Lime Rick is a minimalistic puzzle game where you control a constatly growing snake. Your goal is to get to the apple but you'll soon discover that it's not always an easy task. The game contains 38 levels and I must warn you that the last levels will be insanely difficult.

Play now (HTML5 version)
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Download for Windows

How do you put these stages together, out of interest? Do you start off with the One True Path and then stick a load of obstacles in to block off all the other obvious-but-wrong options, or is the process more organic?

Well it varies a little but yes most of the time I have this one true path and I concentrate on eliminating the easiest solutions. For me, making the levels is a very iterative process. I start with some idea, implement it and test it. After that I repeatedly make minor changes and test the result. Often I come up with best ideas while testing unfinished levels.

Thanks to all for feedback!

I agree that the level tehjonbro mentioned is quite harsh with the difficulty curve and I will do something about it. The level order is something I have been slightly changing all the time but it still needs some work. The level with the big staircase is one of levels which difficulty I find hard to evaluate. The level is definately a hard one since the solution is not easy to see.
 
I will definately add WASD keys as additional controls.

I'll try improving the graphics as well as I can.

[a challenging puzzle game]

I've been working on a challenging puzzle game based on one of my older small game. Externally the game looks like classic Snake game with gravity and infinitely growing snake. Mechanics are simply and fast to learn but in order to pass the levels the player must use logical reasoning and plan his/her moves far ahead. WARNING: The levels get immensely hard towards the end so it might not wise to play whole game through with just one session.

Try beta version

Unimplemented features

• Some kind of hint system
• Full memory undo (Currently picking up a key or rotten apple resets the undo memory)
• Changing the snake appearance so that previous moves can be seen more clearly
  
• Sounds
• Limericks?

The bedroom is ready:

The home of the protagonist has three rooms including this one. I intend to put all rooms next to each other and put a view that follows the protagonist. Since the view is moving but furniture are not real 3D I've decided to show all objects as if you're looking them right in front.

As you can see the main character is still missing from the picture.

I've made some progress but not as much I wanted. I've been busy making my master's thesis but after tomorrow I should have more time for this project.

This time I'm putting much effort in planning before actually starting coding. I have made some scetches and started writing some kind of screenplay based on my short story. Also I have started composing some music for the game.

I hope to post at least one screenshot by next Sunday. Most of the game events happen in the protagonist's apartment so I intend to put much effort on the graphics.

Wow! I can imagine you have already sacrificed tons of time on this. It looks good and feels like a good traditional RPG should.

I tested this with my laptop so unfortunately the game window didn't quite fit to my screen. I hope in the future you add support for other resolutions also and a full-screen mode.

When in first battle I targeted myself only one sentence was printed and nothing happened. I restarted the game and then attacking on myself worked just fine. But more importantly: Why would you want to attack on yourself? If there is no good reason for this you are just wasting player's time with pointless targeting question.

Anyway that's just some thoughts after a small playing session. Good luck with your work! Big project like this takes a lot of guts 

Couple small Game Maker related tips:
-Now pressing F1 shows a blank white screen (game information). This can be fixed from global game settings by unchecking the option.
-In my opinion you could increase view's horizontal and vertical border around the character. Right now you move pretty close to view's edge until it moves which is in contrast with the big size of the view.

[Story]

Well this is something different. I'm doing a heavily story-based game based on a short story that I wrote some years ago. The game will be called 'Dark Days'.

Story
Dark Days tells a melancholic story of an ordinary-seeming man called James. He goes to work and does the usual stuff. At the beginning of the story James wakes feeling extremely uneasy and his wife refuses to speak to him. By night James is haunted by weird dreams.

Gameplay
This would be natural to make as a text-only game but since people prefer visual games I will add visuals and a side-scrolling game mechanics. There will also be some conversations where you can choose what to say from given options.

Age limit
Unlike my previous games Dark Days will have 16+ age limit because of strong language and alcohol use. There is also one disturbing thing but revealing what it is would be a spoiler.

Screenshots

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it I agree that the visuals are the biggest weakness in Aureolin. Screenshots should wake interest but in this case I think they scare people off.

You mentioned you do make music though, what kind? I imagine something quite retro and fairly fast paced for this.

I play piano/synthesizer well. I like to improvise and compose my own melodies. I haven't done much recording except for the music in My Imaginary Girlfriend (not the kind of music I usually play). I usually play melancholic music with a small jazz wibe. I don't have experience of making fast retro songs so I eventually decided to leave Aureolin mainly musicless. My next game will definitely have music in it. In the future I think I should learn to use FruityLoops or LMMS.

I'd love to hear about any ideas you have for future projects?

I'm full of game ideas. My next project will be something completely different: a very story-oriented game with a workname 'Dark Days'. It will be a strange combination of realism and fantasy. I'm starting a devlog of it within couple days.

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. I haven't read much scifi before but this seems interesting.

