Sorry. I'm not in this jam.

Your music is fantastic.

Needs controller support as well as full screen :-)

There is a video for it on the game page. I will go digging in the code again. The lines of code in the error output don't seem like they'd be an issue.

Great little game. Good to look at and fits the candy thing to a T(ooth).

I have uploaded a new version of the game. While it gives me specific line numbers that caused the problem, there is nothing to cause the problem. So I made a generic catch all that will hopefully solve the problem because I can't duplicate it. Please let me know how it works for you.

I will fix that yes. Thanks for telling me. In the mean time, open it up again and see if the same error happens. I am hoping the error is a rarity.

Needs more. Make the candles flicker or something.

Why just yes?

Thank you for the inspiration!

I updated the game its got 9 levels now and takes me a little under 30 minutes to speed run it. The first two levels are more of a tutorial without enemies:

Firefox. Windows 10.

Much fantastical. :-)

The HTML 5 version on the page gave me this issue: Exception thrown, see JavaScript console

Here is a hastily thrown together game using your incredible art:

8 levels is all I can stomach to make at this point. The levels get larger and more complex. They could probably use a map but eh who needs maps when you have exploration?

I see input method keyboard, but there seems to be no way to change it to controller. Is that correct?

The idea: On the forum hHave gifs only play when a user is looking at them or mouse hovering over them. Would that be possible even if the .gif is off site?

My dev log has like 40 .gifs that are 10+ MB. That creates quite the burden on anyone who visits including myself.

I see the off site RSVP has ended. Is there any chance to enter off site?

To give you all a break, I'll space out a visual update for next time.

Production continues, but its obvious I am spinning my wheels when it comes to marketing... all my games. Over on Twitter, Cake Kills Candy gets a lot of likes and a few retweets. I can break into double digits and it feels good. Getting people to the page is a different story.

UPDATE 38: GETTING PEOPLE TO THE PAGE

To make the page look more desirable, I made a new 2+ MB .gif for the itch.io to get people to click the game.

Has it worked? Maybe. 5 page views and 5 downloads yesterday. Interesting enough the other game AlienVania's page view rate took a dive.

I consider itch.io more a place for developers than players. Perhaps if I had a grander game it would get more players, but in the meantime I have gone the free asset route. I made a free art asset pack for publicity. Come for the art, stay for the games.

Has it worked? Again, maybe. It managed to net a new follower so I consider that a success. A developer that uses free assets, so I assume he's here for the assets. As for the traffic, it seems to be flowing to the free assets. 25 is better than 5 even if 20 is going to the assets. According to the analytics the majority percentage find the assets from the game assets tag over the newest game assets, my profile and my feed. That gives me hope that people will still find the assets after they get older.

Its a bit tough to control with wall jumping. Any chance of getting controller support? Even with the first wall having to push in into it, push up to jump and push away from it to jump off the wall then move back to the wall is a strain.

I took five hours to make an 8 bit platform shooter pack free to use even for commercial project. It will be interesting to see where it goes and how many games end up using it. Here you go, 5 characters are animated, 4+ enemies animated and around 300 tiles to use:

https://sitebender.itch.io/space-base-platform-sho...

Its my way of giving back because I've made use of a few pixel art packs when trying to learn.

As for my other art, I am still new to pixel art so I keep it simple with limited colors.

Here are a few highlights (sorry they're on Twitter. I tried to get the images but I can't find the .gifs):

Waiting for the Plumper. The theme was plants... so I went overboard.

https://twitter.com/DrinkingNails/status/848180711...

A Healthy Hollow Knight. The theme was Hollow Knight probably should have made fan art rather than an actual hollow knight.

https://twitter.com/DrinkingNails/status/848557966...

Jungle Background. Just a simple background.

https://twitter.com/DrinkingNails/status/835239505...

Bayside Steel. Just a fake screenshot I made for a game that will never be made.

https://twitter.com/DrinkingNails/status/833674567...

Cupcake Construction. Probably not the best name for this. Anyway I take random color suggestions and make fake screenshots using the color palettes.

https://twitter.com/DrinkingNails/status/811359692...

Mad Science Lab. Another fake screenshot there are a lot of them. Sorry these are all on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/DrinkingNails/status/811267314...

