PROGRAM_IX [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

ix_bash

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 23:09:08 UTC

ix_bash

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls

Menu: Z to start game.

Game:

P1: LEFT/RIGHT to move the player, Z to punch enemies

P2: S/F to move the player, TAB to punch enemies

Mechanics

You and a friend are on a high girder and there are weird monsters coming from both sides! Your only option is to punch them...or die!

Commentary

I thought February felt short, so March naturally was the longest month of my entire life. So much has happened, so many things gone wrong this month and still going wrong, if the news is to be believed. I finished my 2-year make music every week project this month, though, and I worked on this game in a fairly healthy way! I did bits and pieces over the month, made solid improvements, iterated. When it wasn't happening on the last night of March, I didn't stay up late and suffer. I just went to bed because the POINT of ending this challenge is to be done with that stress at the end of every month. And I'm glad to be done with that part. But #onegameamonth was such a keystone for me, for such a long time, I don't know how it's going to feel not having that push anymore. I guess if it feels awful, maybe I will come back to it, in the same or some other form. But I wanted to end it on my own terms before it drove me to hate making games, because that would be a terrible tragedy. I want to keep loving this forever. If you're reading this, and you ever, ever tried or played one of my games, thank you sincerely. I didn't make them just for you, but I made them with the idea of you in my mind, and it was that that pulled me through the tough times and drove me to make things better.

Good luck to you, and I'll see you around the internet! (I'm @PROGRAM_IX on Twitter.)

itch.io page: here.

#onegameamonth March 2020

LEAFBLOWER

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 00:37:38 UTC

ix_leafblower

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls

Menu: Z to start game.

Game: UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT to move the person, Z to blow leaves

Mechanics

Time to clear off your really large patio of all these pesky leaves. Blow them off the screen to finish each level, but watch you don't run out of time!

Commentary

February felt so short this year!!! Wow!!! I'm wrecked and March is right here to get me already. Another game done, and I think March will be my last #onegameamonth now. It's been a good run but I'm really tired.

Anyway this game was pretty fun to make, not much to say about it except I had the radical idea to hide my projectiles (the air that makes the leaves move) and it works quite well!

itch.io page: here.

#onegameamonth February 2020

CALMSAIL

Sat, 04 Jan 2020 23:24:49 UTC

ix_calmsail

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls

Menu: Z to start game.

Game: UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT to move the boat

Mechanics

Just a nice calm game where you float your boat around the sea. Nothing happens except the sound of the gentle waves. You can relax.

Commentary

December was an aggressive month with a lot of supposedly free time that did not end up feeling very free. To be fair I also worked on two or three other different games this month, so that doesn't help.

Note: I expect to stop working on monthly games early in 2020, not sure exactly when. They have been stressing me out for too long and they make it hard to ever work on something with a slightly larger/longer scope.

itch.io page: here.

#onegameamonth December 2019

DESERTMYTHS

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 00:45:55 UTC

ix_desertmyths

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls

Menu: Z to start game.

Game: UP/DOWN to move the bus

Mechanics
Another rapidly-completed dodging game, this time for the Desert Bus Game Jam! Keep that bus away from the weird mythical creatures!

Commentary
Excited to finally finish something for this jam after several years wanting to.

itch.io page: here.

#onegameamonth November 2019

LITTLEGHOST

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 16:07:53 UTC

ix_littleghost

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls

Menu: Z to start game.

Game: UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT to move character,

Z to quit

Mechanics

Just a silly dodging game. More ghosts will appear over time.

Commentary

Travelling for work during about a third of this month and it really knocked me out. But I'm home at last and very ready to start another month of messing!

itch.io page: here.

#onegameamonth October 2019

SPINFLOWER

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 22:57:26 UTC

ix_spinflower

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls

Menu: Z to start game.

