New Home

I'm moving from this blog to be active on this amazing new technology called: Tumblr!!! Because all the hip kids hang out there. See you there.

talhakayagames.tumblr.com

Ode To Pixel Days on Zeitzeugin.net

This is late news, but Guddy from zeitzeugin.net wrote a short article on Ode To Pixel Days. Moreso, she did a lovely let's play video of the game. Although I don't know any german, it was fun to google translate the article and also guess what she is talking about in the video!

CHECKOUTTHEARTICLEINGERMANBECAUSEWARUMNICHT

Here is the video, also embedded below for your lazy browsing pleasure.



Thanks Guddy, I appreciate your lovely effort on my game :)

Random Unnecessary Post Ep. 3

Here is a GIF that I have very mixed emotions about:

CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKFORARMLESSDOGS'SAKE

Random Unnecessary Post Ep. 2

GREATEST GIF OF ALL TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Random Unnecessary Post Ep. 1

Papo & Yo Review

I just finished playing Papo & Yo, and I think it's pretty good.

The game is about a boy who is dealing with his alcoholic father. This is a strong theme for a game and they handled it greatly. If you want a story to stick with you after you finished the game, this game is the right choice for you. So fans of REAL story in games can enjoy this.

The gameplay is very dreamy. The world we play in is obviously the outcome of the kid's strong imagination. The floating houses, our toy who helps us and a mysterious little girl who we chase throughout the game, are all very dreamy and symbolic. This is Papo & Yo's strongest point. The art direction is phenomenal. It's what makes you want to play the game. The developer team seems to put a serious amount of work into creating the best atmosphere possible.

Gameplay is linear, which is perfectly fine; but the weak point of the game is puzzle designs. There were no puzzles in the game that would surprise me and stick with me after the game. The puzzles were simple and more to the point of progression of the story. The puzzle mechanics are selected so that you would feel the complex relationship between the boy and the monster, but it lacks serving something original, in terms of actual puzzle design. Again, the art direction is very strong, which puts meanings and strong aesthetics to each puzzle, so even though they are simple, you don't hate solving them, because they look beautiful: Things like the boy carrying a box to see the box controls an actual house floating in the air. And because these puzzles actually mean something for the story. This is an important point, since one of the most important and hard to achive things in game development is telling the story through mechanics and gameplay. I cannot say Papo & Yo succeeds in that a hundred percent: We still deal with boring 3D platforming sections, key-door puzzles and all; but generally, gameplay doesn't seem so far away from the story. When monster's asleep, the boy can climb up to monster's belly to jump up. We are trying to get rid of frogs all the time, which makes monster a terrible creature who would throw the kid around and make him suffer. Things like these are the real deal when it comes to telling the story through mechanics. In this way, a big part of gameplay gets the player to understand the complex relationship between the boy and the monster, which is more complex than a "love-hate" relationship. It's something like "love-hate-a little bit of love-so much hate-I still love you daddy-oh my god my life's ruined" relationship.

There are serious frame rate issues in this game when the game is loading a new place with all the models and textures. I would much rather a proper loading screen than dealing with low frame rate in game while waiting for the new place to be loaded.

The animations are nice, but the texture quality is not great. Especially when a cutscene shows the boy's face close-up, it becomes a PS2 game instead of PS3. But other than that, the textures did not bother me. Although I didn't try out "Very High" graphics option, which may or may not solve the texture problem in the cutscenes.

The sound design and soundtrack was great. I loved it, the music was perfect and the sound assets were rich enough to make me feel the boy's actually jumping across roofs. The soundtrack is wonderfully composed and recorded, which is really helping the general feeling of the game.

SPOILERS START HERE

I found a bug in the game when I picked up an extra blue fruit and went with it to the next area. The monster supposed to be angry throughout the puzzle, but I got this extra fruit so I gave it to him, and then the puzzle was all chilled out! I just did the platforming and all but the monster wasn't trying to eat me, all was fine, although the girl was constantly yelling "OKAY NOW DISTRACT THE MONSTER SO I CAN CHALK THE MISSING PARTS". But the monster's all chilled out, he's just there eating some fruits, what about it?! Then when it was complete, of course the monster was supposed to be still angry. The cutscene came which showed the angry monster eating the little girl. The cutscene ended with the monster being chilled out again. Which was bad. I SAVED MY LITTLE SISTER YOU BASTARDS! GIVE HER BACK TO ME!

