I met Michael Remillard on line. He and I were making resin toys of our characters. We traded a few of our resin toys through the post and have amused one another for a few years now.
I thought his characters were perfect for an arcade style game. I asked if I could use his paintings to make a game, and he said, “Yes!” So we are making a game called Alien Monster Blast, and it’s been a ton of fun bringing these images to life.
I love seeing his characters jump out of the painting and move about. I often look at art and imagine it animating. I want the static images to complete their action. When I see Michael’s art, I want to let the monsters loose and see what unpredictable things will happen.
The game opens to a menu of heads you can unlock by collecting chickens. The price of each head is under the head. You must play the Egg Man until you collect enough chickens to unlock the other heads. The other heads have different super powers that add to game play.
To play, click play. The interface is simple. Tap to make the character drop. You bounce your head through the platform levels avoiding enemies.
Collect chicken and cans of lard. If you collect 9 cans of lard in one session without dying, you will enter the most awesome Lard Wars level and battle giant kaiju cats for a whole lotta chicken. Once you crash and die, your lard count returns to zero and you return to the head menu with all the chickens you gathered.
Hot dogs make you invincible. When you eat a hot dog, you turn into an indestructible hamburger. You can smash anything. It feels really good too.
Society the cat tosses some very useful cat balls. When hit, cat balls kill all enemies in sight, but each cat ball you use cost 25 chickens. That’s a lot of chickens! Use cat balls sparingly or you could lose all your chickens.
Avoid everything else because it’s EVIL! If you touch it, it will kill you. Here’s a tip, if it shoots a pink laser beam at you, you must try to let the laser beam touch you. The laser beam powers you up and turns you into an indestructible fish bowl for 3 seconds, and you can beat the beast by smashing it to smithereens.
While you are playing, notice the can of lard in the top right corner. To its right you see a count of how many lard you have collected during your session. If you click the lard can it will bring you to the head menu if you want to unlock or switch to a different head to play.
At the bottom of the heads menu you will see Little Andy flipping out. Once you have enough chickens you can unlock the Bonus Level. Just click Little Andy to get there.
The goal is to unlock all 20+ heads and Little Andy’s bonus level.
So I wanted to make a weird indie game from the strange stuff here at my house. First up is Andy, a duct tape voodoo doll my daughter made when she was just a wee one. Now a teen, I told her I was using Andy in my game, and she cringed. So far, so good.
There is Cosmo my dog, and Society my cat. There is a scary stick I found on the ground last summer. I thought it looked like a kaiju monster, so I glued googly eyes on his face and named him Xerxes. Now he’s flying around causing all kinds of mayhem in this game! There’s a floating rubber glove guy, a tons of ants, and rubber chickens are the currency you collect to unlock everything.
You start out as a fragile egg, and as you collect rubber chickens, you can trade them in for other fancy new heads that have all new super powers and moves.
Once you collect enough rubber chickens you can unlock the Bonus Level where the shrimp are running like mad! With 20+ different heads to unlock and play, and a bonus level to unlock, this insane game will have your friends wondering what the hell you’re doing. If they ask, just tell ’em you’re on a LARD QUEST!
Kay Stephens was kind enough to photograph and interview Malaya and I now that we’re conducting book readings of Snotgrass. Check out the Pen Bay Pilot’s article! Snotgrass is available as a paperback book on Amazon for only $6.99 – buy several copies and hand them out to all your weirdo friends! Yeah!
My reading of Snotgrass at the Camden Library was completely taken over by the Time Brats! What a hoot it was to make so much noise inside a library. We all took turns telling strange tales of mythical Maine beasts. The night turned into all of us sharing stories told to us by our grandparents and elders. I heard about several old Maine story tellers: Buckwheat Shed and Frisco Ireland, strange tall tales of bear hunting at the Houlton dump, and how to catch Bigfoot using peanut butter. We made up a new local monster and called it the Camden Crawler. Here the kids display the handmade Swamp Boggers I brought along. Thanks one and all for coming out on a rainy Maine evening!
I will be at the Camden Library reading excerpts from my book Snotgrass on Tuesday, June 16th from 7 – 8 PM. Paperback books will be on sale at $6.99 each. If you want, I’ll draw critters and sign ’em for you. Hope to see you there!
Snotgrass a book by J.E.Moores signed with a handmade Swamp Bogger resin toy. Limited time offer. Each Swamp Bogger is unique and shipped at random. Click below for ordering info.
So I’ve been typing my guts out this long harsh winter of 2015. My family and I returned to Maine after living in California for so many years. Been here almost two years now, and one of the reasons I moved back home was to get in touch with a story I’ve wanted to tell my whole life.
It’s my unauthorized autobiography that has been sitting there on a shelf in my mind all this time. No matter what has happened to me over the years I’ve put it into context in this manner: does this make it to the book or not?
I have found my nonexistent book got me through the toughest of times, because I could say to myself, at least it will make a great chapter in that book I’ll write some day. To get me there I have drawn comics, made toys, and used these items to workshop my ideas.
Whether playing with plush Swamp Boggers on the floor with my wee one, or making resin toys of the silly Yupapotamus, it was all a path to the story I want to tell titled, Snotgrass. This epic Maine adventure is over 50 years in the making. I can’t wait until I write it.
