Java Games

In early 2020, I told myself I had to make a game from scratch using what I learned in my high-school programming classes. So I started watching this Java game development tutorial series on the YouTube channel CodeNMore.

After watching this series, I created my first couple Java games. The first was a side-scrolling platformer in which the player’s speed was uncapped and enemies can be killed by landing on them like in Super Mario Bros. You can download that one here. This game also features terrain that is generated as you play, created from a small number of blocks similar to Minecraft or Terraria. Later on I added some power-ups such as speed shoes and a jet pack, plus a backdrop with parallax scrolling to create the illusion of depth.

That parallax scrolling technique was re-used on my second game, which I simply titled SpaceShooter, where the player shoots enemy spacecraft against a scrolling background of stars. In this game I experimented with animated sprites and scaling difficulty. This game has a wider roster of enemies, some of which have stronger weapons or armor, others might have the ability to shoot at an angle. You can try SpaceShooter by downloading it from this GitHub repository.