Haunted Monster Cocktail Party of Doom Update #1: Basic Mechanics

I didn't get started on this until yesterday, but it only took a couple of hours to get a basic demo up & running. So far so good. So today I'd like to address the question burning in the minds of rabid fans and detractors alike: "What the fuck is Haunted Monster Cocktail Party of Doom all about?"

Well, calm down. It's a little grid-based puzzle game. You're a ghost in a room with a bunch of monsters, and for some reason you want to kill all of them. Also, apparently they are at a cocktail party. Look, I've gotta make this title work. The catch is that, as a ghost, you don't have any sort of attack abilities. But you can possess the other monsters and use their attack abilities against each other. So the goal is to clear the room of monsters in as few moves as possible.

The thing that I hope will make the game interesting is that in addition to having unique movement and attack patterns, the different monster types also have some action that they perform upon death. Like, maybe one explodes, killing any adjacent monsters, and triggering those monsters' death actions & so on. So you can be clever and chain multiple kills together in a single move.

That's it. I've basically got the ghost working, as well as one placeholder monster type. There are probably only going to be like 5 monster types, however many it takes to make interesting chains possible, but not so many that it becomes tedious to try to remember all of the movement and attack patterns.

Stay tuned for the next episode, in which I enthrall you with the movement and possession mechanics of the main ghost character. Gonna try to get some GIFs up in there as well, if making GIFs doesn't turn out to be too much of a pain in the ass. Probably going to be a pain the ass, though, right?

Potato Clock Games Fall Lineup Q&A

Q: Where you been, bro?
A: Stardew Valley.


Q: What up?
A: So, Ok, don't get weird about it, but GameMaker & I got back together. Sure, we had some bad times, but man, oh man, when it was is good is was good. Like that time there was a Humble Bundle where instead of paying like a grand for the pro edition & all the output modules I got them for 15 bucks. Good times like those.

I made Flood in GameMaker as sort of a warmup (always fucking warming up) and as a, like, 85% successful test of exporting to HTML5. The online version pretty much works, but you can't save your progress & all of the numerical values hilariously show up as NaN ("not a number", for the less nerdy out there) for some reason. Math? Probably math.

I'm going to start working, today hopefully, on another little puzzle game that I've been wanting to make for a couple of years now, called Haunted Monster Cocktail Party of Doom. FYI, I'm way better at coming up with titles and nebulous sequel/remake ideas than I am at the whole actually making games bit. Anyway, more on that one soon probably.

I'm also working on a long-winded, handwritten design document for the game that will make me famous. So stay tuned for that crushing disappointment.


Q: Wait, what?
A: SEE YA.

Release Announcement: Flood

Flood is a small, casual puzzle game based on the ancient Tibetan art of the paint bucket fill tool. Check it out at potatoclockgames.com!

Space Wizard Ultra Demo Re-Release!

I have succumbed to the crushing weight of public demand and spent a few miserable hours figuring out how to to compile the old Space Wizard Ultra demo into something playable.

You know where to find it, baby.