Forem: Shaquille Niekerk

Comms Under Fire - Update 01

Shaquille Niekerk — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:27:50 +0000

This is a major update that I've done on my game.
From a shift in the overall purpose of the game, to the mechanics, down to how things look. Below I will go over everything that I've done and try and explain why I've done it.

Purpose

Originally I wanted to create a web demo of a game I've wanted to create for PC, a game where you're in the drivers seat of a propaganda machine, and the middle man between soldiers on the ground and the powers that decide the fate of the nation. Oh, and this takes place during a war...
Once I created the demo I realised that the tools I had to create this proved to be more difficult, so I stripped back on some functionalities and in doing so I realised I was working toward a different idea. a classic competitive typing game.
This will have leader boards, with those who have the highest WPM sitting at the top, challenge modes where you can challenge other users to see who types the fastest, and a story mode, if you just want to improve in a relatively stress free mode, while getting the gist of what the story would be in this world.

Mechanics

The mechanics have not changed that much, the major change is that I am trying to remove any mouse input. Having the main element of the game be controlled solely by keyboard inputs.

Looks

Originally I had two monitors on screen. One that displayed the text you needed to type, and the other displaying the text that you were typing.
This approach brought a few issues. Firstly people kept getting lost where they were in the text because they had to move their eyes between two monitors. The fix for this was to show a cursor of where you were as you typed, but this just made people only focus on that one monitor, making the two monitor approach seem redundant... Now I think I will still keep the two monitor approach for the main game I plan on creating, but for now one monitor seems to do the job just fine.

Update 01

So here we are with the first update.
A whole new game mode, from a story driven typing game to a ranked typing game. A whole new look, from a two monitor setup to a single monitor setup that can be controlled entirely with the keyboard.

For Update 01 I've only included the story mode. But rest assured that I am working on many updates to get this thing having all game modes I've mentioned, and any new ones that come to mind as I go.

Thank you for reading,
And please check out the game here.
And leave a comment on what you think, or let me know if you have any issues

How One Game Made Me a Gamer Again

Shaquille Niekerk — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 14:56:04 +0000

Lately, games have started to feel less like an escape and more like a chore.

Every new release seems to come with a trade-off. Battle passes, cosmetic shops, seasonal content, daily logins. The message feels clear: the more money you spend and the more time you sink, the more fun you’re allowed to have. Microtransactions are “optional,” of course. Just like breathing.

I started wondering if the problem was me.

Maybe I’ve just lost the patience to really get into games. Maybe adulthood hollowed out that part of my brain. I’d watch reviews where someone confidently stamped an “8/10” on a game, boot it up myself, and immediately feel like I’d played it already. Same mechanics, different coat of paint. Or worse, a game that felt unfinished unless I paid to fill in the gaps.

Then, almost by accident, I played Dispatch.

For those who don’t know it, you’re in charge of a superhero group, managing crises and sending heroes out to fight crime. No endless progression systems. No dangling carrots. Just a focused idea, executed well.

I finished it in one sitting. And immediately wanted to replay it to see the other outcomes.

That hasn’t happened to me in years. I still haven’t finished The Sims 2, and I started that around 2007.

That experience made me pause. Maybe I wasn’t burnt out on games. Maybe I was just burnt out on the kinds of games I’d been choosing.

So I tested that idea.

Instead of relying on reviews and scores, I went back to how I picked what game I play back in the day, so I started watching trailers and forming my own opinion about whether a game actually looked fun to me. Not “content-rich” not “worth the grind” just fun.

That’s how I landed on High on Life.

On my first play, I went for four uninterrupted hours.

That might not sound impressive, but for me, that’s huge. Four hours without checking the time. Four hours without feeling guilty. Four hours without that nagging sense that I should be doing something more “productive.”

And when I stopped playing, I didn’t feel like I’d wasted my time.

So now I’m left with a burning question.

Is it just me, or have a lot of modern games become either souls like pits that require time and dedication just to master one move, or carefully engineered money machines designed to drip-feed dopamine? Games that don’t respect your time unless you give them your wallet too?

So great games are still out there, and I’ve just been looking in all the wrong places.

What game(s) have you been playing lately that was just an absolute blast?

My First game - Comms Under Fire

Shaquille Niekerk — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 14:57:28 +0000

A game set in an alternate world where two nations are locked in a brutal war. You’ve been assigned to man the comms, where you’ll find yourself drafting Propaganda to keep your fellow citizens calm, hacking into enemy communication channels to leak sensitive state secrets, and planting destabilizing messages to push the enemy’s civilians into panic.

All of this while staying alive during active invasions, relaying time-sensitive comms from the frontline to HQ, and doing whatever it takes to help win this war.

The Comms Under Fire mini-demo has just gone live, and you can play-test it right now. It’s the tiniest snippet of the full idea — a small taste of what the final game will become. I’ll be releasing the full version on Steam once I’ve got the proper tools to build it out.

For now, enjoy the free online mini-demo. Updates will be rolling in, so keep an eye out!