I think I’ve always enjoyed making games more than playing them. Long before I realised that game development was an actual job, and even longer before it became my career, I’d already tried making my own games in any way I could. I made games on paper, with different pages for different scenes, in a kind of visual “choose your own adventure”. With little in the way of programming taught at school, I used what tools I had, combining slide transitions and hyperlinks in Microsoft PowerPoint to make shooters and adventure games. I was fascinated by games that included any sort of editing tools, be it Sim City 3000, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, or later Valve’s Source Engine games.
At some point, I got hold of a legally dubious copy of Flash 8, right as Flash-based browser games had become ubiquitous. Still not knowing much programming, I stuck to the age-old method of copy-pasting from online tutorials and trying to hack at the code to make it do what I wanted. I experimented with a lot of different game ideas, most quickly abandoned, but one that did see the light of day was WormWorld.
WormWorld was a platformer based on some stop-motion animations I’d made, and despite being, in hindsight, not great, with broken physics, embarrassing art, and the most irritating audio you’ve ever heard, I was quite proud of it. It was especially fun to watch my friends try it out in the school library, even more so once I added a multiplayer version that two people could play on a single keyboard. Looking back, I had a great time making all the levels, and it was definitely a stepping stone on the path that led to where I am today. Somehow, I think it created fond memories for my friends too, who occasionally ask what happened to it.
With Flash becoming infamous for security risks, it’s not supported by modern browsers, rendering the whole history of Flash games unplayable. But, thanks to the open-source Ruffle project, these games can be played once again. So, by popular(?) demand, WormWorld and its two player spinoff are returned to the internet, along with an unfinished prototype of a whole new WormWorld 2. Ah, what could have been. Put on some rose-coloured glasses and enjoy them, but maybe turn down the volume first!