[Platform: Flash] The kingdom is in peril! Too bad you're too wrapped up in bureaucratic red tape to do anything about it. Reemus and Liam's quest to save the land hits a massive speed-bump when they discover they can't proceed until they're able to produce a whole lot of paperwork and a sample... but fortunately all that can be acquired in a manner both our heroes are very accustomed to. Namely, solving bizarre problems, combating strange beasts, and deciphering strange puzzles! The latest installment in the wildly popular point-and-click adventure series has finally arrived!

[Platform: Flash] The Kingdom of Fredicus is a place that loves its heroes. Unfortunately, Reemus, exterminator extraordinaire and overshadowed brother to the local dragon slayer, is having trouble convincing that populace that he deserves a little undying adulation. Sure, later in life he'll have Several Journeys to prove his bravery against invading death slugs. Right now, though, it's early in his adventure gaming career, and even after his first minimal-property-damaging bug slaying, he's have trouble getting people listen to the glorifying ballads written by his faithful bear companion, Liam. So a-questing he goes, in search of glory, gratitude, and, most importantly, a soft bed. It's The Ballads of Reemus: When the Bed Bites, the first premium downloadable adventure game in the popular series, produced by the newly minted Click Shake Games! And while the anticipation may have driven us all a little buggy, it was totally worth it.

Winner’s Circle

This week’s Flash Game Friday winner is Greens Survive Only When Reds Die by Oleksii Zagorodnii!

You have to love a game with instructions in the title, and this title pretty much says it all- Greens Survive Only When Reds Die!

The object is to get the green guy through the door. Problem is, you have to make sure to kill the red guys in order to get the door open…without killing the green guy, of course!

Greens Survive Only When Reds Die is a great platformer witha unique gameplay twist- congratulations Oleksii!

Get To Know Oleksii Zagorodnii

Tell me about yourself- how many people are on your team? Where are you based?

There is one person in my team, this is me :). I live in Kyiv, Ukraine. I do programming and art by myself, but I know nothing about writing music, so the music for most of my games is created by Alexander Ahura. He is a really great composer and I’m happy to work with him.

How long have you been making games? What did you do before?

I’ve been making (actually, trying to make) games since I was in school. Back in those days I used Game Maker and then BlitzMax, but never actually finishing anything. I completed my first Flash game in the summer of 2010, and since then I have created six more games, all of which can be found at my site: friedpixel.com.

What was your inspiration for “Greens Survive Only When Reds Die”?

I really love platform games and wanted to create something original and fun in this genre. The idea of playing with lots of characters at the same time looked promising. However, I saw a few released games where players controlled several characters simultaneously, so I decided to add a twist, and make some of these controlled characters ‘bad’, setting a task for players to kill them.

Any major challenges or hurdles during development?

The main challenge for me is my laziness. I’m not a full-time game developer. I have a dayjob and sometimes it’s very difficult to start working on a game, especially when the prototype and all of the experiments are done and there are lots of things and polishing to be done to complete the final version.

What types of games do you like to create the most? What types of games do you like to play the most?

I love to create different arcade and platform games. I also enjoy playing platform games in Flash and on mobile devices the most. Sometimes I also play some big AAA games on XBox, the last were Gears of War and Skyrim.

How long is your game creation cycle? What is your process?

Usually it takes 2-3 months to finish a game. There is not so much work in the type of games I create, but I can’t spend a lot of time on them. There is no particular process; I just do the things that need to be done to create the game.

Are there any game developers that you admire or consider “rock stars”?

I really admire indie developers who create original and fun games, especially those who share their experience and help less experienced game creators. I would name Adam Atomic (Canabalt and Flixel, my favorite Flash engine) and Johnny-K (Cover Orange, Ragdoll Cannon).

What is it about making a new game that you enjoy most?

At the first stages of development it’s really fun to try new things and see how game mechanic starts working. Later, when the game is released, I like to read reviews from players on different sites. It’s really great to know that some people from the different corners of the Earth like your creation.

Do you have any hot projects you’re working on right now?

