Best of the Net: Bare Minimum Edition
August 31st, 2009
Best of the Net
Holy crap this month was a prolific time for all of you rapid prototypers! Together you guys made a whopping 29 games, with some deciding to make multiple titles. I’ve compiled a list of everyone’s games here, but do tell me if I missed anyone’s!
Eat goos to grow bigger, don’t let them eat you. Retro but stylish game with nice scenery bubbles.
Also, food is included.
Arpeggi, by Zacqary Adam Green
The one pixel wonder scaled up to save your poor eyeballs. A sound and color based game controlled solely with your mouse.
Use your mouse to dodge oncoming obstacles in this minimalist 3-d rail-racer.
A Robotron-esq shooter. Use WASD and the arrow keys or a 360 controller to shoot oncoming waves of block enemies.
Dalbergaria is an evil, evil man. Navigate Falken’s maze with the arrow keys, whilst avoiding deadly invisible walls…of death!
Match your square to the oncoming color waves, in this twitchy color game. A tense game for those hopped up on 4 shots of espresso.
Tunnel Vision, by Marauth
Fly as far as you can while keeping your ice ship’s temperature at bare minimum! The game is entirely played with the mouse. Reminds me a lot of those later levels of Star Fox.
Saloons of Death, by Man of Doom
Shoot ‘em down, pixel cowboys. Deal mouse-only death in this 3-color shooter. A little western themed run n gun. Press f4 for fullscreen mode.
Nanok, Defender of the Earth, by Ben Wilhelm
Save the planet as Nanok the highly equipped bear! Bear minimum, indeed.
Drop life-preservers on drowning sailors before the sharks get them – though for some reason they seem to fall underwater when this happens. Probably because you’re dropping them from a speeding plane.
Strip the Forest Bare, by J. Tremblay
And the bear/bare puns continue! Strip the forest as a lumberjack while avoiding dangerous bears.
Create and flip blocks to help your black and white characters escape.
Mozart’s Musical Mayhem, by Tayron
Help Mozart match his synthesizer to the song.
Contrast Survival, by Bacioiu Ciprian
Survive as long as you can in this vectory 3D graveyard. WASD to move, and control to activate your shield.
Draw your ship, then do battle! A unique and challenging barrage space shooter where you control what the protagonist ship looks like. Check back for updates!
Bactoriam king of Bacteria wants to prove to human that bacteria are not the minimum bare living organism and they are better than Viruses which the human afraid of them. A mouse-only game.
A one-dimensional pong game, need I say more?
Press a button, get a score. We’re all winners! Hard to get more minimal than this one, folks.
The Red Switch, by Matthew Elvey Price
The first game I’ve seen using the 2Dboy rapid prototyping framework. You control a rocket car helicopter submarine that has a single control, mapped to every button. Basically turns the rocket on. Spinning the front wheel powers the helicopter rotors.
A one-click interactive movie made in 4 hours.
A sonar-esq moody and atmospheric experience. Use sound to find your targets. A very nice sound game.
Keep your clothes on in this very fun pixel platformer. Deform the terrain with explosives, but be warned – too much damage will strip your character down to practically nothing. Someone was bound to go there eventually.
Just a Button, by Mathieu (iPhone)
And the first game for the iPhone is up, courtesy of Mathieu. The idea behind Just a Button is that pushing a button is the minimal action needed to do something in 95% of video games, so why not trying to make a game where this action is the only one available?
Destroy everything on screen – I think. An Asteroids-ish game, with a springy control system.
Sphere of Influence, by Forrest Trepte
Place spheres strategically to beat out your opponent.
Moonhop, 1D Platformer, and Johnny the Bat, by Jozef “Bobo” Hudec
Three games for one theme seems to be going above and beyond the Bare Minimum Theme, but the games themselves definitely follow the theme. I’d recommend downloading the zip files.
Equip > Pants, by Zachary Johnson
Having perhaps the highest hilarious: number of pixels ratio, equip > pants follows the exploits of a pantless hero who must don pants.
Running Against the Clouds, by Zebreu
A short, soothing experience – until you’re met with the DEATH option.
No Quarter: V-Sides, by Alex Austin
Squeaking in just at the nick of time, is a small collection of Bare Minimum games by Mr. Bridge Builder, Alex Austin.
