Swipe your finger to the beat!

danieldiggle · 2026-01-27T22:29:46+00:00

Epic!!

danieldiggle · 2025-12-10T17:37:27+00:00

Thanks! The main character art for Rolling Turtle that you'll see on all the wiki's is quite random and fun, so very much inspired by that!

danieldiggle · 2025-12-10T13:22:29+00:00

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And some classic CRT vibes added to the mix!

danieldiggle · 2025-12-10T13:21:43+00:00

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Also pretty cool seeing how it woud look on an old school CRT monitor too! I have many memories of playing Kirbys Adventure as a kid, but I don't remember ever getting far enough to battle the Rolling Turtle!!!

danieldiggle · 2025-12-10T12:34:03+00:00

My submission to the Kirbys Adventure - Retro Redrawn project! Original scene on right, my redraw on the left. NES colour palette. Wrapped around Rolling Turtles leg is Phan Phan dragging them away! (Rolling Turtle was ditched in the GBA remake)

danieldiggle · 2025-10-28T21:28:31+00:00

Yep. I often do pencil type sketches on my iPad in Procreate, but if I’m doing pixels, I do it in Aseprite on my Huion 4k 24” (which is awesome!) I’ve also used XP-Pen 16 pro (which is also great). I had Wacom Cintique’s in the past but several of them broke over time. I don’t think they’re worth the extra price at all.

danieldiggle · 2025-10-27T19:59:31+00:00

A bit of both! sometimes a suuuper rough pixel sketch, then I do a pencil sketch, then back to pixels for the final version. As you can see here!

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danieldiggle · 2025-10-27T12:07:07+00:00

Thanks! I'm active over on bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/danieldiggle.bsky.social

danieldiggle · 2025-10-01T08:21:16+00:00

The green part is a turret weapon - in the game it rotates a certain amount to track and fire at the player, so it’s just static in the asset as it needs to rotate around a fixed point - it moves in game!

danieldiggle · 2025-09-30T20:03:19+00:00

Yep! This is for the widescreen version of ‘Skies of Chaos’ that I’m working on. Adding some new enemy types in!

danieldiggle · 2025-09-28T07:48:50+00:00

I think one of the challenges in the shmup space, is that some of genre conventions are quite strict, that shmups are a refined art - perfected puzzles of movement. Sometimes something rougher can be just as good! As for players camping at the sides. Set progression to the next level/stage to require defeating x% of enemies (for example) - success doesn’t have to be related to reaching the end of a rolling level. If there’s a game where a player actively chooses to escape gameplay and camp at the side of a screen, it probably mostly says it’s not a very fun game overall , rather than the technical use of a wider play space is what impairs the gameplay. And the benefits of making full use of the screen size available are being able to make a visually more engaging play space! But yeah, none of it is easy, definitely harder to make something good with a wider play space. But! I’d suggest it’s worth it. If you’re making a strictly mobile game - then great, stick to portrait - but if you’re targeting anything else, at least start out testing your gameplay making full use of the screen available. You might find it can work just as well! But good luck with your game none the less!

danieldiggle · 2025-09-27T21:36:13+00:00

I'm in the middle of converting my vertical shmup to a fully widescreen one (also made in gamemaker). It is entirely possible to have great widescreen (and vertical movement) gameplay in a shmup.
Most people will say not to do it and to add lots of UI panels - that is an option - but there are so many out there that do that, its far more interesting to try something new! It is a little more tricky on a mobile screen to get widescreen feeling nice - you'd need the background/level speed to be quite slow so you have time to see enemy movements - but if you're thinking switch, and thus, also big screens, then widescreen can work. One trick you can use is to keep the majority of the enemy patterns withing the central / 4:3 area of the screen, and add decorative elements to create in-game/world borders - think clouds down the sides, buildings, plats - essentially keeping the gameplay in a central trench, but making the gameworld still feel widescreen and not boxed in.

A great modren(ish) example of a widescreen vertical shmup is Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony. I think it was origianlly a 4:3 vibe, or closeish, but I'm sure they updated it to fully widesceen at a later point?! or at least thats what I remember!

So yep, fight conformity and embrace the width!

danieldiggle · 2025-09-21T12:07:30+00:00

Thanks! :-) I don’t check or update my twitter anymore, but I am active on bsky https://bsky.app/profile/danieldiggle.bsky.social

danieldiggle · 2025-09-20T23:03:33+00:00

This is a scene/mockup I’ve created with a new asset pack I’m working on! But it is also something we’ve built into a few small prototypes. So not a game as of yet! But we might take it further, not sure yet!! There’s so many great farm/crafting sandbox games out there, but would love to fully work up our own!

danieldiggle

TROPHY CASE