About the events, I think it would be cool if we got more of the game ones that @/Mistreil made like the oarfish one where you ate the staff's island reps to grow bigger or the one with Leif where you had to make your way out of the maze. I'm no programmer so I figure those game probably took lots of time to program and stuff, but I enjoyed seeing and playing them even though I wasn't very good at them
Games!
Since these are my domain, I've decided to just talk about these immediately because 1) it only really is relevant to me on the staff team, 2) I'm stuck on a train and trying not to fall asleep and miss my stop, and 3) I'm a nerd.
The tl;dr if you don't want to read this over-detailed post is:
feel absolutely free to suggest game ideas/domains/etc.! There are limitations to what I can reasonably make, but having a log of ideas when my brain is empty is always helpful -- especially since I'm never sure what might actually be interesting to people aside from me!
I think this is probably the main thing I should mention: limitations to the games that I make.
There's a few categories here, but the main ones are about the game design itself, and then the implementation.
... The last limiting factor is also just my own time and mental energy -- I do programming for my full-time job, so I usually just... don't want to think on my off-time, even if I really like game development and find it fun. 
Most of the games I've made so far were actually quick weekend endeavors! Or reskins done in the few hours between work and sleep.
Game Design Limitations
This isn't about art or anything (somewhat), but more about the types of games made, things that can be used in them, and their controls.
The main factor is: every game I make, I try to make sure that it's something most members should be able to play. Namely the rules I
try to keep in mind are:
- It has to be mobile-friendly: This means the controls are either using the keyboard-only, or have click/swipe controls, but not both (unless at separate times).
- If audio is required, there has to be a text-equivalent: For obvious accessibility reasons. I think I messed this one up once, but quickly adjusted (iirc it was available but the text version was too unclear initially -- or I had a bug and it didn't actually appear right; might've been both). This also means I'm probably never going to make a rhythm game. Sorry to my fellow rhythm gamers.
- Anything with multiple repetitive clicks/button mashing is a no-go: Single click quick-time events are OK (with a slightly generous timing window), but that's it. I don't want people breaking their hands, keyboard, or phone. Also I'm not giving myself repetitive strain injuries while playtesting. This means no cookie clicker, unless there's a built-in autoclicker from the start.
- It should be short-ish: Or doable in a single session, even if a bit difficult. This one's a bit looser, but the general idea is I don't want people to have to spend more than like 20 minutes to solve something at fastest. If I hand it to the other staff* and it takes them more than 20 minutes, I usually try to adjust. Usually. So no long epic narratives (unless I split it into multiple small parts!)
* Shout out to ~Kilza~ who I use as a good benchmark for "is this too hard" 
The summary is that games I make and any suggestions need to be fairly accessible! Games that are frustrating because of brain usage is OK (although hopefully not too frustrating), but not because of skill, technology, or accessibility issues.
On a side note, I've had a few personal concerns about visual-oriented games (like the mazes), but those seem to have largely gone OK so far? The only thing I need to keep in mind in that regard is probably colour blindness (so no puzzles where colour is the only indicator of difference). But maaaybe there's other things I'm forgetting?
If there are any accessibility issues you've faced with the games, please do let me know! I know some of them were difficult, but hopefully not too impossible.
Implementation Limitations
This one isn't really something anyone else can predict aside from me, but it does factor into what I am able to make reasonably.
The short of it is: I implement almost everything from scratch for the games.
Think of it like making a cake via cake mix and premade icing vs. from scratch with both results looking pretty much the same in the end. Most people being happy with having a cake at all, but there's still reasons to do things from scratch (like ingredients, health, because it's fun, etc.)
There's a few reasons for this:
- It keeps the file size small: This is sort of the large one - I could just write games in a game engine (e.g. Godot) and then export it for web! This is much faster, but the resulting files are usually larger than they need to be -- which I don't really like. At most, the games I make have just the images as the main overhead for data usage/loading time (and I try to keep that somewhat reasonable too -- if I do make games that have significantly larger images, I'll probably note what the total size is.)
- It gives me more control: All the problems that appear are things within my control (for the most part), and things that I can probably fix much faster than trying to figure out why a game engine handles something a certain way. Also more control over the size of files, and the control scheme of the game (and thus mobile-compatibility.)
- I find the technical part fun: I'm a nerd, nothing else to say here. I find it fun to make things from scratch.
There's a lot of drawbacks to this: namely that it takes way longer for me to make the entire engine from scratch compared to doing it in an existing game engine (e.g. moving a character around and animating it takes like, 2 minutes to do in Godot -- but instead I have to spend like 6 hours making the logic for the map, sprite reading, movement, animating, etc. which may also be more bug-prone.)
(I don't actually know if anyone cares or if the difference would even be notable, but I care and I'm the one making the games. So in exchange, you get fewer games because I'm stubborn about this.)
With that said, there's actually very few limitations in terms of programming ability -- I'm fairly good at figuring out how to implement things (and I'm building on existing projects over time -- like text in the maze games). There's just a higher initial timesink to build the base from scratch.
Game Ideas
I would love a fishing game. 0.00000001% chance of getting a golden ray or something webfishing
Funny you mention that! There are a few ideas I've had floating in my head that I might explore in the future, such as:
- RNG Games: ... like fishing or balloon shooting! Various locations, a simple wait + click quick-time event, and then you get a random fish or something. In terms of event currency, it's probably redemption codes after getting X rolls (and people can share their results or something for funsies.)
- Visual Novel-like Games: ... like dating sims but not romancey except in a maybe comedy sort of way. Just some reading, maybe results based on what you pick. But I'm not actually that confident in my ability to write that much, sooo... big maybe here.
- Point-and-click Puzzle: ... probably an escape room sort of game, since I like those. But this one's a bit more time consuming for me to implement compared to others, including art asset creation.
- General game reskins: ... like what I did with Snake (Oarfish)! Maybe 2048 or minesweeper or something, because... I just like those games.
I'd love to know what sorts of games you'd be interested in! Part of me making these is because I find it fun to do, but also because I like seeing people have fun!
I grew up playing like, neopets and its minigames, so... this is me trying to carry on that spirit in a way, I guess.
Aaaand that's about it! Thanks for reading! I may edit this in the future if there's more things I forgot to mention.
... this is also why you probably shouldn't ask me about my fields of interest. this was probably way more information than is actually relevant and yet required 0 braincells for me to write.
but also it got me through my train ride. and i almost missed my stop because i was locked in on rambling. oops.
In the end I think I still ended up winning for two events somehow, and I did feel a little guilty about it.
Maybe they can still get the extra currency if that's part of it, but perhaps they could just get an honourable mention instead? Or maybe, staff could state that there will be X amount of winners/staff favourites per event (like how LNY 2024 and V-Day 2025 had four winners per event) ahead of time, or even gauge that number after the event closes if it's hard to give an exact number earlier on. Do the internal voting for X amount, but if there's any repeat winners across all the events, choose additional winners for those categories to make up for the "loss"? After all, it's just virtual currency and a jpeg at the end of the day, so there shouldn't be harm in going over the cap that was originally set. Hopefully that makes sense, though I don't mind elaborating with an example if needed.
It's fun reading silly prompts and it's even better that you don't need art skills for it!! Bring back dress-up events as well, I think it's really fun just going ham with picking a nice little outfit and stuff. Not every event has to have a high-effort output like art to be considered fun, and as a small community I think we can definitely benefit more with "lesser effort" contests c:
