The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #30: Homebrew Video Games with My Bro

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast

This episode originally aired on March 7, 2016.

https://13thhr.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=post&jetpack-copy=3349

There is bonus material available here:

https://13thhr.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=post&jetpack-copy=3398

Today, I have my first live guest! My brother, Jeremy, who writes about video games on his blog, Pixel Grotto, joins me for a conversation about the video games we made (and tried to make) when we were kids. It all started when Jeremy got interested in a graphical video game making software program called Klik 'N Play (this was in the late 1990s), and started making homebrew games. The nice thing was that because it was graphical, the learning curve to making games was considerably lower.

Eventually, I became interested, too, and decided to make fan games of my own, starting with one called Tomb Raider: The Unicorn Quest, where a young Lara Croft goes on a search for a unicorn with her mentor, who is ambushed and killed not long after they locate the mythical animal, leaving Lara stranded on a quest to save the unicorn and avenge the death of her mentor. It sounds better than it really was! But I've recently relocated the game files - those and more about the game can be found in the separate post here).

I wrote in a previous post about plans to make a sequel that I think I was going to call Tomb Raider: Shadow of the Wolf, with better animations ... but that ended up in development hell, as they say. You can read more of here).

Links to download the other games we talked about (games about chimp fighting, breakdancing, etc) are here.

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Links to the gamemaking software we talked about:

Klik 'N PLay

The Games Factory

Multimedia fusion

Clickteam Fusion - the modern, free version of the above programs

Unity

You can follow Jeremy on Twitter as well to get real-time updates and his unique insights into games and how we play them.

Here are a few links to his articles on his Tumblr site:

-http://pixelgrotto.tumblr.com/post/131556691816/mobile-for-sommerlund-and-the-kai-when-i-was-a - on the Lone Wolf game books and how they were visual novelized

-http://pixelgrotto.tumblr.com/post/129636036426/now-playing-knightfall-warning-lots-and-lots-of - on Batman: Arhkam Knight

As always, thanks for listening!

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