Someone else with Windows 8 gave it a go as well. He had problems, so he found the .exe, right clicked it and went to compatibility and did Windows XP as an admin and it worked without errors. If you ever have the desire to try the game again, give that a go. If not, I totally understand :-)

I am back again to murder your browser, RAM and modem!

UPDATE 37: CLOUDMALLOW COVE

With 8 marshmallow enemies and gumdrops finished it was time to make the world they all live in! The world turned out far better than either of us were anticipating and I think that's because less background tiles is more. The background tiles look good, but having interior backgrounds turned each level ugly. Plus it was tough to navigate as it all blended together.

Rather than a simple tileset swap, there are a different number of tiles and arrangement here along with a new cloud system. The entire process was about six hours of programming. With a different color palette, this makes the CloudMallow Cove look and feel different than the previous tilesets. The game is also divided into two sections where the first eleven levels take place with the old tilesets and original enemies and the next ten takes place in the gorgeous CloudMallow Kingdom.

UPDATE 36: MINI MARSHMALLOWS

There are four larger style marshmallows that are already finished enough, but yesterday was about fleshing out the mini marshmallows. There are four minis, a default enemy type, a rocket, a spiral marshmallow that jumps when the player jumps (for now) and an exploder. The rocket will turn into a rocket when it spots the player where it then bounces horizontally off enemies and walls. When it hits the player it detonates.

As for the exploder, when it sees the player, it will charge at and follow the player. If it comes within a certain radius of the player it stops and arms itself for a brief second before exploding. Explosions can damage both the enemies and the player. If the player is damaged in the explosion, the player becomes invulnerable like all damage taken, thus preventing the player from dying if caught in the explosive wave. The explosions will now push affected objects away from the point of origin.

I took a few days off off from doing these blogs to give someone else a chance at the top without bumping this daily. The past four days was spent with enemies and enhancing the weapons.

UPDATE 32: TANKS

There are four different tank marshmallows. They have high health and move slower than normal enemies. The more damage they take, the faster they run. Its easier and more effective to just not shoot them.

With these enemies came new stats such as increasing speed rather than maximum speed all the time. The player has this stat and its a wise stat to have, but with the crunch of the original game jam, the time was never taken. There is also a new rush attack that can be applied to any enemy, but it will be just for these enemies at the moment.

UPDATE 33: CHERRY BOMBS

Grenades were something in the game, but removed from it, because when you can hop on enemies why would you need grenades? With the move to make the game fair for both enemies and the player, the enemies can no longer be stomped. The game feels easy enough when you can shoot through enemies. The drawback to unstompable enemies is the fact that enemies can bunch up in nooks so you need a grenade to destroy them.

UPDATE 34: DROPLETS

It took a good three days for these droplets to be finalized. These enemies are more of a trap that gets launched out of the larger gumdrops. The droplets stand in one place hopping until you walk close enough to them and then they pounce! If these droplets cling to the player, then the player moves slower, jumps lower and it takes multiple consecutive jumps from the player to shake them off. They only do damage the first time they cling and if the player has one on them, then the others refrain from pouncing.

UPDATE 35: GOING BANANAS

In the past four days a lot of the weapons have been reworked and enhanced. Projectiles have changed, muzzle flashes and hits have changed as well. This is something that has been in the sprite sheet for weeks, but in the crunch of a game jam, they were never added. Cake Kills Candy has its own sprite sheet slicer for lazy mod support and dealing with the slicer's math is a slower process, but it sure beats having to cut and paste images to make sprites.

Anyway, bananas have changed to six shot weapons. Once you're out, you can throw the peels or set them down. These peels make enemies slip and fall. It was about three days working on this weapon on and off between enemies. It might not look like it from the gif, but seeing and hearing the enemies slip turns this simple throwable into a joy to experience!

LACK OF TRAFFIC AND MOMENTUM

It is within these past four days that I've noticed there's less of a Twitter response with less retweets and less likes. Traffic for the game continues to be flat lined with a page view every few days.

I was the person that pointed that out to you on Reddit. They do have ratings on user feeds after you've played the game, but that's only if people have an account. Other than that there is no way to rate a game in the client and that's what I use. Its a pain having to search out the page to rate.

As for me I've got 6 ratings on a game with 120 downloads (1 rating is from a friend). The other game has 300+ downloads and 2 ratings.

