Another HTML5 solitaire, Babataire EX! This one is way less refined and more chaotic than the previous one, but this one actually features rule-changing elements like Baba Is You! I’m reasonably happy with the result, but I think I’ll adjust the design a bit in the coming days.
In other news, I’ve scoured my archives but couldn’t find any source files for the original Once in Space from 2007! That’s really odd because I’ve tended to care about archiving stuff a lot, even too much, and I would’ve expected that I’d for sure have saved some project file or another. I wonder what happened there.
Anyway, I noticed that if the existing executable is launched with the -NOF command, the game-breaking fullscreen resolution-switching goes away and the game’s current build is actually playable! I set up a zip with a .bat file to get this effect, and included also an earlier build that for some reason exists; someone told me they’d be interested in playing the original. Warning: it’s extremely finicky!
I’ve added the three recent new games (Babataire, Cavern Sweeper & Mamono Mower) to the main website. Due to them being very quickly-made and in-browser-only, I initially added them to the “small games” page, but after some consideration moved them to the “medium games” page, because my “medium games” page is more a “games not made for game jams or other such events” page.
Twitter’s future looks even more uncertain now, so I guess I might be posting about future endeavours in here & in my Mastodon & Cohost accounts more than before soon. Oh well!
I made another minesweeper-like game! I was interested in seeing what happens if the mines in minesweeper affect tiles around them other than the default 8, and that led me down the path of making this game. It was a fun exercise, although the solving logic got quite impossible very easily when combining multiple different patterns. The game’s HTML5 so you can play it in your browser, same as Mamono Mower & Babataire.
Hey! I’m releasing a whole bunch of things again, would you look at that. I played the Zachtronics Solitaire Collection earlier, and had a good time with it, which of course led me to ponder about making my own solitaire game. I considered a couple different concepts, but ultimately settled on a design that resembles the Cluj solitaire from the aforementioned collection. Drawing my own deck of cards was fun, but don’t be fooled; the solitaire doesn’t really have anything to do with Baba, despite the cards & the name. I’m pretty happy with the result, although I couldn’t be bothered with implementing a system to ensure that all the deals are solvable.
Once in Space! That’s the game that originally prompted me to set up the hempuli.com website! I remember Nifflas helpfully making me a simple HTML example for how I could format the page for the game, and I’ve been using that as a template ever since (with some adjustments over the years). That was a hugely helpful HTML file!
Anyway, Once in Space was one of my original “platformers-with-a-twist”, alongside games like Timerocketxby, Flickerstrings & GENERIC Platformer. I was quite fond of it, although the initial 2007 version received some harsh-but-valid criticism from a JayIsGames.com reviewer due to how rough the game was to play.
Eventually, in 2011 (I thought it was earlier), I decided to remake the game. For various reasons that version was ultimately kind of lost in time and space, despite being much much more refined game design -wise than the 2007 original. I’ve been thinking of updating it for a new release for years, but now that has actually happened!
In other news, I put Cavern of Flight, one of my highest-quality Ludum Dare entries on Itch.io earlier this year; the game had had a very unfortunate visual bug ever since release where respawning after dying would commonly require you to hard-restart the program. I fixed that for the Itch.io release, but there were a couple additional issues with its design that I didn’t bother fixing at the time. However, while I was still excited about putting OiS 2022 out, I went and actully fixed those issues, making the game a much less rough experience to finish. So that’s two old games now available, better than ever!
Hmm. There was a time when I actively didn’t understand the purpose of Twitter, but as I’ve gotten more into “professional” game development, its utility in sharing my work (and shitposting) has become more apparent to me, and despite the various issues with the site, for the past couple years I’ve mostly appreciated its existence. Especially maintaining the Baba Is You official Twitter account has been quite rewarding apart from some specific bad experiences.
Anyway, as it is, Twitter’s future looks somewhat uncertain, so like a lot of other people it seemed prudent to set up some alternative social media accounts for possible future use. At the moment my plan is to still use Twitter and just mirror relevant posts to these other sites, but we’ll see if that’ll change in the future. And who knows, maybe this means that I’ll post more here on my blog in the future?? Life can be odd like that.
Exuno & Goost from the Mystery Fun House blind speedrunning community inspired me to make a lawnmowing-based game. After some jokey lawnmowing crossover suggestions, I started feeling that I wanted to actually make one of them real, and proceeded to spend the rest of the night programming a simple HTML5 lawnmowing-minesweeper hybrid. And this is it! Based on Mamono Sweeper, which you should definitely check out!