SPOILERS END HERE

If you're looking for a recommendation of the game, here you go. I think you should play the game, just to experience the atmosphere and the relationship. It really makes you feel some feelings where you want to cry your manhood away. It's a great game. If it had better puzzle design, I would say it's a timeless classic, but in this case, I'm really looking forward to what Minority team will come up with next. This game will definitely bring them a loyal fanbase who respect games with strong themes.

Buy Papo & Yo on Steam for 15 dollars.

Taking A Break On Game Development

If you somehow follow this blog, get updates and stuff, you'll be sad to hear that I'm taking a break on game development for 3 months or so. If I have the chance I may make a Ludum Dare game. Those are always fun. Other than that, I'm limiting myself to study my university courses and be a nice boy.

This is how I feel about how busy the university is keeping me:

LINK

So I'm pretty busy. I don't take showers. Life is good. Thank you for following, if you did, please stop now. This is getting weird.

But really, thank you a lot, if you followed this blog. I like you. Sometimes. See you.

Love's First Week Is Released!

Here are links for my sponsor 2PG.com's site and Newgrounds:

http://www.2pg.com/game/loves-first-week/play/
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/614748

It helps a lot to rate it up on Newgrounds!

I also uploaded to Kongregate but the resolution didn't fit the site, I had to scale it down. Do you know what happens when you scale down pixel-art? It becomes a pile of shit. It looks lousy. If you want to rate it up, here's the link:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/taloketo/loves-first-week

Sorry for the delay of the release of this game. Shit happened in my personal life, and is still happening.

Anyways.

I hope you enjoy the game.

Love's First Week ALMOST Released

Can you feel it? No?

It's very close. It's behind you!

Under your bed while you dream about ponies. Why do you dream about ponies?

It's not under your bed?

LOOK BACK!!!

The point is, it's very, very close to the release of Love's First Week. Probably tomorrow? I don't know. Flash game industry sucks. I don't even need to market this thing.

Enjoy this screenshot. Say "Aaahhh" when you finished enjoying it.

Here's a Lovely GIF

Why am I enjoying this so much, I don't even know.

Ode To Pixel Days Soundtrack on Soundcloud

New Game: Love's First Week!

I did a small project recently, a 2d puzzle/action platformer called "Love's First Week". It's a game about me and my girlfriend, when we just started dating. Player controls my girlfriend and me, kicking rocks and each other to solve puzzles. It's a fun game. It's very weird narrative-wise because actually the game was made for my girlfriend as a present. So a lot of things that make sense to us don't really create a clear picture for the player. Funnily enough, that gives the game some kind of an interesting narrative quality. Some parts are open to interpretation for the player. I think it'll be out on web in a few weeks.

"Bit By Bit Gaming" Article!

Blair DeLong was nice enough to put a lot of time into writing a great review about Ode To Pixel Days. It's very insightful about the concept of the game. I recommend you to read it wholeheartedly.

CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKORGOTOHELL!!!

A Short Story

A man was bored and always bothered with existentialist pain. He was a nihilist and he was proud to find no meaning in life. He was proud to stand in front of life and say, "you're stupid". But one day, he got very depressed over something, and he tried to suicide. He did not die though, so he felt even more miserable.

Then as doctors gave prescription to, he started taking antidepressants and lived happily ever after.

A Wild Article Appeared!

Here's the wonderful article of Thomas about Ode To Pixel Days and why it's a special game.

CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKPLEASEFORGODSSAKE

Quoting from it:

"Through those simple and sometimes subtle mechanics, you actually live the feelings Hans is going through. From sadness he wants to avoid and stop, the frustration of having a load on his shoulder, to eventually freedom. Almost everything is expressed through level design and puzzle mechanics."

Thank you Thomas, you are a wonderful person!

Check out his site flashmetagames.com for more awesomeness.

