Jam, The Game Release: March 2018 Genre: 2d retro arcade w/ local multiplayer Role: Game Developer, Tools Programming Made with: PICO-8, Bash, Python, Linux command line. Gamejam: UL Gamejam 2 - “Simplicity” - Student Soc. Building, UL, Limerick
OBSTACLES Release: November 2018 Genre: 2d retro arcade hi-score chaser Role: Solo Game Developer Made with: PICO-8 Gamejam: UL GameJam 2
Last minute Release: November 2018 Genre: 2d arcade, retro pixel art Role: Developer Made with: PICO-8 Gamejam: Last minute jam, Galway Game Jam Game by Darren Kearney and Joshua Daly, made late in a game jam.
Soul Harvest Release: December 2018 (abandoned) Genre: Hack-n-slash, 2D top-down Role: Solo Game Developer Made with: PICO-8
Recast Release: January 2020 Description: Users must repair shapes on a conveyor belt. Genre: 2d puzzler Role: Game Developer (Design, programming) Made with: PICO-8 Gamejam: Global Game Jam Online (2020), Diversifiers “The Roaring 20s”
Originally posted on the itch.io OBSTACLES Devlog. Yesterday I brought OBSTACLES to a local meetup that I run called 1GAM Galway. You can read about that meetup here. 1GAM Galway is a game dev meetup I run that follows the onegameamonth.com challenge and a serves as a time and place for game developers and hobbyists to play each others game projects, give feedback and chat. Today I’ve been addressing a few things about the game that were discovered or suggested at 1GAM Galway....
OBSTACLES is a top-down 2d driving game that started life as an entry for the UL Gamejam held on November 3rd 2018. It’s available as a browser game playable with a keyboard or controller on itch.io. The gamejam theme was “Obstacles”, hence the game name. Designing the Game I sketched a few ideas for games and settled on an idea that became this game. The idea was that the computer plays as the car and you play as a monster/wizard that is throwing heavy objects on the road to cause the robot car to crash....
Last week I was asked to run a PICO-8 workshop in Limerick. This week I ran it. I continued to work on the tiny prototype-game from the workshop. It’s not much even for a crappy Pacman clone, but it was made in about half a day. You can: play the game that came out of the workshop on itch.io, and/or read the notes from the workshop on github. Anyway, the workshop was a nice surprise!...
Galway Game Jam 10 offered either “extinction” or “insomnia” as a theme. Which would you choose? I chose “extinction”. I made a broken game, designed to make you feel horrible and think about extinction. A terrible game about being a cat in 1894. These themes were oddly miserable in tone. Using such a theme adds an extra challenge and makes you get a little philosophical! Such gamejam themes can make really interesting games that would never otherwise exist....
About a week after UL’s Game Dev Soc Game Jam, I had some free time to revisit the collaboration tool I made for the gamejam team. It was nothing special, but I was hit by a mini-epiphany of turning it into a super-simple web app that would aim to make it as easy as possible to use. A fun little side-project, why not? Generally when solving any problem I have to ask myself “Has this been solved before?...
For UL Gamejam 2 I joined a team with Dave Ryley and two of his brothers, Brian and Jono Ryley. Dave is a veteran game jam enthusiast, but this was both Brian and Jono’s first experience of a gamejam. Luckily we got a great theme for the first-timers; “Simplicity”. Together we made Jam, The Game. Naturally, a game about jam is the simplest gamejam game you could make. Our game won the popular vote at the end of the jam, which was a wonderful achievement for our team!...
I’m delighted to be able to attend my 4th Global Game Jam in Galway. I’ll be switching to another game engine for the jam AGAIN - this time I’ll be using Godot Engine instead of Pico-8 (which I have been using these past few months). Since the Previous Global Game Jam I used Godot during last year’s Global Game Jam and I failed hard. A lesson was learned, which is what game jams are about!...