Jon Nielsen

Working on new cat worker animations

Mistpaw Ravine on Steam The witches are gone. Only their cats remain. Make a new home for them in this feline city-builder. Keep your cats fed and happy, clean their litter box, and endure the toxic mist of a world ravaged b...

store.steampowered.com/app/3735490/...

Hope you like the new Mistpaw Ravine demo I made for the Steam Next Fest.

This is my most ambitious game ever. It's taken over a year of really hard, constant work to get here and I just hope you like it 🥰

oh man without fail and no matter how much testing I do or how many other people I get to test it, a game-breaking bug always makes it into my game right at the start of a big Steam Festival. Every time! 🙃

It's fixed now but oof. Waking up to the messages almost gave me a heart attack.

Promotional image of Winter Witch, now a part of Steam Next Fest

Winter Witch is a part of #SteamNextFest! Explore and craft as you traverse deeper into the winter woods.

Play the free demo here: store.steampowered.com/app/3633020/...

Happy Birthday Paradise Marsh!
To celebrate, the game is 75% off! That's cheap as dirt!

Mistpaw Ravine on Steam The witches are gone. Only their cats remain. Make a new home for them in this feline city-builder. Keep your cats fed and happy, clean their litter box, and endure the toxic mist of a world ravaged b...

My cat city-builder :)
store.steampowered.com/app/3735490/...

Mistpaw Ravine on Steam The witches are gone. Only their cats remain. Make a new home for them in this feline city-builder. Keep your cats fed and happy, clean their litter box, and endure the toxic mist of a world ravaged b...

I added a bit of Creeper World stuff for ya ✨

store.steampowered.com/app/3735490/...

daaangg it looks so slick 🤩

CONSTANCE IS FINALLY PART OF STEAM NEXT FEST - LIVE RIGHT NOW!! 🔥

Make sure to PLAY OUR DEMO!! 💜

promo image for my game Mistpaw Ravine. It says you can play the demo during the Steam Next from October 13th to the 20th

Mistpaw Ravine is part of the Steam Next Fest!!

🐈 build a city for magical cats
💣 terraform and make new rivers
💩 clean their litter box

Play for free: store.steampowered.com/app/3735490/...

(Don’t worry I fixed the typo)

Screenshot from Mistpaw Ravine that reads: "After sending this relic to the Capital, a cat appeared in its place. They claimed to be from the future but had originally been from the the past. That was before -- and after -- they arrived in the present. Which was now. A second, identical cat appeared, thanked us for detaining the first cat, and they both vanished. A pile of food was later found at the scene. No one could agree if it came from the past or the future. It definitely wasn't from the present. Which was no longer now."

The latest Mistpaw Ravine demo update added little story moments. This one's my current favorite :)
#screenshotsaturday

The Sun Keeps Exploding by Jon Nielsen Repair your ship and escape before the sun explodes! Again!

Anyway that's it! I could talk about this stuff forever.

Go play my game! It's free!!

encifer.itch.io/the-sun-keep...

2: I had the entire game designed and planned out before I started programming. There was no "I'll figure it out when I get there." Some things were tweaked and changed during the process, of course, but there was a direct path to the finished product

Some final thoughts on what worked for me:

1: I led with a "name and pitch first" approach to designing for this. These game jam games need to be immediately understandable and fast to pick up

After a much-deserved rest (and celebratory pizza)... I then spent the following day designing the full version of the game 😅

Will The Sun Keeps Exploding be my next game after I finish Mistpaw Ravine?

I don't know. But I know it'd be a blast to make.

And so, even with taking my time committing to the jam and starting late, I submitted my completed game 4 hours before the deadline.

I did it :)

My first game jam, my 5th game ever, made in about 4 days.

Progress was amazing but I was really starting to feel the burnout and exhaustion at this point. I pushed really hard on what should have been my days off but the finish line was so close! It was so beatable

The final day of the jam started with my game basically done. I put in the final win condition and victory sequence, and spent the rest of the day making the cover art and store page with gifs. My two daughters playtested the game for me, even finding some funny bugs

The asteroid-spawning system was based on the card-spawning system from WitchHand. The player movement and feel was based on Mechanibot.

By design, every aspect of this game was varied yet fully within my wheelhouse and it was a joy to create.

Programming-wise, even though it was an intimidating mountain of work for one guy, it was a ton of fun pulling bits and pieces from my 5 years of game dev experience.

The claw works a lot like the laser from Lost Nova. The menu functionality is from Mistpaw Ravine

I got permission from the sound designer of my first game Lost Nova to reuse those sounds for this game, which was a huge time saver. He even kindly made brand new sounds for the claw and the Victory guitar sting (thanks Topher!)

The next two days were a whirlwind of non-stop programming. It's a small game but there's still a ton of moving parts and features

- claw shooting, retracting, grabbing, upgrading
- buildings, the ship
- particles, effects, sound
- menus, browser version

bsky.app/profile/enci...

Halfway through making the color concept art, I'm like, all right I guess I'm making a game 😤

That first full day of work (which was actually the second day of the jam) I finished art for every asset, set up the project, and got player movement and the claw working

This all took me 2 hours. I wasn't going to make this game but this was a fun design session and at least I got it out of my system.

I didn't work on the jam any more the entire first day!

But then the next morning came. I couldn't get it out of my head that I WANT to make it

You play little robots trying to fix your ship and escape.

Each robot's death is an opportunity for the next robot to maybe save the day.

I wrote up a whole design plan and sketched out some concept art

bsky.app/profile/enci...

the new pitch came quickly:

The Sun Keeps Exploding
"The sun keeps exploding! Yank asteroids out of space and shove them into your explosion-powered forge. Build your extremely explodable base just enough to repair your ship and escape before the sun explodes! Again!"

also, sacrificing yourself over and over had a kinda icky connotation that I wasn't super fond of

So... new idea!

What if the sun keeps exploding and destroying you and all your stuff EXCEPT for what you can stuff down in your bunker??

I still think this is a fun idea. Everyone's had a boss fight go bad and intentionally die just to get another try in faster.

My problem was, as I was designing it, it turned more and more into a puzzle game that was too big of a scope for me to make in such a short time