Category: Flash Games

Warriors End

Lately, I have inordinately enjoyed Warriors End at Whirled. It is a flash game that plays like bilging in Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, except that instead of water levels going down, you have warriors on the top who are blasting each other. If you have played Corpsecraft, their headline game, you know the same mechanic. There are no graphics to speak of, although that could be awesome. My team is based around Rex, who has the Distracting Pants power. Without this game, I might have gone my entire life without thinking, “My pants are insufficiently distracting.” And what kind of life would that be?

A new grind: emotionally satisfying for a while, and available in very small doses. And I am a stellar bilger, so this is right up my alley.

Also, Whirled will apparently give me candy or something if you sign up from my link. Full disclosure. I have no idea what you can do with the points and coins, but I will learn someday. Like Kongregate, another site for little games with points and trophies attached.

: Zubon

Yeah, “Warriors End,” no apostrophe. Like Rainbows End.

Horrors of Design

The flash game challenge of the week at Kongregate is Rage 3. Adventure map 4 exhibits two large, very common problems. First, successive keys are at opposite ends of a large map, so go all the way to the bottom to get the key to open the gate at the top to open the gate at the bottom to open the gate at the top to open the gate at the bottom to open the spring at the top. Second, after doing so, you discover that you must be level 6 to enter the last boss’s room. There is not enough experience in the entire adventure game to bring you to level 6. You must either grind the map a few times or play the arcade mode to build up experience. Grinding, in a platformer. Also, mention the level requirement before sending someone all the way to the bottom to get the key to open the gate at the top to open the gate…

: Zubon

Frantic

I rarely recommend flash shooter games, but Frantic is rather good. It demonstrates several competencies in game development:

  1. It has auto-fire. How many games like this make you hold down a button to shoot? Or worse, click repeatedly? If the player is going to shoot constantly, with no reason not to, just turn on constant fire by default.
  2. Bullets everywhere. You are throwing out so much ammo that you can forget to dodge enemy attacks because you are distracted by how awesome you are. Use all the powers of this computer to make me feel mighty.
  3. Enemy attacks are entirely reasonable. For all the bright colors flying at you, at no point is being hit inevitable. You can beat the game on your first try without dying (I did). You can probably get through the whole thing without getting hit. This qualifies as the main negative: it is easy. But when a boss throws out hundreds of shots at once, you can still find a safe path through them. Excellent.
  4. You do not take damage for touching an enemy ship, just their shots. Not a terribly important thing, I just like any change on the standard “touch anything and die instantly.”
  5. You get enough money for the final set of upgrades just before the last level. The timing on that is perfect. You build over time, you get all your toys, you get one last run of being awesome with them, and then you are done. You do not farm gold to buy them, you do not keep doing the same thing after running out of shinies: cap, hit the final boss, go home the winner.

: Zubon

The Cream Sinks

J. and the Australian Gamer Podcasters have realized an important truth, namely that most user-made content is crap. Then again, most x is crap for all values of x. The question, I comment there, is whether you have tools to separate the wheat from the chaff (to jump metaphors). The goal is to set a million people loose, let it be 99% crap, and still get the work of 10,000 talented people (and remember that even talented people produce a lot of crap to get their good stuff).

Editing is hard. I will not even get into that here, except to note that many companies edit their own stuff too poorly to consider harvesting user-made content. If your internal content-production still gives mostly crap after filtering and editing, what hope do you have?

Continue reading The Cream Sinks

While You Download

How about some flash games while you wait, sorted by your download ETA?

2% and stalled, dear gods, I want to play:
Bubble Tanks
Bubble Tanks 2
Desktop Tower Defense 1.5
The Endless Zombie Rampage

I liked that tower defense game, but do you have an easier version?
Bloons Tower Defense
Bloons Tower Defense 2
Gemcraft

I have a lot of time to kill, but I don’t want to commit to anything:
Amorphous+
Dolphin Olympics 2
Free Rider 2

Less commitment, more thinking:
3D Logic
Portal: The Flash Version

Half-ish way there:
5 Differences
6 Differences
Hedgehog Launch
The Last Canopy

Almost there, need soothing music to calm my nerves:
Boomshine
Music Catch

2% to go, I am already insane:
Elephant Rave
LightSprites
Tangerine Panic
You Have to Burn the Rope

I love Pokémon:
Brute Wars

I love Rick Astley:
Kongai Launch

: Zubon

1000 Bloom, 900 Wither

The phrase appearing most in my IMGDC notes, although no one actually said it, is “let a thousand flowers bloom.” Whatever fun or crazy idea you have, make that game. Independent studios have the freedom to try things that are too risky or quirky for big producers. Barriers to entry have never been lower, with improved middleware and distribution channels. Everyone on the forums who thinks he can do better has a chance to prove it.

Of course, Sturgeon’s law applies. Most of them are going to be crap. Have you been to a flash games portal? There are a dozen decent games of each type, followed by a couple hundred horrors. That is fine though, because players will tend towards the few quality games, followed by a long tail of niche games with implementations that appeal to a small number of people. Many attempts at low cost will produce a few gems, which can then receive greater attention.

By greater attention, I mean being bought by a larger company, unless your indie has the business framework to work with a million customers. That is a good problem to have, but it probably means you should cash out and use that money to fund your dream project. If you are not part of the crap 90%, you might have a sustainable niche game, and a select few will be bought out by EA, Sony, etc.

Or maybe they will just take your idea and run with it. I have not noticed Blizzard making payments to Games Workshop or the estates of Gary Gygax and JRR Tolkien, nor did Richard Bartle drive away in a gold-plated limousine.

: Zubon

Great Moments in Flash Gaming

I am playing some adequate shooter, and I have reached the last level. Like most, you hold down the left mouse button to fire. This being the last level, I am firing continuously for … longer than I can admit to myself. Wave 9 of 13 complete, huzzah, I have this nailed! Shift my hand a bit because I’m getting sore…

My new mouse has these really useful buttons on the side, which default to back and forward in a web browser. Microsoft designed this mouse very well, so they are right at your fingertips. You barely even need conscious thought to use them.

Crap.

: Zubon