Compass Rose Games (SailEars Super Secret Game Dev Blog) @compassrosegames - Tumblr Blog

No games just pain of life

I joke only to hide the tears. Only really played mobile games this week. Though I would be getting data back but no dice so Monster Hunter Now has been kinda limited. TrainStation 2 and Creation Divine have both been taking less of my time as I focus on work.

It hits like the ocean so let’s invoke Poseidon shall we?

#compass rose games #fucking up yet again #weekly failure #fall 7 time rise 8

catchymemes

What I played this week

Super late but the habit is what matters. I can get the timing down later.

Anyway, not much to report. Been a busy week IRL and so I only played a few games

TrainStation 2 and Creation Divine. I think I like working in the morning a little more so maybe getting up earlier is a better idea?

Games I played Last Weekish

Super relaxed as I go to bed, nothing super fancy.

Astroneer - Got about half an hour in mostly gaffing around working on power production and research of new technology. I was also focusing on the sound design as well as other visual design features and aesthetics since that is a good place to start. In retrospect it is also kind of startling how many implied corpses there are littered around the planet but hey, can’t make an omelette without cracking a few helmets am i right?

Hooked on You - I did manage to get about half an hour in. Wohoo. Unfortunately I am a sore loser and wanted to get the best possible option. As it turns out the game only lets players save at certain points which is rather interesting if frustrating. So I got most of the way through the date, saved just before the event flag, and it would load back to the start of the day, so like 20 minutes of game time before I would be at the point I was trying to save at. Interesting little feature

Cookie Clicker - I’ll be honest, I keep forgetting that I have it open in one of my tabs and I am now in the trillions. I sold all the grannies to pay for a time machine. That’s all I’ll say for now.

Mobile

Creation Divine - This is another MMO RPG that is entirely too overwhelming but somehow less so than Sword Ling. I think the visuals have a much more muted color palette so everything is just a slight shade duller or less shiny. I can’t tell right now. Still has the sheer numerical weight of Sword Ling though

Exominer - A cute little idle game focused on … you guessed it; mining. Specifically mining on an exoplanet. Kinda more Cookie Clicker levels of activity but it is a little needier asking the player to check in every two hours or just stopping progress

TrainStation 2 - There has been a museum event going on that has been kind of interesting but I have been spending less time as I hit the upper limit of their freemium business model

But ok I must sleep now.

So long and thanks for all the fish

#compass rose games #played this week

By blood and darkness this is harder than I thought it would be. Been dealing with some personal drama so that has been eating up more oxygen than I thought it would

I think doing it only once a week encourages procrastination. In other words, I need a higher cognitive load in order to keep myself engaged with the work.

So let’s do this instead; three updates. Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday with goals.

Gonna try and keep the Friday gameplay as well. This weeks is going to be posted tomorrow.

Because I am useless without a schedule, let’s aim for sayyy … 12:00 UTC

Otherwise no changes to the goals I just have been making a framework for building characters rather than actually creating them 😅

Anywho as you were

#compass rose games #fucking up yet again #new schedule

3dgoblindev

They are the same video

#trendingshorts#trending #viralshort #short #reels

That video singlehandedly inspired the whole mechanic.

#soloev #indiedev #game design #game development #snail #mushrooms #inspiration

Weekly Update 2024.01.21

FINALLY.

Two things. Nice and short.

I continued my playthrough of Hooked On You. Got through Huntress' date and tried to save in the middle of it. Quit the game and it reset to the beginning of the date. Definitely frustrating but I was surprised at how easy I found the minigame to beat.

I also got started with an older game called The Beginners Guide. Seems appropriate for making my first little shitty project.

But I put a little more time into the game this week. It has been busy and I have been procrastinating. But I got through options for the drinks and moved on to the food

I am of two minds when it comes to this. I kinda want to do one more three-option for location, or jumping right into picking a potential partner.

Or split the difference and do both

I think I am just trying to avoid coding consequences for the choices because I do want there to be consequences but I get to do more research into Twine to see how that all would work and that will take more time than just writing.

So maybe the option is just to write one path? Instead of three? That seems the most reasonable even if it isn't how I have been operating.

I think the other thing that I have to do is imagine what the romance options will be. Give them a little character and whatnot.

So I think that will be the goal for next week:

Write a short bio for one romance-able character

Write a short intro after choosing a place to sit

A little more work than what I am used to but lets push a little more shall we? As for gaming goals:

30 minutes (1 in game day) of Hooked on You

30 minutes of Katawa Shojo

Lets stick to the more visual novels for now. Because I still have:

Game Analysis: Astroneers - 1st Draft

I am not sure how I am going to do this one as there are a lot of ways to dissect it. I am particularly impressed by the sound design but the visual styling and interface are also very intuitive and would be worth dissecting. So lets just do another hour of gameplay and see what happens.

