About
I grew up on Psygnosis, Cinemaware, and LucasArts — games where every screen felt designed by someone who cared too much, where the art was too good for the hardware and the stories were weirder than they needed to be. Code that felt like magic. Worlds that felt handmade. That's the tradition I'm trying to carry forward, with slightly more modern tools and considerably more grey hair.
The Obsession
An Amiga 1200 kid in a bedroom full of game boxes. Shadow of the Beast. Defender of the Crown. Monkey Island. The visual storytelling, the alien aesthetics, the sheer ambition of games that seemed impossible for the hardware they ran on. Somewhere in there, a decision quietly got made.
MonsterNOIA!
At 17, before university, needing to prove something to myself. 2,500 lines of BlitzBasic 2, written entirely solo — concept, code, graphics, animation, sound, and the title track. A hybrid of Boulder Dash, Sokoban, and Pac-Man: a blue monster with a red backpack, password letters to collect, intelligent enemies that actively hunted you, and enough interactive elements (stones, coloured doors, teleports, oneways) to keep things interesting. A custom level editor thrown in for good measure.
Released on AmiNet CD 7. Later picked up by AmigaForever. Someone on the internet eventually made a walkthrough. That felt like enough.
Verus — The One That Got Away
A university game development course. A Roman gladiator game — before gladiator games were really a genre, for what that's worth. Low-level OpenGL, C/C++, and a difficult mix of real life vs ambitious goals. What was planned: a glorious fight in Circus Maximus with a wild and furious fights and even wilder audience. What shipped: circus minimus, a skeleton with rudimentary AI, fighting in a colonnaded gallery. At least with a self-hosted game development wiki and project manager/issue tracker (Trac) :) Filed under glorious prototype and left there.
Crash & Burn Games
Back to it. Same spirit as 1994 — do everything, prove something, finish it. Blue Chip & Bullshit is the project: a hilariously quirky interactive adventure set in the Bronx art scene of the 1980s, built in Godot 4.7. The tools are considerably better than BlitzBasic 2. The deadline pressure is self-imposed. The chaos is familiar.
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