25 Browser Games Developed…Now What?

The release of Snake Island was also an important milestone for me: it was my 25th browser game developed as a solo/indie! The journey that started in 2008 with Ninjas! as a “can I actually make money by making games solo” (short answer: yes!) would eventually went on with 24 more games developed for my own Piron Games brand, a 5 years stint with a company making Facebook/social browser games, 5 programming languages learned (Haxe, Actionscript 3, Javascript, Typescript, C#) and many other tech used.

Now what?

I’m split between continuing developing smaller casual games (after all, I did art for 8 more of them) and starting to work on a more ambitious, half year or more dev time, game. Feels like it would be time for the later…although committing to a longer project brings a bunch of problems not related to the actual game development process (motivation, funding, etc).

While still trying to reach a decision, existing games are always in the need for a bug fix, a new feature or some new levels. So…

Dodge This will see 30 new levels, but this required some refactoring of the chapter/levels system. Will also see some small improvements like a targeting history.

Snake Island gathered some feedback and I’ve remade the touch screen control scheme (now it’s a compass-like thingamabob), fixed the level 8 puzzle and improved the visibility algorithm.

Wobbly Dot might see a new game mode with a first release of 30 levels.

Unfortunately, plans are made for the fate to mess with them. As I’ve recently suffered the loss of a family member, had to put everything game dev on pause to focus on family. I may return to game dev later on this year.