I uploaded my latest Pico-8 game Sub-Uber-Marine and it's already been featured, which is super cool and makes me so happy!

Sub-Uber-Marine started out life as a Compo entry for Ludum Dare 48 where the theme was 'deeper and deeper'. I wanted to make some kind of an arcade game to keep things simple and something involving a submarine would nicely fit into the theme (LD48 featured a lot of submarine games.)

I've been working on game on-and-off since April but really made an effort to get it finished to coincide with the start of the Winter Sale on Itch.io. Yes, you can buy the game on Itch for $1.50 (50% off) or in a bundle of all my games for $10.

My latest game Dominion Ex is a vertical scrolling shoot-'em-up which features three levels, four different weapons, a whole bunch of enemies and also a cool upgrade system. As usual, it was made in Pico-8 so is full to the brim with pixel art, chiptune goodness. I'm so happy for the game to have been front-paged, it's so great to see so many people enjoy the game I spent so much time working on.

For those who like the music in Dominion Ex I've posted the soundtrack over on Bandcamp.

My last post on here was in 2011, it's only taken me a decade to post another update, so here goes.

I've started posting my Pico-8 games on here, the reaction so far has been really great, so there'll be more to come. Here's what I've posted so far:

Super Mumtaz Bros. a platform game I made for Tom Hall's ToyBoxJam 2020. Besides making fun of Mario Brothers, the main gimmick with this game is that it's a platform game without jumping. The idea of ToyBoxJam is that all entrants start with the same graphics and music and you have to use these 'toys' to make your game. It was loads of fun making this and so it was great for it to get frontpaged and Daily 3rd Place.

Ola! Tannenbaum a Christmas game that I made... well, for Christmas. It's a reflexes game where you have to decorate a tree as best you can. The name is supposed to be a pun on the carol 'O Tannenbaum', Tannenbaum is the German word for Christmas Tree, and Ola is sort of like Hola, as in Spanish for 'Hello'. Doesn't that trivia make you feel better?

More music. Quake had a brilliant soundtrack, and I especially like the theme. Here is my version.

Quake

Complaints:
-Uploading the thumbnail for this song was a pain; for some reason it kept getting flagged up as having a transparency layer, and for some reason NG still doesn't support that.
-Have PNG files never been supported in posts? What's going on here?
-Since I'm airing my grievances. Genres: sort them out. Either make them like tags (see: Soundcloud) or get rid of them entirely. Being forced to pigeon-hole your music into one of a few narrow and quite specific genres is ridiculous. Seriously where do I put Industrial Metal? If there actually was someone looking for music for a flash animation (that's what the Audio Portal is supposed to be for, right?) I can't see how the genre categories would help them either.
-Also, this website looks really bad if you happen to increase the text size in Windows. What can I say, reading tiny, tiny text hurts my eyes.

Extar.

Hello,

Here's two new songs. The first one is called 'Out of View' and I had no idea which genre to put it in. The fact this website still enforces genres onto the Audio portal is ridiculous. Then again, the Audio portal itself is pretty ridiculous.
The second song is a Roky Erickson cover, 'Night of the Vampire'. Yeah, Entombed also did a cover.
Out of View
Night of the Vampire
I don't know why I even bother putting stuff up on here anymore.

Extar.

Yo yo,

Hello idiots, here's a couple of new songs for you all to ignore.

The first is a cover of the How To Destroy Angels song 'BBB'. I decided to call it 'Big Black Boots' on the portal because the last thing I would want to do is attract the attention of meme-fool idiots from /b/ or whatever that shit is.

The second is an industrial lounge metal cover of Wu-Tang Clan's 'Bring Da Ruckus'. Yeah, whatever.

BBB
Bring Da Ruckus

Over and out,

Extar.

Look, children! A new song. It's called 'Heckmondwike'.

"This song came about after I heard Iron Acton by 'Beak>' and thought it was really cool.
The lyrics are about
The song is called Heckmondwike because I couldn't think of a better name.
It's called Heckmondwike because I live there."

Heckmondwike

Over and out,

Extar.

A new song. This time it's a Joy Division cover, 'She's Lost Control'. No one reads this anyway, so listen to it, delete it, whatever.

She's Lost Control

Better by you, better than me,

Extar.

Oh look, it's a new song. This one is all loaded up with electric piano. It's called The Minotaur. Why not be the first of your friends to give it a zero?

The Minotaur.

Danke,

Extar.

Tidings,

This is my first 'Christmas single' in quite a while. That I'm happy to see the light of day anyway. It's a version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and it's very industrial sounding. I've been listening to Portishead - Third a lot lately, and I think it shows. The samples are from Sky News and some film with Colin Farrel that was on Film Four the other day.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Comfort and joy,

Extar.