Share your "Indie" game story!
adent42
Key Master, Head Chef, Executive Chef, Member, PRO Posts: 3,159
I'm giving a talk in a few weeks to teachers about bringing the "Indie Game" spirit to the classroom.
I have a few games I like to give as examples, but was curious about any more recent games people were making or made by the GameSalad community.
What do I mean by "Indie"? I guess I'm looking for games that are personal passion projects. Maybe they are a tribute to a favorite game or genre. Maybe they highlight an important public issue. Basically, games that are more than about making money or taking advantage of the latest trend. Art games. Political games. Biographical games. Games with a personal connection to family or friends.
What I'm looking for is your game AND the story behind why your making a particular game.
So share your game and tell your story. What are you working on and why is it so important to you?
Comments
I've recently released my latest game to Google Play. It is called I've Got A Brand New Pair Of Legs: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ashumbesher.legs
I have a close relationship with my step farther, Chris, and I have featured him as the player's character in every one of my games. One of Chris's quirks is making up funny songs, so this game in particular is especially personal to me because the whole game was entirely based on one of his silly tunes. Even though the song consisted of one line repeated over and over, "I've Got A Brand New Pair Of Legs", I worked hard and managed to create a whole game based on it. I even created several 8-bit renditions of the tune to use for the game's theme music.
I hope this is the sort of thing you're looking for. Good luck with the talk
Get Screaming Loaf on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1813910/Screaming_Loaf/
In 2018 I released a trivia game in Indonesian, based on a template I got from GShelper (I think it was from @Braydon_SFX). The game is called "Kuis Aku Cinta Indonesia" or "I Love Indonesia Quiz". The content is all about the interesting things about Indonesia, like tourism, culture, friendly politics, history, etc.
I decided to make the game because it was nearing 2019 the presidential election, Joko Widodo vs Prabowo, and it was probably the most brutal campaigning in Indonesia's election history, where both sides of supporters were using the black campaign against each other, etc. So the game is a kind of reminder to everyone, at least in my community, that we need to calm down, put aside our ego, and prioritize unity.
Maybe the game wasn't downloaded as many times as I hoped, but since I promote the game quite intensely, I hope the message of unity from the game reached a lot of people.
Kuis Aku Cinta Indonesia - Available on both Play Store and App Store
Developer: Braydon_SFX via GSHelper and myself
Graphic design: myself
Art: Tomas Soejakto (IG @tomassoe)
According to a Mental Health Foundation study, in the past year 74% of people felt so stressed they were unable to cope! I found that truly shocking.
I decided to create a simple app to help people relax and gather their thoughts.
It's called The Relaxing Tree and has just been released on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigborisstudios.relaxingtree
How cool! Thanks for the mention!
My GameSalad Academy Courses! ◦ Check out my quality templates! ◦ Add me on Skype: braydon_sfx
So, how did the talk go? Did you use any of our stories?
Get Screaming Loaf on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1813910/Screaming_Loaf/
Hi, here's a a little story of my first game Kaapelipeli: The Cable Game.
Kaapelipeli: The Cable Game is a true one-of-the-kind shooter-action-casual-rpg-adventure-survival -game. (Game concept is based on real life! (Remotely!))
Players job is to guide a lonely project engineer to the transformer while avoiding angry landowners and endangered animals. Player can shoot contracts against stubborn landowners and use drills to destroy rocks and other obstacles. It is encouraged to place marking sticks and pick up boosts along the way to get points and to increase players stats. Later player will also dig through the marked route!
First seed of Kaapelipeli was sown in autumn 2017 when the idea of world's only game about power cables was brought to coffee table. It all started as a joke but suddenly Gamesalad was discovered and not long after that the first angry landowners were prowling free. Originally it was supposed to be a 1-hit ko game with very few levels and even simpler gameplay.
The game continued to develop during the next two years. Usually because some real-life experiences affected games main idea and inspiration to “code” more grew.
After some time (and some inside jokes about the game) many rpg-elements were added: Coffee mugs became health and player gained ability to shoot contracts. Soon rpg-items emerged so that by collecting these items player could upgrade his stats and make game a little bit easier. Not much after that the point system was added as well to enhance games contestability.
In the year 2019, after a lot of testing and more added content, Kaapelipeli was released to Google Play as a first beta version. This beta version was shelved after a while though.
During Summer of 2019 The Official Demo Version was released in Google Play and Gamesalad Arcade.
In November 2019, Instagram-account was established to spread the news and updates more easily.
☀ https://www.instagram.com/kaapelipeli_thecablegame/
Year 2020 began with a new game-mode: Digging. At the same time, Demo received "some" tweaks and a Google Leaderboard was added with some achievements as well. First steps to ios-publish were taken too.
At the present time, Full Version with all possible content is in alpha testing.
Future visions include making a kickass Trailer and release to Steam and other platforms.
Follow the story here:
https://kaapelipeli.fandom.com/wiki/Kaapelipeli_Wiki
@AshumBesher I didn't end up using the new stories as I had too much content. There are a few here that will fit into the existing talk so I may retrofit. But I'm leaving this thread here because I love hearing these stories and hopefully it's inspiring to everyone here making games!
A great idea for an app!
so my story begins, i am born. to begin my life with the beginning of my life, i record that i was born....
wait, that’s david copperfield by charles dickens. try again. take 2...
once upon a time, in what seems another lifetime ago, i was fascinated by computer technology. basically this was back in the days of the atari 2600, vic 20, pac-man, space invaders, etc.
in year 6, our class got the school’s first apple computer, and hands on use just made me more interested and intrigued.
the following year at the high school i went to, we had BBC micro computers, which i taught myself a decent level of basic by deconstructing/reverse engineering code from those old computer mags and library books. i remember sitting in shops writing short code and adults looking over kinda amazed at something as simple as 10 print “hello”; 20 goto 10, then running it, as though i were involved in some black magic fkery.
i finished high school and college (yr 12 in australia) with As in computing, but by that time i got sick of sitting in front of a screen typing, not wanting that to be my daily life, so pushed through uni to get a bachelor degree in one of my other big interests, sport (my undergrad was sports admin and coaching science).
anyway, after working in a number of different industries including hospitality, and as a personal trainer, we fast forward to the last 10-15 years, where i ended up a dancing monkey doing work for !@#$% brained politicians in a government job, and ironically, doing what i wanted to avoid 30 years ago, sitting in front of a screen typing.
during this time i started thinking about coding n all, and what i could do with it, given it was something i had a bit of talent for as a teenager, as well as potentially making some extra cash from it. so here i am today, dabbling with a bit of computer stuff in my spare time, trying to build a library of games for the market. i’m for the most part liking learning this stuff again. challenging at times, but also gives me a good feeling when i solve something.
/fin