Sometimes I convince myself to make a game fast-and-loose, with whatever graphics and no expectation of long play times, rather than letting myself build up the expectation of hours enjoyable story and gameplay. It’s really just doing a game jam without the actual structure of a jam that someone else is running (although… hold that thought). This week I brushed off an old almost-finished game that I built nearly two years ago and just finished it as much as I was going to bother finishing it.

Defend All Humans!!

Last week I mentioned how sometimes I make games as fast as possible. Some time near the end of 2022 I decided I wanted to do that again, and since I keep intending to build a Defender clone (and then not), I figured it was time. (Or something like that; honestly, it was nearly two years ago so I only vaguely remember it anyway.)

So I did! Based on file times, random Discord messages, and whatever other notes I could scrounge up, I think I worked on this for the equivalent of three or four days? Then I spent about another day worth of time on it this week to do some fixes and… “polish” isn’t quite the right word, but something like that.

So: Defend All Humans!!

Play Defend All Humans!! in your browser on itch.io

The game is very straightforward, and there isn’t a lot to it, honestly. (I’m doing a great job at selling this, I know.) Like the other “not-really-a-game-jam games” I’ve made, it’s more of a sketch of a larger game – there’s only one level, there are only three kinds of enemies, etc. It does have a (local-only) high score list, and has all the general parts of a Defender game though!

I could have made more – I even thought about adding a few things, like more levels and so on. That really wasn’t the point though. I have a bit of nostalgia for Defender (I played it on our Atari 2600 when I very young) but it’s not really something I’d want to make a bigger thing out of for nostalgia’s sake, like I did with Escape from Evil Island. I convinced myself not to add more than I wanted to. So here it is!

Aside: What’s the Point?

Part of the reason I didn’t bother to finish the game for so long is because I was kind of over it, and I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with it. I wrestle with whether I should bother with actually puting small games like this out there – what’s the point, exactly? They’re mostly exercises, rather than anything I have a great deal of attachment to.

That said, it’s also just… irritating to have something hanging around that’s not done. Every now and then I run across it in my projects directories, and figure I should do something with it, but not (until now) enough to actually do anything about it. I’m posting it, finally, as a way to just sort of close the book on it; that’s all really.

Game Jams, and Week Sauce

Something that’s changed my thinking a bit on whether it’s “worthwhile” to post something or not is hanging out in the Discord for Week Sauce.

I love the idea of game jams, at least theoretically. I like making games! There isn’t a lot of time investment! Back when I was in school (sigh… 20-ish years ago, now) I participated in jams a lot more (before we actually called them “jams”). I almost never actually end up participating, though, because I just can’t really find a weekend (or worse, a whole week) that I really can set it aside just for a game jam.

That said, though, is there really much difference between a game jam and the “quick game sketches” I do? Other than the structure of someone else running a homepage for it, it really doesn’t seem different. Week Sauce, in particular, is so flexible and freeform that there’s no reason not to just… think of my quick games as entries for it. This helps, a little, with the answer to “why even bother?” I think it’s good for me to get more things just actually shipped.

Have a good week!