12 Games in 12 Months

 One of the blogs that I read on a regular basis is "Tales of the Rampant Coyote" (a name which almost, but not quite, sticks in my head... "rampant, um..."). Today's post links out to Christer Kaitila's project of "12 Games in 12 Months", which matches an idea I was thinking about for 2013. I recall Petri Purho challenged himself to make a game every month, and I thought that was ambitious.

"Ambitious" is a good word. "Uncomfortable" is right in there, too.

I don't know if I can really pull off a game a month, even with a low "game jam" level of quality, but I think it's worth giving myself a challenge like that.

There's a lot of little games I'd like to play around with, and a lot of game frameworks out there. And I've got commitments of work that I want to do, anyway.

I may regret doing this, but I'm throwing my hat in the ring - for the calendar year 2013, I challenge myself to make a "game" every month. The scare quotes there are deliberate weasel space; I know I'm going to push the boundaries just to squeak in on some months, and I know that I'm not going to polish them all, and some of the games that I intend to count will be ports of games I've already made to new frameworks (Woody Tigerbaum, you have been warned).

As I go, I expect to post here with a few links, a few screenshots. And, if I really have my act together, I'll post to github with code repositories.

Even as I wrap up this post, I'm reminded of Chris Hecker's "Finish Your Game" rant, which somewhat argues against the game jam idea of sketching a game idea and moving on to something else. I love listening to Chris, I think he has some great ideas, but I don't know that I should always take his advice (and it'd be a cheap shot to say that Chris ought to finish his own games - he's working on one now, which is good. But hey, what happened to that rock climbing physics game? I guess "Spore" shipped, so that's good...).

I have a big game that I want to work on, and working on 12 small games in 2013 means I won't be working on The Twenty in as much depth. Then again, I haven't worked on it that much in 2012, unless you count my NaGaDeMo game. So maybe that's OK.