What? A new game programming challenge?

Via Slashie of Temple of the Roguelike, news of a NEW game programming challenge: Tiny Game 2010.

A full game in 40x30 PIXELS, using the 16 color EGA palette. I remember EGA; I wrote an EGA video driver way back when I worked for Digital Research, Inc. The original one.

Rules are: 40x30 (or 30x40) pixels, written as a Java applet with no external libraries required.

I’d wanted to write my 7DRL game as a Java applet, but I had concerns about that, as my tests showed troubles running applets on a wide variety of browsers. Nonetheless, I program in Java for a living, so the real question is, can I (without the one week time pressure of 7DRL) actually make a fun game?

I didn’t get high marks for

, and it’s no surprise. I spent almost the entire time working on the engine and the game itself I programmed in about four hours on the last day. Next year, I will start that project with a completed engine, so I will have 7 days for the game.

The real question is, what kind of game to write? My first instinct was to go for a Wizardry-like first person dungeon crawl game, but I saw over on the site that someone had been working on a Eye of the Beholder clone, so that’s right out. So I think it’s the right time to leave my RPG comfort zone, and try something a little new – a rhythm music game.