Release Announcement: BRS v0.04 (Ship Redesign & Damage System)

New version now available on the Itch.io page, give it a spin!

In this update I've attempted to make the game look less shitty with a redesigned ship (interior & exterior) and some redesigned planets & moons. I've also added a new planet with 2 moons to explore.

Gameplay-wise, we now have a basic damage system, which will be expanded on as I add more detailed ship systems in future updates. This can be disabled if you still want to exercise your god-given right to run into shit without dying. For more information on new ship maintenance considerations, check out the 'Help' option now available from the escape menu, which also includes basic procedures for departures, arrivals and warp drive operation.

The help menu was a player suggestion, as were the new additions of an infinite fuel option and a free flight mode, both now accessible from the title menu.

Other quality-of-life improvements include slightly less wonky manual navball rotation and an expanded cryopod display which now shows the nearest station in addition to your targeted station, as well as your distance to the edge of cryopod and warp range limits.

There were also a few steps backwards, if I'm honest, particularly with space station lighting, both interior & exterior. But, like, whatever. I'll fix it later.

Thanks for sticking with me through another glacial development cycle. Hopefully the next one goes quicker. It probably won't, you know, but here's to keeping hope alive. o7

Release Announcement: Black Road Sky (version 0.3)

Download Black Road Sky v0.3 here!

Not sure if you're ready to part with your hard earned zero dollars? Hype yourself off the fence with this release trailer!

There's no in-game tutorial, but the itch.io page includes a basic guide to getting started and I'm about to start working on a comprehensive video tutorial series. Stay tuned to the all new Potato Clock Games YouTube channel for updates.

The Return of the WUMPUS BASTARDS Leaderboard!

Play WUMPUS BASTARDS here!

I've never been able to convince anyone else that this is a good game, but I genuinely love it.

The high score table has been broken for years because the database was stored on a university server which I eventually lost access to after graduation. By that time I had completely forgotten how PHP and SQL and all that worked, so I kept putting it off, but it only took like an hour to fix once I finally sat down to figure it out.

The old leaderboard is lost to time, so there's plenty of room to make your mark. If you're into logic puzzles, long winded game manuals, and drawing crazy maps then this is your game. See you in the putrid caverns of the Wumpus abomination, wretched hunter!

Black Road Sky Version 0.2 Released

I know I said March, but fuck it, here you go:

potatoclockgames.com/BRS

I had planned on waiting to release this until I had put together some sort of tutorial, but who knows when/if I'll find the motivation to do that. I've already started working on the next version update. Making a tutorial system for a game that's constantly changing and nowhere near finished feels pointless. I'll probably make some drunken YouTube video tutorials at some point.

Let me be clear: this is a buggy, shitty looking tech demo with basically no gameplay. That said, I've been working on it since October 2018 and I'm pretty proud of the state it's in. The physics simulation is working, with realistic orbital mechanics and Newtonian flight. There's a full scale solar system spread across billions of kilometers with no loading screens. You can walk around your ship while in flight, you can dock with space stations, and you can get out of your ship to walk around the stations you dock with, all seamlessly. These are all difficult technical problems to solve, NOT TO TOOT MY OWN HORN HERE OR ANYTHING, which I've never seen combined into a single game (with the exception of the now cancelled Rogue System).

The next version, which I expect to take anywhere from 6 to 12 months to complete, is going to be a pretty boring one. There's a ton of behind-the-scenes kind of stuff I need to take care of before moving on. I'll be adding some very basic space trucking gameplay with contracts to accept and money to manage, but most of v0.3 will focus on cleaning shit up and getting the codebase ready to start implementing ship systems.

Man, I need a fucking hype man or something.

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.

Jack Ham's Maze of Tribulations 2015 Update

I've made some minor updates to Jack Ham's Maze of Tribulations & uploaded the new definitive version to the Potato Clock Games website. Here's what's changed:

1. Picked some low-hanging fruit to reduce the filesize &, more importantly, loading time. I mean, the load time is still bullshit. I could do a lot more optimization & maybe I will someday, but this feels good enough for now.

2. Pushed through a bunch of little bug fixes, mostly involving the player getting stuck in walls & on George Washingtons due to cruddy collision detection. I didn't fix the cruddy collision detection, Ok, I just hacked out the bugs. Some of them.

3. Most importantly, & the reason I wanted to update the game in the first place, I rebalanced the end of the game. It's easier now, or, I think more accurately, it's less unfairly difficult now. There were occasional impossible-to-avoid fireballs, that kind of thing. The fireballs are a bit slower now & their hit boxes are a bit smaller so if you get hit it's your own damn fault.

Other than that it's the same game. I just wanted to give the fans a fair chance to experience the game in all its glory ahead of the release of Jack Ham Zero, which is very nearly complete! Give me like two weeks.