A Startling Lack of Banjos

Hello!

So I’m working on a new game! I’ve been secretly tinkering with it for a while now, but this week it’s really started to take shape. I’ve got a great feeling about this – hopefully it’ll be something special.

I mentioned a while ago that I had a couple of ideas for new games – specifically, that I had an idea that was visually quite close to Small Worlds, and another idea that had a brand new, exciting, and radically different aesthetic!

This is not that idea.

So, yes, it looks quite a lot like Small Worlds. I fully intended to put this one on the back-burner and concentrate on some of the many non-chunky-pixel game ideas I’ve had, but then I was sitting on the 9:30 from Stratford a few weeks ago staring out the window at some lovely chunky blocky office buildings and suddenly the game leapt back into the front of my mind along with a whole bunch of really interesting game mechanic ideas, and I haven’t been able to banish it since.

So I figured, what the heck.

I don’t really have a title yet – I’m calling in ‘Entanglement,’ because that’s the first thing that sprung to mind, but I don’t really like that so hopefully I’ll be able to think up something better before it’s finished. I don’t want to give too much away right now, but I can confirm that it’s an exploration-based platformer, although it has a far stronger emphasis on interaction and puzzles than Small Worlds had, and a cunning twist that for the moment must remain a tantalising secret.

I can’t give a definite release date yet – it’s still a long way from that – but I reckon it’s weeks rather than months. I’ll keep you updated!

In other news, I didn’t win a Mochi! Small Worlds was nominated in the ‘Creative’ category in the Mochi Awards at the recent Flash Game Summit, but lost out to the absolutely excellent Time Fcuk. The also excellent Windosill was the other finalist – I can very strongly recommend you give both games a try – Windosill costs money, but not very much, and there’s a demo (the link above!) so you can see how good it is for free.

Oh, I also made another sort-of-game for my cruel overlords at rathergood.com. You’ll need a microphone to play, but if you have one, I can absolutely promise that you’ll have the best experience of your life playing Mind Control.*

Please don’t judge me.

* Disclaimer: You may not have the best experience of your life.