Tag: Video Game

Fumble Realm

On the way to the optometrist
My sunglasses fall below the seat
I reach, but am grabbed
Pulled into another world

Fumble Realm is the world’s first text-based action game, and a pretty solid argument against the creation of any new ones.

Take control of a person who has just tumbled into the Fumble Realm. You can’t see anything. You are told in text how far away walls are from each of your sides, your front and back, as well as the general direction of nearby objects of interest. It is up to you to fumble through the four (five? I don’t remember,) levels looking for the portal to the next one.

I made this game as part of a text-only game jam. I don’t think anybody played it. I didn’t win. It’s a hard sell. BUT. If you’re into puzzles, if you’ve got a strong visual mind’s-eye, and if you’re ready to do some pen-and-paper cartography, I believe its a pretty clever little puzzle to untangle. I’m proud of it enough to post about it here, anyways.

Available on itch.io! Free! Runs on windows!

 

Teddykaboom Kaboom

TeddyKaboom Kaboom is an adaptation of the classic Atari 2600 game “Kaboom” from 1981. Use your mouse to move Diffusely the Bomb Disarming Robot side to side to catch the bombs that I, for some reason, am hurling at the street.

It’s a free download for everyone who signs up to my newsletter! It runs on most Windows machines. There will probably be a Mac version after the completion of Bif Borf.

I wanted to make a quick, dumb game to give away in exchange for subscribers. I almost did Atari Combat, a game I remembered enjoying a lot with friends a long time ago, but unfortunately, that game is still really good. I needed my fun, dumb game that I’m making in a few hours to be at least as good as something that ran on a toaster thirty years ago. looking at Atari Combat, I dunno, I wasn’t 100% sure I could pull that off. I set off looking for a new game that’d better suit my purposes, and that’s when I remembered Kaboom! It’s half my name! it’s meant to be!

Now sure, the rights for Kaboom are held by the only company from that era that’s still going around suing people, but I figure I’m under the radar enough to get away with it. Plus, Kaboom was already a knock-off anyways.

Other WIP

This is where I’m putting things that aren’t MAIN projects, but ARE things I regularly think about and will (hopefully) one day be graduated to proper project pages.

Danbr & Burke

While I am still fuzzy about what I’m going to make out of it, I refuse to let this premise or these characters die. They are my darlings. “Aren’t you supposed to—” Yes, I’m supposed to kill those. I know. I know. I also refuse.

Maybe a book? Maybe a radio play? Maybe a regular play? A graphic novel? Something else? I think for now I just have to find what I found so exciting about the concept when I first came up with it, and chase that. I’m missing something stupid for sure.


Smaller Experimental Video Game

The idea for Bif Borf came out of me screwing around until I stumbled onto something fun. That, as you can imagine, was a great feeling. I wanna feel it again! Every once in a while, I’ll get a crazy hunch that something might be fun, and I take a break from Bif Borf to make a conceptual demo with rectangles and smiley faces. When I get far enough ahead on Bif Borf, I might try developing one of those into something small and fun to fill the meanwhile.

Bif Borf

Bif Borf is a work-in-progress adventure game for PC, aiming to be released by the end of 2021.

Things are peaceful in the world of Sensibland, until one night when the nefarious Gilty Husk and his legions of monsters emerge from the depths of the ocean…

Since the monsters’ diet consists of human tears, their plan is to kidnap the 120 orphans from throughout Sensibland and live off their suffering for the rest of time.

The last hope that the kids have is Bif Borf, a folk hero of theirs, who always fights for the downtrodden. He is a big, unstoppable bison who can smash through monsters with his great heft, dash across bodies of water, and roll into a huge bouncy ball.

Bif Borf’s stories had always been just that; tales the kids told each other to comfort themselves when times were tough. But one night, every orphan made the same wish at the same moment, Bif Borf came to life!

This game came about a year or so ago. I wanted to dip my toe back into game design after pulling it out in high school. I tried to make an easy game: “like top-down Zelda, but the character has a bit of inertia.” My inexperienced butt got the numbers way off on my first attempt, so it felt more like “top-down Zelda if Link weighed 500lbs and had the top speed of a cheetah.” I’d accidentally made a game in which it was really fun to build up speed and slam into things, so I made the character into a bison, and here we are.

Demo soon! Subscribe newsletter!