Everyone is making mobile games now. I thought that I also may try to create something in this field and started new arcade shooter for iPhone with my friend. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it as quickly as we would have liked, and it’s still a little too early to draw any conclusions about the success of the game.

 

Thanks Oleksii, and congratulations again on winning Flash Game Friday!

---

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Link: Pick and Dig 3
Developer: MyPlayYard
Genre: Puzzle/Platform/Strategy
FlashMush Rating: 7.5/10

While this is the third installment of the Pick and Dig series I must say this is the first I'm hearing of it. But, then again up until I started this blog I wasn't too involved into flash games. At least not as much as I am now, so it's real no surprise I haven't heard of it.

So if you're like me and haven't heard of this series before you may be wondering what it's about. Well, it's a puzzle platformer but I almost don't want to label it that as it is far from the typical (and to be honest, boring) puzzle platformer mold. Instead it focuses on an element of freedom and physical building of your landscape. Yes, that may sound a little confusing so let me explain. Basically the goal is to get through levels by using a combination of three items that you have to find in the level first. They are ladders, shovels and hammers. With the ladders you can climb up a block, shovels you can dig down a block and hammers you can crush a block to the side. Using these items in the right way can give you access to different parts of the level and eventually to the end.


However, Pick and Dig 3 does feature a semi open endedness aspect. Some levels may seem very easy at first but as you learn more skills you can go further and further in them, finding bigger and better secrets. You are free to play whatever level you want to see if you can find better treasures to unlock more levels, so it is actually quite encouraged. I do admire the whole series of Pick and Dig for actually featuring or trying to create a unique mascot. Much like the old mascots like Mario and Sonic, I admire the audacity of making a standalone character for their series.

[Platform: Download (Windows)] Viggo and Christine thought they had escaped the evil that had almost destroyed them and left their lives in ruins before they found each other. One evening, Viggo is abducted by a mysterious figure, and Christine turns to you for help in finding him. The trail leads you to dark and mysterious Blackhill Manor... and now that you've arrived, it's quite clear someone doesn't ever want you to leave. Will you survive the Black Widow of Black Hill? Another installment in the wonderful hidden-object adventure Nightfall Mysteries series.

Attracto TD is a difficult and challenging entry into the Tower Defense genre that is deceptively unassuming until you get into actual gameplay. The difficulty inherent is so great that it is not uncommon to die within the first few levels, even on the first level if you don’t place your towers correctly. This flaw [...]

[Platform: Flash] A puzzle game in which you direct streams of colored particles from lotus flowers to colored chakras, achieving totally zen-eriffic enlightenment on the way. It's quick, and perhaps a little easy, but it sure is relaxing to watch colored pixels flow across the screen. Ahhh...colored pixels.

Link: Mud and Blood 2
Developer: Urbz
Genre: Strategy/Defense
FlashMush Rating: 8.5/10

War is one of the most popular subjects of games all around whether it be on a console like the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 or even in flash games. More specifically historic wars seem to be popular as just look at the Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises (to certain extents). Mud and Blood 2 is a strategic World War 2 game which while three years old, still retains relevancy in the flash game universe.


Mud and Blood 2 is a very interesting strategy game...in the sense that it is very detailed and also features a very well balanced randomness factor. And when I say detailed I mean detailed. It's almost overwhelming at first but you have the time to learn. But basically the game plays on a randomly generated map which has various features you can use for cover and such. You start out with a squad of soldiers and you must defend yourself against waves and waves of Nazis. You then earn hero points which can be used to buy/upgrade things. This is where the details come into play. You can buy so many things and upgrade to so many different weapons it is insane. It's also detailed in the fact that you need certain prerequisites before you can buy others and so forth. The enemies are detailed as well, so detailed that they even show moral stats.

The randomness factor, which I talked about earlier, is the other big draw to Mud and Blood 2. It basically just gives pseudo realism and makes every game different. This is what has lead this game to having a cult following, still being played/relevant three years after public release and what makes it fun honestly. The only real down points I have for Mud and Blood 2 is the pacing. It is a very slow game I felt, but on the flip side this does give you loads of time to not only think of different strategies but also to learn the expansive upgrade system.