Oh boy big week lets see if I am biting off more than I can chew

#compass rose games #game design #game analysis #compass rose 006

shencomix

I hate going on this shit

Week of Play 2024.01.13-19

Oh no where has the time gone?

Getting back on the bandwagon that now that the new year is officially under way. This week has been kind of light in terms of gameplay as I am focusing on forming new habits and getting paperwork ready for next year.

But on to the GAMES

More Astroneer this week. Getting my base set up and exploring more of the world. It is nice that there is a series of tutorial missions, now I just need to find the menu for it. I found one of the monuments that is central to the big mystery and story of the game. It looks like Astroneer won the analysis so I will be working on taking it apart

Switch

Of course, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a classic that I am slowly working my way through in Japanese. Sitting down and trying to understand the new words is hard but I am hoping that it will get easier with time. I like it because it is more open than other traditional JRPGs that have a shit-ton more text, so less vocabulary to learn while still having a solid story.

It would help if I could actually focus on it instead of my main goal; climb every mountain in not but my boxers, 3 hearts, and a dream.

Mobile

I have been playing less mobile games but one I keep coming back to is TrainStation 2, mostly because it is an easy game to wait around in. It's monetization structure is also fascinating because it takes advantage of that wait time and provides just enough to incentivize voluntary advertisement viewing.

I have been playing less of this since I have lost data so wandering around hunting stuff is a pain in the ass. I should be back to it soon but the wandering itself is more satisfying without it unfortunately. I will still put this on the docket for dissection just because the game design is superb in my opinion

I haven't been playing much else this week. I fell off of Sword Ling RPG as between it's overwhelming interface and difficulty getting into the gameplay

That's it for now. I am going to see about playing more Astroneer, Hooked On You, and one mystery game so stick around and find out (Who knows what my mobile games will be, YOU CAN'T MAKE ME SAY)

Have a wonderful weekend y'all

#compass rose games #game analysis #weekly games #astroneer #loz botw

Played this week 2024.01.07-12 - remote edition

Been busy fucking shit up so gonna be quick and late.

Been mostly playing TrainStation2. It’s gotten interesting as the timings have gotten longer and more annoying to deal with but on the flip side it is one of the few games where I actively want to watch the in game ads because they are integrated so well into the gameplay

I also got a couple of hours in on Astroneers where I got my research lab done and now have a bunch of new tech to make

Need to put more time into this rip me

See y’all next week

#compass rose games #game analysis #played this week

i-am-a-fish

I made this, please feel free to use

i-am-a-fish

I made this post a couple months ago, and I completely forgot that I made it

today has been one of the worst days of my entire life, and this post somehow made its way back to me, like a mental-health chef boyardee can.

it actually helped me a lot

i-am-a-fish

have some more

prokopetz

I love it when farm animals in strategy games have their own little pockets of visibility in the fog of war, because the fog of war is ostensibly a visual abstraction of military intelligence-gathering, which implies that the goat is submitting intel reports.

autisticbisexualsokka

“I will rebleat all calls from posts more distant from the guardhouse than my own”

godslayerclaira

prokopetz

See, that's even more ridiculous, because it doesn't just have a zone of visibility – terrain it's passed through stays revealed. If we accept the abstraction that revealed terrain represents knowledge possessed by your side's commanders as a result of intel reports, this frames an implicit narrative in which the sheep drew a map.

pixelmason

#gaming #video games #strategy games #fog of war #game design #ludonarrative dissonance #punny

Update 2024.01.07

All right now we're cooking.

Somewhat.

With the new year and new habits I have been being a fucking idiot with my time and efforts yet again so we are gonna start slow. A step forward is still a step. No matter how small.

I started on a small project in Twine, a piece of software that is good for making game stories as it allows for easy drafting of visual novel style games. I got the intro and three options for it afterwards. No real characters yet just a rough start for an initial greeting. I'm going to see about drafting one story line all the way through to give myself some room to work with.

Basic idea is gonna be you just got to a college, and the goal is simply to secure a first date with one of three lucky entities. No idea how it will proceed from here though.

That reminds me there are a couple of games that would probably be helpful to revisit. Katawa Shoujo and Coffee Talk.

