awww

Auto-generated description: A user named bartalonmew comments on a jam game, praising its enjoyable gameplay, programmer art, and sound effects.

Bird Bonkers is live on itch.io. It’s not going to win any awards, but I think it’s fun and challenging, and it let’s me cap off a weird year with at least one non-embarrassing jam submission.

Still needs… all of the polish, but Bird Bonker basically works. Flapping uses “fish power”, bonk birds to get them to drop fish, which you need to grab to replenish your fish power. I am not an ornithologist, so I may have made some incorrect assumptions about how birds work.

Not a bird

Still making birds

Wife: Whatcha doing?

Me: Making a bird

Wife: For a game?

Me: Yeah

Wife: What’s the bird going do?

Me: …

… bonk other birds?

Wife: you should call the game Bird Bonkers

like a room without a roof

I was playing Glypha the other day, and wondered if an “endless Joust” game would be fun– instead of discrete levels, you keep proceeding upward. It turns out, Joust Revival is exactly that. I can’t get it to work with Wine, though, and if a game isn’t playable on Linux, does it really exist?

Either way, Revival is otherwise a re-creation of the classic arcade Joust game. I have something different in mind, but definitely with the DNA of Joust. Or Glypha. I’m pretty sure I played Glypha first. I think I’m going to give it a try in the upcoming GitHub Game Off.

2025 hasn’t been a productive year for making games. The job hunt and related Government uncertainty basically ate up the first seven months, and I haven’t really recovered the lost momentum. I am going to try to end strong with three simple jam games before the end of the year, the one described above, and two jams I’ve enjoyed participating with in the past: the 1-Button Jam and the 20 Second Game Jam. Embrace constraints!

Pinball Putt was my entry in the 2024 1 Button Jam, and twenty thousand milliseconds my entry in the 2023 20 Second Game Jam.