Hello all. I'm donstathemonsta, and I'm a long-time videogame modder and mugen creator, but I've never made my own videogames. I've decided to change that and have started a series of games. I've nearly finished two (I'll be adding polish from here on out until they shine bright like a diamond, thank you Rihanna) and plan to do five total.
The theme of the series is taking expectations and turning them on their heads.
drive.google.com/open
nPONGo is a great example. It's 2-player, local multiplayer only, though I've had a great time playing over Chrome Remote Desktop with my friends. Starting the game up shows you the classic Pong set up, and you first realize something is fundamentally different (if you don't read any of the writing about the game) when the ball in the center of the screen just directly to the floor and starts bouncing. Yes, you can move your paddle up and down, as you'd expect, but to get at the ball you have to move towards the center of the screen. Lo and behold, you can. It goes on like this. This is the first game I've ever made from start to finish, and I'll be adding fancier effects and such as time goes on for a while. Here's the link, please check it out: scirra.com/arcade/multiplayer-games/npongo-a-multiplayer-shooter-music-update-25121
drive.google.com/file/d/1th5c6TQ7rDEqdYgMRo4ShiBekxN5pWzA/view
My second game, RicoShot!, is actually the first game I tried to make, but decided it was too complicated. I went instead with what was originally going to be a simple Pong clone, but we know how that turned out! Anyway, the screen set up evokes vertical scrolling shmups with endless ammo. It always bothered me that for so many scrolling shmups there was plenty incentive to never take your finger off the fire button. Limited-ammo weapons were usually on their own buttons, so a constant stream of bullets was always a good idea. Developers realized this and made (especially mobile) shmups where the primary weapon fired automatically and constantly, which also bothered me. I wanted a game that sharply discouraged it, but let you fire all crazy if you wanted to. The first thing you'll notice is that although it looks like the usual vertical scroller, you can actually move in eight directions. You'll also quickly realize why the name is RicoShot (hint: ricochet). It goes on to be really hard (for me, at least) and pretty fun (again, for me, and to my friends). I also just finished adding asymmetrical multiplayer, though single players can multitask for added challenge/benefit and pilot both machines at once. The story will be silly and not very fleshed out, and I have a spriter on-board to add some more personality and give them rough gem some more luster. I hope that somebody out there enjoys it, and let me know what you think! Oh yeah, there's one boss, then an additional, harder playthrough kicks off, and it loops like that.
scirra.com/arcade/shooting-games/ricoshot-ghost-update-now-with-co-op-vs-2-player-mode-25159
I haven't given much thought to what the next 3 will be, but I'm sure you can tell from the banner images, games used for inspiration, and graphics thus far (though they're subject to change in RicoShot!'s case) that I'm going for old-school presentation with unexpected gameplay. So if you have any ideas, please let me know!