Gdevelop 

Gdevelop is a free game-making app.

 Game Developers Marketplace 

There is no time like the present, and now it’s also a great time for being expressive. To express our thoughts, emotion, fun, anxiety, fear, love, or anything, we have several types of media. The game is one of them. And among us who became game designers or developers to express ourselves, itch.io is for them. Itch.io is a marketplace. It is a platform for publishing your game for free and reach to millions of gamers. You can even sell your game and game-related content like game assets or any other digital content. You can create your game page, design it your way, and use your own CSS; you can keep your game private also.

Itch.io has different options for distributing your content. Each creator has access to analytics on their project to find out how a user finds out about their content and how they get engaged, download or play. From their dashboard, they can access all the useful data about their links and uploads which create the most attention.

Itch.io believes every creator is unique. 

 Terracotta 

The definition of a game requires so many things to make a game. But no definition is complete. And terracotta is a game where the definition of game is not focused. It's focused on the expression of the mental state of the creator. With a simple presentation, the artist tried to represent an understanding of life lessons that can lead us to move on in life. This game encourages us to start to live a life with real experience and acceptance in life.

In the gameplay, you will find yourself in places near home, a small garden, an dolna, and the parking. And on every place you face the on-screen thoughts, this treatment makes me feel that all those quotations need to be understood as a life lesson otherwise we can't come back to our home. After revealing all those quotes we achieve the strength to come back to our strong state of life.

And for tools, it's not necessary to go for any premium software now, every free tool is much more powerful than ever. We have plenty of free and paid assets also available. This game also makes us feel that any person can express their emotional understanding of life with available tools now, in fact now game development has sixty years of experience. Thank you, Olivia Haines, for designing this beautiful short, and sweet game. I liked it so much, that I Couldn't help myself but write this blog.

 Play Terracotta 

You can play this game on Itch.io. Itch.io is a marketplace for games and game-related content mainly. While exploring the site I found this game and really enjoyed it a lot. And there are so many talented game developers and designers gathering here to build or play games. I have created a page on this site also, to sell my game and the game assets i am working on. You can check my page also. 

 "Spacewar" 

Its name is "Spacewar", considered to be the first video game, conceived by Stephen Russell. The genre was space combat, first released in 1962, almost 60 years ago. The stories of the father of "space opera" Edward Elmer inspired the game. He used to publish as E. E. Smith, Ph.D. and later as E. E. "Doc" Smith.

Quotes from  the Creator 

If I hadn't done it, someone would've done something equally exciting, if not better, in the next six months. I just happened to get there first.

                                                                                                                                - Steve Russell.

Stephen Russell programmed the game in 1962. Steven Russell is an American computer scientist. His nickname is "Slug".  J. Martin Graetz, Peter Samson, Alan Kotok, Wayne Witanen, and Dan Edwards from MIT helped him to build it. They build the game on a mini-computer named PDP-1. This minicomputer was designed by a company named "Digital Equipment Corporation". They donated the computer to MIT and expected to build something to show its capabilities.

 Inspiration  of Spacewar

Russell was a fan of E. E. "Doc" Smith's stories. Before the PDP-1 minicomputer arrived in the lab, he has finished reading the Lensman series by E. E. "Doc" Smith. These stories inspired him to go for a space war genre type of game. In the lensman series, heroes' spaceships were encountering each other and the writer described vividly how they maneuvers the ships across the galaxy and invent their way out from their obstacles. Skylark novels from the same writer and some Japanese movies also inspired Russell’s team.

 Development 

Two hundred man-hours were invested to build Spacewar. And the computer they used was the first computer that allows multiple users to share the computer simultaneously. This computer has a cathode-ray tube-type display and a keyboard input. It was an interactive mini-computer by "Digital Equipment Corporation". Its name was PDP-1. PDP stands for programmed data processor. This computer was specially designed to focus on user interaction. And the company was first acquired by Compaq and later merged with Hewlett-Packard (HP) in May 2002.

 Gameplay 

Spacewar has two monochrome spaceships. One ship is called "the needle" and the other is "the wedge".

The game is happening in the background of a star field and in the center of the screen there is a gravity well of a star. That gravity is pulling both the ship continuously. Each ship was controlled by a player. They attempt to shoot each another. Ships can through torpedoes. Their fuel capacity is limited. And the most interesting thing is that the ship keeps moving even when the players don’t operate. The ships can fire one torpedo at a time. They can rotate the ship's direction but they can not stop the direction of their motion. 

The winning condition is to destroy the other player’s ship and not get sunk in the pulling star by its gravitational force.

 Influences of Spacewar 

Spacewar influenced so many games in video game history. After creating Spacewar, at some point, Russell transferred to Stanford University and meet Nolan Bushnell. Nolan Bushnell was an engineering student. Bushnell got inspired by Spacewar and game programming and started writing coin-operated games. And start Atari Computers.

Many modern programming languages recreated Spacewar for PDP-1 emulators. Later many commercial games got directly inspired by Spacewar.

And Spacewar became one of the most important video games of all time.

 Play Spacewar 

You can play several Html versions of Spacewar here.

If you want to play Spacewar on a digital device, check this.

F.A.Q

Was Spacewar the first video game?

Spacewar was designed on a computer called PDP-1in 1962. This computer has a cathode-ray tube-type display and a keyboard input. It was an interactive mini-computer by "Digital Equipment Corporation". Its name was PDP-1. PDP stands for programmed data processor. This computer was specially designed to focus on user interaction.

What was the very first video game?

Tennis for two is thought to be the first video game. Two people played the electronic tennis game with separate controllers that connected to an analog computer and used an oscilloscope for a screen. 

When Spacewar was invented?

Spacewar is a space combat game, first released in 1962. The stories of the father of "space opera" Edward Elmer inspired the game. He used to publish as E. E. Smith, Ph.D. and later as E. E. "Doc" Smith.

Who programmed the Spacewar game in 1962?

Steve Russell and his MIT colleagues programmed the Spacewar game in 1962.