A couple of years ago I was interested in Mark Overmars’ Game Maker utility because I had this concept that would blow the complete game industry to pieces. I tried several game creators but always reverted to Game Maker, I subscribed to the forum and asked some silly newbie questions, I downloaded the complete tutorial (and the software itself, obviously), started learning its programming language (although Game Maker’s best feature is the drag and drop menu that lets you create games without a single line of code) and started designing, well I almost started…

The back side of this all was that the forum was literally overflowing with game projects in alpha, beta and gamma stage and that I spend more time looking at other people’s games than at my own.

Thus this project became one more on the pile of my unfinished ones although quite recently it came back crawling through a hole in my head, hence this post. Who knows what the future might bring? (But knowing myself, don’t hold your breath.)

Two GM games have intrigued me ever since.

The first was Seiklus and you can read more about it at the following posts: Seiklus & Seiklus (again). If you want to know how this game looks like you can watch some video speed runs, about 35 minutes in total, on Youtube.

Number two: Sandbox of Gods was so inspiring to me that I created some walkthroughs allowing the casual player to reach all the possible goals in the game. As the game is icon-driven the best way to illustrate the different possibilities was, in my opinion, to have a graphical representation rather than a textual approach. Although these walkthroughs were never as popular as the one for the Penumbra Tech Demo, that more or less gave this blog its lift-off, it had its visitors, especially when SoG was still rather hot in the indie freeware game scene. From time to time, once or twice a year, I check the website of Mr. Chubigans to see if the long awaited Sandbox of Gods sequel has been released (or not) and this week, nice springtime weather by the way, I found it the ideal opportunity to have a go. The good news was, well read for yourself…

There have been two attempts at getting a sequel to SOG, even a contest with a major announcement of Sandbox of 2: Ancient Warfare. Since then, nothing much has been churned out, mainly due to the overwhelming amount of work Fred and I had at the time, and the second attempt being at a bit of a bad time (last month, as the holidays were approaching and I was finishing Spirits of Metropolis). Still, there will be a sequel to SOG, and it won’t look like it did before, nor will it have an Ancient Warfare theme (used due to the competition theme we were entering at the time). But it will be done later this year. (Taken from Vertigo Gaming)

That SoG still attracts some player was proven on the Vertigo forum where quick11 wanted to have the answer to the following questions:
How do you get 'Ancient Defences'?
And how do you get 'Bunnies Killed [A.D.]'?

Needless to say that Unfinished Projects contains the answers to these questions. As I was browsing the forum anyway I responded with a link to my graphical walkthroughs, but to my amazement my post was deleted a few hours later. I asked the moderator (who is not the maker of SoG, by the way) for some explanations. Those sounded like this:

I deleted your post because your site contained pornographic material on it, which we strictly do not allow.

Because a previous article that mentioned SoG also contained some links to an ArianeB add-on and to some games on Shark’s Lagoon I am now known, at least on the Vertigo Games forum, as an official pornographer. I have never been so proud in my life!

This assumption however made me wonder if the above is indeed true, as I am quite a geek I downloaded a log of the visited pages on the 24th of April 2009. Here is the result.

A staggering 86% visits this blog for ArianeB alone and if one adds the other posts that mention adult gaming that number rises above 90%. Other games, including Sandbox of Gods, make out about two and a half percent of the public. My various Pink Floyd and Douglas Adams posts only reach one percent of the hits...

The (recently updated) Sandbox of Gods walkthroughs can be found at:
Walking Through The Valley Of Eden (Sandbox of God Walkthrough Part 1) 
Bad Moon Rising (Sandbox Of God Walkthrough Part 2) 
Under The Vulcano (Sandbox Of God Walkthrough Part 3) 
I Want To Be A Little Fishy (Sandbox Of God Walkthrough Part 4) 
It's the Final Countdown (Sandbox Of God Walkthrough Part 5)