The Unfinished Archives of NAL 2004-2009 / by Allison James

This is a blog entry mainly to mention that, on Game Jolt, I have released a compilation of 40 unfinished games from between 2004 and 2009. They can be found here. Some information on each game in the pack, pulled from its description on GJ:-----I've dumped a hell of a lot of games in the past. From 2004-2009 (nothing from 2003 worth seeing), I've collected 40 (count 'em) unfinished and (in most cases) abandoned games that are at least in a playable state, and .exe-ed them into one big 60MB zipped folder. They're dated so you can quickly predict how crap they're gonna be.

2004 -----

Retroform

A jetpack shooter. Was dumped because my skill at the time was awful and I couldn't get anywhere near what I wanted.

2005 -----

Defrag

Platformer styled on the defragmentation graphics on Windows' defrag tool. You have to turn all the undefragmented blocks green with your progression item. Was very dreary - didn't complete much.

KOed

Poor excuse for a beat-em-up. Never tried making one since.

Lost Jewels

The only time I've attempted a movie in GM. This is like one big, naffly-made cutscene lasting about two minutes and erroring at the end.

Penalties

Penalty shootouts. Badly made but kinda works. But badly made. This one's near enough complete, though it never got released.

Primitivity

Game set in the past. You have a spear. You can throw it, but then you have to get it back to throw it again. Boring.

Rigmorol's Platform Adventure

Another that was near enough finished. Might actually be short enough to be tolerable throughout. You get turned into a ball and have to... get yourself turned back into a human.

Shotgun, Baby!

Not very done at all. You can run about in a single area and shoot a woman bloodily. Understandably, I dropped work on it very shortly after.

Tracker

Basically, GTA1 with awful controls, nothing to do, and nothing much to see. Kinda funny watching your guy get run over though.

Vakioum

Pretty much finished, designed as a minigame to a crap, released game. Collect all the hidden coins in an area before time runs out. Again, short enough to be playable, since there's only one level and it takes about half a minute to complete.

Way State

One thing I've learnt in my years of game making: I can't do adventure games for shit. This was one I started, got about an hour into then stopped. Has an alright parallax thing going on though.

Yarat

More clichéd than a chocolate teapot having sex with a sleeping, lying dog on a blue moon while someone allergic to apples is pursued by a doctor, Yarat was a platformer all about the key-opened gates. About 1/6 of a level finished before I realised it was gonna get crap, fast.

2006 -----

Dafyddylle Violent

If it wasn't so pathetically slow this could've worked. Alas. It's a game in which you join the military and go to war. The game includes the enrolment process and training, along with a couple of empty levels in which you blast some enemies with AI less intelligent than a plank.

Evaders

Two-player dodgem wars with guns, Evaders tried to be innovative, but ended up a bit meh. First game I ever made to incorporate game options, though, and some things worked okay.

Ovmira Racing

Closest I ever got to making a racing game. Not very good. One level, one path-scripted AI car, one wasted minute of your life.

2007 -----

Desert Game

Yes, that's a temporary name. Desert Game was my first attempt at a self-made FPS. It never turned into a game but it's alright for titting about in. The engine later formed a city game, which later still became Dreaming On E.

Festival For Under Fives

A shooter with nothing to shoot. This came about me editing the Mingitilla engine to try and incorporate weird model distortion. It worked, but it sucked.

Nails

Holds a place in my heart. It's a difficult shooting game that I spent a lot of time on before scrapping it heartlessly. To this day a part of me wants to finish it, but then I see all the horrific D&D and run away.

Notthemostoriginalgamenamebutupthere

A game designed for a mouse-only contest. Wasn't great so I scrapped it and started a new game instead - Rockit. Never looked back.

Robotreq

Yet another platforming game that (for the time) wasn't badly designed, but was axed on the basis it was blander than a piss sandwich.

Va

Isometric detective game with two missions made. If I'd applied myself a little more I'm convinced Va could've worked. But I didn't. So it didn't.

2008 -----

Cartoon K

Always wanted to make a cartoony game. Cartoon K was satisfaction, as well as realisation that if I wanted it to be fun it would require a lot of work. A lot of work? *chop*

Don't Let That Guy Get You Down, Man!

Name is unexplainable, but the game is a 2.5D game that aims to mess with your prespective senses while being a generally spooky game. Got bored of making it.

Elemence ZII

One of several (in this pack one of two) games with which I attempted to reinvigorate the Elemence series, a series that carried my best game until I got better, Elemence AuX. ZII was 3D, not very Elemencey, and, to summarise the game in four words, "a bad Ballance ripoff".

Flat

Arcade game with flat characters. And flat gameplay. But I made the music for it, so that was a plus! And the blood effects, I've yet to replicate.

