Crosswordle is a 5×5 wordle clone (they were popular at time time). Each row and column is a valid English word.
I created this game while on vacation, where some friends and I were guessing how many solutions there would be to a
puzzle like this. There were guesses everywhere from 4 to a million. It took a little while to figure them all out, but
there are 81,572 solutions. Note that each transposed solution is also a valid solution, so the number most people were
guessing for was 40,786.
Toil & Trouble is a point-and-click adventure game with a potion brewing mechanic. You play the role of a young
witch who must explore a mysterious (but cozy) cottage and meet the characters that reside within!
Isolate yourself from society to contemplate the meaning of life and create art of tremendous depth.
Pilot your submarine into a dark cave, carefully monitor your air supply, and ponder existence in silence.
Depths of the Mind was a competition entry for Ludum Dare 49, which had the theme "Deeper and deeper". The
object of the game is dive deep into an undersea cave, contemplate for a while, and save enough air to return to
the surface.
Note: the object of this game is not simply to dive as deep as you can. Please read
the in-game "How to Play" page.
In Loop City, you’re a harried delivery driver working to ensure packages get delivered on time! The mail, as
they say, “just keeps coming”, but if you can find the hidden wormholes, and use them to shorten your trips,
you’ll be able to handle it like a pro.
This game is a 2d Crazy-Taxi-like where packages become ready to deliver, and you have to pick them up and get
them to their destination before your time runs out. You get points and a time bonus once you finish a job. The
game keeps looping until you run out of time!
Tardigrades on the Moon is a light real time strategy game where you explore the lunar surface with a colony of
waterbears. Tardigrades dry out quickly, so you'll need to dig canals to keep them hydrated as they wander
around.
Avoid death aboard two rickety gondolas suspended beneath a zeppelin! Enemies will try to cut your cables,
destroy them before they do. Or just move the platform out of the way! Your gun has limited ammo, use it
judiciously. Once a platform is gone, it's gone for good. Get a high score! Reflecting buzzsaws gives you bonus
points, and reflecting them into enemies gives you even more points!
Credits
Zeppelin Defender was an entry to Game Off 2017, and was created by our team of four:
Crowd Fiend is a crowd-sourced demon-summoning game that you play on your phone. A large number of players
connect to the game using their smartphones, and are distributed among two teams. After the game begins, every
20 seconds, they'll be given a ritual to fulfill. Whenever a player completes a ritual, their team's demon gains
some points, allowing it to level up. After three minutes have elapsed, these demons use turn-based-RPG-style
rules to attack each other.
Crowd Fiend was created at Raritan Valley Community College for Global Game Jam 2016, when the theme was
"Ritual." When forming teams on site, it attracted a large number of people, and as a result had a total of nine
contributors. The game concept came from Cory Williams, who pitched a game about summoning demons cooperatively
with phones. I had pitched a different game where players would perform a large number of easy, but repetitive
tasks, until they were overwhelmed. After hanging up posters to attract teams, we discovered that the two could
be merged quite well, and thus Crowd Fiend was born.
Despite network issues at the GGJ site, we managed to get a game with 36 players in it at the time of the demo.
A link to the event can be found below. I can't speak for the whole team, but personally I was extremely
nervous: the most players we had ever tested with prior to the event was 8, and while testing was done on a LAN,
when we presented the game it was done over the internet connecting to a Raspberry Pi 2 with a $5.00 wireless
card. Despite our best efforts, everything went quite smoothly, and a good time was had by most.
Zolf is a game about winning a round of golf during the zombie apocalypse. Like any golfing game, the objective
is to hit the ball into the hole in as few strokes as possible. Unlike any golfing game, you gain
negative points for killing zombies by hitting them with a fast-moving golf ball. You also gain
infinite points for getting eaten by zombies (making you lose at golf).
Zolf was an entry for Ludum Dare 32, where the theme was "an unconventional weapon." As a "Jam" entry, it had a
72 hour time line, and was allowed to be a team project. It was developed by a team of four:
Sports Medley is a local multiplayer game in which players rapidly switch between playing hockey, dodgeball,
kill the carrier, and "ultimate flying disc." There is a bonus round where everyone is playing every sport at
once.
Sports Medley was a Global Game Jam 2015 entry, where the theme was "what do we do now?". While it was a success
at the jam, the peculiarities around the web gamepad API make it very difficult to get started. You can give it
a shot if you like, or just watch this video.
Sports Medley was designed and implemented by Chris Mondok and Justin Giannone. Graphics were provided by Ben
Harris and Jon Echavarria. Brian Thompson created the audio. Nick Matthews provided the (mildly disturbing)
game poster.
