How Ultimate began

Actually, this isn't the first time that I've tried to make a Syobon Action game. Syobon Action Ultimate is my forth. Always reworking from scratch and learning from the past has made this project what it is now.

The first game

The first game was created around 2020. November, in GameMaker Studio 2.
Here's how it looked:

That game had lots of problems. Mainly because of my lack of skill. The poor controls made this game nearly unplayable. I just couldn't put my ideas into reality bacause of my lack of experience with the engine.

Syobon Action 5

One year later (after some other projects), using the first game as a foundation, I created this game. By that point, I had a "good" understanding of Gamemaker and was attempting to fix my previous mistakes and create a good-looking game. It was also shared with other people through YouTube and itch.io to boost my motivation. I used the nickname "Bored Cloud" to share these.

Back when I worked on this project, there wasn't a Syobon Action 5, so this name was valid, and coming up with good names wasn't my strength, to be honest.

The problem with this game was that I was being a bit too ambitious and burned out really fast. The code was quite poor looking back at it (my standards are much higher now) and didn't really fix the movement code.

You can try out this game yourself, it's the latest version and was never shared "publicly" through itch.io or youtube: Download link

After buring out I decided to delete the youtube and itch.io page. Maybe that was a bad idea? Whater now.

Syobon Action Ultimate (Pre-Editor Version)

I started Ultimate in 2022. June. 17. 

This game made a big jump compared to the previous versions; I "nailed" down the movement (Not the original's, but a kind of unique thing), and there were no major bugs or graphical errors (To my knowledge lol). I also reimplemented almost half of the original Syobon Action content (Two levels fully done!)

After like 3 months of working on the project, development became stagnant; I just couldn't put myself to work no matter what. Something wasn't right there.

The last version was v0.3.5 which added music and sound effects and fixed bugs. Not sure if I even have a build of that, maybe someone has.

Here you can try out the first ever builds of Ultimate (only about 20 people downloaded it when it was up in the itch.io page so they are not well known): Download link

The rewrite

It took six months to finally find the motivation. A complete rewrite for the fourth time. 

It introduces a key element: shareable level packs outside the game itself, turning Ultimate into a sort of game engine.