UIBuzz - Software and game development

What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the UIBuzz podcast. I'm your host Peter Witham. You can find me and this podcast at PeterWitham.com. In this one, I am going to talk about some of the games that I've been playing recently. And yeah, it is connected with Steam's Next Fest and all that stuff going on at the moment. Because there's just been a huge flurry of new games announced. In particular, new damage. which I think is always the smart thing to do right always think about your game having a demo if you want people to pay for it because if they're anything like me and it seems like according to the numbers they are you they're going to download and play the demo first simple as that and for me if I play a demo and really like it I'll go get the game simple as that and if I've got a bad feeling about the demo or it says coming two years in the future or whatever, all right, it might go on the wish list.

We'll see. But I do want to talk about a few of the games that I have been playing that I've just really loved. And I've done some live streams on them. And I just want to share this with folks. And this is not only because I think they're games worth your time, if they sound interesting, but it's also hopefully to inspire the game developers out there to just, you know, just keep going, right?

You don't have to wait for one of these festivals on Steam or any other platform but they certainly are a good thing to target and of course naturally there's a massive boost of people visiting those platforms. Again if you've got a demo trying it out greatly increases your chance of getting on a wish list which of course is also super important. But let's dive into a couple of the games that I've been playing here.

I was recently with a friend of mine called Moonsweepers and this is one of those games that as you describe it sounds completely pointless until you play it and the idea of Moonsweepers is you can either by yourself or with friends you clean the entire surface of the moon from of dust you go around you collect the dust you start with a toothbrush of all things. And then you collect the dust, you put it in this device that ships it off and sells it, and you get money and you get upgrades, right? Obviously a very familiar pattern to those of us that are, you know, used to these kind of games. And so you upgrade the toothbrush, and then you get bigger brushes, you get ones that you push around, you get ones that you can sit on, and then you get ones that you contrive.

And that is pretty much the extent of what you do. in this game. But it's really a lot more than that. So for example, you know, when my friend, shoutout to CocoaType, joined me, we had, I mean, it just went to a whole other level. We had so much fun with the two of us. And you end up creating your own games within the game. And that's the beauty of this kind of game, right?

So for example, my friend's outside, clutching the dust. throwing it towards the moon base and I'm inside opening the door collecting it putting it in the machine to sell it and then we get upgrades and so on and it really comes alive when you play it with other people now to someone like me with my kind of brain the obsession is easy to describe right I've got to clean the entire moon of dust boom there it is my brain is in it. My brain is like, yeah.

Because it's all about the obsession. And the, I guess, just wanting to do it. Like straight lines and everything else. But that's kind of the attraction to me on this. It is about $7 and something right now. There have been people saying they've had problems with it, with multiplayer. We did experience a couple of crashes. I was playing on the Steam Deck and essentially my machine becomes the host. It's kind of how this works, they join my game and so on. They had a couple of crashes but I have no doubt the developers are working on this. I think there's been two updates since the release.

It was either late last week or something like that it was released. Now, hey, that always happens.

problems, but your mileage may vary. But in general, this game just has that magic thing that says it's great to play it with people. You can build bases, automate things, conveyor belts to sell the stuff and all that kind of thing. But a lot of it is just doing it with friends. And I can't remember, I think it's four players you can have in a game. And that's pretty much the basis of this game. But I have put hours into it.

And it's beautifully relaxing. I mean, there's like, you know, no stress. The only stress would be if it crashes on you. Okay. But that's the same with any game, right? Or, you know, you can get lost. But it's the moon.

If you keep walking in a straight line, eventually, you're going to find it back to one of your bases. I have since learned that there is like a north, west, south and east base. I have found them all and I think as of this recording I've done almost one percent of the moon and I think that that is, you know, I've played it multiple hours. I'm just actually looking at the numbers here live. So I've played 5.1 hours so far and I've got 23 of the 33 achievements but of course i'll put a link in the show notes let me be clear everything i'm going to mention um in this episode nobody is paying me to talk about these nobody has given me uh free keys or anything like that unless i indicate it um moose sweepers i paid for it i do not regret it For me, anything under $10 is like, okay, you know what?

It's worth giving a shot. Okay? So that's Moonsweepers. I have a live stream recording. I'll put a link in the show notes for that as well of us playing it. We just had a blast. You know, another thing we did was like, can I open the door and can my friend throw the canister of dust across the distance and get it through the door? You know, you just end up making little games for yourself. So if you're one of those people and you know, then you know.

Okay? So that's Moonsweepers. A game that I... another game that I am looking at at the moment is Vacuum Warrior. This one's been around a little while. And if I remember rightly, it was free. And the idea is that you just vacuum up dust. Dust again. I got this thing about dust apparently. You vacuum up the dust from the floor. Again, you get upgrades, upgrade your vacuums and achievements and all the usual stuff.

But if I remember rightly, this one was free. So, hey, the level of entry is very low. Right now, I've got 76% of the achievements I've done. And yeah, again, there's multiple levels. You know, these are all great relaxation games. These are the kind of things that I say.