Congratulations to everyone that made a game this month! I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with for next month’s theme – starting… TOMORROW!
We're a group of indie game developers, running a friendly competition every month. The rules: Make a game based on the month's theme, and don't spend more than 7 days. New games posted at the end of every month. 
on 
on 
on 
on 
on
23 Comments, Comment or Ping
Oh, my game is not there!
Running Against The Clouds;
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?0gdthgondjw
Or maybe you didn’t want to humiliate me with all those nice games.
August 31st, 2009
Added!
August 31st, 2009
Cant wait until tomorrow!
August 31st, 2009
New Theme Please!! Nice job everyone… I just downloaded the games. Will try them out :D
August 31st, 2009
Wow, thanks for the link!
If I have time tonight, I will try to add sound and a better ending to Equip > Pants… technically it will still be within the month of August and no more than 7 days of development.
And then tomorrow I’m going to have to play all of the submissions by everybody else =)
This site is a great idea. Thanks for doing this.
August 31st, 2009
Fix the link to Minima Bomber…you’re linking to a picture and not the game post: http://www.graduategames.com/blog/minimabomber.html
August 31st, 2009
Thank you!
Oh, and the link for Running Against The Clouds is
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nyzmmum0wz3
Sorry about all that… I feel like I’m mistreating you.
August 31st, 2009
You misspelled my intentional misspelling of my name. :P
But thank you for the linkback.
August 31st, 2009
Grr, I fail. :( Unless I can crank out a minimal game in the next few hours. :p
Cool to see this abundance erupting forth, though. About Sound was my favorite. :D
August 31st, 2009
Hi everyone! I’m a newcomer here. :)
Color Memory is my bare minimum game about coloring theme and memory mechanics. I made it in about 7 days. The game is very simple and primitive, you just have to memorize the colors which show up in sequences, then click color robots in order.
You can download Windows and/or Mac version below (1.5 MB):
Win download: http://blog.monkeypotion.net/download-manager.php?id=21
Mac download: http://blog.monkeypotion.net/download-manager.php?id=22
And see some screenshots/details in Chinese:
http://blog.monkeypotion.net/game/color-memory
August 31st, 2009
“starting… TOMORROW!” so this is the theme? :D
August 31st, 2009
Oh! I’m so happy you added my game, and not only that, but in the top! Or in other words, the first thing you’d read when checking this out ( mostly )!
I was woundering if you could, instead, link to http://www.gamingdew.com ( my site ), it has the direct link inside it ( or alternatively both O-o )!
Again, thanks a lot! :P
August 31st, 2009
Changed, and changed! Some really fantastic stuff this month.
September 1st, 2009
Hmm my game isn’t there. Probably because I couldn’t post a comment in the theme. Dunno why. If it still counts:
Squared Shooter. Made in 7 days.
http://www.mediafire.com/?5w2yeemwjrj
September 1st, 2009
Can’t wait for next months theme ^.^’
September 1st, 2009
Hi all…
I am playing games on pc and i like to more about gaming…
I like this article because it’s about gaming…
September 2nd, 2009
Thank you for listing my game! I can’t wait to try out everyone’s prototypes- 29 games! I love it! :)
September 2nd, 2009
Yay my game got listed! Thank you. Great prototypes guys, looking forward to this months experiments. Good luck to all!
September 2nd, 2009
Minima Bomber seemed really polished, lots of cool tech with varied abilities, weapons, enemies, and of course destructible terrain. Buggy and frustrating sometimes, but the Replay+ is way fun. The postmortem is pretty accurate I think and the game is minimal in many ways but doesn’t make any sort of strong statement about bare minimum in my mind. (Comment posted here because their website didn’t work on either of my browsers.)
September 30th, 2009
Screen Kill (another game with no author contact/comment form) – pretty fun – a little buggy and difficult to get the hang of at first. Then once you learn to simply hang out at the bottom and dodge them as they come at you, the exploration has pretty much run out. The mechanic itself is fun enough, but not unique or varied enough to hold the audience’s attention as long as it could. The connection with Bare Minimum is tenuous but at least mildly thought provoking. If this had been the first thing done instead of asteroids, who knows, this could have been the most widely cloned game instead. ;)
October 1st, 2009
Reply to “Best of the Net: Bare Minimum Edition”