Launching Lonely Paddle!

I’ve had many stints at trying to make and finish games. My ambitions tend to be greater than my skill and wherewithal, leading to a bunch of unfinished projects. With each effort though, I get a bit further along, learn more skills, and learn more about myself. This game, Lonely Paddle, is my first finished game.

It started with learning by making a Pong clone. Then I thought, what if I made this a little juicy and fun to play alone? And, most importantly, what if I kept the scope really small?

Finishing things is a skill just like making music, coding, and writing. It takes practice. So my credo is: No matter how simple a game is, if it’s fun, I want to finish it.

Lonely Paddle is like Pong but for those without a friend to play it with. It’s like tennis but for those with bad allergies or unfortunate weather or limited access to tennis courts.

Lonely Paddle won’t change anyone’s life, but it’s a way to have a little bit of fun for a few minutes. And for me, it’s my first finished game project. I’m proud of it!

Finishing Takes Time

Something I learned making the game is that no matter how small a project is, it takes intentional effort to get something from a prototype state to a finished state. Polishing up a project takes time and there will be weird bugs and issues. There was an issue with the music looping that I had to debug and investigate for a few hours. That kind of stuff can be a bit demotivating, but that’s the name of the game with software development. Fix the bug and then move on.

Tech Details

I made Lonely Paddle with HaxeFlixel, a wonderful framework for making 2D cross-platform games in a statically typed, compiled language. I really enjoy working with it.

The game is open source with liberal licensing. The code is MIT and the assets are CC0. View the source on GitHub.

As I continue to make small games and prototypes, I want to keep making them open source so others can learn from the code and make use of the assets.

What’s Next

With Lonely Paddle done, I’m excited to move onto finishing some other prototypes and ideas I have. I’ve got a prototype for an infinite runner and a wall jumping platformer that would be fun to finish. I’ve also got a turn-based RPG prototype working, but that’s a bit larger in scope to finish than I think I’m ready for right now.

I’m really interested in building things out in the open and sharing updates along the way. If you’re interested, please follow me on Itch. That’ll be the best way to get updates and know when a new game is released.

Until next time. Thanks!!