They're games that you play while you're doing something else. Maybe you're watching video or listening to music or an audio book or whatever it may be. It's the kind of game that requires just enough attention that you can do it and something else at the same time. And that's not a criticism. That is actually the kind of game that I like. So that's Vacuum Warrior. That's another one worth giving a shout out. Again, this is on Steam. Both of the games are are available for Windows, but they may be available for other platforms.

I've been playing them on Windows. I like it if it's Windows and Mac, right? That's kind of my two key ones. Another one that I want to talk about is I did a live stream recently where for the first time ever, I did a World of Warcraft character that was hardcore. And I don't know. So I was like, okay, you know what? The beta for forever is over.

I'm not going to talk about that too much here. We'll probably talk about that some other time. But that's over. So I'm going to play, you know, what can I do while I'm waiting for that? So I saw this thing where you can create a hardcore character. And I was like, okay, let's give that a go. I've never done it. So it's interesting. It is different.

And I would argue that it's easier in the starting areas. For example, I did a human hunter. So I was in the starting zone near Stormwind and so on. And the NPCs and the creatures and everything, they were definitely a lot more sparse than they are in the normal version. So they do try to help you out with this hardcore version. And it is what it is, right? Dead is dead. So you get no second chance. When you die, that's it. You're over. You're deleting that character because you cannot bring it back.

And if memory serves, I played on the live stream. I did a paladin. More focus towards a tank because that's a paladin. tank is what I always played as my main. And I got to level eight before I died. And this is my own fault. I died because of my own stupidity. Right. I was attacked by a group of, I think it was a group of murlocs, if I remember rightly. And I'm running backwards to sort of pace and kite them, as we call it.

And of course, stupidly, didn't look behind me, ran into another group. That's it. I was dead. I was done. But funnily enough, I was not that upset about it. Because you would think that after putting like an hour and some work into getting to level 8, you'd be mad about it. But I really wasn't. Because I didn't know what to expect, having never done a Warcraft hardcore character before. I'd be inclined to do it again.

Interestingly there are some classes not available. For example I do recall that the Human Hunter was not available. I'm guessing because that might make it too easy. I don't know. But there's that and the quests are different. If you're a World of Warcraft player and you've never tried Hardcore you might want to look. It became a fascinating thing to see the difference between that and the real game. I was going to say real game. That's unfair. That and the normal World of Warcraft. And I've also been playing Plastic as well just to sort of prep a bit for, oh, that's right, that's how this worked for forever when it comes out, whatever it is, November 2nd, November 4th. I will be talking about that because I am going to be playing it and I have every intention of live streaming it as well.

So you can follow me on Twitch.tv forward slash compile dev but there's also a link of course and you can actually watch the live streams on my website as well directly so you can go to peterwitham.com and see them there you can watch the play of me dying horrible death stupid death in hardcore and laugh at that you are more than welcome It's on YouTube as well. I think I kicked it over there.

All the links are on my website. But those are games that I've been playing the past week or two whilst I've been doing some development work on some of my own apps that I will talk about in future episodes. I did ship an update to Subradar, my subscription tracking app on iOS and Mac and iPad.

So not only can you add them to your calendar, but you can also get say give me a notification and you can either choose a preset or you know X amount of days before it renews. The reason I quickly added that was because I had again fallen foul of it. I did not add a subscription to the app, my own app, shame on me, and it renewed and I had to go in and like oh I gotta get this the money back and refunded and so on. Hey, it was a couple of hundred dollars subscription every year. And I would say so far, you know, self-promotion, yes, but this is the truth.

I'm not making this up. My own app, Subradar, has reminded me of subscriptions that I meant to cancel. And so far this year, I have saved a fraction under $400. I think it's $300. $797 of subscriptions per year that did not renew and I did not need. And the app reminded me before they were due and I was able to go in and make sure that they were cancelled or stopped or whatever you want to call it. So yes, that is a bit of self-promotion there, but that is the truth. This is why I built the app myself and then realized other people want it. You can download it.

Go to subradar.app. You can find it there. You can download it on iOS and add. There's a free level where you can add, I think it's three subscriptions. And then, of course, there's the pro version where you can add unlimited and some other features. But check it out. So that's all the stuff that I've been doing past couple of weeks. Busy time, right?

Especially in games. A lot of gaming stuff going on at the moment. A lot of tech news of course and I'm not going to get too much into it here but a lot of a lot more job layoffs in the software industry and then of course a lot more big games coming right there's the World of Warcraft Forever GTA 6 you know obviously those are the two that if you know anything about gaming you've probably not failed to hear about there are so many others that's it just wanted to cover that in this episode share some of the things that I've been playing and you might be interested in so much more to come on all that stuff again and some software development i'm currently in reviewing a lot of applications from folks regarding potential guests and i'm looking at those so if you are one of those folks that have reached out thank you so much i am promise you i have not forgotten you if i've not replied i just got so inundated i'm trying to work my way through them that's it folks you can find me at peter I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of this or any games or software or anything like that you can reach out to me have a great one speak to you again soon