The candles in the Twelve Chambers must be lit by a wickster. Once a wickster lights themself ablaze, they will only have five seconds to light every candle in the room. Plan carefully. Press X to jump. Press Z to ignite. Press K to restart a chamber.
Features “Snowfall” and “It’s Here” by Joseph Gilbert/Kistol.
Released during the final hour of the final day of the final year of the 2010s.
When a freak accident destabilizes the stabilizer, the control cubes go missing and Liz and Laz must work together to secure them! Laz transports into a hazardous landscape and relies on directions from Liz to keep him safe.
Taking direct control of Liz, you’ll issue controls to Laz remotely. Liz uses a life-sized game controller to tell Laz to move, jump, and shoot. She jumps on buttons to guide Laz to the control cubes.
Features music by celestialghost8, Snabisch, Juhani Junkala, and Alex McCulloch
Initially designed to be a quickly dashed-off, intentionally frustrating game, I ended up really liking what this became. Inspired by ZZT Engine games (including my own Punctuation People), Lemmings, and the games Nanairo ringo and Kaerazu no mori by Kabusoft.
After the release of this game–the 90th I’ve released–I wrote up a reflection on my blog on my past two decades of game-making and some of the influences I was mindful of when I approached this game in particular.
Set up stages by fixing the positions of balance levers. When you’re ready, touch the ELECTROPOST and convert yourself into an ELECTROBALL so you can safely roll to the GOAL.
Fifteen single-screen stages.
AND IT IS ALL CYAN.
Press X to jump. Press V to restart stage. Press R to return to title screen.
I began work on this game in February 2016, intending it to be just a weekend project, and showed an unfinished version at an Indie Game Play Test Night in Eugene, Oregon at Shoryuken League. I meant to release the game very shortly thereafter, but wanted to explore the elements further with a few more levels. The game was placed on hold as I got increasingly busy with school, teaching, and then went and got married. I dusted the files off in October 2017
Explobers pushes your planning, puzzle and platforming skills to the limit for a challenging but rewarding experience. —MMOaholic
Explobers is a unique puzzle platformer that requires you to use multiple player characters to solve difficult challenges by using their powers (and lives) to destroy terrain and build blocks in order to navigate through over eighty tricky stages.
The game begins in the familiar CGA palette of classic PCs. As you progress, new graphic modes become available and you may find some secrets!
Explobers will be featured as a part of the upcoming 2018 Smithsonian American Art Museum Arcade in Washington DC on July 22, 2018.
Explobers has a trailer. It also has an official website.
I worked on this game through most of 2017. Please purchase it at itch.io or GameJolt.
As of 2020, the game is also available for Android-based handheld game consoles (such as the Retroid Pocket 2) as Explobers GO and for Android phones as Explobers Pocket. These can be downloaded from the game’s page on itch.
The game is fully playable in Japanese. 日本語でも遊べる！
Santa Claus must eat all the candy canes to open the peppermint vortex in each stage. As he eats, he gets larger, and as he gets larger his abilities change! Break through ice, avoid spikes, crawl through narrow paces, and achieve Santa’s peppermint candy cane vision!
Ten stages.
Released on Christmas Day 2016.
This tough puzzle platformer has the player character manipulating the size of the blocks that help her reach her goal.
Stand on the green blocks and press UP and DOWN to grow and shrink them to aide you in your escape.
Seven puzzle platforming stages.
Selected as a Featured Indie Game on GameJolt.
Your shadows have split from you and you must guide them to the exit. You can move at will, but the shadows need to be given commands. Pick up command boxes and drop them where you want the shadows to act.
Ten stages of challenging puzzle platforming by proxy.
Controls:
X: Jump
Z: Pick up/put down boxes
R: Restart level
Press ‘L’ on the title screen to load the game from your previous play session. The game autosaves and starting a new game will overwrite previous progress.
Made for Klik of the Month Klub #93.
There are many balls! Get one of them to reach the exit! Have other balls turn to stone and become platforms to guide other balls to advance through all eight stages. Build your way to success!
Extra points awarded for balls left over at the end of stages.
Super Stone Ball was selected as a Freeware Pick by IndieGames.com, calling its puzzles “rock hard.”
Instructions:
————————
X: Jump
Z: Turn current ball into stone
Space + mouse: Scroll stage
R: Reset stage
F: Toggle fullscreen
Q: Quit
ARE YOU READY to enter the CAVERNS OF KHRON? Spikes, slugs, demons and more await you below the surface. What unknown evils will you encounter deep within? Arm yourself with sword and star and venture forth!
In addition to the forty stages in the main game, there are two shorter campaigns (Sky Realm and Special Stages), a bonus stage, a boss rush mode, a costume select, and a level select that can be unlocked after clearing the game. The game has an extensive record-keeping system to track your best runs, optimized for speedrunning.
CAVERNS OF KHRON has its own website.
View the game’s trailer:
At the time of release, this was my largest and most polished game. Begun as a one-month “bakedown” jam game at the SelectButtonDotNet forums, the game expanded significantly, involved a musical collaboration with my longtime friend WiL Whitlark and a graphics artist, Michael Santaigo. The game is set in a fantasy world I originally created for some unfinished QBASIC games in the mid-nineties. While the basic platforming is not too gimmicky (at its core, it began as a fantasy re-working of the DOS classic Monuments of Mars with a sword), the game allowed me to work out some ideas about level design I’d been itching to try. The game file contains an NES-style manual.
While this game was in development, the engine was modified to provide the basis for The Adventures of Bulb Boy.
Get to the goal flag at the end of each level! Dig down! Jump up to destroy blocks! 4 levels of puzzle platforming!
Arrows: Move
X: Jump
Z/Y: Dig
Made for Klik of the Month Klub #60.