Game: UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT to move cursor,

Z to place point (reflected 4 ways)

X to finish shape and start a new one (shape will begin spinning)

Mechanics

This is a simple toy thing I put together in a very short time (maybe 2 hours?) on a laptop because my main computer is having Issues. But it came out pretty fun! Every time you 'add a point' with the Z button, it reflects a line to the centre of the screen from that point, mirrored four times, so it looks like an X basically, but you can control the size and angle of the X. And then you can keep adding Xes until you're happy with the look. Press X to 'set' that shape and start it spinning, and then build another the same way. If you're running in PICO-8 itself, you can use F3/F4 to capture little GIFs of the thing. Sorry it is so basic, as often happens the last-ditch idea is way cooler and has way more potential scope than I thought!

Commentary

Do I even bother saying it was a busy month? It's been wild. Working on a lot of different things as usual, in and out of work! But feel like I'm learning, and have more to do as always! This is a fun idea I might come back to and significantly expand, we'll see.

itch.io page: here.

#onegameamonth September 2019

LANDER

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 22:58:31 UTC

ix_lander

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls

Menu: Z to start game.

Game: DOWN to fire main thruster

LEFT/RIGHT to fire main thrusters

Game over: Z to restart.
Mechanics

It's a lander game! Thrown together in about four hours over two days! Aaaa!

You're aiming to land as fully on the white pad as possible. If you're not on it enough, it won't count.

The wind/gravity is a little different on each level, so be wary of adjustments.

Just mind your fuel, and don't drag the lander along the walls, or you'll bust it up.
Commentary

Whew another busy month. I have an exploding tooth in my mouth and that has been a bad time. Meanwhile I have been working on some cool Blender scenes in my 'project time' which leaves less time for actually making games. Frustrating at the end of the month when I end up rushing, but it feels good the rest of the month.

itch.io page: here.

#onegameamonth June 2019

NEONTUNNEL

Wed, 01 May 2019 00:51:16 UTC

ix_neontunnel

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls
Menu: Z to start game, X to disable/enable flashing (accessibility - epilepsy).
Game: UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT to catch a shape if it is close enough to that side
Game over: X to restart.

Mechanics
Shapes flow down the neon tunnel on all four sides - up, down, left, and right. All the player has to do is catch them after they get close enough. Luckily it shows when they are close enough by switching the shape and colour from pink squares to slightly rotated blue squares. If any of them make it offscreen, you lose.

Commentary
It's been a busy month! Work has been wild and I uhh got married! This was developed in a couple of hours on the 29th and 30th, bleeding over a little into the 1st. But I'm pretty happy with it! It lets you get into a decent flow state, or at least feels that way to me. Tapping the arrow keys feels really good once you internalise the mapping of stuff on the screen to the placement of your fingers. Don't really have much else to say except I'm glad I made a small effort to provide a hopefully epilepsy-safe version, as well as making visual changes that are not limited to colour for game mechanics (hopefully helpful for anyone with colour differentiation issues).

itch.io page: here.

#onegameamonth April 2019

BEES

Sun, 31 Mar 2019 17:57:59 UTC

ix_bees

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls

Menu: Z to start game.

Game: UP/DOWN to adjust nectar quota (how much nectar a bee will collect before returning to the hive)
Z (when the 'add bee' icon is visible) to add a bee at a cost of 10 nectar

Game over: Z to restart.

Mechanics

Bees visit flowers for nectar (but they can only find flowers within a certain radius, so they explore if they don't find one right away). Bees collect nectar until they have enough for the quota, then they bring it back to the hive. As the hive accumulates nectar it can produce more bees. Bees have limited lives, but every time a bee dies, a new flower is born somewhere in the garden. Every visit of a bee to a flower adds pollen to the flower, which helps the flower produce more nectar. You can adjust how much the nectar quota is, balancing between bees being away longer (more likely to die without returning their nectar) and bees spending too much time on journeys to the hive (not using time efficiently). You can also add new bees once there is ten or more nectar in the hive.

The game is over when the last bee has died and there is not enough nectar left to add a new one.

(I am not trying for realism in any way with this game!!!)

