Puzzle Ptuesday: Keep On Keepin’ On

Current Submissions:
Flea in Terror

Current Votes:
Let’s Undo the Time Warp
Puzzle Club-Home Decorating

Current Brainstorms:
The Essentials

Ptuesday? ALREADY? Oh jeez, I hope someone wrote something…

Episode 2 is going swimmingly. Chez is blocking up a storm, Patrick and myself are creating levels for the game, and Mike T is moving from prototyping to full-on game development.

Now, you might be wondering: what’s difference between prototyping and proper game development? After all, they both involve writing code and, well, making the game.

In the prototyping phase, it’s assumed that any/all code will be scrapped at the beginning of development. If there happens to be usable code, that’s great! However, the main focus is to bring the game to life as fast as possible. By quickly incorporating all of the base features of the game, we (the team) can check if the game is actually fun much earlier on. If the game isn’t fun we can make quick changes, or scrap the prototype altogether. Because it was made quickly, we don’t have to worry about throwing away a meticulously crafted piece of code.

Real game development has the actual, careful planning, and this is where we make sure everything is efficient and running. During the transition from prototyping to development, any working code is saved, or incorporated into the Puzzle Clubhouse API for future use in other games. As an example, we took the grid-based level design/loading of Laz0r Frogz and actually used it for To Gnome Me is to Love Me’s game.

Elsewhere in the episode, Brittany is making everything look fancy. She’s almost finished all of the community content for the episode!

Check it:

The finished Fattening Cage:


The Kennel:


The Transplanar Bat of Whiffling (charged and uncharged)


The Woe Goggles (non-slimy AND slimy)


G-g-ghosts!


Outside of the episodes, we’ve had several serious discussions about the current state of the website. Laura is hard at work identifying problem areas of the site, as well as better ways to not overload new visitors.

We’re completely committed to making the website the best it can be - if you have any thoughts about how you want the website to look, don’t hesitate to let us know.

Alright, that’s enough for now. We’ll see all y’all next time!