Archive for the 'Games' Category

Beastie Burgers and the Beastie Builder

Published on November 2, 2009 in Games and News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Blimey, It’s been ages since i’ve posted here. I got a load of topics I’ve been meaning to write about, and I’ve managed to get all of none of those actually started.
What I have been doing though is making sure we finally got our latest productions launched.

Beastie Burgers

Beastie Burgers

First up, we have Beastie Burgers, a time management / cooking frenzy style game we’ve been working on in our spare time for the past year and a bit (I can’t believe it’s taken that long). It’s been a lot of fun to build, and roughly marks out the style and direction of the sorts of games and apps we’ll be producing in the future. I’ll have a Hamster & cheese burger with Jalapenos and slime when you’re ready, thanks!

Secondly, we have the social media genius that is, the Beastie Builder, a Facebook app that we built alongside Beastie Burgers. The best way to describe it would be a monster themed dress-up style app. Except, you don’t really dress the monsters so much as assemble them. You can then save them to your photo stream or post them to your news feed (if you feel like it). Just a bit of fun to waste away the hours at work (and help promote Beastie Burgers of course).

I’m planning to write up a bit about the development of these in the future, although quite when I’m not sure yet. Watch this space!

The Space Game

Published on February 20, 2009 in Games and Reviews. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

In my book, a good flash game is one that I play more than once. If after I’ve finished playing around with it and then later that day I start thinking, “Oooh, I want to start playing that game again”, then it’s a winner. If I happen to find myself playing this game for a good hour or two each time, then it’s a very good game.

“The Space Game” from The Casual Collective is such a game. I’ve nearly worked my way through the main missions, and as I write this I’m thinking that I’ll have another go for 30 mins or so. It’s Friday after all!

The game is descibed as “a single player strategy game that features 18 missions and modes of play. You build structures to create and store energy, you mine asteroids for their minerals, and use both to expand and defend your operation, all while under attack”.

It actually reminds me of Homeworld a bit, which I used to play for hours on the PC when I was at university. I guess you could argue that it’s actually a bit like Desktop Tower Defence, but in Space and with some mining. What would be great is if it had an attacking element to it or even better, multi-player!

I must confess I had been a bit envious of The Casual Collective, thinking that perhaps they’d been a bit too lucky with their success with Desktop Tower Defence, and especially as it allowed them to pursue Flash game development full time. With the release of this game however, I think they are proving their worth as game developers and judging by the game ratings they are getting on sites like Kongregate, I am not the only one. Hats off to you David & Paul.

Overall I’d rate this game as 4.5/5 robots and 3/5 lizards.

Play “The Space Game” here.

The Codex of Alchemical Engineering

Published on January 7, 2009 in Games and Reviews. 0 Comments

A nice flash game that caught my attention recently was The Codex of Alchemical Engineering by Zachtronics Industries.
The basic aim of the game it to move around elements using programmable arms in order to make new elements. I nearly gave up on it initially as the instructions weren’t immediately clear to me, but once I’d got the hang of it I really enjoyed it. The author describes it as a game for engineers, and as a programmer myself, I really enjoyed building my little contraptions to acheive the level goals. I would rate this game 4/5 robots and 1/5 lizards.

Tri-shooter

Published on January 7, 2009 in Games. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

With being so busy recently, I neglected to post that Helix made a nice little shooter game.
As a break from development on our other projects, I set him the task of building a game in a day, and Tri-shooter is what he came up with.
In all honesty, it took a bit longer than a day to complete. The core game mechanic was a day, but then I decided it needed a high score system in, and then it needed testing and tweaking, so in the end it was probably about 4 days total effort.
The main criticism we have recieved is that the controls are a bit weird, which I guess is true, but they’re fine once you’re used to them. You basically use the arrow keys to tell your ’ship’ which direction to go in, and the mouse to aim and shoot at the bad guys. The quirk being that you press the keys in the direction you want to move the ship rather than the usual, thrust/turn left/turn right setup.
Have fun!

What’s it all about?

Published on December 8, 2008 in Games. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

So what this Robot / Lizard thing all about then eh?

Well, I’ve been working at a professional level in the Flash development industry for about 6 years now. Mainly doing e-learning work, but I’ve also done a fair bit of games and marketing type work.
About 4 or so years ago, I had an idea that I’d like to build a big online multiplayer game, in Flash, just for fun. The dream was to be able to build something fun, and make a living out if it. The only problem was I didn’t think I’d ever have the time, or money to get it started, and I couldn’t actually see any way for it to make me enough to pay the mortgage every month. So, I ploughed on with my developer job and as the years have rolled by, it’s become apparent that there were other people thinking the same thing I was, only they actually did it, and made a fair packet at the same time (Club Penguin, Puzzle Pirates etc).
Now I’m not claiming that if I’d built my app, I’d have done as well as those guys, and I’m not about to start moaning about if only I’d done this and that. In fact, I’m really glad that they’ve proved that there is a viable market out there for Flash based games. There have been a few developments over the past few years that have got me thinking that there never was a better time to get into serious Flash game development then now, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.