Commentary

I started with just bees, and they would look around for flowers. Writing rules for entities and seeing how they work is great fun. This game was a slow burn but a great experience. I was flexing my systems design brain gently throughout the month, trying to ride the line between 'there's nothing to do here' and 'this game is asking too much of me'. I think it came out pretty well in that sense. The only interaction from the player (if they even want to interact) is to adjust the nectar quota and get the bees coming back more/less often, or add new bees.

itch.io page: here.

#onegameamonth March 2019

DODGER

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 21:04:58 UTC

I'm still getting to grips with Voxatron, but I had fun making this game. It's a simple score attack thing where you pilot this little blob around the screen, dodging the big lasers. Score points by scooting through the lasers while they charge, before they fire. But you're better safe than sorry if you're not sure you can make it!

Voxatron is funny because it feels Big compared to PICO-8, and also limited in an interestingly different way. I keep wanting to use the 'whole screen' in fullscreen but I can't, because I only have the voxel screen. I need to work on adjusting the camera better. Anyway nothing too exciting here but it's another game!

Controls:
(in menu)
Z: start game

(in game)
Arrows: move

(in 'game over' screen)
Z+X together: back to title

itch.io page: here

#onegameamonth Feb 2019

ix_dodger

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

GARDENING

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 00:07:41 UTC

A simple game I made to try and get to grips with Voxatron. I'm so, so glad I finally managed to get into this, after it inspired me so much in its early years but I found the development tools a bit difficult to figure out (even quite recently!).

Having since bought in heavily to PICO-8 and made some 40 games with it, I decided to come back around and make a proper go of it when Voxatron 0.3.5 hit, and I'm really happy that I did. This is entirely programmed in one script inside the main room, with one (short and boring) tune in the background. No precreated assets or anything like that. Which might make it interesting for you to explore!

Anyway here's my silly game about being a weird gardening alien with a weird ship in a weird garden that has
a bottomless pit in the middle. You have to clear all those nasty rocks out!!!

Controls:
(in menu)
Z: start game

(in game)
Z [hold]: activate tractor beam to suck up rocks under your ship
X [tap]: dump a rock, ideally into the pit

(in 'all done' screen)
Z + X together [tap]: back to title

When you've dumped all the rocks into the pit, you'll get a nice 'all done' screen and an opportunity to replay. That's it! Have fun messing around in this little world!

itch.io page: here.
#onegameamonth January 2019

ix_gardening

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

RUBBISH

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 20:38:21 UTC

RUBBISH 1.0

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls
Menu: Z to start game.

Game: Left-click on trucks to move in the direction the truck is facing. Right-click on trucks to rotate them.

Game over: Z to restart.

Mechanics
Each level ends when you have used the trucks to collect every piece of rubbish. Click on a truck to move it in the direction it's facing. It will stop when it hits the edge of the screen, or another truck.

Commentary
Puzzle design is super difficult. But this game was a lot of fun to make! Designing the trucks and the rubbish kept me interested over the month, then in the last few days I finally figured out where I was going with it. I bumped over into November because of a number of commitments and other noisy stuff, but I'm very happy with how it came out. Maybe I will make more levels eventually? I'm sorry if it's very boring to people who do lots of puzzles!

itch.io page: here

#onegameamonth October 2018

BLOOD

Sun, 30 Sep 2018 19:30:27 UTC

BLOOD 1.0

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls

Menu: Z to start game.

Game: Left-click to create white blood cells (while you have reserves which you can see in the bottom left corner).

Mechanics

Deploy the white blood cells near the red blood cells and they will automatically move to protect them from green bacteria invasions. Sometimes white blood cells get confused which red cell to protect when two are close together, so you might have to keep some in reserve to protect a lonely red cell in an emergency.

White blood cells and bacteria both change colour as their HP runs out. Red cells have their HP shown in orange just underneath them. Bacteria will lose HP even from hurting a red cell. Try to keep the four red cells you have alive as long as you can!

