Lifespan of Downloadable Games

     My girlfriend bought a Sega Genesis at a retro games shop to replay games from her childhood and we've been playing it all weekend. It reminded me of how good it feels to be able to play something so impactful a decade later and see it in a new light with an older /wiser mind. It got me thinking about how good it would feel to have people going back to play games I've made decades later and remembering how I made their childhood. That's when another thought about permanence came to me.

     With Fish Feaster going away I can easily see Apple or Google just dumping their appstores some time in the distant future for a clean slate, or even closing it off as the appstore of decades X through Y. Do downloadable games have the same literal lifespan of physical console games? I know those can decay slowly over time, but since downloadable games can be stored anywhere and played on anything with the right emulator, do they have more longevity? I wonder if games I make 10 years from now will be remembered 30 years from now...

Web Versions of My Unity Games

     I made a couple of my games playable on the web as html games. My teacher wanted to play my Phoenix Wright game and told me that the exe file I linked on my Games tab wasn't working. She suggesting making a web version so I made a new build in Unity and tried it out. I also did Feed The Plant that way like I intended a while back. I ran into problems with making it playable on the site before so I made a ZIP file this time so people can download and run it that way. The only downside to running these on the web is the little Unity icon in the corner that slides in when the game starts. It's not too annoying, but something to keep in mind.

     You can try them out yourself here: Feed The Plant and Phoenix Wright

Status Report #56 (Enemies, PCT GameDevs, & Surviving the Common Cold)

     Bidding farewell to Fish Feaster, my very first game. I don't think I ever learned so much about game development at once. I made mistake after mistake and put all the skills I got from my pet projects to work. I went from a dropped Dragon Ball Z RPG, to a joke pony app, to an unfinished DragCore prototype (which was lost in my first Macbook breakdown). I made a bunch of posts a while back chronicling the Making of Fish Feaster along with a bunch of other related things.

    The more I think about it, the more the game means to me. Every project means a lot to me. Each one taught me so many new things and are helping me grow into the developer I still dream of being. As for anyone following me from the beginning, I hope you can remember these milestones along with me into the future.

First PCT GameDevs Meeting

     Our first club meeting was today and it went really well. Plenty of people came (others were held up with a tutoring event) and I finally got an idea of what running a club is like. When you're presenting stuff up there it really helps to have a bulleted agenda to go by and keep things focused. This first meeting was really an introductory one where I asked what people wanted to learn and showed the topics I planned to cover in the coming weeks.