Category: tech

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Welcome to the Jam

As a child, I wanted to create video games so bad. I didn’t know how to program (nor anyone willing to sit down and teach me), but I did have a spiral notebook I packed with ideas: some of them just a title and a genre, others with a character in mind. A few I had built a world in my head, and was ready to get started.

But I didn’t. Never did. I may have turned a few into stories at some point, but otherwise, those ideas are lost to time. A book of childhood fantasies that never came true.

I have better tools now. And over the past week, I’ve exercised them. And with that, there’s now a game named Caretaker.

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games tech

“(Y)ou must first invent the universe.”

I’ve been playing a game called Moonlighter, an independent game from the small team of about seven people in Spain called Digital Sun Games. Players take control of Will, a shop owner that sells by day, and plunders randomly-generated dungeons by night to find new materials with which to craft and sell to his patrons. It has a thoughtfully-crafted in-game economy (as you might expect from a game based on selling items to customers), Legend of Zelda-inspired dungeon crawling, and an expandable shop to spend those earnings on. There’s even a banker that can help grow your money (whenever you’re able to talk to him).

And it’s a perfect example of why I love living in the future: every possibility to make something wonderful… no matter how small your team or experience.

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gifts new year tech

Happy 2021!

Happy-2021-GBDownload

So it’s a small thing, and it’s late in the day (and already 2021 by the time most people read this), but I thought a fun little thing I might do tonight is make something to (hopefully) put a smile on somebody’s face. It’s a Game Boy ROM I created using GB Studio, playable with a Game Boy emulator, and it has no sound (since I built, tested, and compiled it in about 90 minutes)… but I hope you might enjoy it despite its flaws. I even made all of the assets myself, basic as they are, aside from the font I used. Proud of that!

I’ll try to write more thorough blog posts again in 2021, I’m sorry I dropped the ball a little this year. The game doesn’t make up for it, but I promise I will over the next 365.25 days.

I hope you enjoy my little trinket, and a positive 2021 to everybody! Stand Tall, friends!

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games life tech

Game Boy: A Retrospective

One of the best-selling consoles of all time, the Nintendo Game Boy is a unique beast in the gaming landscape. It wasn’t nearly as powerful as its competitors, the screen was about as awful as a screen could be (even in its heyday), and the games… there was a lot of garbage developed for it. Yet with nearly 119 million units sold in the Game Boy line, from the original gray brick in 1989 until the final Game Boy Color rolled off the assembly line in 2003, the 8-bit juggernaut was a console that couldn’t be ignored, even when it was being absolutely overlooked.

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reviews tech

Microsoft Surface Go: Plenty Good (But Not More)

As much as I love my 13-inch 2015 Macbook Pro, it doesn’t fit well into a small bag for quick trips or my daily commute. And if I’m honest, I don’t need the power of my Macbook Pro for most of the things I use it for, like writing articles, working on my novel, or watching the occasional YouTube video (oh who am I kidding, the occasional YouTube binge session, like streaming sumo in bed). For things like that, a more compact (and less expensive) machine can do the trick.

But I still wanted some power for a commute-able daily driver. And so, to compliment my aging-yet-lovely Macbook, I purchased my first new Windows machine in over a decade: a Microsoft Surface Go tablet. And after a few weeks of fiddling, playing, pushing and writing, I’ve developed a few thoughts about my mobile companion.

Let’s get to it.

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