Top 'games' for creative individuals!

[Slime_Punk]

Crapht Box is a Fantasy Physics Sandbox, inspired by the Fantasy Console genre. It brings a simulated world with a number of disks and tools, and leaves you to play, program, create and share disks.

Breadbox is a realistic retro computer simulator. Experience the amazing machines from 70's and 80's in a visual environment. Interact with hardware and old media as if it were real. Add emulator and test your programming skills with Basic or 8-bit machine language.

Petit Computer is a software development application for the Nintendo DSi and later systems, developed by SmileBoom in Sapporo, Japan.[3][4] The application is built around a custom dialect of BASIC known as SmileBASIC (not to be confused with the 3DS sequel with the same name). Users can write games and other software using the onscreen keyboard and run the applications from within Petit Computer. The platform supports text-based console applications, visual applications, and any combination of the two. Input is available via hardware buttons, touchscreen input, or the onscreen keyboard.

This is the programming software, "SmileBASIC 4", that allows you to create and play games with Nintendo Switch™! The programming language is "SmileBASIC" which is the most suitable language for creating games. Because it is based on the language "BASIC" that is easy to understand even for beginners and it has been developed for program learning. So, even those who have never experienced programming can work on their projects. Moreover, there are many materials and various tools to support your work development.

FUZE4 Nintendo Switch is a coding application for Nintendo Switch. It has been designed and developed by a team of experienced gamers, programmers, artists and educators. The end result is a language ideally suited to coding games and apps for absolute beginners and seasoned programmers alike.

Award-winning music creation software KORG Gadget is now available for the Nintendo Switch. Plentiful instrumental gadgets combined with a simple and intuitive graphical interface enable speedy music creation. With this new music creation studio, one can create and perform music by actively twisting and turning the Joy-Con™.

Ozapell Basic is a hobbyist programming language simple enough for new programmers -- while powerful enough to develop playable retro 1980s games.

Sprite Basic 2 is a high-level programming language that runs at the highest speed offered by computers/ mobile devices. With a very clean instruction set, you'll be amazed by overall performances.

HTML5 Javascript Game Engine provides a complete set of functions making writing games simple and rewarding ! It is a great tool to start with for learning game programming while achieving impressive results

 

[Angular Chap]

I've been sleeping on this one and I need to wake up! I think I got it on sale for like $10 once and it just slipped through the cracks. Thank you for bringing attention to this one! (Also, from what I remember when I demoed it, I think it ran pretty OK-ish on lo-spec setups which is always a plus!)

Also, it's showing up on my 'moddable' list, which can only mean good things!

Yes, it ran pretty good on the PC I had when it was first released (with a GTX 670.) Only a few slowdowns when speeding up and slowing down time with a huge rocket or space station (it has to calculate the physics for individual parts.)

As for mods, don't get me started! Fly Thunderbird 2! Attempt to fly planes on other planets! Build and pilot boats and submarines on other planets! Mod in warp drives and fly your favourite Star Trek ship! Better stop now...

 

[Misery]

Oh, you know what, I thought of one other very special thing I want to show. Normally I never have any reason to show this specific thing, but I've got an excuse now so I'm gonna do it:

So, this is from LittleBigPlanet, the game that got me interested in, well, ANY of this stuff.

The original LBP, specifically. The second and third games introduced these "circuit board" interfaces that you could stick onto objects, and use things like logic gates and whatnot to create complex behaviors, and of course it came with excellent tutorials on how to use those things, but the first game? None of that. The "core" that controls the monstrosity in the video is this huge multi-screen mass of wires, pistons, blocks, and binary switches. All welded together by someone (me) who didnt know what a logic gate was (AKA, the thing isnt exactly efficient in structure). The boss itself is made of like 5 million individual parts, most of which have invisible wires connecting them to the core, which is offscreen so the player doesnt have to see it, and that part takes up multiple screens when zoomed out. The designing process of the thing was weird and took like 3 weeks. I distinctly remember a point during design where I'd fire it up, it'd start spinning slowly as it's supposed to between phases, then it would seem to catch on something, go bonkers, and violently fly apart. Friction! It was friction. You had to deal with stuff like that in this. Took days for me to figure out why it kept going nuts. I tell ya, completing this thing was a massive confidence boost, and I often think of this when I'm getting that "I just cant do this" feeling.

Later on I made a lot more big boss things, but I quickly learned to squash the cores into drastically smaller spaces.

