Indie Game Development

First 6 months was quite productive in terms of hobbyist game making. I spent a lot of time on Pixelizer which started getting into great shape and it was now the engine I used for pretty much everything I did. I even gathered up the courage to go open source and put it up on GitHub. It gathered some interest and was even used in a few LD entries.

In February I made Circus 200 for Pirate Kart V. Quite happy with the result of 2 hours coding and pixeling, even if the game leaves much to wish for.

A few months later LD 23 was coming up fast and I really wanted to join since it was the 10th anniversary and all. A few weeks before I warmed bu with another micro game and 4 hours later Bee's Knees Bees was made. A pretty lousy game actually. But it still counts.

The theme for LD23 was Tiny Worlds, and I went with a cliff notes version of Super Mario Bros: A Super Mario Summary. The game was received extremely well and got posted all around the internet and on twitter. A great experience as I was quite happy with the end result myself.

Public Speaking

I was invited to talk at two major venues during 2012, also during the first half of the year. I held the keynote at SIDeR'12 (Scandinavian Student Interaction Design Research Conference), talking about gamification and social games. Lots of great discussions after the talk and interesting questions. In april I also talked at the Trans Europa Express conference in Rome, about how we're running Free Lunch Design. Less engaged audience, but Rome was a beautiful city in spring. Who knew?

Real Life

Late in June it finally happened, I became a father! Huge! Since then priorities shifted and the amount of time I spend on DIY game making shrunk. For a good reason! Caring for a small baby has been a lot of fun, but also quite tiring. But fun! Did I say it's fun?

Work

Most of the year was dedicated to creating a sequel to Icy Tower, cleverly named Icy Tower 2. Apart from vacation and the time around my son's birth, it was pretty much what I worked on all year. We released it for iOS in November and for Android in December with great success. The community was quick to pick it up and reception was really nice.

All in all a very good year. I had hoped to make more games, but having a kid was more fun. Also, making games at work and continuing at home isn't always the best idea. Sometimes it works, but a lot of times I'm pretty fed up.

Pixelizer

Is it still being developed? Absolutely! Just a lot slower than before. Currently I'm rewriting the collision system to be more flexible and powerful. In the dev version I've also streamlined all the systems that work inside Pixelizer so that they work in the same way, and making it possible to add custom systems that operate on whatever entities you want. Check out the github page for the latest details!

Icy Tower

I rarely write about what I do at work here, but now I just have to. We've spent the last 6 months working on the sequel to Icy Tower and a few weeks ago, Icy Tower 2 was released for iOS! The game has been going really good since and managed to reach a million downloads in only ten days. I'm really proud of the game and I think it is a very worthy sequel.

New stuff

There's a few ideas bouncing around in my head, but nothing that has really stuck so far. Hoping to get some time after new years to at least make a prototype. That's it for now, hopefully next post will have a little more substance. With the current rate, I might as well wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2012-05-13, 0.4.3, "the squasher of bugs"

More info on Pixelizer: http://johanpeitz.com/pixelizer/
Straight to GitHub: https://github.com/johanp/Pixelizer

Almost three weeks has passed since A Super Mario Summary was released and the Ludum Dare judging end in less than two days. Before that happens, I thought I'd take the opportunity to look at how the game was received by the internet.

Once it was picked up by Kotaku, it seemed to spread like wild fire and there was a constant stream of recommendations pouring on twitter. This led to that a lot of non gaming sites (The Verge, Bar Stool Sports, Brain Magazine, Church Mag, etc) picked up the game as well, something which always warms my heart a little extra. When site like Destructoid and Boing Boing it also seemed to reach other parts of the world (only only US) and a lot of sites from Europe (even Swedish sites! FZ, Feber ) and South America also wrote about it. Finally it was also great fun to see it picked up by Japanese sites, even if I couldn't even remotely understand the google translation.

All in all it was a crazy dopamine rush seeing my game all over the internet!

Here's all the sites I've found that wrote about the game (in more or less chronological order). Thank you for spreading the word!

Indie Game Mag, Linfocito, Free Indie Games, Press the Buttons, Alternaria, Buzz Feed, General Lordisimo, Kraftfutter Mischwerk, DIY Gamer, Indie Games, Play Peep, Kotaku, Go Nintendo, Rvervuurt, Limbo Tech, Tragbares, Pizza Xtreme Team, Boulot Retro Dodo, Feber, One Video Game Aday, Boing Boing, Reino Do Cogumelo, Scoople, Brain Dead Radio, Games.com, Gaming Centrum, Zabij 10 Prasat, Baby Soft Murder Hands, Blog People, Kottke, LFO Tech, Nintendo Gamer, La Fortaleza De Lechuck, Vida Extra, Euro Gamer, Complex.com, Best Week Ever, Destructoid, Q103 Albany, FZ, Bar Stool Sports, How To Geek, Baixaki, The Verge, Byte Maniacos, Wii Clube, Game Zone, apt get update, Consolas.es, Game Zebo, Paper blog, Cubed 3, Chip.de, Arturo Goga, Euro Gamer (IT), Dooms Day, Lo Nuevo De Hoy, Pop.com, Glitch, Meetinx, Nerd Approved, PC Room, Point Final, Therror, Choco Games, Church Mag, Techquila, Zelda Informer, Jay Is Games, PC World, Compulsive Squire, Brain Magazine, Gamasutra, Scott Sevener, Mighty Geek, Super Level, Gram Za Darmo, Stromstock

1. Save a level or two in the new version of the game. (The one where you lost your progress.)
2. Locate where johanpeitz.com stores it's flash save files. This is SHOULD be in:
   %appdata%\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\[SOME RANDOM LETTERS]\johanpeitz.com\
3. In there you should have two folders, asms and flash
4. Navigate to asms/asms.swf/ and you will find a file progress.sol -> COPY IT
5. Go back and open flash/asms/asms.swf/ instead and drop the copied file there
6. Done - go play!

Sorry for the hassle, see you on 8.4!

Based on all the great feedback and comments I have received regarding A Super Mario Summary I have released an update!

Changes include (but are not limited to):

• Time trials - get the best time!
• Replays of your best times!
• New level selector with goals!
• Tighter controls!
• Lots of usability improvements!
• A ton of tweaks!
• Bug fixes!

I really hope you enjoy the new version. As always, play it here!

Thank you so much for your kind words! I am very glad you liked it and found it entertaining! From all my heart, thank you!

This weekend was Ludum Dare weekend! Had great fun making a game in 48 hours. The theme was Tiny World and I eventually ended up with an idea to remake the original Super Mario Brothers as tiny, bite sized puzzle platformer levels. I will write a proper post mortem later, at the moment I'm still a bit dazed by the intense workload.

So while you're waiting, why not try out the game HERE?

Initially my plan was to spend two hours making the game, but by then the game was only half done so I spent two more getting it more or less to a complete state. No harm done.

two hours in

Anyway the result is a bit weird I think, but quite playable. A fun exercise before next weekend's Ludum Dare.

Let's make honey!

Please enjoy the life of a bee swarm now!

My best result is 873. Can you beat that?