Author Archives: John

New game: Cyborg Arena

Posted on October 1, 2021 by John

This year’s IFComp games are now live, including my entry, Cyborg Arena! In the dystopian future, cyborgs have been stripped of their rights and  treated as property. You find yourself owned by an entertainment company and forced to fight other … Continue reading →

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Beyond the Chiron Gate: September 2021

Posted on September 27, 2021 by John

After taking a break to write Cyborg Arena (which will be released on 1st October), I got back to working on Beyond the Chiron Gate this month. I’ve added some new content and made a lot of changes based on … Continue reading →

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Beyond the Chiron Gate: Cover Art

Posted on September 16, 2021 by John

For my previous games I’ve made cover art myself, mostly by manipulating a stock image and putting text on top of it. But Beyond the Chiron Gate deserves something better, so I commissioned artist Tom Morley to create a cover … Continue reading →

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Dev blog: Cyborg Arena

Posted on August 22, 2021 by John

This month I’ve been taking a break from Beyond the Chiron Gate so that I come back to it with fresh eyes. As well as my one-page tabletop RPG, Encounter, I’ve been working on a new Twine game: Cyborg Arena. … Continue reading →

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Encounter: a one-page tabletop RPG

Posted on August 16, 2021 by John

Reminder: if you signed up to playtest Beyond the Chiron Gate, you have until 22 August to send me feedback. If you signed up but didn’t receive the email with the game, it probably ended up in your spam folder, … Continue reading →

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Beyond the Chiron Gate: July 2021

Posted on July 22, 2021 by John

Most of my work on the game this month has been writing the text of events I added with placeholder text last month. Here’s a sample: I’ve also made notifications for explorers gaining traits into inline highlighted text you can … Continue reading →

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Beyond the Chiron Gate: June 2021

Posted on June 25, 2021 by John

The other day I completed a full playthrough of Beyond the Chiron Gate, and I found that–despite a ton of bugs (noticeable, but not game breaking), lots of placeholder text, and the fact that nothing really surprised me because I … Continue reading →

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Seedship: The Desktop App

Posted on May 25, 2021 by John

I’ve just created downloadable app versions of Seedship for Windows and Mac. You can get them from the itch.io page. I made these using the new Twine App Builder tool by Lazerwalker, which takes a Twine game (or any HTML … Continue reading →

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Beyond the Chiron Gate: May 2021

Posted on May 24, 2021 by John

Beyond the Chiron Gate is now firmly in the adding more stuff stage of development, and I’m making good progress. This month I’ve made some minor mechanical tweaks but mostly spent the time adding new things to discover to do … Continue reading →

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Beyond the Chiron Gate: April 2021

Posted on April 20, 2021 by John

I’ve made some good progress this month. Beyond the Chiron Gate can now consistently be completed, and a complete playthrough of the game is taking the shape that I want. I’ve spent a lot of time this month playing through … Continue reading →

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