The game is now ready! (Download link is in the first post)

Some things that may cause discussion are difficulty and special checkpoint system. Is the game too hard? Should the checkpoints be activated with less visits? Were you able to finish the game?

All feedback is welcome!

I've making some progress although a stress injury in my wrist has been slowing me down.

Here's what I've done lately:
- Sound effects (made with Bfxr)
- Rest of the enemies except the boss
- Enemy explosion
- Full-screen mode
- Small polishing

Next on the TODO-list:
- The boss (I've already made the sketches. It will be awesome.)
- Save game
- Options
- Music?

Funny and perky game, good job! The graphics are personal and lively and the music fits the game. Sadly I wasn't able to test 2 player game right now but I can imagine this would be fun with two human players.

My favorite minigames were feed the sumo, equeerstrian, nudist javelin and pill maze. Also table tennis was a successful and stylish interpretation of Pong. I didn't enjoy that much the race and the hobo hurdles. This was mainly because of the randomness. Randomness is a good thing but I think it should be constrained a little so that in the race vegetables and drugs don't appear too close to each other and in hobo hurdles obstacles don't appear all the same time making them quite impossible to avoid. There were couple times I felt like I was doing the best I can but I got bad luck and thus failed.

Anyway I guess I have to invite my friend over to play some Olympdics

Those who seek more strategy and depth may want to check out Race for the galaxy. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28143/race-for-the-galaxy

I bought this game a week ago and I love it I've played Race for the Galaxy three times so far and I'm finally starting to know what I'm doing It's great how compact it is but still you have so many choices to make.

I have played 7 Wonders quite a lot. It's a good game but after about ten plays you feel like the game hasn't anything new to offer. But the Leaders expansion is a good solution to this problem since it creates new kind of strategies and you can start planning your strategy straight from the beginning of the game.

Thanks for the feedback

Not sure if you'd be willing to rework this but it would be cool if there were different upgrades to choose at each check point, perhaps different bullet types, ones to upgrade reload rate etc. Would add a lot of replayability as well as strategy to the gameplay.

Funny because I originally had something like this in mind I planned that player would choose from five different choices: increase character speed, increase jump height, increase bullet speed, decrease reload time and increase ammo capacity. But I decided to keep things simple and now the player receives all these five bonuses at the same time

I didn't think it was obvious how to activate the checkpoints, most of the time I was playing I was starting again each time. You should make it automatic as you walk over them. Also, it would be better if you recovered all your health at checkpoints since by dying and restarting from there you end up having full health anyway.

Checkpoint system is a bit special. I didn't want to add normal checkpoints but forcing player to start from the beginning everytime is just too cruel. In order to activate a checkpoint you have to get there six times. If you look the checkpoint platform you see it keeps count of the visits. This isn't clear to new player when he/she first couple times sees it but I hope player will eventually figure it out. Although might be that the upgrade is taking all the attention away from it.

Just figured out there is a little bug in the checkpoint system since the teleport activates one visit too early. I'll be fixing that shortly. For now the checkpoints activations are not saved when the game is closed but I intend to change this.

Other effects like particles and debris when you kill enemies would be nice.

Yes, I'll do that.

Oh and a scaled fullscreen mode would make my day!

I'll probably implement this too. I have quite wide screen myself so when I tested a simple fullscreen it looked quite flat. But I'll try to figure out a smart way to do the scaling.

Needless to say sound and music would add a lot to the game as well!

Yes, I will definitely add some retro sounds later. I've thinking about background music but I can't figure out what sort of music would fit with the game. Also eventhough I'm a decent musician, making music for an action game isn't my strength.

If this isn't creative I don't know what is Looking good

Yay! Beta version (for Windows) is now available. I also uploaded

to YouTube.

Some pretty cool enemies were left out from the beta version because I want to keep the level order same as it'll be on the compelete version. I only need to draw a several enemies and then I have all the enemies ready.

The graphics could be better but this is the best a programmer like me can do in decent time frame Rather than making awesome graphics, I try to make personal graphics.

Hi, I tried the demo and I liked it very much The game looks great the game mechanics work nicely.

I've always wanted play more story-based games. I've played some old fashioned text adventures but I never fully got excited of them. This looks just the kind of game I've been hoping to play. Keep up the good work!

Aureolin is a challenging and colorful action game where you have to defeat 29 mechanical enemies. Shoot the enemies with your gun while dodging bullets.

Download Version 1.0 (for Windows)





(from slightly older version)

--- OLD POST ---

Aureolin is a game I've been working for quite while just fo fun. It's a fast-paced side-view shooter game where every level contains only one enemy and nothing else.

I think I already have the programming pretty much done but now I should concentrate on graphics and small details. As a programmer that's not my favorite part of game making so I hope to keep motivated by updating this devlog occationally

I'm planning to upload the beta version of the game in the near future.