News is that there is a Mud and Blood 3 coming out soon so with that being said, here is all of your chances to play the sequel to the original and see for yourself the awesomeness and epicness that is the Mud and Blood series.

I recently hosted a playdate at my house for six of my former co-workers and their children. Amidst all the chaos, I noticed one of my friend’s shoes; they were the cutest little flats with multi-colored polka dots on them. After asking her about them, she told me they were made by TOMS and were [...]

In connection with the last statements in the preceding paragraph, you should also take time to know the cost of the operation/s you are planning to undergo, and what your budget is. Do not be hasty when it comes to making a decision as to which hospital/clinic you are going to go to, and which [...]

Fans of Minoto, rejoice: Ugly Duckling 2, the latest Minoto’s Point’n’Click Adventure game is live! Have fun!

Continue Reading about Minoto – Ugly Duckling 2

When searching for office space Manchester residents have many options. Unfortunately, many leasing agents make it difficult for a new or expanding business to find rental space they can afford. Most offices for lease come with complex and lengthy contracts that can be prohibitive for a new business venture. Fortunately, there are other options for the [...]

Many people think that a dating site is just a marketing strategy to earn money. One of these is taking advantage of lonely people who would like to have a little attention, something that they do not have in real life. Maybe this is true; who knows? But the thing is, it all boils down [...]

(Check out the first 4 days here)

It’s Thursday! Party time!

In these devlogs I’m trying to avoid describing the core mechanic of the game; I’m not absolutely certain it’s final and I’m still experimenting. So if things seem a bit vague: don’t worry! It’s intentional.

I didn’t get a whole lot done today. Probably only put in about 2 hours of work, but that’s allright. The big changes for today? A brand new game mode, and some tweaks to the scoring and gameplay start/end. Most exciting though: solidified an artistic relationship!

Artistic design in games

I want to stress here that I put a huge amount of value in artistic direction, and significantly less value in actual artistic execution. Not to be unfair to the more artistically minded, but to be frank: a simple artist is a dime-a-dozen. I get emails from talented folk in, well, third world countries on a monthly basis. All they need to work is a few measly dollars, specific direction, and plenty of hand holding.

For example, you might ask for an image of a penguin. An artist might say “sure! but… How big should the beak be? Should the eyes be big or small? What palette do you want to use?”… The level of hand-holding here is very aggravating. It’s like the easiest way to communicate is to just mock-up all the art assets myself and just have them draw over it, but better.

And that’s exactly what I don’t want. Sure, I have preferences and intended artistic themes for my games. But I also have enough experience to know I don’t know what’s best, and I should just shut the hell up and leave it to the pros. This is one of the reasons that I fawn over amazing designers like Greg Wohlwend and Dan Cook so much:  They can completely design – from the ground up – a projects entire image, and execute on it  with amazing talent and precision. I wish I knew appropriate artistic lingo to drool over them professionally.

Another name to add to that list is Sven Bergström - an indie developer with a lot of passion from South Africa (3rd world status there is a coincidence! I swear!). I’d say he’s a newcomer, a rising star on the horizon – but really he’s just new to my personal network; he’s been making games for longer than I have, and knows a lot more about – oh, let’s say mobile development, than I do. I wish I knew he existed sooner! He’s the one that helped revamp the visual design on my personal blog here a few months ago, and he’s super talented in all that he does. I’m excited to have him on board!

Sven just started working on this mysteriously-titled “Word Game” yesterday, and I asked if he could put together an image to share with you.

Check that out! Character design for the game. This is the first stage of evolution for our lead character! I love reading about this kind of stuff. I learned things today about character design!

Two types of player

When I take a look at most word games, there seems to be two camps.

On one side is the person that likes to find long words. These are the people that like Boggle, or a lazy Sunday spent staring at a Scrabble board. In the mobile space, you pretty much just look at the games that have no time limits or external pressures. The goal is to be your best. I like to put SpellTower in this category.

On the other side is the person that likes action, and would be just as happy dazzling you with an array of 3-letter-words. These types of players tend to play the faster-paced, more hectic games. Games like PuzzleJuice, or tournament Speed Scrabble. Sure, there’s bonuses in it if you have long words, but the score to be gained by just going fast is the prime target here.

