Because I work 3-days a week (sometimes from my home, sometimes at the office), I originally planned to use the 4 off days and devote them to Clutter-II. Although it took about 1 man-year to create clutter, I figure I could put out Clutter-II in less than half the time. I’ve been spending my “free time” getting this website running, thinking about Clutter-II, promoting Clutter (getting it on Amazon, packaging it up for at least 4 other languages), etc…
I’ve decided that the only way to ensure that I ship Clutter-II by September is to do at least a little actual “coding” on it, each and every day. I also want to blog each and every day, so I’ve decided each blog will have two parts. One part will be me rambling about whatever topic/story I feel like talking about that day. The other part will be a very brief description of what I plan to accomplish in Clutter for that day.
Today, for example. I want to create my Clutter-II directory and add the “difficulty” setting to the Options screen…and test that setting in the basic game. It will go right beneath the Sound and Music settings and it will “snap to” just 5 degrees of difficulty. The harder settings will add 5 and 10 matches to each level and the easier settings will remove 5 or 10 objects. This might not work exactly as I hope, but it might, so it’s worth trying.
My true goal is to get Clutter-II “functionally” complete in the next 2 to 2.5 months, and then decide whether or not it needs a “face-lift”…or whether I want to sort-of make-fun of the fact that the game “looks” the same but plays differently.
So, to quote the dwarfs in Snow White – “I-O I-O it’s off to code I go”.
4 Comments
i think that clutter is the most addictive game iv’e ever played thanx for hours of fun
Hi Joe,
Ditto the others on addiction factor AND enough of Leon’s face after the first few hundred times of seeing it… Nice face, just getting old.
I believe there should be an active MENU button at all times, in case someone must pause or quit regardless of where he/she is in the game. And definitely after the first round of credits and thanks, someone should have the capabiilty to click away when replaying and reaching the end (the faster to go back to the beginning and do it all over again!)
One other thing: Part of the real fun is discovering the coins. When you unlock the flashlight and the binoculars, and play the levels again and again, there are no coins or letters to find. Can you make that part of the “forever” gameplay, just for grins and giggles? Definitely the coins, and maybe not letters, just symbols on the Scrabble tile-looking pieces that unlock another level or something…? Just an idea.
And if the other puzzles get unlocked, maybe a few new ones thrown in for more challenge…?
I have never played and replayed a game as much as this one in my entire life, in spite of ol’ Leon and his blond and brunette friends making such frequent visits. Need more please!
I am addicted to Clutter—especially the venetian blind sub-game that has pictures cut into a billion parts and you move vertically then horizontally. Have almost worn it out! Any ideas on where I can get more of them?
Hi Maureen:
Thanks for being the first comment at the revamped Puzzles By Joe.
There was a game by the guy who created Tetris (Alexey Pajitnov) sold by Microsoft called Pandora’s Box. It had many, many variations on the picture puzzle theme and well worth the time if you can find it (and it works on your machine). I tried downloading a demo (from the Microsoft site) but it has a direct-x incompatibility and I wasn’t able to go further. The game is 12 years old…but it was way ahead of it’s time. Very fun, very challenging.
Other than that, you can use the Arrow buttons to switch pictures (reaching at least 60 of them) and you might like some of the other variations like the stretch/shrink ones.
I’m glad you enjoy my game. I’m going to do my best to get the sequel out by September, and the venetian blind puzzles will be back with at least 60 new pictures.
Do you have any other things you’d like to see in the Sequel?