Archive for the ‘games’ Category

Mantle Moon Sea

 Posted by Bob the Hamster on February 2nd, 2017

I made a little game for fun, and to practice my C# skills. What better way to have fun with C# than with Unity3d?

This game is called Mantle Moon Sea, and the idea of the game is that you are piloting Bob the Hamster’s submarine through the ice-caves of a frozen moon. You collect treasure, bump into harmless jellyfish, explore maze-like caves, and generally have a relaxed time. Oh, and you also pump the pristine ocean full of floating science buoys.

The music is Bilinsky by rocavaco (CC-BY), and my oldest daughter made all the jellyfish noises for me.

A word from the High Priest of the Cult of Baconthulhu

 Posted by Bob the Hamster on December 23rd, 2013

Siiiiiizle! Siiiiiiizle! I am the high priest of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Cooked-At-Less-Than-144-Degrees-Fahrenheit. I am here to decry the heinous heresy against my dark and salty master.

(Windows Version) (Mac Version) (OUYA Console Version) (Zip File)

The blasphemer who created this game has updated it yet again! That makes twice in one month, and now this farce contains even more Hamster-Triumphing-Over-Bacon mockery.

I was willing to overlook the old 2009 version of this game, since its lack of a real save-game feature made it unlikely that any player would progress far enough to permit the player to complete the desecration of the image of my Thinly-Sliced-Pork-Lord.

Here is a short list of the new outrages committed by the new version of this game:

=NEW FEATURES=
Save-game support!
Sound Effects
Different colors for each floor
Now has a “good ending” and a “bad ending” depending on whether you save-scum
You can make donations from the main menu

=NEW ITEMS=
Chalk (draw permanent marks on the floor)
Jiffy Potion (fast walking for a limited time)
Scroll of Repel (drive away enemies for a limited time)
Maul of Wall-Whacking (breaks cracked walls)
Scroll of Telepo (Teleport)
Wavy Sword

=NEW ENEMIES=
Monocular Blarb
Meat Man
Crypt Yuk
Jelly Coiler
Doom Sponge

=BALANCE=
Rebalanced enemies (slightly easier)
Buffed the Scroll of Burning
Slightly reduced the size of the two largest dungeon levels
Fixed Soma potion to work properly

Please join me in NOT playing this game.

The Death of Von Stabbingmore

 Posted by Bob the Hamster on March 12th, 2012

Last week I finished a new game for the 2012 Week Long OHR Random Collab Contest. This was a collaboration, and my randomly chosen team-mate was Sid “Thespazztikone” Tyler. He happens to be a master at making maptiles, which is one of my biggest weakpoints, so I was very happy to be teamed with him, and he didn’t seem too mad about me hogging all the plotscripting and textbox-writing fun.

The game we made is called The Death of Von Stabbingmore, and you can download it from here: slimesalad

  

The game is intended to be in the style of a point-and-click puzzle-adventure, although there is no pointing and clicking. All the controls are the standard OHRRPGCE interface for running around the map and fighting RPG battles. The puzzles are all built into the battles, requiring you to use the correct sequence of commands to win. I tried to make the dialog funny, and based on reactions I have gotten to it so far, I think I succeeded.

The game uses tall hero walkabouts, based on the WalkTall tech demo scripts that I wrote a few months back. In writing this game I found a fixed a few bugs with the OHR’s support for modifying walkabout sprite slices.

Escape the Wolf (in 48 hours)

 Posted by Bob the Hamster on August 25th, 2011

Last weekend I participated in the 21st Ludumdare 48 hour game making competition. It was a lot of fun. Mahlena came over to keep me company, and I programmed almost all weekend. I used the OHRRPGCE, and talked the OHR community into timing our own annual 48 hour contest to be simultaneous with the Ludumdare competition, so that people could double-enter. Several did.

The theme of the contest was “Escape”, and the game I created was called Escape the Wolf: OHR You can download it from here:

(Windows version) (Mac OS X Version)

I also have a page for it at SlimeSalad, and the Ludumdare page for it is here.

Basically, you run away from the wolf, and try to find the cabin. I hacked together some pretty decent-seeming ai for the wolf, and took care to avoid overusing randomness. The map is generated randomly, but the gameplay is pretty deterministic.

Procedurally generating the forest was pretty fun, and not as hard as I feared it might be. I allocated layers 2-7 as overhead, then I generated trees from the top of the map down to the bottom, dynamically placing the tiles in the lowest free layer. That means that seven trees would have to overlap before there would not be room for the tiles (possible, but very rare). Trees layered badly when they wrapped over the top of the map and onto the bottom of the map, but it was too minor for me to care about in such a time-crunch.

In retrospect I really should have added some landmarks scattered around the forest. I did have one landmark, a cobblestone path that lead from the cabin to a well. It made a big difference in finding the cabin, since the cabin was only 3×3 tiles, and the footpath could stretch over as much as half the map. Still, it is a big map, and more landmarks would have helped.

I am also very happy for Mahlena’s brief playtesting. The wolf chomped her rapidly and repeatedly, and that convinced me that the game mode I had been working on should become “Hard Mode”, and that I should add Normal and Easy modes.

So far the ludumdare responses have been mostly positive, and all the OHRRPGCE users who have played it seemed to like it. I will update this post after the voting period is over.

The voting has completed, and out of 509 contestants, I scored in 12th place for Audio (which really surprises me, because I was just doodling and warbling into the microphone) and I scored in 17th place for Humor, which I am proud of, because so very many of the contestants tried to make funny games.

