User:MikeMazeguy

Hello! I'm Mike, creator of the Invasion of the Blobs not-quite-a-trilogy and a few other Game-Maker games.

I've decided to use this page to document my unfinished games and experiments, starting with...

Mazeguy

The first game I made with Game-Maker was designed to help me learn how to use my new software. The concept was simple: a guy in a maze. The character I designed was a brown-haired boy wearing a red shirt and blue pants. I figured the game could use some monsters to make completing the maze more difficult, so I made some round, bouncing enemies that roamed around. As time went by, simple walls became trees, rivers, and hills, and in turn, Mazeguy became… Invasion of the Blobs.

So, technically, Mazeguy isn’t an unfinished game. I wanted to mention it because there’s still evidence of its transformation today. If you look at the filenames for Invasion of the Blobs, many of them started with the letters "MG", and some are simply "MAZEGUY". Apparently I was too lazy to rename the files.

Of course, Mazeguy also became my nickname, as well as the name of my website.

Invasion of the Blobs III

My first attempt to complete a Blobs trilogy was an Arkanoid clone subtitled Zib Springs Into Action! The friendly blob named Zib from Blobs 1 would be the ball that broke bricks and bopped bosses. When Zib hit the paddle, he moved away from it until it hit a block, at which point he moved towards the paddle and repeated the process. This meant it was impossible to lose Zib, so this idea was scrapped.

My second attempt was a Marble Madness clone subtitled Zib Rolls On! Game-Maker wasn’t designed for isometric games, although, unbeknownst to me at the time, Slinker was somewhat successful. I tried switching an overhead view, which worked pretty well. However, it wasn’t what I was hoping for, so I abandoned it.

I’ve come up with some new ideas since then, so I may still try to finish the Invasion of the Blobs trilogy someday. Maybe.

Paintball

One kid single-handedly takes on seven teams to become the king of paintball. The first team was the Blasting Bunnies. The rabbits hid in holes, bushes, and trees to take shots at you. This was the only level that I finished. It wasn’t until years later that I realized I had basically reinvented Contra.

The final level would have pitted you against the U.S. Army. Other teams were probably made up of kids, elderly people, aliens, and so on.

"Dog" and Clive

This game wasn’t very memorable considering I can’t even remember the dog’s name. The cat was definitely named after Clive Anderson, the host of Whose Line is it Anyway?

This was your basic side-scroller starring anthropomorphic, crime fighting animals, but it had a twist: each character had different abilities. The dog was slower but had a bigger weapon, and the cat jumped higher but had a smaller weapon. This game didn’t get very far.

Gory Metroid

That’s just a working title. You didn’t play as Samus Aran, but some generic dude on steroids. I made a sloped cavern with bugs crawling out of the walls. They burst into red and green pixels if they so much as touched you.

A much bigger enemy was at the bottom of the cave. This unmoving monster was almost as tall as the screen, an attempt to recreate Kraid from Super Metroid. After shooting its stomach a few times, it exploded into a torrent of blood and guts that splattered all over the floor and wall.

Captain N: The Game

Now we’re talkin’! These days, games like Super Mario Bros. Crossover and NES Remix let you play as characters from different worlds, but this would have been one of the first.

You would have been able to choose a character from the animated series Captain N: The Game Master: Kevin Keene, Princess Lana, Simon Belmont, Mega Man, and Pit – oops, I mean Kid Icarus. Then, you’d pick a game world for them to play, Mega Man style. Just imagine the possibilities: Simon Belmont vs. Eggplant Wizard! Kid Icarus vs. King Hippo! Princess Lana vs. Mother Brain!

Unfortunately, a small section of Angel Land was the only stage I completed. I didn’t have enough experience making side-scrollers at that point to accomplish such lofty goals.

Dominoes

I’m into domino toppling. Just visit my website if you need proof. Recreating this hobby in Game-Maker was a logical step.

Dominoes that could fall in eight directions were made, and fall they did. Actually, that’s all they did. If I gave the player the ability to place their own dominoes, marbles, and other stunts, a good puzzle game could have been made. But, I wasn’t clever enough to figure it out.