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QWOP for iOS is out! Play QWOP on your iPhone

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…

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Chicanery for iOS

Chicanery for iPhone

I converted Anna Anthropy‘s Chicanery to iOS. It’s native on the iPhone, iPod and iPad.

When I bought an iPad, it immediately became clear that most developers weren’t making the most of the social potential of the device. iPad games can be shared in a way that games haven’t really been since hotseat computer games died out in the 90s. Now when we play multiplayer games, everyone has their own controller and in fact everyone is probably using a separate console in a separate house. Something has been lost.

It’s free at the app store.

Winner vs. Loser

Winner vs. Loser is a two-player, one-button athletics game in the mold of ‘Track ‘N Field’. Press your button rhythmically to build up speed, and hold it down to jump the hurdles.

A training mode is included for people with no friends, but really it’s designed to be played with one or more people standing by.

Play it online for free.

QWOP

QWOP is a game where you do not have superpowers, and you do not get to live out your fantasy, but instead you need to regain something many of us take for granted: the ability to walk.

QWOP has developed quite a following online, spawning comics, speedrun videos, parody videos, and weird Japanese homage videos where the man is replaced with a 3D schoolgirl on the moon. I get a lot of hatemail for QWOP.

Play it online for free.

Gentle Gradient

Gentle Gradient 0.1

I have always found the gradient editors in packages like Photoshop unsatisfactory for making gentle colour gradients (such as skies). If you use two colours, you get a smooth gradient but usually a very ugly sky. If you use three or more colours, it is very hard to get a smooth gradient. You can do it, but it takes a lot of trial and error to find the right arrangement of colour swatches.

So I’ve made this tool, which is designed to plot a graceful bezier arc through RGB space. At this point you can only use three colours. The curve will not touch the middle colour – rather it is used as a control point.

This tool isn’t for everyone. If you need more of an explanation of why this is useful, you probably don’t need it. But I hope some people will find it to be a useful timesaver and a creative aid.

Click here to download Gentle Gradient 0.1 for mac.

Mac OSX 10.5+ / Intel only.

Zaphos has made an online version using Processing, which works the same except that it can’t save a file or copy to the clipboard, and it’s doesn’t have Floyd-Steinberg dithering. It is available here.

Gentle Gradient is distributed as-is, with no documentation or support. Please do not charge money for Gentle Gradient. If you want to make a clone or incorporate the idea into Photoshop, you are welcome to. Gentle Gradient is alpha software, and I am not responsible if your computer blows up.

Too Many Ninjas

Too Many Ninjas was the first game I ever finished. It is a reinterpretation of the excellent and elegant bouncing ball minigame from Archer Maclean’s incredible IK+.

Play it online for free.

Evacuation

Evacuation is a puzzle game using randomly generated levels. Vent the aliens into space but try not to evacuate your spacemen or the captain!

I designed Evacuation and made the artwork, but for the code I turned to the expertise of my old friend Ryan, who is a lot better at programming, mathematics, and logic.

Play it online for free.

Or buy the iPhone version for a dollar.

Little Master Cricket

Little Master Cricket is my attempt to make a cricket game that focuses on compelling gameplay rather than realism or verisimilitude. The real pleasure of cricket is to swing a bat and hit a ball, something that’s missing from every commercial game and most free ones as well.

Play it online for free.

Or buy the much-improved iPhone version for 99 cents.