I’m very happy to announce that my latest game, Cool Soda Can, is available to play right now on Android, iPhone, iPad, Linux, MacOS, Windows, and in your web browser.

Through some miracle, or my own improved competence, I have managed to release Cool Soda Can on all my intended platforms on the same day. This means everyone in my family can experience it at the same time and have to say nice things to me all on the same day. I also found out today that itch.io notifies your followers as soon as you publish your game, so you should probably have your announcement posts ready to go when you hit that publish button!

On that note, shout out to online influencer eirawave for being the first person to cover Cool Soda Can in a DBD hangout on their discord. Truly they have their finger on the pulse of gaming.

When I released my last game in February I had a lot to say about the game and my process and intentions. I started working on Cool Soda Can basically the next day and immediately thought to myself “oh no, I have nothing to say about this game.” As in I was already getting anxious about promoting the project on day one on development. “Better delete all my accounts and never talk to anyone again,” I thought.

I shared an almost-complete build of Cool Soda Can with some fellow trash game-fans a couple of weeks ago, and one asked, “is there a story behind this game?” I wish there was!

I guess there are pieces of story behind the game, though. According to a git repo commit I started work on this game for Github’s Game Off 2017 game jam. From the looks of my commits I’d abandoned the idea of finishing the jam even before the jam had ended, and I basically didn’t do any more work on it until this year.

Cool Soda Can was always fully formed in my mind, despite spending years existing nowhere else. You would play as a giant soda can, and you would give free sodas to the forest animals. These animals would be the same animals that you see in Coco Wiggler 4 and Horse Plays because why make game assets and use them only once (sadly I couldn’t figure a way to fit pizza in).

More than anything I think I started Cool Soda Can as a jam game so I could learn something. At the time I was really enjoying Shelly Alon’s Glitchskier on my phone. I liked the game itself, but I was also really fascinated at how the mobile and desktop versions were the same but different. I liked how the game used the portrait display of a mobile phone but also a landscape aspect on desktop without totally changing its layout or how it played. I just really wanted to learn how to do that, and I think I worked it out.

One thing I was not trying to do with Cool Soda Can was write succinct levels or game sessions that had obvious goals or end states. I added upgrade unlocking as a naïve nod to the gaminess of games, like how I’d stuck scores and counters on Coco Wiggler 4 because games have scores and counters. I guess I should add “design satisfying ending” to my list of goals for some future project. Is it a game loop if the loop never ends?

I should also put “write satisfying conclusion” on my list of goals for my next game announcement post. Oh well too late for that now BYYYYEEEEEE!