Today I reached 2000 fans on Newgrounds!

It's super cool to think that that many people were looking forward to see whatever I do next <3

'Twas over 10 years since I hit the 1000 milestone, so I'm thrilled to get to celebrate again today!

I have to say, I'm forever grateful to Newgrounds for being here in the first place, to fulfill my first real dream of getting my games noticed, my music heard, and my creative pursuits supported.

I met some lifelong friends on Newgrounds.

I created almost all of my best work through Newgrounds.

And I feel surrounded by its talented and kind community every single month.

The sense of significance about this site was potent at the "Pico Day" events at the NG office, where we all met each other, for real, right in the middle of our awesome (and strange) careers.

Just like the others that I met, I found Newgrounds at a time where I was just looking for creative validation. And here it was! Newgrounds essentially gave me a chance to immediately prove myself and grow. And that was deeply impactful.

My games now have over 2,500,000 plays here, and a couple went viral because of Newgrounds, leading to a quarter billion people to play my games worldwide.

My music has about 350,000 listens here, and Newgrounds allowed me to get noticed in Geometry Dash, allowing me to reach a hundred million people, by my rough estimates.

And! I was able to monetize my creations here, allowing me to pay the rest of my college tuition literally thanks to Newgrounds!

Things are a bit different now compared to those crazy days haha. But a new thing I love about Newgrounds is the nostalgia.

Participating in the early internet was warm and accessible in a way I think we will never quite see again - yet because this site remains self-maintained, I still feel that the vibe never actually left here, even as new communities migrated over and technology did what it do.

It's a nice bubble, here. I guess we're all just still wonderfully homebrew haha

I'm here basically every day still, witnessing all the crazy eras Newgrounds finds itself in. And before long, I will absolutely be posting new games and music here. :D

I just wanted to quickly reminisce about the impact Newgrounds had on me. I'm hoping some of this resonates with others here, and I would love to hear some stories and thoughts in the comments if you got 'em!

Thank you Everyone <3

- Zanz

(Shoutout to @FT385 for being my 2000th fan here! I'm happy you liked the Henry Stickmin music I did :D)

Welcome to my 10th annual gamedev plan! 10 years, gosh.

This year, I'm bringing back some games, releasing an audio tool, and adding texture packs n other stuff.

Watch the video below for my plan and to see how my previous year's plan turned out.

Spoilers: it turned out great! :D

If I can get Rogue Among Robots in a finished state, it'll be my first Newgrounds game release in 9 YEARS!? holy

So what are your 2024 goals? What are you excited about this year?

Btw, you rock. :D

Zanz

I released Mine Blocks 1.31!

Introducing: Scavenger Hunt! In Scavenger Hunt, you spawn in a new world, and have 8 minutes to find 10 items before your friends do (or you can play solo)! YES, it's multiplayer in Mine Blocks!

Watch the fun announcement video! And see below for a link to the game.

This update also includes 5 new NG medals and a new leaderboard for Scavenger Hunt. Good luck!

Play the update below. It's an HTML5 game now, no longer a Flash game :)

If you're looking for people to play with, definitely drop an invite in the Mine Blocks Discord.

This was such a big moment for me. This is my first multiplayer game ever, and for the first time in 13 years, I can actually play Mine Blocks alongside my community. It's been a lot of fun!

I did work on a bunch of other stuff in 2023 - I documented all of it in my yearly recap post here. Soon I'll talk about what I'm working on this year in my 2024 Projects video - I expect that to come in late February.

Happy 2024!!

Zanz

To celebrate "Secret Box" reaching 1,000,000 views on YouTube, I've released a brand new track - "Howl With Me" (Leedle Leedle Leedle Lee) -- and an overly edited music video! Just in time for Halloween! I hope you enjoy! :D

I've been working on this since 2015, so it feels great to finally have it out there!

But now that it's out, I'm going straight back to making game updates! :)

I hope everyone has a scary good Howl-ween! hohoho 🎃

Zanz

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Before you ask, no this track will not be on Newgrounds. Sorry! My previous remix, Secret Box, was unlisted by a moderator, so I've taken the hint, haha. Transformative copyright laws are confusing, and I respect that it's best for NG that I don't upload content like this here.

Wowee I spent too long on this video! BUT IT'S DONE. I'm excited for my projects this year!

This new video presents what I've been up to with my games, music, and other projects. And it even includes an animated segment to boot. Enjoy!

Have an awesome day!

- Zanz

Woop!

After 2 years of making a small game engine in Haxe, and 2 more years porting over 44,000 lines of game code, I've finally re-released Mine Blocks as an HTML5 game!

My 10-year old game now has a second life beyond Flash. <3

Watch the update video below:

After a small break to chill for once lol, I'll post a bugfix update or two, then start porting Mine Blocks 2, posting my annual general projects video, and finally getting back to working of my unfinished projects, which is exciting. :) Lots to come, stay tuned!

