Ever since I was an 8-year old elementary school student I was already obsessed with video games, PC/DOS gaming in particular, but I did carry my Nintendo Game Boy around nearly everywhere I went. With classics like Super Mario Land, Wario Land, Pokemon, and Zelda: Link’s Awakening (you know, the usual). Recently I bought an Analogue Pocket, a modern FPGA-based handheld console that can play original Game Boy cartridges. 1980s and 1990s game development and history is somewhat of a passion of mine, but somehow I never got around to trying Game Boy development, so I decided to finally give it a whirl. ...

I’ve been working on a new mobile game, out today on Google Play! The App Store version will follow soon. I had to hit an April deadline or my Google Play account would be closed for inactivity. Maintaining mobile games is… not always fun. Pilot Panic is the successor to my earlier mobile game, Pilot Express. I originally built it in Unity, but I’ve been learning Godot over the past few months. Porting a previous game felt like the perfect learning opportunity, though I ended up rebuilding almost everything. The game is now fully 2D, which makes the gameplay clearer and, in my opinion, looks better than the old low‑poly 3D style. ...

Over the past few months, my girlfriend and I have been spending a lot of time with Satisfactory, and it’s safe to say we’ve become pretty addicted. Satisfactory is a game about factory management and planetary exploration (and exploitation). As a pioneer for FICSIT Inc., you drop onto an alien world with just a handful of tools. Your mission: harvest natural resources to construct increasingly complex automated factories. Think conveyor belts, lots of them. ...

Today marks Quake’s 25th anniversary, which also happens to coincide with my birthday. Quake released on June 22, 1996. I was still in elementary school and I’m not entirely sure how I first got my hands on it, probably through my cousin, but my dad and I were instantly hooked and played daily. Quake wasn’t just among the first fully 3D, real‑time‑rendered FPS games; it was executed so well that it still holds up today, and that quality is what makes it unforgettable. ...

With the release of World of Warcraft Classic some months ago, I’ve been casually playing it most weekends (until the nostalgia eventually wears off). One of my work colleagues happens to run the guild I’m in, and has been pestering me to write some guild management addons. Having no experience with WoW modding, it piqued my interest. Since I’ve been playing a rogue, I found myself constantly having to re-apply fresh poison to my weapons, a necessary but tedious chore. With my recent foray into addon development, I realized this was the perfect opportunity to /scratch my own itch. After all, my creed dictates to automate the heck out of anything that makes me work less. ...

I’ve been active in the VR community for a while, being one of the original kickstarters for the Oculus DK1 VR headset. I was totally sold on the tech since E3 2012, thanks to John Carmack’s Doom 3 ski goggles tech demo. I’ve owned about every Oculus headset and dev kit since then. This eventually led to a fun contract with HTC, the Taiwanese electronics giant behind the HTC Vive. In collaboration with Taiwanese filmmaker Poke Poke Creative, we built a small VR game to raise awareness of the Air Quality Index (AQI) and Taiwan’s pollution problem, an issue tied to the country’s massive electronics manufacturing. ...

My second mobile game is officially out on iOS, grab it on the App Store! Hidden Kitty is a cute seek‑and‑find game. Explore the rooms of the house and figure out where the kitty is hiding. Behind a pillow? Inside a cupboard? Tap and slide things around to discover new spots. There’s lots of objects in the house to interact with. This summer I wanted to build something smaller and cute than what I was already working on. Unlike my previous mobile game Pilot Express, which was free‑to‑play, Hidden Kitty is a paid download, something I’d been wanting to explore for a while. ...

I’ve been working on a little mobile game this summer, which is finally released on both the App Store and Google Play! Pilot Express lets you fly a small plane up and down, avoiding obstacles such as mines and balloons along the way. Collect coins to increase your score and fly through hoops to gain a speed boost. The controls are simple and responsive, so the challenge comes from reacting quick enough, flying through tight gaps, and deciding when to go for the bonus items versus playing it safe. ...

Ludum Dare is a fantastic challenge: make a game from scratch in 48 hours. Every year more people join, resulting in thousands of entries by the end of the weekend. This was my second time participating. Running into time-wasting problems is dangerous when you only have two days. Preparing before you start is key. While there’s some value in learning new software under pressure, it’s better to use tools you already know: the C# programming language, Blender, and Unity in my case. Prepare your work environment before the weekend starts. I set up Chronolapse to capture a timelapse and OBS for livestreaming on Twitch. Avoid nasty surprises once you start, nothing derails a jam like broken software. ...