Also yes I know the video quality is terrible and the character goes offscreen in parts of it. I didnt have a capture card. I had a terrible camera instead. Sometimes, you use what you gotta use.

I *really* wish they would bring back LittleBigPlanet. Like, bring it to Steam. Or anywhere else really. It truly was something special, and there's never been anything like it since. Not on PC, anyway...

Factorio... now that needs its own thread. I could write a book and I'm still only scraping the surface! Have you played any of the mods or do you mostly play vanilla?

Strictly vanilla.

I was actually stuck with only the Switch version for the longest time... due to nerve & tendon issues (which I go to physical therapy for) I cant hold a mouse for all that long before my arm starts to flare up (and it's a vertical mouse too, not exactly meant for gaming). Factorio on the Switch... which doesnt have mods... obviously has controller support, but the PC version didnt.

Or, at least, it didnt until like, right now. The update that adds that is on the experimental branch at the moment. I only just discovered this fact like an hour ago.

So, I'm gonna install the game here and start on it again. I can actually eventually play mods now! But also I can use my Xbox controller. The Switch Pro controller is decent, but I'm convinced that the thing which came with the Xbox Series X is the best controller ever made. It doesnt hurt to hold (unlike some other controllers... specifically Playstation types) and the d-pad is utter perfection. Which I say as someone who plays shmups and fighting games.


Also this thread is turning into quite the treasure trove. I'm usually pretty up to date on even really obscure stuff in indie-land, but there's a couple of things here that even I havent heard of.

 

[tripleU]

Bevy Game Engine

Bevy Engine

Bevy is a refreshingly simple data-driven game engine built in Rust. It is free and open-source forever!

bevyengine.org

A very hard game engine to use, and eats up a lot of your time, once you get the hang of it, you can start being creative

 

[Misty Avich]

I made up a game using my Google docs app on my phone. What I do is write a list of random names and birthdays next to the names, but there is not allowed to be a repeated name, surname or birthday month within two lines, and there is not allowed to be names or surnames beginning with the same letter within two lines.
It can get quite challenging, but addictive and fun.

Please don't judge lol.

 

[Outdated]

I just thought I’d elaborate on Minetest a little more. I think it has real value in several different areas.

As an edutech tool that’s completely free and far more configurable than any other similar game. I have also used it to create scale models of historical buildings that you can walk through and explore. You can import blueprints and build on them, the building of those is an education in itself. I was surprised to find a now defunct forum still up and here’s a story about one of my builds:

Angkor Wat - FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

minetest

forums.minetest.org

Security. Both in the home and in the classroom. By default Minetest is an offline game, it doesn’t automatically look for an internet connection. There’s quite a few online communities out there that you can join if you want to but Minetest can also connect directly to other computers and phones within wifi reach. So children can play with each other at home without being on the net, no stranger danger.

Personally I never play online, I don't like other people interfering with my game.

 

[Slime_Punk]

Fantasy Consoles & Game Engines - Collection by Occult Designs

I scoured Itch.io and found so many awesome engines, fantasy consoles and frameworks and added them to a collection. Obviously nobody needs this many all at one time, but I'm keeping this around for those fun, rainy-day experiments! And also because (test) deploying my last Love project was cumbersome and annoying AF.

Mostly all of these are free, too. The ones all the way on the bottom are the well-known ones

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Animal Crossing New Horizons is an excellent game to be creative in. Super Mario Maker 2 is also pretty fun to create some sadistic levels for others to go through.

 

[Misery]

Fantasy Consoles & Game Engines - Collection by Occult Designs

I scoured Itch.io and found so many awesome engines, fantasy consoles and frameworks and added them to a collection. Obviously nobody needs this many all at one time, but I'm keeping this around for those fun, rainy-day experiments! And also because (test) deploying my last Love project was cumbersome and annoying AF.

Mostly all of these are free, too. The ones all the way on the bottom are the well-known ones

A lot of them, definitely.

All of these looks so intimidating to me.

The biggest problem I run into with this sort of thing is that I have zero ability to handle math of any sort. I strongly suspect that I have dyscalculia. I can do addition and subtraction, sure, if the numbers arent too big. Multiplication, very slow and with errors. Division will just get you a blank stare. Anything beyond that and I'll just throw a chair or something.

This does bring up the question of how I handled the contract work but so much of that was "I dunno, this seems like a good spot for a number" and then somehow things did what I wanted them to. Doesnt really make a whole lot of sense.

