This appears to be by Kenta Cho, a.k.a. ABA games, who has a long history of writing wonderful small games in D. His work is well worth checking out. https://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/
I feel like HN is on a kick right now with this concept of “small games”.
But folks are tripping over the definition of small. There’s the small as defined in the link you have, small as in low mechanic and low content like “Gone Home”, small as in asset flips, small as in just not AAA, small as in really intricate but not large, small as in procedurally huge but limited visuals and simple mechanics, small as in just a dating sim or porn, and then small as in old school “small games” like Doom Guy’s Commander Keen which is cute and good at the time but laughably unpolished for todays standards.
Since the beginning of the industrial era, people have been looking for side artisan-gigs to distract from how droll their day job is. This isn’t particularly different than woodworking, gardening, knitting and the legion of other hobbies used for this purpose.
It'll depend on who you ask and what lens you look in. "small" for a dev is very different from a consumer
And when you split into disciplines it gets even more murky. VN's are "small" for a programmer (you may not even need to program for many of them) but can be hundreds of art assets for an artist to work on. Likewise, something like Dwarf Fortress didn't even have a GUI at first but is filled to the brim with simulation state for a programmer to manage.
And if course that definition is relative. Final Fantasy VII was top of the line in 1997 and took 5+years, but it'd be at best a beefy 2-3 man project over a few years today.
I haven't visited this site in years though. I wonder if mobile games are the reason why. I stopped playing a lot of web/flash/html5 games a long time ago when gaming (for me) moved to the app store.
But I recognized the name and remember playing a lot of these games back in the day.
I always thought they were delightful. Building off a single game mechanic or two and then moving on to the next concept. The dev has a good system in place for shipping :)
Does anyone know a way to subscribe to find when he adds a new game? I checked out his blog and Twitter and they don’t seem to be a great way to follow just the games. Can’t find an RSS feed either.
jncfhnb|2 years ago
But folks are tripping over the definition of small. There’s the small as defined in the link you have, small as in low mechanic and low content like “Gone Home”, small as in asset flips, small as in just not AAA, small as in really intricate but not large, small as in procedurally huge but limited visuals and simple mechanics, small as in just a dating sim or porn, and then small as in old school “small games” like Doom Guy’s Commander Keen which is cute and good at the time but laughably unpolished for todays standards.
bobthepanda|2 years ago
johnnyanmac|2 years ago
And when you split into disciplines it gets even more murky. VN's are "small" for a programmer (you may not even need to program for many of them) but can be hundreds of art assets for an artist to work on. Likewise, something like Dwarf Fortress didn't even have a GUI at first but is filled to the brim with simulation state for a programmer to manage.
And if course that definition is relative. Final Fantasy VII was top of the line in 1997 and took 5+years, but it'd be at best a beefy 2-3 man project over a few years today.
TulliusCicero|2 years ago
silenced_trope|2 years ago
I haven't visited this site in years though. I wonder if mobile games are the reason why. I stopped playing a lot of web/flash/html5 games a long time ago when gaming (for me) moved to the app store.
But I recognized the name and remember playing a lot of these games back in the day.
I always thought they were delightful. Building off a single game mechanic or two and then moving on to the next concept. The dev has a good system in place for shipping :)
memalign|2 years ago