I live in a cage and build games all day.
Male
Hamster wheel athlet
Academy of Art
San Francisco
Joined on 4/11/10
Posted by jacklehamster - January 24th, 2014
Lately, I’ve had a few decisions to make in terms of the difficulty of the games I produced (Dragonworm Megablastard and upcoming My Champion). I made this soccer game, which was apparently insanely difficult. I did spend a lot of time trying to win a match, and felt pretty satisfied when I did. When it came to releasing a test run of that game, it turns not only nobody was able to beat it, but nobody could even get a draw! (ok I think one person managed to win). Still, I struggled before reducing the difficulty, because I felt that players should really try to beat the challenge. On the other hand, one thing to keep in mind is that a level of difficulty that’s too high really drives popularity down, because let’s face it, it’s no fun when you can’t win ;-/ I decided to tone down the difficulty so that winning a match now is as difficult as it was to get a draw, and now it’s still very difficult to win by more than one. (I’ll try to add more levels in practice mode to draw people in.). Okay, I had to cave in. It’s concerning though, have gamers become softer, are easy going games now becoming the standard?
Posted by jacklehamster - December 3rd, 2013
Lately, things have been productive. Three new games got release, each part of a game jam.
- 0h maze: Made in 3h for 0h game jam
- Divine Techno Run: Made in a week for Game Jolt's Contest (Theme: Party)
- flo: Made for Charity Jam. Sometimes I skip jams, but I really didn't want to miss this one.
Interesting fact: To produce flo, I actually used pre-made art from the artist. (I had to cut out the characters from the image). So the art was actually not produced for the game. I also lack time so I basically hacked Divine Techno Run, which uses a semi-3d engine. I didn't use the Youtube API of Divine Techno Run, it actually slows things down a lot.
0h Maze (pronounced zero hour maze) was produced for 0h game jam. I didn't really understand the rules, but I guess I was supposed to produce the game in less than 1h, and during daylight saving time... whatever. Nobody's really anal about the rules for those jams.
Still, 3h is the shortest I've done to make a game. I was working on some other game and I needed a break, so I made that one. I was also planning to work on Shark Jam during that weekend but that one fell through (too bad).
Anyway, I've been working pretty intensively on a game engine (used in the last 2 games) which will allow me to make more performant games. The next project should be interesting.
Posted by jacklehamster - July 17th, 2013
So as you might know, Krapi Studio has released their first game:
Weedman
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/621157
Don't worry, I'm not committing myself to produce only Krapi Games. It's just that if I finish a game that looks a bit sub-standard, I'll stick the Krapi logo on it and pretend it's krapi on purpose. ;-P (j/k)
Anyway, with Krapi games, also comes krapi humor. So I started a comic about it:
http://www.dobuki.com/omgaf-comics.html
Cheers and enjoy!
Posted by jacklehamster - June 28th, 2013
Howdy,
So there was this silly project I started. At first, the idea was to make a game where a hitchhiker simply goes from planet to planet, looking for his dream planet. All he gets are clues from aliens on various planets.
The idea was ok, but to work, it needed a great story. Not sure why, but I really got writer's block on this one. I came up with dialogs but I have to admit I didn't really get inspired, and I'm almost feel shameful to admit I wrote them.
Anyway, I was going to just put the game up and not care much about it (we didn't really spend much time on it anyway), but I came up with another idea. I'll let you guys fill up the game with dialogs ;-P If nothing, I hope it can become an interesting social experiment. You can also change the look of the alien (see below, I added a stupid hat). You could actually redraw the alien completely, because all you do is upload a 90x90 png. It uses the Newgrounds API to store all those images.
This game will be released probably early next week. I don't plan to work much more on it, just get the project off my plate. However, if you do have a suggestion, feel free to let me know.
The game is here:
http://www.newgrounds.com/projects/games/681865/
preview
Posted by jacklehamster - June 9th, 2013
It's my birthday, so I think it's a good opportunity to share two news ;-P
#1 - New game: Mr. Fish (http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/619322)
There was this fishing jam, which is a challenge to make a game in 7 days. So I just made a game for it. It was a good way to cool down, between some other more difficult projects. (I have to say, I didn't look hard for groundbreaking gameplay or originality). Gotta say I'm pretty satisfied with the result, and got the opportunity to work with a great composer. She's new on Newgrounds, so please support her: http://marbletonemedia.newgrounds.com/
#2 - Re-designed website: http://www.dobuki.com
I re-designed my website (looks much cleaner now). The website now features not only finished projects, but also the ones being worked on, and playable demos of some pending projects. There is a blog that I recently started, and a forum for game creators. (the forum is brand new, so it has nothing in it yet).
Posted by jacklehamster - April 29th, 2013
"The World is in your hand" is a game just produced for the 48h Lundum Dare competition.
The theme is Minimalism.
To play the game, .... (some are not gonna like this), you use only ONE BUTTON.
Press Space Bar.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/616576
Posted by jacklehamster - April 20th, 2013
Publicly available at
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/615858
Posted by jacklehamster - April 20th, 2013
Just about to finish a quick game, with art from pokemon7777.
It should be release on Newgrounds shortly!