Artechnik Podcast!

I've been the guest of the wonderful guys from Artechnik Podcast. Listen to us while I'm having a hard time speaking proper English for 53 minutes! This was my first interview ever, that's why I forgot even basic English words, but nevertheless, it was A LOT OF FUN. The guys were amazing, and they were so interested in my game and personality. I'm officially a fan!

We talked about the reactions I got to Ode To Pixel Days, my brother's game Zipzip: Secret Dimension, my fear and inability of playing video games as I just watched my brother play, and much more!

You can listen to, download the podcast here on this link. You can even listen to it through Itunes.

CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKNOWWWWWW

I want to thank Aaron, Adam and Jef for being such amazing and kind people, and being interested in my humble work. Thanks guys! Hope to do this again when I can speak English without hesitation!

Bandcamp Success

Check this out. Let's filter Bandcamp with the albums that came out of Turkey:

http://bandcamp.com/tag/turkey

Ode To Pixel Days soundtrack is the most popular album from Turkey! How awesome is that?!

But there's more! The album is also popular on almost every genre tag of Ode To Pixel Days, but the coolest one is of course the "video game music" tag.

http://bandcamp.com/tag/video-game-music

Being in the first page of this list is awesome, some of my idols are on that page! Cheers to everyone who gave a listen to it and downloaded it.

You can still download it for free (click Buy Now and enter 0). You can also buy me a coffee sometime by paying a few bucks. Thanks everyone for the amazing support :)

Let's Play Ode To Pixel Days!

I was just going through nice play-throughs of Ode To Pixel Days. I haven't watched all of them yet but I think the ones I watched are very worthy of posting. So if you're the most hardcore Ode To Pixel Days fan out there, and don't know what to do because you played the game once and got bored of it (let's face it, it's the most linear game of all times), then enjoy these videos that some nice people put a lot of work to.

Hans' First Trip

Here's some little aimless psychedelic toy I made when I got bored making the game a few months ago. I stole the name from "Syd Barrett's First Trip".

Left and Right arrows to walk around and get bored.

CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKGODDAMNIT

Ode To Pixel Days News

Ode To Pixel Days can be seen on Kongregate's front page as of now, which attracts a crazy amount of views for the game. It's currently 15K and counting on, which makes OTPD easily my most played game ever.

It also got featured on Newgrounds and got a Daily 4th Prize, which is nice. I didn't even know that they got a 4th prize :D

I really thought it wouldn't be liked on Kongregate and get some niche kind of attention over Newgrounds. The love OTPD is getting really exceeded my expectations.

I also got a long, nice article about OTPD, which is here:

IndieStatik

I also got a short Jayisgames review, which is also somewhere here:

Jayisgames

So thank you for your support and love. I'm very glad that most of the people are enjoying my game. Thanks :)

Ode To Pixel Days Reviews!

I got some amazing comments about the game on Kongregate and Newgrounds, that made me very happy. What made me happier is these wonderful articles about my humble work!

Thank you, this all means so much to me :)

Guidology.com

OhTheThin.gs

This one's in Turkish, it's amazing!

Ode To Pixel Days Got Featured on IndieGames.com!

This made me extra happy today. I submitted it this morning and John Polson from indiegames.com was very nice to me and thankfully he was interested in my game. He even quoted me on the article!

http://indiegames.com/2013/02/pixelize_the_ugliness_away_in_.html

About Indie Game: The Movie

Two days before I watched "Indie Game: The Movie", I have designed my game, Ode To Pixel Days, for the first time. When I watched IGTM, it inspired me so much, I felt really motivated to create my game. As you may know, Ode To Pixel Days is a very personal game for me, I see some people connecting emotionally with it and it makes me so proud. I put so much things from myself in it, I feel like I've shared a valuable thing with other people.

I watched IGTM and loved it. I watched it again, I made my friends watch it too, they all loved it. Every time I watched it, it touched my heart and motivated me to continue making the game. My game is not a big game, it's just a little browser game. But I am so proud of it, and I am thankful to James and Lisanne for making such an awesome movie.