Hope you're doing great! Happy Thanksgiving <3

- Zanz

G-bot let me know I'm user of the day today! :D WOO!!

What an awesome early birthday present (it's on Friday)!

I wanted to take this opportunity to update on everything - what I do, what I'm up to, and why I haven't released another game on Newgrounds in 6 years... yet.

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What's been up?

So I've been working on my ol' 2D Minecraft fan game for over 10 years now! Check out my previous post about its 10 year anniversary.

The past 2 years I've been recreating the whole game in HTML5 so it can be played in browsers again. And currently I'm at 92% done! It's literally ~42000 lines of code right now. But it's really close - I'm just working on the pause and main menus.

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Before then, I also recreated 11 of my other Flash games for HTML5, ALL of which are now available on Newgrounds again! I organized them in a Newgrounds playlist. Plus, I actually released it as a desktop bundle. If collecting achievements interests you, check out the other post about that!

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Plus, since my 6-year "haitus" here, I've actually published 2 albums worth of music. Here's the most recent one.

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So I have been quite active really, just in a different way than some may be used to!

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What's next?

First, I'm still chugging along on the Mine Blocks port. I've been releasing weekly Friday updates consistently for 41 weeks straight on the Beta site. Very soon it'll be done, Mine Blocks will be back on Newgrounds, and I'll be working on big updates again!

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Secondly, I have a bunch of new and old projects waiting for me. They need to be converted to HTML5 as well though, so that's why I haven't talked much about them lately. A good number of them will be on Newgrounds some day!

Here's an incomplete list of the first 5 that come to mind:

1. Spike Tower (website)
2. Frisbio (website)
3. Fynnland (website)
4. Lab Lights 2 (indiedb)
5. Mine Blocks 2 (indiedb)

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Once the Mine Blocks port is done, I'll be working on all of this stuff. Mine Blocks 2 first, then Spike Tower, Frisbio, Fynnland, etc. It'll be great!

I'm really excited to get back to sharing new games - it's been so long, and these projects aren't mere weekend projects anymore (to be honest, I've been burned out of jamming for while - I'd rather keep focused on the above instead)! That said, I do have a full-time job as a QA Developer, so I can only go so fast with my personal projects.

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Also, as for music - as always, I am just noodling around, but there is no releases set in stone right now. Been trying to poke away at some nearly-finished stuff, but it's one of those things that just happens when it's meant to happen (i.e. when I'm procrastinating on other projects). ^^

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Thanks!

Alright that's good enough for now! Hey I hope you like my profile and consider following along with my journey! I appreciate you reading through this update post <3

Have a fantastic day!

- Zanz

It's been 10 years since I first released Mine Blocks on June 27th, 2011!

To celebrate, I made a video documenting the history of Mine Blocks. I hope you find it interesting!

I also released an archive of older versions that you can play in your browser (using Ruffle):

https://mineblocks.com/1/classic

Many thanks to Newgrounds and its amazing community for being a major part of Mine Blocks all these years :)

I met my best friend here, connected with such talented folks at Pico Day parties, and turned a hobby into a career thanks to the resources Newgrounds provided us all for free.

Btw... coming later this year, I will have a fully ported HTML5 version of Mine Blocks on Newgrounds. And more fun stuff to come afterwards.

Until then, thanks for sticking around and for being a source of happiness to me all these years :)

- Zanz

Hi!

Over the past 4 years I've been working on a tiny game engine in Haxe, and using it to preserve my Flash games.

On Newgrounds, you can find 11 Flash games faithfully ported to HTML5 -- medals and leaderboards intact!

And now, my games are available for Windows in Zanzlanz's Collector's Bundle!

This is a collection of 11 games, with a launcher that tracks all 100 achievements:

When you get all 100 achievements, you land a spot on the winners leaderboard.

The first 10 people to do so are auto-congratulated on my Twitter. :D

I hope you like achievement hunting!

Have fun and GOOD LUCK! :D

- Zanz

It's a bit nuts that I'm updating a Flash game in mid-November, 2020, with less than 50 days left before Flash is gone.

But hey, here we are anyway!

Introducing: Mine Blocks 1.30 - The Hardcore Update!

Here's the update video:

Here are some of the fancy new features:

• Hardcore mode and spectator mode
• Updated slime block physics
• Armored zombies & hostile spawnskins
• New shift-click inventory shortcuts
• Bamboo stairs, slabs, and backdrops
• Wear mobheads and... a mustache?
• Over 57 bug fixes and tweaks! And still more!

Play Mine Blocks on Newgrounds:

Next up: HTML5!

To live past the end of Flash, Mine Blocks is currently being ported to an HTML5 game!

While it's still very very unfinished, you can check out the progress at:

mineblocks.com/beta

I hope everyone is doing really well! More soon :)

- Zanz