Alternate dimension early 1800's United States RPG

The year is 1826 or something. You start in an established city on the East Coast, like Philadelphia or DC, but with a different name.

You set out on a westward trek, traveling from town to town and then into the frontier wilderness, discovering and fending off the mythological creatures of the Americas: bigfeet, chupacabras, greys, lizardmen, creepy backwoods children, ghosts, thunderbirds, native American spirits, etc.

Basically an RPG like Diablo, but I think the theme is pretty different. The end of the game would come when you find a suitable place to settle down somewhere in the west.

Sounds very ambitious!

You might want to get the name of the game straight
First you call it PurpleHatch, then you call it PurpleRune, then, in your blog you call it Twist. "So all in all, I have absolutely huge plans for Twist."

You probably typed it all up really fast, so it's understandable.

Here's my game.

If you like Oregon Trail, you might like Tobetl!

It's called Tobetl 'cause that's what I shortened "To Bethlehem" to in the code.

Oh yeah, the music won't play in IE so try it in Chrome or FF.

Push/Pull Factory

Play here!

This is my game for the GitHub Game Off. I hope you enjoy it!

Beat that.

Nice game. It has one of the coolest "tutorials" I've ever seen. I almost didn't notice it. The game was slow paced, which fit the theme, and that's a very good thing.

I found that I couldn't coordinate my thumb to press space at the right time so I ended up hitting the space bar with my right hand. Just thought I'd point that out. I'll keep an eye on this project. I want to know what happened to the little brother.

Looks great. The art style reminds me of those old computer graphics videos from the 90s which I loved so much. I really want to play this.

It's a cool idea but it need a lot of tweaking. It's really hard. The ball moves too fast, and with the ship moving down constantly it becomes impossible real quick.

Abduct the people? HA. There's no way, I was way too busy just barely keeping the ball on the screen.

I think if you just slow the ball down and make the people move up a little faster you could have something really fun here.

Took me a second to realize that was a shark on the front of the motorcycle.

I found this nice article about prototyping: http://gamesfromwithin.com/prototyping-youre-probably-doing-it-wrong

I think I'll start this game by making a prototype. I'll just try to make one branch with a leaf that you can click and drag. You draw a curvy line while you're dragging. After you release the drag, the branch will grow to the shape of your line.

That bit is the only part of the design that seems difficult. If I can get that done, the rest won't be too much of a challenge, besides making it look nice, of course. That's always the most frustrating part.

Yes, mobile is certainly a goal. I think the mechanic of tugging on branches is pretty well suited for touch screens.

The way it's different from the WoG prototype, and what I think is especially cool about it, is that you aren't restrained to a certain structure in any way. If you want to make your tree into just one giant spike, you can. It won't gather enough nutrients (not enough leaves), but you can.

[you grow the roots and branches by pulling on leaves]

Official blog: http://blog.gageh.us/tag/arbor/ There's a crappy drawing of the game if you click that...

The main goal in the game is to grow a tree.

On a micro level, you grow the roots and branches by pulling on leaves (on the branches) or little nubbins (on the roots). You use a touchscreen or mouse. The longer a branch is, the more nutrients it collects, and the more water it uses. The longer a root is, the more water it collects, and the more nutrients it uses.

There are two ways to lose:

• The tree runs out of either nutrients or water. Go too long without nutrients or water and the tree dies.
• The tree falls over. Does a tree falling make a sound if no one is there too hear it? You'll find out, if you put too many branches or roots on one side.

You have a score that is based solely on how big the tree is. Just try to grow the biggest tree you can. You win by getting a high score and then bragging about it on a social network of your choice

The game will be very slow paced, but hopefully still challenging.  I imagine it being kind of like Eufloria in that sense.

You can grow the tree any way you like. Make it tall, make it wide, make it gnarled and twisty, make it look like a Squirtle, whatever. Once you have something cool, you can take a nice picture of it and share it.

I might make something bad happen if you have more nutrients or water than your tree can handle, not sure yet. I kind of like how simple it is now.

Question:
There is already at least 1 game called "Arbor". I love that name, but do you think it's a bad idea to use a name that's already taken by another game?

Finally read this today.  Sweet little story, yo.  :D

Thanks!

I want to make a game that's half lithium mine simulator, part TD, part rougelike.

Let me 'splain.

You start with a small patch of land somewhere in Nevada. You have a simple mining operation and some kind of weak fence with a gate in it. You make money gradually by selling your lithium in the town. You can buy supplies in the town.

Here come the animals. Wolves, big cats, pigs, rodents and more start arriving periodically. They might break your defenses, chew wires, drink from a pool and die in it, or attack you. You have to defend yourself somehow; with weapons, turrets, and better fences.

You might eventually make enough money to buy bigger and better mining equipment, growing your mine and allowing you to make more money. You start to become a real competitor in the area. Mysterious vandals start arriving. Much smarter than the animals that used to attack you. Do you kill them, scare them off, or capture them and interrogate them? They are people after all. Different options have different consequences.

Then the monsters start appearing. Where do they come from? You set up good automated defenses at your mine and venture out into the salt flat. Do you explore the cave systems in the mountains, or go check out your competitors mines?

Basically the game goes until your done playing. There might be a few ways to "win", but overall I'd like it to be more or a sandbox type experience with a lot of little wins throughout a large story arc.

Sound like fun?

Right now it's pretty good. The physics were decent, except for braking, I want to drift and slide!

May I also suggest making the city feel less boxed-in. Right now it's not a big deal, but someday you might want to have it feel more like a city and less like a hamster cage. : )

I had an awesome moment a little while ago. I was looking for a "nuclear sword", you know... for the ladies... anyway, I get to the boss room and before I entered the door I used the YinYang power which switched my place with his. Then I just walked over and grabbed the nuclear sword. I didn't have to fight the boss or use the key.

Sounds promising, but I have to ask, why would there be backpacks with keys in them lying around?

Also, since it's inspired by Slender, will it be first person?

The graphics and sound are nice, but the gravity feels way too strong. The guy falls fast and jets up too slow. With a little more upward thrust it might be fun. If it's meant to be extremely unforgiving, good job I died in about 30 seconds and only made it through 1 gate. I, maybe, picked up like 3 measly coins.

I played it on my Transformer Infinity and it ran great! It was fun too.

"Micro" is not an exaggeration. It only took me about 3-5 minutes to finish, but that's okay. I can tell it's meant to be played a few times in one sitting. Also, it seemed very easy. I didn't look to see if there was a difficulty setting but I'm just letting you know that the default was not a challenge at all. Maybe I just got an easy dungeon.

I love the way the power ups and attacks work. The controls were intuitive and discoverable.

One time, some blood-dripping fangs came out of a box and then disappeared. What was that? If there was a message about it, it was overwritten too quickly.

Also, you hid the exit button very well. You should make it more visible and allow the user to exit or go to the menu when they press their back button too.

Android sorely needs more good games. It's the most used phone OS. Why are game developers ignoring it? I don't know. Thank you for making an Android game

Looks cool, I wish I could play it! I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S II and I could only see the lower right corner of the game screen. It's like the whole game was shifted up and to the left. I'll try it on my tablet later.