2QWOP

2QWOP

Since I’ve been making a bunch of two-player games, I decided to adapt QWOP for a two player race.

Give it a try here, for free.

Modern computer keyboards don’t do well with pressing a lot of keys at once. So I recommend you either use a gamer keyboard (NKRO) or else plug in a second USB keyboard for player 2.

PoleRiders

Pole Riders is a pole-vaulting polo game for two players only.

It’s a bit silly, this game, but then again so are all of my games, so that’s ok.

Play it online for free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pole Riders

Coming soon!

Come and try out the polo mode (featured above) at Babycastles, 7 September 2011.

I’m in Wired

 

Kickstarter’s Fred Benenson wrote a profile of me for this month’s Wired magazine.

You can read it here.

GIRP

GIRP, my new climbing game

I’ve finished work on my new game, GIRP. It’s very loosely a spiritual successor to QWOP.

Press and hold the letter keys to reach for the rings, and use either SHIFT, CONTROL or the mouse button to haul yourself up. Your goal is a bird’s nest at the top of the cliff, that has an awesome, amazing treasure hidden inside. But you have to contend with a territorial bird and the slowly rising tide. It’s not as hard as QWOP but I think you will find it… hard enough.

Play it now online for free.

Note: There is a bug in Firefox 4 for OSX which prevents SHIFT and CONTROL from working, until they fix it use the mouse button or Safari or Chrome. On Windows, there is a ‘feature’ where StickyKeys gets turned on if you hit shift too many times, so use Control or the mouse button. And on a number of cheaper, newer keyboards, there are combinations of letters that won’t register if you’re pressing SHIFT or CONTROL. If you’re having trouble, try using the mouse button instead.

Big update for Evacuation

It’s long overdue, but we just updated Evacuation for iPhone to version 2.0. Changes include:

  1. 27 new hand-crafted challenge levels. Try to get an A-rank in each one to progress.
  2. Save-game support for iOS 3 and iOS 4. Now you can take a call and not lose your progress.
  3. Better visual feedback for touches, makes the game feel more responsive.
  4. Tested for iOS 4.
  5. Various bugfixes.
New level select screen

New level select screen

Get it now for a dollar on the iPhone store, or upgrade your old version for free.

Someone made a QWOP tumblr…

There’s a new QWOP tumblr with a collection of fan art and comics.

A couple of my favourites:

QWOP for iOS is out! Play QWOP on your iPhone

QWOP for iOS

QWOP for iOS is now available! You can play it on your iPhone, iPod, or iPad. And it’s only $0.99.

Already seeing some great scores on the Openfeint leaderboards, with 100m times of under 26 seconds and long jumps of over 4.5 metres. Give these players another week, and QWOP will start to look like a real athlete…

Nearly there…

WIP pic of QWOP iPhone

Getting close to being feature-complete on my new iPhone/iPod version of QWOP! With any luck, I’ll have it ready for release by Christmas.

QWOP’s learnt a few new tricks. Pictured here, he can now jump.

Some unfinished designs

Like everyone, I have made a lot of designs that never became finished games, usually because the prototype wasn’t fun or was too hard to make. Sometimes I come back to these designs and finish them (Winner vs. Loser is one example).

Mockup 1
This one was going to be something like Tetris in reverse, where the computer would play tetris in an incompetent manner, and you would try to fill in the holes using the gun at the bottom so the computer could succeed. It works better in theory than reality. Plus, steampunk is over.

Mockup 2
This was an attempt to remake Sente’s ‘Off The Wall‘, one of the best, least-known multiplayer games of all time. I still want to make it work sometime but my first prototype was a mess. If anyone wants to handle the code, drop me a line. Or if you just want to hang out and play Off The Wall.

Mockup 3
An idea for a chess-like game where you strike your opponent by jumping two squares past him. I implemented it and it was… not quite right. It needs a fundamental rethink. Maybe it would work better as a content-oriented adventure game, but I don’t do content, not even in two colours.

Mockup 4
I’ve tried to implement this idea twice: It’s a game about using the wind and gravity to build up speed. The physics need to be just right, and so far I’ve been forced to put it in the ‘too hard’ basket. One day I’ll work out how to get it right, though.