Also having my name tied to a rating makes me far less likely to rate a game unless its 5 stars. At that point I'd rather comment to hopefully encourage a product to be enhanced.

Does Rock Paper Scissors have skill? I guess if you make a pattern, then the skill turns into memorizing patterns. Perhaps a telegraph a split second before the rock, paper or scissors is finalized? Level one could be half a second. Level 10 can be a single frame amount of time.

In the .png/ enemies folder.

Another fantastic looking sprite series! I can't keep up! I'm still working with the Grotto set :-)

Quality dev blog and I enjoy the art style and especially the fact you put it in the daytime for a few rounds. It looks like it has more depth than the typical Invaders clone that's out there. Keep going! I like the tank's stop and go animation too :-)

If there wasn't one before there is now.

UPDATE 31: THE KEYWORDS

While there was an update yesterday, I'd rather discuss keywords. Even with this development blog, Twitter and all sorts of things hoping to garner traffic to Cake Kills Candy.... its our other game that seems to have even the tiniest bit of traffic. Despite Cake Kills Candy being in four game jams, after the first three days its all just flat lined. Without the four game jams there would probably be no traffic to the game.

Meanwhile, our other game AlienVania seems to get traffic via keywords such as MetroidVania and Rogue. At some point it was meant to be a rogue, but that was pulled and I had forgotten to change the keyword. Traffic kept rolling in via that keyword until I changed it. The MetroidVania still stuck because it is a bare bones, 10 day game jam MetroidVania. Even the tiniest bit of traffic that it garners is more than Cake Kills Candy.

So to shake things up, the keywords have been changed to hopefully get more views.

Even on Twitter, some keywords seem to gather far more attention, likes and retweets than others that are even more popular.

There are thousands of every type of game at this point with a few rare exceptions that within a year or six months.... they too will be covered.

I assume because candy appeals to kids and included beer appeals to adults and rebel teens.

I wanted to chime in and say I am your audience. Junk food appeals to me... I am eating a doughnut as I try to type this right now with my pinkies. I also enjoy this match three style of game since a specific other game got me hooked and shall remain nameless. Others laughed at me for playing the game, but like everything good just add frosting and people will like it more!

You also look to be a dapper developer even with an apt user name considering the game :-)

UPDATE 30: THE DROPLETS

Yesterday was all about adding a new enemy... the gum droplets. The gumdrops are horrible things with faces that creep me out. Right now they feel like the other enemies, so to make them different when they die, they explode into four gum droplets.

While still unfinished, these gum droplets are impossible to shoot, because if you're shooting something to death what chance would they have? They can die from explosives like rockets and the bouncy grenade.

Because its tough to destroy them, they do no damage, instead they slow the player down. In the coming days or hours even they will be enhanced and finalized.

There is an image slicer that takes sprite sheets and cuts them up to allow for lazy mod support. A lot of the time yesterday was spent on getting their sprite sheet to be sliced correct. There are 4 sprites for each color and it turned into a logistical issue for a bit.

New to the game are damage points that will jump out of whatever takes damage. That might get pulled from the game as it continues, but for now as a time capsule, here they are in this animated screenshot.

Some game jams catch fire, others do not. Pick and chose and there's quite a selection. Its on jam hosts and participants to promote them. Some people piggy back on other game jams.

Things don't magically sell. You need to push them.

For someone that has been here 2 months it says you've been a member 22 days.

Tell us about your games.

UPDATE 29: MOVING AWAY FROM ARCADE

The game has been pushed further to be closer to where it was. To make the larger, multiple room levels, enemies were pulled along with the keys and doors. Now that the new level system works better, enemies have returned to the game. We intend for each level to be capped off with a boss, but in the meantime, doors and keys both spawn in the last room of each level. A variety of larger room chunks returned after being removed.

As Cake Kills Candy transitions from arcade to something else, the details have been changed to make it feel traditional. Gun kickback was removed due to how annoying it is in a game with vertical rooms, the banana blaster is the default weapon and never consumes ammunition. Enemies can no longer be stomped, because the game was far too easy with it. The game is still too easy when you consider the player has a gun and the enemies only pace. The weapons menu has been reinstated and enemies no longer do damage based on what level you are on.

I dig the skulls and the style. Art and visuals look great already! Keep going!