Author: Brad

You probably know me for my Flash game series, The Fancy Pants Adventure.

Bittersweet

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Bittersweet

I don’t think I need to tell anyone that 2020’s been a crazy year for everyone. The ‘death of Flash’ was one of the bizarrities of last year that were more personal to me than most. It’s difficult to see an entire workflow be deleted from the internet that I almost entirely credit as my entry point into game development, my outlet for creativity, the ‘tool of my trade’, so to speak. The freedom, the ease of sharing work, the personal nature of most Flash games, I don’t think there will ever be anything similar to Flash again.

But, with Flash’s death, there’s been more attention on Flash, Flash developers, and Flash games than there has been in quite awhile, it’s, well, bittersweet. I’ve been taking some time off of development and trying to not take the whole ordeal too personally, but I’ve been talking about Flash, games, gaming, and all that quite a bit lately, so I won’t go on too long here about it, but I think I owe the brave souls who listened to me ramble for far too long a link below if you’d like to hear more from me about it.

The end of Flash: What legacy will it leave behind? – Amelia Hansford

Flash Game History – Jonas Richner

It’s from awhile ago, but I haven’t made a post in even longer, so please check out Flash Game History if you haven’t already. I shouldn’t be surprised to see so much love and admiration given to Flash developers, but it still stuns me to think that have any sort of place among them.

Flash Developer on the Dead of Flash – Me

I made this video that long ago?? Should be no surprise that I forgot to link it on the site anyway. I don’t think my thoughts have changed all that much, though I do need to make an updated video now that Flash is finally actually completely dead.

So what’s the future look like for Borne Games, then? I’ve been taking a bit of a break from the stress of trying to get the next game funded / published, but there’s still some plans creeping forward in the background, so we’ll just have to see how 2021 plays out.

Don’t worry, though! Flash may die, but Fancy Pants will live on! I’ve been pretty terrible about using the site for any sort of collection of information, so I’ll give that list it’s own post soon.

Comments Bittersweet

FPA: World 4 now online!

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I haven’t released anything online in forever, and now seems like a pretty good time to do that, with everyone stuck inside…

So! I’m finally releasing Super Fancy Pants online as World 4, in pieces (it’s a pretty big game, after all), part 1 will be the Basement Spire, part 2 (not to be confused with SFPA ch.2!) Squiggleville Plains, etc.

Enjoy some good ol’ fashion Fancy Pants and stay safe (and fancy)!

Part 1:

Comments FPA: World 4 now online!

The Fancy Pants Adventures: World 1 Remaster

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In case anyone hasn’t seen it, the World 1 Remaster is live for PC on itch.io, and on iOS and Android!

The Fancy Pants Adventures: World 1 Remaster on itch.io

And free (ad supported) on mobile!

The Fancy Pants Adventures: World 1 Remaster on iOS

The Fancy Pants Adventures: World 1 Remaster on Android

Not convinced, check the trailer!

Already got the game? Here’s the official 100% Walkthrough / Dev Commentary:

Stay fancy my friends.

Comments The Fancy Pants Adventures: World 1 Remaster

FPA World 2 Christmas Edition

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Merry Christmas, internet!

Site’s been even more dead than usual, unfortunately. But on the plus side, the FPA Discord server has more activity than the site ever did, so make sure to come say hi!

Discord

Patrons get an exclusive channel where I post as much behind the scenes content as I can, give patrons early builds, and if you’d like to make suggestions for the future of FPA, that’s the best place to do it.

Borne Games Patreon

Patrons are going to get access to the World 2 Remaster as I make it, so you’ll get a closer view of development than ever before.

Standalone builds of classic FPA games are available to patrons, but for Christmas, I’m making a standalone build of World 2 Christmas Edition available to everyone!

Click for a full size wallpaper version. Sheesh, that image is over a decade old!

Download for Mac

Download for PC

Backup links in case you get an error:

Download for Mac

Download for PC

(my Mac bros: right click the app and hit open, that’ll let you play the unsigned app)

Comments FPA World 2 Christmas Edition

Fancy Pants Design: Combat

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Let’s talk about some game design!

Fun fact, the last time I stuck my face in front of the camera was 7 years ago 😐

Apologies for being woefully out of practice at actually looking at a camera. What do you guys want to see next? Interested in seeing how everyone responds to videos about games that are already out instead of still being worked on…

Don’t worry, we’ll be seeing some new content too 😀

Comments Fancy Pants Design: Combat

Anti-Anti-Skeuomorphism video rant

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During the development of Super Fancy Pants, I just never had enough time to work on development videos, now that things are starting to settle down (wrapping up the Android build, woo!), I’d like to start up with some post-dev videos, especially since I’m still updating and adding things to the game (join the beta to get the latest builds!).

Figured I’d start off with the biggest design challenge for the mobile version: touch screen controls. It’s difficult to figure out the balance between keeping the controls out of the way, and giving players subconscious cues for button press-ability. I think I followed the anti-skeuomorphism trend a bit too far with the first release, so here’s a look at next update’s revised buttons.

I feel out of practice and the video might be terrible, but that’s just making me want to record another one soon, so there’s something (if I had a dollar for every time I said I wanted to post more videos…).

Anyways, anything you guys want to see? Tutorial style videos for the combat, movement, or guides for the more difficult challenges would be the obvious ones, let me know!

