This is part of “A Look Back On My Old Games“.
Title: Vegas Undercover
Date: January 2009
Notes: Based on the 2D platformer tutorial for Game Maker by Yoyo Games. Pretty much a copy-paste mechanically, with different sprites and selfmade level design. Not a great game, but a first game never is. Also only has three “levels”.
Story: Honestly, there isn’t much more story here, most of it is in the name. You’re basically a sci-fi dude going undercover (really badly, he’s wearing a different uniform and is killing everyone) while hopping through a very strange and blocky enemy base. I guess this was more of a test to see what I could accomplish with my leet programming skills, which was, at this point, absolutely jack squat.
Title: Sanko Draw
Date: February 2009
Notes: An MS Paint knock-off, only worse and with music (Canon in D major, I was obviously very artsy back then). Better programming than Vegas Undercover, but still quite bad.
Title: Cubeland
Date: May 2009
Notes: The first “full-sized”, finished game. The player controls are horrible and the game is a bit buggy and vague. The first game I made with an actual story.
Story: As you can see below, the plot consists of an evil wizard named Gyx turning the enire world into (rounded) cubes because… he’s evil, I guess? Then, the protagonist named Servor (Latin for “saviour”, so subtle) makes his way through random areas to face Gyx and make the world uneven again, while the rest of humanity just sits around being cubes. On the one hand, the story was an excuse for crappy, simplistic graphics, and on the other, there’s a nice metaphor for how complexity is a good thing, somewhere in there.
Title: World Creation
Date: June 2009
Notes: A 2D platformer (sandbox), a bit more original than Vegas Undercover. Allows for the creation of your own levels.
Title: Age of Time
Date: July 2009
Notes: A sandbox game based on typical strategy games. Not sure which game inspired me here. There are only simple “missions” and you can build what you want, as there are no resources. There is a very simple, purely decorative day-night cycle. There are only 4 buildings you can build (house, farm, castle and senate).
Title: Boll Bros
Date: September 2009
Notes: Second full-length game. A 2D platformer inspired by (guess what?) Mario Bros and Sonic. Has four stages (Sunny Woods, Lunar Mountains, Water Temple, Anti Dote’s Lab) with four (just about harmless) bosses. The only boss that actively tries to harm you is the final boss, Doctor Anti Dote. You can play the whole game as one of the three characters: Boll, Firey and Black (truly inspiring names, I know). There is however never any cooperation between them.
Story: I’m not sure why these three balls are bouncing through all these places to defeat the evil doctor Neo Cortex Anti Dote, but I’m sure there’s a reason. I think he did create them or something, so that’s a total rip-off from Crash Bandicoot, kinda an original idea.
Title: Eraith and the Crystals of Doom
Date: November 2009
Notes: One of my first (published) games in a long line of unfinished games. Inspired by the dark crystals in “Spyro: A Hero’s Tail” and “The Legend of Zelda”. An RPG.
Story: The story was never really developed (which is a bad thing, for an RPG), but it was probably going to be something along the lines from: there are some dark crystals spread across the world which are a taint upon the land (as I said, complete Spyro rip-off), which is the doing of some evil being who seeks to rule the world.
– Next: Old Games [2010]–