Having seen recommendations on Bluesky for this game I started by playing the demo on itch.io and quickly knew that I would have to play this game in full.

I only very recently started playing 2D platformers; at least since becoming an adult. My reintroduction last year was playing The End of Gameplay by droqen, and HollowKnight by Team Cherry and then subsequently platformers like Barbuta in UFO 50 by Mossmouth and friends.

However unlike these skill-based games this is very forgiving - this is a thinky game with many save points and no run backs. I completed it in less than four hours.

As part of learning how to make video games I took the UCSanDiegoX: Comptuer Graphics CSE167x course on edX.

The course covers the fundamentals of rendering 3D scenes. I gained some experience in:

• how shapes, material and lighting can be modelled in OpenGL;
• how simple transformations and camera views can be modelled using 4D matrices;
• how shaders are written and the APIs for passing data to them;
• modelling light and combining colours as vectors;
• writing and debugging programs in C++ with make;
• building a ray tracer from scratch.

As part of the PiCoSteveMo game jam I've been building a deck builder game where you host a great party.

The last time (see day 9) I responded to feedback from play testing by making the gameplay easier to understand. I also added sound effects by printing control codes.

It's coming up to time to finish this game. I enjoyed reading Derek Yu's Finishing a Game post - which is cool because Derek Yu probably made the game that inspired this one.

As part of the PiCoSteveMo game jam I'm building a deck builder game where you host a great party.

The last time (see day 8) I worked on adding animation for a title screen and importantly a game over screen.

I was lucky enough to have some friendly strangers from the internet play test the game. Today I'd like to act on that feedback - the game is "within tweaking distance of fun" - so let's get tweaking.

As part of the PiCoSteveMo game jam I'm building a deck builder game where you host a great party.

The last time (see day 7) I worked on building out the base gameplay to support guests with special abilities.

I made a lot of progress today and I'm almost getting to the point where it can be play tested. We now have the victory conditions and title screen added so it's technically possible to play through from start to end.

It's important that I finish this before Demon School comes out (probably impossible).

As part of the PiCoSteveMo game jam I'm building a deck builder game where you host a great party.

The last time (see day 6) I looked at a framework for managing scenes and then had a play with the music system.

There are just two weekends left in November. Today is free and I have a cup of coffee in my hand so today I'd like to push for something that is end to end playable.

As part of the PiCoSteveMo game jam I'm building a deck builder game where you host a great party.

The last time (see day 5) I worked on showing more than a single row of guests and introduced the planning "scene". I ran into some issues setting up the concept of a class in lua and left it at that.

Since last working I've made some progress on the planning scene. I managed to reuse some of the concepts from the party scene whilst resisting the urge to refactor out common logic.

As part of the PiCoSteveMo game jam I'm building a deck builder game where you host a great party.

The last time (see day 4) I worked on adding interactivity to show guests on the screen as they arrive at the party. I'd like to start working on showing a cursor to allow the party to be interactive.

As part of the PiCoSteveMo game jam I'm building a deck builder game where you host a great party.

The last time (see day 3) I worked on getting the main screen rendered in PICO-8 as a sprite sheet and trying to reduce the size of my sprites.

I've often been told that a fun thing about working in the PICO-8 is that you can very quickly get to a prototype of the game that you can play test. Today I'd like to focus on getting to a version of the game that I can play test and see if it is actually fun.

As part of the PiCoSteveMo game jam I'm building a deck builder game where you host a great party.

The last time (see day 2) I worked on getting an initial design for the main game screen in Aseprite. This time I'll have a go using the PICO-8 sprite editor to recreate it in the game.