Vocabulary Mosaic

 Posted by Bob the Hamster on April 15th, 2010

EDIT: 2015-05-18

I made a new version of Vocabulary Mosaic. This version has larger tiles, some visual improvements, control improvements, and perhaps most importantly, it can save your progress automatically so long games do not have to be played in a single sitting.

vocabmosaic-gameplay-01 vocabmosaic-gameplay-03

Download Links:


Info and screenshots below are about the old version from 2010:

I was asked to write a game design article for Hamsterspeak Issue #36. Instead of just writing an article, I wrote a game.

I had recently been playing a lot of Words-With-Friends with my Sister and my Brother-in-Law, and that had me thinking about word-tile games.

One thing I don’t like about word tile games is the limited size of the board quickly cramps the word space, and the double and triple score boxes force any winning strategy to emphasize small words on score boxes in favor of long words.

So I set out to make a word tile game that rewards long words most of all. The result was Vocabulary Mosaic.

There is more information about the making of the game in the hamsterspeak article. (old version)

DON’T EAT SOAP! An Educational Game Starring Bob the Hamster

 Posted by Bob the Hamster on June 6th, 2009

For the 2009 OHRRPGCE 8-bit contest,  I have taken it upon myself to do a public service, and I have created:

DON’T EAT SOAP!

An Educational Game Starring Bob the Hamster

Dont Eat Soap! - main title

Soap is bad for you to eat. It is good for washing your hands, but very very bad for you to put in your mouth. If soap ever accidentally gets in your mouth, spit it out! This game is an educational simulation using the latest in 8-bit gaming technology so that you can experience mouth-related soap accidents from the safety of your living-room without risk
of actual hospitalization.

August 2013 update:

I am please to announce that an updated version of Don’t Eat Soap has been released for the OUYA Console. This new version features 15 new levels (for a total of 40 levels) and 3 new enemies. There are also an assortment of small bugfixes and tiny improvements. Now you can not eat soap in even more style than before!

Remember! This is only a game! Do not try it at home!

Download it here in a ZIP file

Download it here as a Windows Installer

Download it here as a Mac App

This game is available on Android via Google Play

This game is also available on the OUYA console!

Bob the Hamster in the Crypt of Baconthulhu

 Posted by Bob the Hamster on May 7th, 2009

EDIT (2014): There is a new version of this game available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and OUYA Console! See this post for more info

I made Bob the Hamster in the Crypt of Baconthulhu for the 2009 OHRRPGCE Terrible Games Contest.

EDIT: My game narrowly won first place! See the results here: HamsterSpeak Issue 27

To give you a taste of the game, here is a brief “Director’s Commentary” video of it.

Also, I should note that the youtube video doesn’t do justice to the game’s music. It was composed by John Sebastian Willow, and it really makes the atmosphere.

If you want to try this game yourself, the direct download link is here: http://HamsterRepublic.com/dl/baconthulhu.zip

This zip includes an exe for windows, but the game also runs in Linux, as long as you have the Linux version of the OHRRPGCE.

StegaVorto: The Game that came to James in a Dream

 Posted by Bob the Hamster on November 23rd, 2008

Last tuesday night I had a dream… In this dream, Michael Sweet, frontman of 1980’s glam-rock hair-band “Stryper” appeared to me.. except he was wearing a business suit, and standing on the front lawn of a public library… and he challenged me to play a game, a strange game that I had never played before. When I awoke I knew that I had to program it…

Your challenge is to discover secret messages embedded in the works of great authors.. Secrets that have been waiting all along for you to find…

Download the Windows version of StegaVorto
Download the Mac OS X version of StegaVorto
Debian packages (preliminary) thanks to Miriam Ruiz
Android App (preliminary)
Download the source-code of StegaVorto (Linux, BSD, Other)

The source code is written using python and pygame.

Alternatively you can get the source code using Subversion to check out

svn://gilgamesh.HamsterRepublic.com/hamster/stegavorto

The source code is under the GPL


2008-11-24: Updated! Check out new features such as author portraits, difficulty levels, and visualization of missed letters.
2008-12-10: Updated! More polish on levels, added a victory screen when you complete a level, and default to full-screen
2008-12-23: Many thanks to pygame developer René Dudfield who discovered how to fix the music problem (not just for StegaVorto, but for all pygame games that play music the same way StegaVorto does on the Mac)
2011-08-17: Updated! Added an Android version. Removed the flakey picsearch feature, and replace it with additional joyous kittens!

Provide Excellent Customer Service through SMASHING!

 Posted by Bob the Hamster on April 6th, 2008

Pyweek just ended, and my team *barely* got our entry submitted in time. At 6 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 30 seconds, I was literally shouting “Where is the upload button!? Why can’t I find the upload button!? It was here yesterday!”

You can download my team’s game here. I would also recommend checking out the numerous other nifty entries (although most of them are distributed as source code so you may have to install Python and some libraries)

(Old) Bob the Hamster Sidescroller

 Posted by Bob the Hamster on February 12th, 2008


I recently ported some of my ancient QuickBasic code to FreeBasic. One such piece of code was an old unfinished prototype of a Bob the Hamster jump-and-run side scrolling game.

You can download the results here ↵
bob-old-sidescroller.zip

You can move Bob around a single level, and interact with a few objects, although there are no enemies to fight.

This code is notable in O.H.R.RPG.C.E history because, as best as I can remember, it is the first Hamster Republic code to use the multi-directional scrolling code used for the OHRRPGCE’s maps.

I have no plans to finish this code, but I do have another sidescroller in the works