Commentary

Last month's ant game made me want to play around more with 'thinking' things and the easiest way to do that is with more mouse input. I think I did a slightly worse job this time to be honest, but I didn't have as clear an idea of what I was going for. But it is fun to just blast new white blood cells at a problem.

Hope you have fun playing around with this silly thing. Don't use it as a reference in a biology paper please, I have NO idea what I'm doing.

itch.io page: here.

#onegameamonth September 2018

ANTS

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 18:55:06 UTC

ANTS 1.0

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls
Menu: Z to start game.

Game: Z to create ant (costs 3 food), left-click to drop scent (guides ants), right-click to remove scent.

Mechanics
Extremely basic cat-herding strategy game - you have to keep your ants going towards the food (using scent, or waiting for them to find it for themselves). Once they spot food they will grab it and return it to the anthill.

Commentary
This started after I wanted to make something that had entities just doing their own thing in the game world. I remembered a section of Will McGugan's Pygame book (https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781590598726) where he builds a little ant/insect simulation using simple checks for behaviour. I decided to give that a try, without actually referencing his book to see how it worked! But I managed to get the ants moving easily enough, finding food and returning it to the hill, and eventually picking random goal points so that they were not jittering around when not 'on mission'. Then I wanted to add more stuff, at the same time being frustrated waiting for the ants to find food sometimes, so I put in a thing where the player could use the mouse to drop a scent trail and thereby guide the ants in the right direction. Finally I wanted a threat to the ants, and I figured a bird would be appropriate, but didn't want it to be too punishing. I settled on a bird that would only prowl the edges of the play field. The only loss condition is when you have no ants left, and not enough food to make another ant. But it's not really a game you're 'supposed' to lose at. It's just a fun thing to play around with. Amusingly, you can 'micro' or 'macro' the ants if you are used to that kind of play from actual RTS games - leave a scent trail sitting near some food and wait for the ants to find it, or click quickly near an ant, dropping one scent after another and slowly dragging it in the right direction.
I'm really happy with how neatly this came together! Hope you enjoy!
Lexaloffle BBS thread: here.

#1GAM August 2018

PUMPACTIONPAT (Pump-Action Patrick)

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 19:37:27 UTC

PUMPACTIONPAT (Pump-Action Patrick) 1.0

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls
Menu: Z to start game.

Game: X to pump coffee press (make coffee), Z to pour coffee into nearby mugs

Mechanics
Sort of a very small diner dash game. You have a coffee press which magically restores coffee when pumped (X). But it only holds 4 pours and you need 2 pours to fill a cup! Keep that pump hand ready!

Commentary
I spent lots and lots of time in this game's file, and it sure doesn't look it. I threw away several different ideas before landing at this, but it came out surprisingly well. Play as 'Patrick' trying to serve that good coffee to absent customers. If you care about your results, try to do it fast and without spilling (overfilling) any! The game is themed off a Waypoint Radio podcast episode title, simply, 'Pump-Action Patrick'.

itch.io page: here.

#1GAM July 2018

Waypoint Community Game Jam 2 (Big Boy Season)

COW

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 18:13:54 UTC

COW 1.0

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls
Menu: Z to start game.

Game: Z to jump, X to restart from game over screen.

Mechanics
Super simple runner game. Jump over ditches and fences, don't jump over grass. Following these rules will increase your score.

Commentary
Another project-heavy month - I actually finished a GodotEngine game, but it was basically their tutorial game so probably not worth sharing. Also Pride here was right at the end of the month and that took a lot of time out of games stuff. So I tried to be kind to myself and let this slip into the grace period, and I feel good for doing it. Pretty happy with the cow sprite, the others aren't my favourite work but they serve pretty fine. Please enjoy!

itch.io page: here.

#1GAM June 2018

DANDELION

Thu, 31 May 2018 18:43:05 UTC

DANDELION 1.0

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls
Menu: Z to start game.

Game: Left/right arrows to move fan. Z to blow puffs of air, X to add more seeds (falling from above).

