, switch over to Play mode and take control of a climber and do your best to reach the highest point of your construction. I’m very happy with what I achieved in the jam’s alotted 96 hours timeframe. I wish it could have something challenging in it (the only challenge right now is if the player makes a course that’s hard to navigate), but without it it becomes a relaxing game instead, which has merits on its own. You can try it for yourself by clicking here.
Finally, I just want to let y’all know that the first six months or so of this year weren’t very productive for me. I made the February 29th video, but other than that I just wasn’t able to get myself to work on any projects. Some small updates here and there, but nothing substantial. Since mid-summer I’ve been somewhat consistently making progress here and there, so here’s hoping I can keep it up. Thanks for reading, catch you on the socials. P.S: I’m much more active on my Bluesky now than before, for those of you there. Twitter will remain my main platform of choice until all the official accounts start jumping ship, but either way, all my relevant socials can be found in the header or footer.