Both feature relationship building. Katawa Shoujo was the first real dating sim I ever played. You play as a boy with a heart condition who got transferred to a school for people with disabilities. Each of the eligible girls has a different one, from pure trauma to blindness and a couple in between. A surprisingly sensitive portrayal of relationships considering it's origin story.

Coffee Talk is probably closer to what I am aiming at creating but that is still a long way off. You play as a barista who offers comfort in the form of warm drinks and a friendly ear and advice to whoever comes your way. Building relationships and events are based around what drinks you are able to figure out. It is a fun experience that is much warmer than the world presented by VA11-Hall A despite having very similar mechanics.

I will probably go through VA11-Hall A later when I have a little more time and a better idea of the story that I ultimately want to make.

Anywho goals for next week. I'mma be busy so let's keep it simple:

Lets get the next series of choices down from Coffee Shop, I'm thinking something to eat as well, so figuring out how to add values to each choice will be next up.

Let's also do another 30 minutes of "Hooked on You."

Better to under promise and over deliver than over promise and under deliver.

Let's build some shit.

See y'all later

#compass rose games #game development #game design #compass rose 005 #weekly update

prokopetz

autisticbisexualsokka

“I will rebleat all calls from posts more distant from the guardhouse than my own”

godslayerclaira

prokopetz

Played This Week 2024.01.01-01.06

Got to play a couple of games this week, only one on PC while another couple on mobile.

ASTRONEER - System Era Softworks (2016/12)

~ 1 Hour (~48 hours for the main story + extras)

This is an old favorite of mine, a game about exploration and mining that is much gentler than some of the other games in the genre that share similar mechanics. It was funky getting back into the mechanics of the game but it was still enjoyable and very engaging. Especially seeing all of the new stuff that they have added to the game since I last played seriously. While I do kind of miss it I have never completed the main story so I want to do that since unlike Space Engineer, Satisfactory, or Stationeers there is a little bit more of one that isn't hidden behind layers of base optimization.

Mobile

Sword Ling RPG - 854Game (???)

~idk? About an hour a day? so 6-8 hours mostly in the background

I have been slowly grinding through the stuff but holy shit is it overwhelming. Each little menu has like 2 or 3 things that can end up contributing to the player's Combat Power (CP). And that's before finding whole other heros who can each be equipped to add CP. Looks like this one really is gonna be a long haul.

TrainStation 2 - Pixel Federation Games (2019 CW)

~idk? probably about 6 hours total now?

It's hard to keep track of these fuckers. This is a cute little game that caught my attention because I like trains. Well, transit. Transportation. Whatever. I have spent a decent amount of time in Transtportation Fever 2 and this game brings a little nostalgia back from that style of gameplay, moving resources around. I may go deeper into my thoughts on it but it is a very comforting game that does interesting things with pacing transit times, especially in this the tutorial levels.

Monster Hunter Now - Niantic Inc. (2023/09)

~2 hours a day so ~12 hours this week?

I should really get a program logger installed to see how long I am playing these.

This particular game is made by Niantic of Pokemon Go fame. While I had been on Pokemon Go this caught my eye and has hooked me longer. Concept is the same only the player actually fights monsters from the Monster Hunter universe using weapons of various styles. I can definitely see where the learned a lot from the game-play weaknesses of Pokemon Go and really turned it into a game I don't mind walking around for. I do want to go into a deep dive on the differences between the two so I might do that over the next few weeks.

Lost Abroad Language Cafe - Lost Abroad Inc. (2022 CW, EA)

~ 0.5 hours

A little language game that I saw an ad on Reddit for. Despite early access this seems like a very interesting concept for learning basic grammar and politeness. I tried Japanese for a little bit and it was pretty fun. While I would like to put more time into it, it is in Early Access so not everything seems to be implemented yet, but I need to check. I have only played on my phone so I need to try it on my iPad to get the full experience where it seems to be intended. It has a very similar feel to Influent, but because there is a much smaller scale of words that are unlocked rather slowly through forced repetition and a relatively rapid speed of comprehension through that repetition make this a game that I want to keep my eye on. Gameplay takes place in chunks of 1, 2, or 5 minutes which make it a nice snack for any language learners.

Recap

So I actually played more than I thought. Which is nice. Unfortunately a lot of the mobile games kind of slide into the 'unconscious' play style where I might as well be doom scrolling for all of the attention I am paying to them. Lost Abroad being the one exception.

Anywho, which would y'all like to see further analysis of?

Which game should I take a closer look at?

Astroneer

Sword Ling RPG

TrainStation 2

Monster Hunter Now

Lost Abroad Language Cafe

Voting ended onJan 12, 2024

Have a good week y'all, see ya Sunday