Only two posts for a single month? Not good! I haven't touched much of the project at all, but there is some development news to actually dicuss today. There is a new game design/development challenge up over at GDR. The main challenge is to create a playable (and hopefully fun) game within the confounds of the size of a generic website banner ad. So, ultimately the only restriction is that the game runs within a 468x60 pixel area. That's pretty tiny! I decided to hop onto this challenge. My main concept is a block breaking game along the lines of tetris/puyo pop, but with a strange twist to it. It's a bit difficult to get used to in its current stage in development, but the hopes are that sprite animations will help smooth out the confusion.



The main concept of the game is like any other block breaker: there's an advancing wall of blocks that needs to be destroyed before they topple over some predetermined line. My spin is a little wonky. The player shoots blocks from the right to the left. When the "arrow" of blocks hits the wall, it will "unfold" in reverse on top of the blocks it hit. If the unfolded blocks match the wall blocks underneath, they will break - otherwise they will be added to the stack on the wall.

I currently have a semi-playable version, but I'd like to at least add proper game over stuff before I throw it up for download. Currently if you lose, the game will either crash or do all sorts of crazy things.

Those who have played the game so far seem to think it will turn out fun in the end, and is a good spin on what would be just a simple block breaking clone. Hopefully I'll be able to add all the nice touches to it that it needs before the competition ends at the end of October.