Those developments were:

  1. The Flash player got good. Flash Player 9 and AS3 has made a huge difference to all of the projects I’ve worked on, no more clunky interfaces, nice smooth interactions and animations. Since it came along, Flash games have got better too and I have heard of a few independent game studios that are moving to Flash as a development platform, from traditional windows based development. Flash Player 10 and other technologies like AIR have made Flash even easier to use as a serious app development platform.
  2. It got a bit easier to make money from Flash games. Companies like Mochiads have arrived offering developers the opportunity to monetise their productions with in-game advertisements. This coupled with the many Flash portals like Newgrounds and Kongregate offering distribution to millions of players, means that with a good game, an independent developer can make a handsome sum. Emanuele Feronato has written quite a bit about his experiments in monetising Flash games, and I intend to conduct some of my own.
  3. I started a development studio. Over the past few years I’ve moved from being a salaried developer, to being a freelancer, to employing a couple of people. We act as a 3rd party “work for hire” development studio and build various Flash based apps under contract for other businesses. Most of the time it’s quite good fun, we get to work on pretty interested stuff (although usually we’re not supposed to talk about it), however the time has come to start developing some of our own IP, rather than someone else’s.

So in summary, Robot / Lizard Productions is my attempt to try to build games and apps for our (and our players) amusement. If we can make some money to pay the bills along the way, then great!
We still intend on continuing with our usual client work under our regular moniker (Like I said, most of the time it’s quite good fun), so we might not be able to get our works out as quickly as we’d like, but hopefully it will be at a reasonable pace.
Early next year we’re involved in a project that combines the best of both worlds, building a Flash version of a classic game we love. Watch this space for more info as it happens.

Dr. Syntax

My Top 5 Flash Games

Published on December 6, 2008 in Games. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

There are lots of flash games out there. Here are my five favourite:

The Last Stand

This game has you playing the role of a survivor of a zombie apocalypse who has to, well, survive against hordes of attacking zombies. This goes on for twenty nights, with the attacking zombies getting stronger and stronger with each passing night.

The really great thing about this game is how it introduces an element of strategy at the end of each level, giving you options on how you want to spend the day, whether it be searching for more survivors, searching for weapons or reinforcing your barricades.

The graphics in this game are also phenomenal and look very professional. The overall style works fantastically and gives off a very gritty atmosphere, with the story and game hints being given in the form of diary entries or post-it notes attached to various items in the menu screens.

Five Differences

This is a very unique flash game despite the fact that it is based on a very old idea. It’s essentially an animated game of “spot the difference” with amazing slick graphics and is actually pretty difficult.

The game presents you with two scenes of landscapes which are, seemingly, identical and tasks you with finding the minute differences, of which there are five, between the two scenes.

The gameplay doesn’t go any deeper than that, but it doesn’t really need to. Five Differences is a great game and a breath of fresh air from the usual fare of flash games (not that those aren’t great, of course).

Fantastic Contraption

An excellent physics based puzzle game, Fantastic Contraption tasks you with building a machine to carry, propel or otherwise move an object from one side of an area to the other. To build these machines you are given a number of base parts which can interact with each other, giving you the potential to build really complex inventions, should you wish.

The main challenge lies in figuring out exactly what kind of invention will be able to traverse the terrain, getting more and more difficult as the game progresses.

Blueprint

Another physics based puzzle game. This time you are presented with a ball and a target and you must arrange the terrain itself in such a way that the ball will hit. Terrain elements can include ramps, springs, conveyer belts, pipes amongst other things, all of which will be needed to accomplish each level’s goal.

Auditorium

Auditorium is one of the most unique puzzle games i’ve ever seen. You are presented with streams of light and your goal is to aim the light so it activates musical panels scattered around the screen. This is done by moving triggers around the screen that can affect the light in various ways; for example, a trigger has a circle around it and if the light enters the circle it could begin to move upwards rather than its current direction.

As the levels go on, the puzzles become more and more complex, with additional puzzle pieces being introduced, making the game more and more challenging.

The main draw of this game is the stunning visuals, despite their simplicity. The streams of light look very visually impressive and the overall style of the game is very well done.