Mechanics
Dandelion seeds are falling and you can decide how you want them to land! Blow them directly up by sending puffs of air from right below them, or move them left and right by blowing air past one side! When they land they will turn into lovely dandelions. You start with 5 seeds and you can add more any time by pressing X.

Commentary
I've worked on no fewer than 4 projects this month, I think. But I'm really happy I got this one done in the end - it was a bit last minute as many months go, but it feels so pure and nice to play with the dandelion seeds and get your little garden just so. I also decided quite late on that it would be a #nogameovers game. At first it was going to be that the first dandelion seed landing would freeze the game, play the growth animation and then take you to a game over screen, but this version is way more fun. And anyway, what would be the point of a game over?

itch.io page: here.

#1GAM May 2018

SHOCKWAVE

Mon, 30 Apr 2018 19:01:20 UTC

SHOCKWAVE 0.1

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls
Menu: Up arrow to go to instructions page. Up arrow again to start game.

Game: Up/down/left/right arrows to move. Z to set off green shockwave, X to set off blue shockwave.

Mechanics
Shockwaves will sweep away the rocks of the same colour, but your ship is vulnerable to either kind so you had better sweep carefully! Watch the cooldown marker in the bottom left corner.

Commentary
Bah I was doing so well with my 2D board game thing from a few nights ago but I really didn't have enough time to make it happen so this came together just today. It's an awful mess in many ways but came out better than it might have done.

itch.io page: here.

1GAM April 2018

POD

Fri, 30 Mar 2018 19:40:52 UTC

POD 1.0

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls
Menu: X to switch from mouse control (default) to arrow keys. Z to go to instructions page. Z again to start game.

Game: Move mouse (default) or use L/R arrow keys to rotate ship. Z to thrust (note that you can travel in that direction at that speed indefinitely once you are moving).

Mechanics
Every time you are near a planet, a line will guide you to it. (Or to the nearest planet if there are several.)

Every time you pass over a planet, you might collect resources from the detritus floating around it - fuel, minerals, or both. The fuel will keep you going longer. Minerals are just for bragging rights. Planets are also marked with a V for 'visited'.

Try to visit as many planets and collect as many minerals as you can before running out of fuel.

If you're really lucky the speed and direction you're travelling when you run out of fuel will take you over a planet that has fuel, and you can continue on, but you can also give up if you don't want to wait and see.

Commentary
Finally did a Big Thing (or a relatively Big Thing) with my vector line drawing stuff in PICO-8. I am calling this mess 8STROKE and will probably make more games with it in future, although maybe not for a while because this was a lot of work. Nonetheless I am getting in on time and with plenty of nice-to-haves done! Very happy.

itch.io page: here.

#1GAM March 2018

SPRINGBEAR

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 19:47:05 UTC

SPRINGBEAR 0.1

by PROGRAM_IX

[Click to Play]

Controls
Z to start. Arrows move the bear.

Commentary
I got tangled in a dirty web of vector rotation when I was working on this month's game, and it so distracted me that I never actually worked on the other parts of the game...so instead, I threw this together in two days! Just like I always seem to do.
Nonetheless I think it's pretty good. You play as a bear who's just woken up from hibernation to a snowy landscape with no grass! Have to clear that up so grass can grow and spring can really begin.
There's no real fail state in this game, but it happens in moves - you'll continue in a straight line as long as you're moving over unbroken snow. But it's fun to try and complete levels in the shortest time possible. To be fair, I wasn't able to create as many or as clever levels as I had hoped, but if you're interested you should be able to add some easily by editing the file. If not, just enjoy the 7 levels already there!

itch.io: here

PROGRAM_IX [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

ix_bash

LEAFBLOWER

CALMSAIL

DESERTMYTHS

LITTLEGHOST

SPINFLOWER

LANDER

NEONTUNNEL

BEES

DODGER

GARDENING

RUBBISH

BLOOD

ANTS

PUMPACTIONPAT (Pump-Action Patrick)

COW

DANDELION

SHOCKWAVE

1GAM April 2018

POD

SPRINGBEAR

1GAM February 2018