It took more than 6 months to finish and release the game, but there were very depressing times, when I did not want to go on with it. I remember one night, I was terribly depressed about the game, I started losing interest in it at some point. I watched IGTM and cried when Team Meat released Super Meat Boy, Edmund Mcmillen talked about his emotions about the release. A kid, staying up all night to play Super Meat Boy... That scene always kills me. I remember after watching the movie, my depression fading away, I was back to being determined to finish this game.

And I have finished it.

Today, I released it.

I am very thankful to James and Lisanne for creating such an inspirational movie. It means so much to me and I'll continue watching it again and again in the future. Thank you for everything :)

I'd be honored if you guys tried out my game. Thanks :)

Game is available on these links:

MaxGames
Kongregate
Newgrounds

Ode To Pixel Days Released

Ode To Pixel Days is released! Pick your favourite flash site and play!

MaxGames
Kongregate
Newgrounds

To tell you my mixed emotions, here is a photo:

You see how fucked up I am? Well I'm very very happy anyways :)

Thank you for your support and interest.

Ode To Pixel Days is Releasing in 24 Hours! (Probably)

The puzzle/platformer flash game I've been developing for 7 months, Ode To Pixel Days, will be released tonight or tomorrow hopefully. Still not sure about the exact hour.

It will be playable on maxgames.com, kongregate.com and newgrounds.com. I'll share the links when it comes out.

Thank you for your support and interest :)

I'M SUPER EXCITED!

Ode To Pixel Days Extras!

Thank you for playing Ode To Pixel Days!

If you've enjoyed your experience, you probably want more!

Extras include:
The Meaning of The Story And Narration
Wallpapers
Free Soundtrack
Credits

Hope you enjoy these:

The Meaning of The Story and Narration:
(!!!SPOILERS!!!)

I'll try to explain what I've tried to do with this game. I always had this low self-esteem thing going, and through teen years, social interactions got very uncomfortable for me. I wasn't a very social person. I lived through things in my mind, and not by actually living; like I never told a girl I liked her, I never felt confident enough to try my chances on things and people, I just lived through my life since now, expecting something to happen by itself.

I think I pretty much changed that behaviour now, because now I work for my dreams, like making the games in my dreams, and telling stories that I was never able to tell the other way. Because I know that, playing a game is very different from watching a movie or reading a story. The difference is beyond "interactivity". Games have the chance to actually let the players live through something, experience something on their own and learn through the game. For example, in Cultivation, Jason Rohrer's old game, you experience a very difficult trade-off between neighbours, and you actually get to learn through the experience, not like you try to understand the message of a movie, but you actually experience something and learn.

I tried to create this "learning experience" throughout this game. I don't think I was able to fully do it, but I'm sure my games will get better with time.

In the game, Hans builds a machine that makes everyone look just the same. The reason of that is, a young person would always try to change the world first, instead of changing himself. He doesn't know that the world is not easy to change. He changes the world, but only his mind.

He eventually succeeds to get to cheerleader. They become lovers, but not for long. Cheerleader leaves him, tries to get out of this utopia. Because the cheerleader is so obsessed with looking beautiful, a relationship is only meaningful if she looks great.

The relationship, like almost everything of the game, is in Hans' mind. The question that should be asked here is, since Hans' utopia was in his mind, he must have chosen to collapse it, he must have made cheerleader leave him. Why? The answer is... Hans is a very imaginative boy, but that doesn't mean he has the full control of his dreams. He is a traveler, in his own mind. He doesn't really know where he is going. Hans lives through bad dreams in his mind the same way all people see bad dreams while they're sleeping. So, Hans' relationship with cheerleader didn't work out in his mind. There's a strong clue to all this happening in Hans' mind. Just before the credits, there's this black and white level, where cheerleader chats with two girls. Hans walks to her. She looks at him, but she doesn't know him, so she immidiately gets back to chatting with the girls. This scene is a confusing one, but I think some players will be able to understand what's going on here. All the time spent in the colorful castle represented Hans' dreams. And now the black and white level represents the real world. What player knows is that Hans experienced a relationship with the cheerleader. But here, the game shows that the cheerleader doesn't even know who he is. She ignores him completely. He is invisible to her. That way, we know that Hans experienced all this in his mind.