Snowman Race is an Next Generation Snowman Racing Simulator. Players use their smartphones as controllers to
race to the end of a simple maze, gathering items to slow their enemies along the way.
Snowman Race was created for the Ludum Dare Competition. As such, it was developed from scratch in 48 hours as a
solo project. The theme of the competition was "entire game on one screen", which I took to mean a multiplayer
game where everyone looked at the same screen. The winter asthetic came from a potential theme, which was simply
"☃" (the unicode snowman character).
For reasons unknown, the game does not work on iPhones, nor on OSX. I was unable to research this during the
duration of the jam, and indeed came to learn this afterwards when there were many confused commenters. If you
want to give it a try, you'll be best off using Android phones, and Chrome or Firefox on Linux or Windows.
In Tether, you play the pilot of a Planet Collector Tethercraft, gathering planets using a massive cable. The
goal is to connect all of the planets in the level into one network.
Tether was a Ludum Dare Jam entry, in which the theme was "connected worlds". It was produced by a team of four:
Chris Mondok — Developer
Bill Rossi — Developer
Miki Tharp — Art
Ryan Shello — Music and sound effects
On a personal note, I love how this game came together. By Saturday night, we thought the project would be a
massive failure, and none of us could remember our high school physics. Despite that, we got everything working
smoothly enough on Sunday, and things were looking a lot better. The graphics by Miki and the audio from Ryan
really tie it together. We got the ability to have multiple levels, and then a win and loss condition, within
the last hour of the jam.
This game was also my first foray into the web audio API.
The Rototheremin is a fun little toy "instrument" played on a smartphone. Tap and hold the screen to make a
sound. While holding, pitch the phone up and down to change the frequency.
It is tested on iOS, and on Chrome and Firefox for Android. Note that android users might need to face north to
produce a sound.
HAM-3R is an abstract game about doing three things at once. Enemies (red squares) appear in a semicircle around
the player's ship. They can be defeated by clicking on them, aiming and shooting at them, or by typing the words
that appear above them. However, if you rely on one method of attack, it will become much harder. Every time the
mouse is clicked, subsequent enemies become smaller. Each time the beam is fired, it becomes narrower. When
words are typed, incoming enemies get longer and longer words.
HAM-3R was created for Global Game Jam 2014. It was very well received, with other GGJ participants interrupting
my progress to play it for themselves (which was always welcome). The game is intended to be played with a
steering wheel, but it works fine with just a mouse and keyboard. The game was developed before any of my
browsers had gamepad support, so using a wheel requires a Linux (or possibly OSX) server written in node. This
server also acts as the highscore table, which is not set up in the online link provided below.
The game was designed and developed by myself, with audio by Matt Strawder.
Pinger is a game about using triangulation to locate gold while avoiding water and mining as little dirt as
possible. By deploying a sort of sonar pulse, the player can see how far they are from pieces of gold. By
deploying pulses from different locations, they can figure out the precise locations of these gold pieces.
It was created for the Ludum Dare 29 competition, and was a great success, earning 29th place, out of over 2000
participants. (Amusingly, I did not notice this coincidence until writing this document.)
Park-King is a sliding puzzle game about managing a busy parking lot. The player arranges cars as they arrive,
but they will need to depart out-of-order. Additionally, there is a period of time in which the player must
break for lunch, and cannot do anything for a few moments.
The game is played by carefully dragging cars around with the mouse. There is no requirement as to where the
cars are placed, so long as they can depart in time.
Park-King was an entry in the Ludum Dare 28, where the theme was "You Only Get One". I had interpreted this to
mean that the player character only gets one break from his job, his lunch break at 1:00 PM.
Park-King was my first Ludum Dare project. Reception was mixed: some players found the game amusing (and even
addictive). Others had absolutely no idea what was going on. The in-game tutorial is confusing, not to mention
cringe-worthy. While I enjoyed this project, it was a harsh realization that I need to be extremely clear in
describing how to play my games in the future.
Ballin Spain is a game about bouncing a guacamole-colored ball off the top of the screen as quickly as possible.
Some of the platforms in the game are not what they seem.
Ballin Spain was created for the 2010 Global Game Jam, where the theme was deception. It was developed by a team
of 6:
Brian Wilbur
Chris Mondok
Ian Dunlap
Ivan Potosky
Kevin Anderson
Zach Pinner
This was my first game jam, and while I was skeptical going in, I have attended every game jam I can since. I
highly recommend attending one, even if you think you have little to bring to the table. You'd be surprised what
you can learn, and they're great fun.
