Yes, you read that right. I'm sure some might find this revelation confusing, resulting in questions such as: "Why are you selling your soul?", "Why do you need more views", or, "What does this have to do with browsers?". Well, dear reader, rest assured that I will be answering not only those questions, but also why any of this is important in the first place. Let's begin!
(Psst... I also made a new art gallery page for the site. Go check that out once you're done here!)
Back on December 28th, 2025, I released a game called "Grantonimore Clicker". Now, this wasn't actually my first attempt at a game. Far from it, in fact. However, it is noteworthy in that it was released publicly, and that it was completed. As an aspiring game developer, this was a very important milestone for me. And really, that's kind of the whole reason why I made it. It was a project with an intentionally small scope, born out of a desire to finally make a full game and get it out there.
It's probably for that very same reason that I, admittedly, made coding decisions during the development of this game that made it harder for me to develop it. Though that's probably a good thing, since it just goes to show how much I learned from the experience overall. Basically, the code I wrote for it is a bit hard to reason about, at least in my opinion, and if I were to go back and remake the game, I'd probably do it a lot differently to make the game's internal logic more explicit and understandable, for my own sake if no one else's. If any of that sounds confusing, then don't worry, because I'll go into more detail about this sort of thing later in this blog post.
Much more pertinently, however, since the game's release, there's been something a lot more major that's been bothering me. That being the lack of attention the game has been receiving. It hardly has any views, and basically no one has played it! My poor masterpiece!!!
Now, on paper, that wouldn't be an issue in the slightest. Again, the game was pretty experimental, and wasn't exactly designed to be much of a zinger. However, that got me wondering if my future projects could fall to a similar fate, regardless of impressiveness or scope, and if maybe this was more than just a matter of game design, and has to do with something else: Convenience.
The process of actually downloading and playing a game carries with it a few implications. Beyond just having to wait for it to download and navigate to the executable, the player may have to sort it into a game folder first, and moreover, let the game continue to take up space on their hard drive after they're done playing. They could just delete it after they're finished, sure, but that just requires even more effort on their part, and is one extra thing for them to remember.
I think many of us who grew up with Flash games (RIP Flash, btw) remember the convenience of being able to play games directly from your browser. No manual download, no having to navigate and directly run an executable, the game just ran inside of a web page, and it was as simple as that. For many of us, Flash was a formative part of our childhoods. So many amazing experiences, each just a click away. Of course, we still have web games, just that they're HTML5 games instead of Flash, but the basic principles are the same.
I think this convenience led to us playing more games, giving more of them a chance than we would've otherwise had we been required to go through the same effort of manually downloading them. Heck, I still find myself occasionally trying out random web games in a way that I just don't with ones you have to download, which I only really give a shot if I hear about them from someone or somewhere else. So that got me thinking... Why not make my future projects as web games to help them get more attention and players?
Nah, there's no point in phrasing it like a question lol. The choice was pretty obvious. The only thing to figure out was... how?
When it comes to making browser games, there are a ton of options at one's disposal. Even engines that are used for desktop games, such as Godot, will sometimes have features that allow you to export your game as a browser-compatible one. However, I don't have much experience with actual game engines, since learning all of their features and UI can be kinda complicated. At least personally, I find it easier to just work with code directly. For this reason, I decided to go with Phaser, which is a framework, and is a decently popular option for making web games. But just what the heck is a framework?
To understand what a framework is, let's talk about what a library is. In terms of programming, a library is pre-made code that you can add to, and use from your own project to gain certain functionality. For example, for Grantonimore Clicker, I used Pygame, which allowed me to create a window for the game itself, read the cursor's current position and whether or not the mouse was being clicker, play audio, etc.
In non-technical terms, if you wanted to build a house, then a code library (or libraries, whatever the case may be) provides the tools and materials necessary, such as hammers and screwdrivers, and wooden planks and bricks. They provide the building blocks, but the overall structure of the house is completely up to you, for better, or for worse.
In that regard, a framework is much like a library. It similarly provides you with building blocks, but the key difference is that in this metaphor, a framework would also come with blueprints that detail general aspects of what the house should do, but not necessarily how they should do them. For example, the blueprints would tell you that a bathroom must be connected to water and sewage systems, but how exactly that should be done is entirely up to you. In essence, frameworks provide structure and enforce patterns that are tried and true, while still giving a programmer freedom when it comes to actual implementation.
Compared to a library, frameworks can take longer to learn, since you have to pick up on how to follow their exact rules. However, given enough time investment, they can actually be faster to develop with, since you don't have to create your own structure. The framework provides it for you.
Since Grantonimore Clicker was made with a library, I had to do things like specify the game loop and how the game handled individual screens of the game, like the title screen, main gameplay screen, and a screen for each minigame. I also had to create a system for loading and handling assets (basically the images, sounds, etc that the game uses). It was with these things that I made a TON of poor choices that I'm not even sure how to explain in non-technical terms because it was just that absurdly and needlessly overcomplicated. I'd be able to do it in a much better way now, but my inexperience really shows in that code. It's probably not Yandere Dev-levels of bad, but still.
Thankfully, Phaser's ways of handling these things are a lot more sophisticated and sensible compared to what I was trying to do, so I won't have to worry about accidentally digging my own grave this time.
That brings me to the main point of this blog post, which is the new game I'll be working on. Given that this is my first game with a new framework, and second game overall, I want to make something that has a simple gameplay loop, and is easy to make, while still being challenging enough to be fun for the player. Think something like Flappy Bird, though what I'll be working on will be a little more complex than that.
This new game will be titled "Fishing With Grantonimore". True to its name, it'll be about the one, the only, Grantonimore himself fishing off a pier at the beach. You'll control his fishing hook in the water, maneuvering around obstacles to reach an item at the bottom, before having to go back up to safely retrieve it.
You'll have to do this once for each level, and each one will have different obstacles. The levels will also probably be separated between 'worlds', with each world having a unique item you have to collect. I think I'll also make it so that each world will have a comic-like cutscene explaining why Grantonimore has to collect that item from the bottom of the ocean.
Imagine having front row seats to the Mona Lisa as it was being painted, being able to see every stroke and design choice that led to it becoming the masterpiece we know today. Here, I offer you the modern equivalent of that. I have set up a Gamejolt page which will act as a devlog for Fishing With Grantonimore's progress. At the time of writing, this page is available over in the projects page of this site.
I'll be updating the devlog separately from the regular blog posts, so no one will have to wait for monthly intervals to hear more about the game. Go check it out!
(Also, if you find it awkward that I not just directly put the link here, it's because I don't allow myself to put external links in blog posts. It's just way easier to keep those in a select few places so that I can modify them when needed, unlike blog posts which aren't supposed to be modified at all after they are published. That's why the January blog post still has a few typos, if any of y'all noticed them. Thankfully that shouldn't happen anymore since I'm using an actual word processor to pre-write my blogs instead of just writing them directly into the html.)