One Year Of Game A Month

I've been doing game-a-month for quite a while at this point. This game was my 12th entry, marking exactly one year since I started in June of 2018. In 'Don't Look Away From The Colors', a first-person puzzle game, players are tasked to complete various black-and-white stages while keeping their view gazed on black objects. If you look away into the white void ahead, the music will start to distort prompting a reset.

CHALLENGES DURING DEVELOPMENT:
I wanted to keep a clear visual style with high-contrast, but in the process the game got hard to navigate. To circumvent this, the fail-state of the game (looking away from the colors) is quite forgiving. Giving the player a chance to look away for a while before prompting a reset. Making it just a bit easier than it's nightmarish real life counter-part: The Steady Hand Game.

WHERE TO PLAY:
The game can be played in-browser on my itch.
https://papercookies.itch.io/dont-look-away-from-the-colors

'ShortFused' was a group effort during the 2019 Brains Eden game jam. The theme of the jam was "chain reaction". In Shortfused the player drags a burning fuse through a series of levels. After the fuse burns up the fire will through the trail of gunpowder, picking up coins and exploding barrels in the process. The game got the Frontier Innovation Award at the event.

CHALLENGES DURING DEVELOPMENT:
Figuring out a system to detect where the user had created loops took quite a while during development. Luckily we had a great coder on the team (Sarah Druyts) who took it on like a champ. I'm very thankful for all the work the team put into this project!

WHERE TO PLAY:
Downloadable for Windows:
https://papercookies.itch.io/shortfused 
(Link includes full credits.)

Made very quickly for the GMTK 2019 game jam (three hours before the deadline). Keyed is admittedly a small and short game, but hopefully quite pleasant. The theme for the game was "Limited Controls", the game is controlled by mouse only. It revolves around rotating a key into the right orientation to pick locks. However, you can't simply rotate the key. Instead you need to push it against walls in order to get it to turn.

CHALLENGES DURING DEVELOPMENT:
I had three hours, make a guess.

WHERE TO PLAY:
Playable in-browser here:
https://papercookies.itch.io/key

I made The Tower over the weekend with a friend after visiting a museum and liking a painting by Léon Spilliaert. The game is a sort of vignette of the painting, with a simple mechanic of revealing textures if you shine your light towards it.

CHALLENGES DURING DEVELOPMENT:
The game has a memory leak, so you'll be lucky if you can play it for more than 3 minutes.

WHERE TO PLAY:
https://papercookies.itch.io/the-tower

This month I was lucky enough to make two games. Beat Em Up has you climbing up an endless tower punching baddies in the air, while Rotatoe - a mobile game - has you jumping from block to block while revealing a story about the game's development. Rotatoe was an experiment in creating a very non-disruptive  advertisement model. While also being a heartfelt story about family and making video games. (written by @wombatstuff) Both games were a group effort, credits are found on the game pages linked below.

WHERE TO PLAY:
Beat Em Up is playable in-browser here: 
https://papercookies.itch.io/beat-em-up

Rotatoe is downloadable for your Android Phone Device here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.NotSoSolo.Rotatoe&hl=en

No Players Online is a horror game made as a submission to the Haunted PS1 Halloween Jam. It got quite a bit of coverage - such as being featured in Rock Paper Shotgun, the Washington Post and a bit of Youtube Dot Com as well - for which I'm very grateful. It was also a foray into ARG (Alternate Reality Game) development. There's quite a bit to this game if you dare to dig deep enough. Sound design was done by the incredible Viktor Kraus.

CHALLENGES DURING DEVELOPMENT:
No Players Online's base game was made in just 4 days. Which is quite short for the amount of work we put into it. After the initial release, work on the ARG begun, which was made very hectically over the following weeks. All in all the game required some unusual work, like getting a phone number up and running.

WHERE TO PLAY:
Downloadable for Windows and Linux:
https://papercookies.itch.io/no-players-online

Day Divider is an alt-game based on works by Lucy Skaer. It was made after going to a museum and being really moved by the two of her works. It's a tribute to her work, and an experiment in making a game that's not very gamey. I made it together with Ward D'Heer and Viktor Kraus.

CHALLENGES DURING DEVELOPMENT:
For this game, I really wanted to sell the idea as much as possible that it wasn't a game made in a game engine. Trying to replicate the original 32mm look of the work it was based on.

WHERE TO PLAY:
Downloadable for Windows here:
https://papercookies.itch.io/day-divider

I've always been a interested by tools development and user interaction. This project was an attempt at replicating that very special feeling of typing up something on a typewriter. That satisfying clicky sound. That bell when you reach the page end. The way you scroll your page up and down. How you can't press more than one key at once making you very careful about punching down your characters. Complete with jazzy tunes and coffee-shop atmosphere composed by Viktor Kraus.

CHALLENGES DURING DEVELOPMENT
I really wanted to get into the nitty gritty of what makes the typewriter tick. I've studied up a lot on typewriters and I'm pretty pleased with this recreation of a 1946 Smith Corona Sterling. I'm especially proud of the extra feature where you're able to load up any image you have and put it into the app. Using unity to make a text-editor was perhaps misguided, but very fun!

WHERE TO PLAY:
Playable in-browser, but download recommended:
https://papercookies.itch.io/typewriter-simulator

This was a collaboration with Viktor Kraus, @Lfobbb, @Gaziter and me. It's also my first attempt at making a website. It's surprisingly cheap to do once you figure it out and I'd love to do it more in the future. Making websites with Unity is also misguided... but fun!

CHALLENGES DURING DEVELOPMENT:
Unity WebGL does not like audio! Getting the animal to dance alongside the music is easy with the desktop player. But WebGL puts certain restrictions that had me generating hundred gigantic files of raw audio level data and reading them in. It's nothing short of a miracle I got it all working and loading fast on your browser.

WHERE TO PLAY:
http://animalfunk.club/

Car Game is a short game about a dream I've had and a memory of walking at night. Having no experience whatsoever driving cars, it was an interesting challenge to make a game about driving cars and working a stick shift. It's a very weird and personal piece, based as much on my own thoughts as it strangely enough is based on some Woody Allen films quirks.

CHALLENGES DURING DEVELOPMENT:
It dawned on me quite early in making this game that I have no idea how a car works. A relic of this is still present in the final game - the stick shift is reversed.

WHERE TO PLAY:
Playable in your very own browser here:
https://papercookies.itch.io/car-game

A horror game created for the Haunted PS1 Wretched Weekend Jam. VHS 1986 is a collection of home-made blank VHS tapes. All of the tapes within the game were filmed by my own hand through the empty streets of quarantine times Belgium. Blessed again by the wonderful sounds of Viktor Kraus.

CHALLENGES DURING DEVELOPMENT:
A game developers worst nightmare: going outside to film something for your game.

WHERE TO PLAY:
Download here (if you dare!)
https://papercookies.itch.io/vhs-1986

Metamaze was made as part of a youtube video that is yet to be released. It combines a 2D platformer with a 3D maze game. As well as somehow being quite frightening. As I write this, the game isn't yet open to the public. But since you read all the way down I'll drop you a secret link, just for you:

https://papercookies.itch.io/metamaze
The password to access the game is "coolbeans"