the pirate kart

I do have a real post pending (need to figure something out with jsfiddle) but meanwhile I'd like to talk about the 2012-in-one Glorious Developers Konference Kollection Pirate Kart. It has its ultimate origin on a place called Glorious Trainwrecks, a site launched to praise terrible 90s homebrew shareware but now dedicated to the proposition that every can make games, and should.

The Pirate Kart of course shares that sensibility. The most recent Kart had been assembled for the Indie Games Festival Main Competition. Then there was a bit of a... political? motivation? It was meant as a playful argument against the "scenesterism" that sometimes haunts "Indie Games" as a movement.

The Glorious Trainwrecks has always had a spirit of openness, though originally there was an emphasis on use of a particularly peculiar no-programming game construction kit called "Klik and Play" (which is why Ks show up a lot on the site and its offshoots, a trend that as a guy named Kirk I kan only applaud) which let people whip together a game in the 2-hour Klik of the Month Klub events.

Personally, I tend to program in Processing (sometimes making Processing.js variants) which has the added benefit of keeping my Java skills from completely rusting. But more than that, making silly, 2-hour-game prototypes has given me a deeper sense of easy-to-code-but-juicy physics that really helps me make more intriguing and attractive UIs.

Anyway, here are my 5 games! Click to play them online and get some more details about the background story.

shave face race

robotish

dinobeeboxer

hit or missile

action figure fighter

Of all of these, "action figure fighter" is probably my favorite, "robotish" is the best from a game-playing standpoint, and "dinobeeboxer" is just weird and cool.