Share yours if you've found any

These are games usually made quickly by one developer and far below even 'indie' standards
Trashware that kids made for learning purposes and posted on Steam in hopes to wrack in a few accidental
purchases or to get bundled over at Indie Gala.


I sampled this game a year back and thought about it from time to time. Bought it today during the xmas sales and having a blast! Can highly recommend for the current sale price. I feel it deserves more notice.

Flynguin Station
https://store.steampowered.com/app/969250/Flynguin_Station/

TAGAP The Apocalyptic Game About Penguins. They are free to play and each is a great game. I would love if they were able to get it to GoG and start earning some money for all the work they put into their project.

Here is some footage of TAGAP 4 the latest in the series currently in development.

I used to make many such games as a kid with the BASIC programming language. My main two genres were Snake clones and Lunar Lander clones (I recall also making some Pac Man clone), and I recall my big brother and a cousin sometime commenting that a couple of them were actually pretty good for self-made games (I did keep honing those two games for weeks if not months, making them better and better)...

Oh and I got a 10 (= A+ or whatever it is to Americans) for the computer class course at school, after making a pretty good version of Snake for the old Apple IIc computer as my programming example. My version was vastly superior to what was seen e.g. on Nokia phones (Nokia's Snake game) many years later.

I never got any money for those games though. I should have sued Nokia while I could, but instead I went to work there.

It appears nowadays one can make pretty ok casual games without really knowing anything about programming. The tools are so good.

Not in my childhood! If you wanted to make some game yourself, you really had to learn either BASIC, or some Commodore 64 POKE and PEEK assembly magic.

Ok ok maybe there were some Adventure Creator programs already back then that allowed you to make certain types of games with some templates.

If you are willing and able to I would strongly encourage you to remake your games. There is a chance that this time around you are able to earn at least some money. Retro home computers are selling well as do new games. Some cartridges for C64 are published and sold at around 35 Pound. :-)

Nah, at least I wouldn't pay money for those old games I made. They are not THAT good.

Then again I would be paying to myself so that kinda makes sense.

Oh man, you 've just given me flashbacks of GW-BASIC :)

I used to create small games too, although my most memorable "creations" came much later in the mid 00's when I fell in love with C++ forever. Not a really viable option, unless you have the resources and time to dedicate 100% of your self into game development. Even if that's the case, you need an uber-extra-super-crazy idea for your game, since everything imaginable has probably already been covered by other games :) The industry has changed dramatically, and, as timppu already mentioned, there are tools today that are so easy for people with no programming experience at all.

That's true of course. It may be harder when there aren't novel ideas, which, for a snake clone, it wouldn't take much to improve on it - change of direction, tunnels, narrow passages, traps, but it's not impossible, small things, it is very possible to sell it. Crazy ideas as in Yoku's Island Express which combines pinball plus metroidvania, personally I don't need them. When an old game is made well I don't say: Oh, no ... not the 100,000th clone of ... That said maybe timppu would share his work for free on lemon64 or some place else if code still exists? ;-) People with no programming experience will soon notice how limited their options are when using such tools. I find them useful for quick prototyping, AngelXNA, pygame and others. Maybe with RPG maker people can create decent RP games, but it's better to simply learn to write and understand code. C++, C#, python whatever language is compatible to the individual starting out on their learning adventure. Whether something's coming of it is written on another page. :-)

I'm currently working on a timber clone with some twists using SFML. Fun little project with some, not necessarily unique ideas, to play around with to make it more interesting and challenging. Music to increase or decrease difficulty like in beat hazard, the use of swords or boxing, switching tools when there is a thunderstorm, where the hero or heroine has a %-chance to either be hit by burning twigs or a direct hit if he has the axe or some other metallic tool equipped, avoiding to hit beehives all such things. I will share when it's done whatever it will end up to be. ;-)