The Friday Project

What happened after Very Angry Robots?

It has been over a year since I released Very Angry Robots onto the Google Play store, but apart from knocking out a couple of little demos on the excellent Play My Code, I haven't taken any other ideas to completion. Yes, I've taken part in a Ludum Dare here and there, but I've done nothing with those games after the 48 hours were up.

Life Just Bounces (http://www.playmycode.com)

This is disappointing for me, as I like writing games as much as I like playing them. It's what got me into programming in the first place, and even now programming is still a large part of my day job.

It has been frustrating that during that time, my work projects have gone live successfully, yet my personal projects have stalled. My most recent blog post was partly an exercise in trying to analyse why this was occurring, despite being framed in terms of a Ludum Dare competition that hasn't happened yet.

I got to the point of thinking that it was lack of time, and that I was too tired at the end of each day to get on my PC and start coding. And to some extent that was true. When you're tired, it's a lot easier to sit down in the evening when the family is finally in bed, and play Torchlight II, or Orcs Must Die, and tell yourself that you'll work on your game tomorrow. But when you do this, tomorrow comes, and you're tired again, and the cycle repeats.

So, finally I decided to do something to break the cycle.

Breaking the Cycle

I'm lucky enough to work for a company that gives me a lot of time off, so much so that I now have every Friday off between now and the end of the year. Rather than using the time to play games, I'm treating these days as "work". My projects for my employer have clear goals (eventually) and deadlines, and get worked on during the day when I'm awake, so why not treat writing a game for myself with the same discipline?

Having decided to do that, my next question was "what do I write?" Fortunately I had an answer. Looking at the stats for this blog, by far the biggest draw appears to be Cavern Copter, which is a simple, yet reasonably complete game that I wrote for Ludum Dare 15 back in 2009. The idea of the game is to fly a helicopter around in an cave, rescuing stranded scientists while trying not to crash. I liked the idea and have often considered taking it further.

Stripped down to its basics, the core idea is really all about controlling an object through a maze whilst avoiding walls. When you put it like that, then you realise that there are other games with a similar core idea, such as Kuru Kuru Kururin, or Irritating Stick which don't need the conceit of a helicopter at all. Now, take that core idea, strip it down to the bare essentials of controlling a spinning compass needle through a maze, put it on a phone or tablet with touch controls or even tilt controls ... and you've got my new game.

Whirling Frenzy

It's not much, but it's mine. I write it in my spare time.

The game is provisionally titled Whirling Frenzy, at least until I can think of a better title. It doesn't look like much, as everything in it is drawn with the libgdx debug renderer, but I've tried playing it on a couple of phones and it "just feels right" and I think I'm on to something good.

In short, it's a project that I can get behind, because it is already fun to play, even in this primitive state, and equally importantly, it is a project that I can handle in the time that I have available.

What next? Well, that's simple. Given that I have every Friday off until the end of the year, my goal is to get this game onto the Google Play store by the end of 2012. I'm going to go for it, working on the game every Friday, and I'll report my progress in this blog.