The castle that the game is mostly played in represents Hans' storage of hopes and dreams. Through the game, the castle misses bricks, one by one. There are holes through walls where you can see clouds and birds. The inevitable end of the castle, the collapse gets nearer. That of course, is the death of Hans' dream, the utopia, where everyone looks just the same. But as he runs out of  his castle, he finds some kind of peace. The fall from the castle symbolizes that peace.

He succeeded to find some peace when the utopia collased. But actually, as I just explained, the black and white real world is still full of suffering. Hans learned how to be himself, without letting the others criticize him so unforgivingly, without even knowing him.

I put my heart and months into this game. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading.

Wallpapers:

(1366 x 768 resolution)

Soundtrack: (Free Download and Online Streaming)

CLICKCLICKCLICK

Credits:

Sponsored by MaxGames.

Everything on the game is done by me, Talha Kaya. I have designed, programmed, drawn, animated the game, recorded and mixed the soundtrack, generated the sound effects. But who I am without these wonderful free tools?

FlashDevelop

Flixel Framework

Paint.Net

Audacity

sfxr

And who am I without these wonderful people?

Tarik Kaya

Nazire Aslan

My Family

Nowhere Studios

Without your help, support and motivation, this game wouldn't be able to come to life.

Very Special Thanks To:

Orcun Nisli

Burak Tezateser

Refik Toksoy

And the whole Nowhere Studios team. This project has started with your help while I was an intern in Nowhere Studios. Thank you for everything.

Playtesters:

Tarik Kaya, Nazire Aslan, Cem Evin, Orcun Nisli, Burak Tezateser, Ali Bati, Umut Dervis, Emrah Ozer, Ozan Komurcu, Refik Toksoy, Gokhan Yildiz, Caglar Sahin, Murat Kalkavan, Hande Basar, Oguzhan Tocan, Melis Colak, Burak Kadron, Efe Alacamli, Ozan Yildiz, Durmus Ali Collu, Ahmet Erdem, Yunus Emre Tekin, Cagatay Yildiz, Emre Erdogan, Melih Saglam, Oguz Demir, Muhammed Cicek, Kutay Ata Sen, Bugrahan Memis, Hakan Yilmaz

Hans will grow up
Be a random guy on a street
But the pain in his throat
It's going to stay for a while.

Thank you :)

Learning Nape

I've started learning to use the awesome framework Nape, which is a 2D rigid body physics library.

Here's a nice little demo.

Drag objects with MOUSE. Turn on/off gravity with G.

CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKFORPHYSICALAWESOMENESS!!!!

John Conway's Game Of Life

Recently I watched this awesome talk of John Blow:

Jon Blow on "The Truth in Game Design"

So I felt like I should give a chance to implement John Conway's Game Of Life that is explained in the talk.

If you're asking WTF is John Conway's Game Of Life, then just click on it. It's a simulation with very basic rules, but the outcomes are amazing. You set an initial state and simulate it to see what crazy pattern forms up.

So I did it. It's so much fun trying to find nice patterns.

MOUSE to make cells alive or dead. SPACE to start and stop simulation.

Look up and try patterns from this Wikipedia page for more fun!

     

GGJ13 Entry

Our Global Game Jam 13 Entry.

Graphics: Murat Kalkavan

Programming: Talha Kaya

Sound & Music: Doğaç Yavuz

Play it here:

CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK

Ode To Pixel Days Soundtrack

It's on! You can listen to and download it here:

http://talhakaya.bandcamp.com/

I'll just go on and embed it here, too:

Ode To Pixel Days Wallpapers

Today I got bored and made some wallpapers, imitating this image of Fez right here. It was fun. I made it with FlashDevelop which is a weird choice to make wallpapers, right? I also used Paint.NET. All these free tools, what did I do to deserve this awesomeness? Anyway, here are the wallpapers:

The resolutions are especially 1366x768 so I could use them on my own laptop! Feel free to use them as desktop backgrounds or wipe your asses with them I don't care.