Hypocotyl Games

We make games and we want to make them better - in every sense. An open record of our thinking and progress.

[hypocotyl]

Awesome. Two totally free game art books. Will be handy. It looks like they don't have much about the two topics I'm really interested in learning more about though: Rigging and Shaders.

[hypocotyl]

There are too many tools out there! I was going to work in flashpunk, but then discovered HaxeFlixel, and now I'm being talked into not worrying about the code, and just building games in GameMaker: Studio. Every day, there seems to be another great tool released!

[hypocotyl]

Shovel Knight is a love letter to NES era platformers. The team decided to break some of the NES rules where nostalgia outweighed reality.

[hypocotyl]

A Wolf Pack of Three - Frozen Free Fall

Three Wolves spawn every turn. The player tries to remove them by making matches near them, or including them in the footprint of the area effects.

A great use of the negative space in a traditional match-3 level. The wolves don't interupt the normal mechanics of the game.

Wolves always respawn at random points, adding a lot of randomness to the play. The player is less able to take long-game strategies. This is especially frustrating on a small level with many colors (5) - reshuffles are common.

There are less turns than wolves, so the player must remove more than one wolf on average, but there are never more than 3 wolves at a time. It is easy to get to a point where winning is impossible (Wolves > Turns * 3), but the game will allow the player to continue.

It would be interesting to see how this would play if the wolves would persist longer than a single round. Keeping the novel use of negative space, but encouraging the player to play the long game: looking for 4+ matches to knock out maximum wolves.

[hypocotyl]

Crosswords & Moral Panic!

Idling workers, distracted housewives and a decline in reading: Alan Connor looks at the great crossword panic of the 1920s

Via @danctheduck

[hypocotyl]

I always think it is interesting when creatives offer insight into their process and where inspiration comes from. Please enjoy this offering.