 

[Slime_Punk]

The biggest problem I run into with this sort of thing is that I have zero ability to handle math of any sort. I strongly suspect that I have dyscalculia. I can do addition and subtraction, sure, if the numbers arent too big. Multiplication, very slow and with errors. Division will just get you a blank stare. Anything beyond that and I'll just throw a chair or something.

I feel this way a lot, too! I actually think the fact that programming languages do a lot of the math for you is what helps me the most, and sometimes it's just a matter of ad-libbing in the details.

Also, I don't like relying on Chat GPT for the creative, fun and other difficult parts (because it would botch my workflow and make it unreadable to me), but if I need a quick algorithm or something that's really concrete spelled out to me like I'm a toddler so I can encapsulate it into a function, I just use that. Like, if an environment or framework doesn't have a distance function for sprite collisions, I just use it's math to make one because I'm never going to remember that specific algorithm. Then, I can just call up my collide() function without worrying about it.

The part that makes fantasy consoles really easy for my brain is that they don't rely on a whole slew of libraries, so you're not spending eight years trying to find your dependencies if you move a project to a laptop or something like that. Having it all in a little box with either Lua or BASIC syntax is such a fun way to make projects.

They're also super easy to share things with, so if you ever get into anything like that, I'd be glad to help with simple examples and things of that sort! I was kind of terrified of them for a while but now I just battle those regular logic / PEBCAK errors!

 

[Slime_Punk]

Apparently you can just make a quick .gif inside of Pico-8, too. I spent like 4 hours making these collision detections, but at least they're watertight! Now to make my physics not totally stupid!

Also, definitely going to include that code in case anyone wants to play around with it!

-- platforming prototype

function _init()
    x = 50 -- player x
    y = 30 -- player y
    c = 8 -- cell size
    cc = 8 -- diagonal cells?
    s = 2 -- speed variable
    g = 2 -- gravity variable
    inc = 0 -- gravity incrementer
    jump_on = false -- jump animation
    jump_enable = true
    max_jump = 10 -- jump height
    collide = false
    col_right = false
    col_left = false
    col_ceil = false
    speed_inc = 0
end

function _draw()
    displays()
end

function _update()
    ctrl()
    gravity()
end

function displays()
    cls()
    camera(x-62,y-62)
    map(0,0)
    circfill(x, y, 6, 3)
end


function gravity()
    ground_collide()
    if not collide
    then
        y += g -- fall
        jump_enable = false
    end
    if collide then
        jump_enable = true
    end
end

function ground_collide()
    for i = 0, 6 do
        if    fget(mget(x/c, (y/c)+1), 0)
        or fget(mget((x+i)/c, (y/c+1)), 0)
        or fget(mget((x-i)/c, (y/c)+1), 0)
--    or fget(mget(x/c, (y/c)+1), 0)
        then
            collide = true
        else collide = false
        end
    end
end

function ceil_collide()
    for i = 0, 6 do
        if fget(mget((x/c), (y/c) -1), 0)
        or fget(mget(((x-i)/c), y/c -1), 0)
        or fget(mget(((x+i)/c), y/c -1), 0)
        then
            col_ceil = true
            else col_ceil = false
        end
    end
end

function collide_right()
    for i = 0, 6 do
        if    fget(mget((x/c)+1, (y/c)), 0)
        or fget(mget((x/c)+1, ((y+i)/c)), 0)
        or fget(mget((x/c)+1, ((y-i)/c)), 0)
        then
            col_right = true
            else col_right = false
        end
    end
end

function collide_left()
    for i = 0, 6 do
        if    fget(mget((x/c)-1, (y/c)), 0)
        or fget(mget((x/c)-1, ((y+i)/c)), 0)
        or fget(mget((x/c)-1, ((y-i)/c)), 0)
        then
            col_left = true
            else col_left = false
        end
    end
end


function ctrl()
    collide_right()
    collide_left()
    ceil_collide()

    if btn(0)
    and not col_left
    then
        x -= s
    end
    
    
    if btn(1)
    and not col_right
 then
        x += s
    end
    
    if btn(4)
    and jump_enable then
        jump_on = true
        jump_enable = false
    end

    if jump_on then
        grav_trigger('off')
        jump()
    end
    
end

function jump()
    ceil_collide()
    y -= inc
    inc += 1
    
    if inc > max_jump
    or col_ceil == true
    then
        jump_on = false
        inc = 0
        grav_trigger('on')
    end
    
end

function grav_trigger(switch)

    if switch == 'off' then
        g = 0
    end
    
    if switch == 'on' then
        g = 2
    end
    
end