Halcyon Days

Trippy and crazy, this was my attempt to throw myself back into 2D games after the Febmar Trilogy. It got junked when a Jet Pod contest made me decide to make NAL's Jet Pod instead. Incidentally, this was also to be my first game made 100% in code. NJP took that liberty as well.

NeonX

Me playing about with GM7's (I was a late adopter) new effects, specifically draw_line_width. I ended up using draw_line_width in FKR2 and dropping this on account of not being able to find a way to incorporate gameplay without ballsing the graphics up.

WTFPMSL

What The F**k? Pissing My Self Laughing! Well... the game has a skateboarding grandad. Not really the high point of hilarity, but it had a nice greyscale aesthetic.

2009 -----

Classical Castle

My attempt at laid-back gaming, this featured classical music, simple graphics and puzzling mixed with platforming. Halted when I ran out of puzzle ideas about three levels in.

Elemence: Switch / Elemence: Passion Matrix

The other Elemence in this collection. This one instead was 2D and had a lot of bevelgasms. This is one of the games I wouldn't mind finishing - it had a presentation to it I've still not really matched since, and despite only having two levels, was well built and kinda fun.

Gamanstake 3D

As with Elemence, this was an attempt to bring an old series into new territory. I made Gamanstake back in 2006 and wanted to turn it into a respectable game. As a note, the title was temporary. I despise putting "3D" in game titles. The planned title at time of axing (though I may still finish this one) was "Hell Has Brick Walls".

Lyghtgryd

Ever played the game Aargon Deluxe? Guessing that was a "no", since despite being one of the best puzzlers I've ever played, it was hugely underplayed. I don't like remakes, but this was to be a remake of Aargon Deluxe. Unfortunately, my skill collapsed on me and it was left half-made.

Monobrow Cat

A collaboration with Broxter. He wanted to keep this one secret. Bugger him. :D This is an exploration game featuring your friendly neighbourhood |:3. Another one that may well be finished in the future, either as a continued collaboration or with just one of us continuing work on it.

Nightmare In Pixel Width

Fake 3D, presented with a limited colour pallette. Looks kinda nice, actually, but suffered from "implementing gameplay into this is gonna be a pain in the arse", which ultimately meant demotivation and death.

Polybiius

If you've never heard of the urban legend "Polybius" I recommend you go and look it up. Summary - it was a game, created by the government, found in arcades that induced numerous bad effects in players, including nausea, headaches, epilepsy, and narcolepsy. This was my attempt at doing the same thing, though it quickly descended into "making things flash a lot" so I stopped work on it.

Rockit 2 (R2CKIT)

Sequel to Rockit. Lost motivation very quickly - some games I can sequelise, others I simply can't. Rockit's a can't, despite numerous requests to.

The Hilarity Of Murder Pro

FPS version of The Hilarity Of Murder. Looked crap, wasn't very nice, but here's the basics if you want to see life in the player's eyes. Was also to include online deathmatches and similar, but my online crew bailed.

The Inverse Man

A cross between Innoquous, Jumpman and anything with little men and monochrome. This was ditched because of GM's annoying outlines drawn around sprites. GM8's alpha support may end this problem - if so, this could be released in the future.

So, yeah. That's all of them! I will willingly give out source codes to any of these games if you're interested in finishing them or pinching bits of code (with credit of course), lemme know!

-----

It's a 60MB download, so have fun with that!In other news, I've also released a new game, Rainbow Planet 2, a sequel to the predictably-named predecessor from mid-2007. That marks a NALRecord for longest time between two instalments of a series!

You can play Rainbow Planet 2 on YoYo Games, the special edition Rainbow Planet 2.1 on Game Jolt (which includes online highscores and a Twitter feed that automatically tweets new winners), or if you're interested in its history, the original can be downloaded from MediaFire.

The game itself is nothing stunning, but in a small way this was since I wanted to make it true to the original, particularly with the controls, which may be considered awkward.I've noticed YoYo Games have reupdated the Game Maker 8 logo. Although I liked the original new update, I think I slightly prefer this one. I like the slight reduction in saturation from the original version, and this one seems like it would scale down a lot better to a 32x32 icon. It's still just an icon though. YYG will have the £20 thrown at them for the overdue Game Maker upgrade regardless of whether its logo is a Pac-Man in a G, a communist hammer, a smiley face, or a bell-end with clown make-up on.

Anyway, it's currently 8:10am. I've been up all night, and plan to see through the all-nighter. Already rather drowsy and keep getting dizzy spells, so I'm guessing in a few hours I'll probably keel over and sleep on whatever happens to be beneath me. But for now, I'm done writing, so I'll see y'all in the next blog. Thanks for reading, as always!