Comments Anti-Anti-Skeuomorphism video rant

Super Fancy Pants Update #1

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First off, WE DID IT! After 3 years of development, Super Fancy Pants Adventure has launched on Steam!

Let’s Plays and reviews have so far been overwhelmingly positive. Hearing about how nostalgic players have for the series has gotten me choked up at points, and the enjoyment I’ve seen players get from the game is really what making games is all about for me.

A huge thank you to the No Good Terrible Game Breakers that have been helping track down bugs, and of course my family for dealing with my crazy addiction of making and releasing games.

Anyway, what’s in the update??

Game Freezing / white screen

Some older GPUs were not triggering the fallback rendering style in the game and just showing a white screen. I’m manually checking compatibility now, so this issue should be resolved.

Performance Improvements

Some changes slipped through when updating the framework, and the game ended up rendering everything twice, the new update should see a massive performance increase, especially on GPU limited systems.

All The Bug Fixes

So many fixes, guys. So many.

The Future

Everyone wants it, so it looks like local multiplayer is going to be the first major content update for SFPA. It’ll take some time to get the main levels working properly with it (lots of camera problems to solve), but I have a handful of test levels created during development that should work without much modification, so I’ll try to get something to test out multiplayer up sooner rather than later.

Also have some new multiplayer modes in mind that I think will be really fun 😀 I haven’t forgotten about multiplayer, just wanted to get the core mechanics of the game completed and polished first!

If there’s something you want to see in future updates, let me know!

And all updates are planned to be free, so no, World 5 will not be added to SFPA 😛

Comments Super Fancy Pants Update #1

Waiting…

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Oh hey, new trailer up on Steam, release date should be announced tomorrow!

Check it out

Spot the new Fountain Pen Abilites!

—-

Still fixing up bugs here and there, but at this point there’s mostly waiting until the actual release. When is that, eh? Should be a date and new tailer dropping soon 😉

I’m going to try to make some posts to help keep my sanity before launch (yeah I know I always say that, right?).

In the meantime, I found this trip down memory lane, might be a good refresher before SFPA hits. I’m seriously honored that someone thought my games are worth such a detailed look (no pressure for SFPA or anything, lawlz!), so please help me throw some views and thumbs up his way!

Comments Waiting…

Art in Motion

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The gears are grinding behind the scenes, guys, I promise! To help with the wait, here’s a few new clips!

view larger

More level art from Chris Gianelloni. Some levels are more cartoony, while others are more abstracted and… fragmented. I wonder why that is…

view larger

And earlier section, drawn by Andy Debus, focused on the good ol’ momentum-based gameplay you know and love. Run down slopes to gain speed, jump off ramps and profit, you know the drill!

view larger

Wasn’t someone pointing out unfinished slide pole animations earlier? This one’s for you.

view larger

Despite completely overhauling combat for World 4, I went back and adjusted the stomp a few times to get just the right springiness. Because you guys deserve only the best stomping there is!

Probably owe everyone a follow-up Let’s Play video with final art, hmm…

Comments Art in Motion

Android!

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Hey guys remember when I super pranked everyone on April Fools with an image of World 3 on Android?

Lucky for you guys I’m actually far too lazy to mock up an Android download screen and Over the Top was working on one all along!

So, DOUBLE SUPER PRANK COMBO LAWLZ

World 3 Google Play

And it’s free! (ad supported), so download away!

And please, give us a fair rating, it’s a fresh launch so we need your help!

Comments Android!

Annnd We’re Back

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We’ve been single-mindedly hammering away at the last stages of development for awhile now, just want to assure everyone that the site going down didn’t mean development was stalled. Lots of boring behind the scenes paperwork type stuff going on at the moment (more on that hopefully soon), but we’re also sprinting on the rest of the artwork, some new sounds to up the production quality, tweaking challenge difficulty, just lots of little things that I hope I can show off in some videos soon!

In the meantime, I think I owe everyone some new screens for the temporary disappearance there.

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IMG_0208

IMG_0209

IMG_0210

IMG_0211

IMG_0217

IMG_0219

Arrrr!

And some challenges:

IMG_0226

IMG_0227

Comments Annnd We’re Back

World 4, Let’s Play!

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Oh man has it been awhile. I absolutely love keeping everyone a behind the scenes view while I’m working on a game, but World 4 is just a huge game. Since new info has been pretty scarce lately, I wanted to give you guys a nice big unfiltered view of World 4, so I enlisted my 4-year-old and Fancy Pants testing enthusiast Seth to run though a few of the earlier levels.

We run and stomp and attack through 3 full levels, and hey, if this was World 1, that would be the entire game already! Like I said, World 4 is going to be HUGE, so I hope that at least makes up for the lack of development updates in the end. Let me know if you enjoy this type of video, it’s still quicker than planning something specific (I do way too many re-takes), and I’ve worked the bugs out of the recording processes.

Do you even Fancy Pants??
Click for some World 4!

I think it was getting passed Seth’s bedtime near the end there, he was going nuts O.O

Comments World 4, Let’s Play!

Some Imageses

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Since Fairly’s taken over the social media site places, new images and info tend to show up on those quicker than on the site, since I’ve been pretty much animating all day. Here’s some catchup, if you haven’t seen them!

Playing around with some new styles for World 4, what do you think?

grass

porch

Comments Some Imageses