seallion vs manbusiness // write-up

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 | last modified Sun, 16 Nov 2025

This is a tiny game that I made when learning Java in a year 12 computer science class. It was made with greenfoot, an educational game-engine for teaching people how to program (so no export T-T). It was a very simple game with a disproportionately large personality - I had way too much fun making it. Ok ok - lets get down to business…

SealLion is a hand-warmer merchant in the cold arctic ocean. Despite his lack of competition, he is an honest… seal? Regardless, he’s been supplying hand warmers to the local residents for fair prices since at least the 2000s or something. There’s a problem though: a new competitor is in town. The infamous ManBusiness is here to undercut SealLion, establish a monopoly, and eventually extort the local populus in his insatiable fiscal conquest. How else are they supposed to settle this if not by firing energy balls at each other in the deep dark ocean?

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SealLion moves around the screen with WASD and incredibly slippery movement, having difficulty decelerating probably because he’s underwater. (I just wanted an excuse to make a more complicated movement system and use acceleration)

ManBusiness takes the initiative to fire homing energy balls at SealLion in vollies of 3. SealLion, however, uses the power of local businesses when pressing SPACE to form a reflective shield around himself. If timed well the projectile will reflect off of SealLion and home towards ManBusiness.

SealLion starts with 3 handwarmers, and loses one each time he is hit with an energy ball. He can pick up loose hand warmers which spawn randomly to recover up to a maximum of 3 during the fight.

SealLion needs to deflect 10 projectiles back to ManBusiness to win the game. Unfortunately, there is no win or lose state, the game just freezes when either party runs out of hand warmers.

Whelp. Thanks for listening to my TED talk.