About
Whole Bean Interactive is just me, John Hiner III, in my capacity as an independent game developer. I'm a husband, father, and programmer in my thirties who believes in computer games as art, but not as Art. I trust I make myself obscure.
Here you'll find various computer game related projects of mine, including my current project, my "enhanced" version of the classic Chase, my point-and-click text adventure engine, and my blog, where you might find computer game related musings from time to time.
If you have any questions or comments, or you'd just like to chat about computer games, you can reach me at ludenscogitet@protonmail.com or drop me a line on Twitter/X @JohnVsPop.
Current Project
My current project is a small scale Metroidvania, working title Phasarium, in which the player must reorient sections of the game world to progress.
The central theme gameplay-wise is the interplay and contrast among different scales of awareness, from what is directly visible to the player all the way to the mental map the player makes of the larger environment.
At the moment I'm making a first pass on level design. Pushing ahead designing the critical path of power ups necessary to complete the game. The plan is to keep building rooms until the game is playable end to end. Then, I'll begin refining and reworking, tweaking room design, room layout, and gameplay until things come together.
Art assets made by ansimuz and SnowHex and modified by me. I'm thinking I might seek some more outside help for art at a later stage to round things out and add some polish.
Robots Revenge
I wrote the original version of this game (called simply "Robots!") specifically for Android phones in Java using the libGDX framework.
I then ported it to Windows, Linux, and web browsers in order to become more familiar with the Godot engine.
This game is an attempt to fix what I thought was a deficiency in the design of games like Robots. It was specifically designed to have an old school, simple, arcade feel, and I'm pretty satisfied with it. I also know at least 3 kids who have enjoyed it. (For kids, I recommend the 99 lives cheat. On the main menu, click on the title 5 times).
FATE
The Fantastic Adventure Text Engine (FATE for short) is a browser based point-and-click text adventure system.
What that means is that, like Zork and other classic text adventures, you play a FATE game by issuing written commands and seeing how the game reacts. However, you don't construct these commands by typing them, but by clicking on words on the screen. Each word used to describe something, record a command, or respond to a command can be clicked on and used as a building block for the next command.
FATE is a system, not a single game. It is designed to be a platform for anyone with knowledge of JavaScript to write and share adventures of their own. I do write adventures for it myself, however. :)