games — Blog — Geoff Watson

December, 1940. Italy threatens to capture the Suez Canal, but Britain readies a counteroffensive, code-named Operation Compass. Can you outfox the Italians, who have greater numbers, with the elite tanks in your 7th Armoured Division? Can you capture Tobruk before the inevitable Axis counter-attack?

This is my first published computer game! You can download it from itch.io here: Tobruk . The site asks whether you want to donate a couple bucks to the developer (me), but please feel free to ignore the donation and just proceed to the download. The game requires Windows. It comes in a .zip package; just unzip and run the executable to play.

I did a terrible job of giving instructions. To play: (1) left click a brown (British) unit. (2) left click again to give it a destination.(It won’t move until the execution phase.) (3) Repeat for some/all of your other units. (4) Hit enter and wait. (5) Hit spacebar to walk through each of your moves, hex by hex.

The game is my entry for the “Tropical Game Jam” at the Gamemaker Studio forums in this thread . The rules of the jam required that the game be made in just 3 days! It was all very rushed, and I didn’t finish until 4:30 a.m. last night. So don’t expect a magnum opus. Also, I finished on time, but I supplied a broken link because I didn’t realize itch.io sets links to private by default. Fortunately, the jam organizers are still accepting my entry.

I don’t expect to win, but I’m proud of my little game! Here’s a cropped screenshot.

We’ve had my studio’s carpet removed and the floor and wall cleaned some, and we’ve hired a contractor to jackhammer the floor and install a flood-control system for the future. But that work won’t be done for another month. Plein air isn’t a great option either; I’m not comfortable painting in public with the virus.

So I’ve contented myself with drawing in sketchbooks and painting on my iPad. I’ve also resumed an old hobby — making computer games! I’ve made a clone of Tetris, a chess engine, and now I’m working on a card game. Here are some screenshots from all these endeavors.

First, my Tetris clone. I call it “Falling Logs.” It’s fun, and I suck at it.

Here’s a look at my chess engine. It plays as well as me into the endgame, at which point it falls apart, because I haven’t taught it any endgame patterns yet. I could spend years improving this thing; it is an addictive thing. But it’s also a bit depressing to see your own AI start to beat you. I think I might prefer to leave it in its current, beatable state.

And finally, two examples of art for a spy-themed card game I’m working on. The game itself isn’t that fun yet, and I may abandon it, but making the art for it has been a hoot. FIrst, an illustration made on the iPad. I might or might not add color and shadow. It’s been great to experiment with line art like this:

Geoff Watson, “Media credentials,” made with Adobe Fresco on the iPad Pro, 2020.

Finally, I pulled out my oil paints to do a quick sketch for a game card. I did this quickly, on the back of a piece of cardboard!

Geoff Watson, “Small gift,” oil on cardboard, about 11” x 14,” 2020.