I like both styles of play, and I’ve been trying to work them into a single game mode. This has been failing! Balancing long words versus big “combo multipliers” is very tricky indeed. I fought my urges to unite these two camps and instead built a second mode into the game.

Now, without changing any mechanics (just the scoring algorithm), I have two different game modes: one that rewards long words, and one that rewards lots of small words in rapid succession.

The jarring end

One thing that is a common occurance in word games is that brick-wall ending. Maybe you have a word half-spelled, maybe you are massaging your temples as your brain cascades through all the potential letter combinations. Then BAM! The game suddenly ends, your tiles disappear, and you are left holding nothing.

I think this ending is hugely anti-climatic and I really dislike it. I reworked the game to instead allow you one more super-move after the timer expires. Sure, you can sit there for as long as you want and hunt down the best possible word – but in Speed mode, your combo multiplier soon runs out and you’ll not gain much for it. In LongWord mode, it’s the final cherry on top of your sundae.

I’m playtesting this new feature now; I hope some variant of it will stay make it into the final game.

On a smaller, but similar note: the big mean ol’ nasty countdown clock doesn’t start ticking until you’ve actually made your first word. Terrain in this game changes a lot in just a few seconds, so being able to plan out your first move isn’t a huge advantage.

Other odds & ends

I got TestFlight setup so I can start an actual iOS closed-beta program for the game, and get some feedback before launch. I also made my first iPhone build (so far it’s been iPad only) and I was very pleased to see that the game was simulating nicely without any modifications at all. I’ll have to actually see it on-device before I declare it a success, though.

There’s a few mobile-specific features in the game now too; things I consider housekeeping: rotation locks, proper (mockup) icons and loading images, pivot behaviour hooks, specific code for android “back” button mis-presses, and customary stuff like remembering to pause the countdown timer if you swap out of the game (and reducing the game to 1FPS in the background, so it doesn’t suck up your battery). Whenever folks talk about mobile development having a lot more “gotchas,” this kind of work makes it seem very true. However, I did all of these tweaks in about 30 minutes of code. The only trouble they’ll give anyone is if they simply forget about them before launch!

I think the most notable thing about today is that I spent way more time playtesting than I did coding. I think that’s a very good sign.

Rival is the latest Room Escape game released at Gotmail, where you can play all IDAC’s games. For an unknown reason unless you read Japanese, you find yourself locked in an unknown place. Look around for useful items and eventually find a way to escape from “Rival”! In Japanese only. You must register at Gotmail.jp [...]

Continue Reading about Gotmail – Rival

People have become more aware about the harmful effects of weight gaining. To avoid this they are spending dollars and dollars on different weight loss programs. One of the effective diets to lose weight quickly and in an efficient way is HCG diet meal plan. This diet has however been in the center of controversy [...]

Kingdom Rush is a Tower Defense game developed by Ironhide Game Studio where you have to defend “your realm against hordes of orcs, trolls, evil wizards and other nasty fiends; armed with a mighty arsenal of warriors and mages of your own! Fight on forests, mountains, and wastelands. Upgrade your towers with special powers, rain [...]

Continue Reading about Kingdom Rush

Civilizations Wars: Ice Legends is a strategy game from Cave of Wonders Studios. A sequel to Civilizations Wars, you send out your troops to take enemy territory then defend it from attack. Work your way across the battle field and conquer the enemies home fort. Have fun!

Continue Reading about Civilizations Wars: Ice Legends

Link: BoomBang Friends
Developer: BoomBang
Genre: Action
FlashMush Rating: 9/10

Today's flash game review is on a game you most likely have not heard of as it is from a Spanish company and is sort of a featured/sister site of a community that reminds me of Club Penguin or even Habbo Hotel. But I'm not really hear to talk about the community behind BoomBang Friends, I'm here to talk about the game. It is my specialty I suppose.

I didn't really know what to expect with BoomBang Friends, all I knew was it was supposed to be very addictive and the general idea of how to play. The addictiveness I was warned about, let me just say that is true. This addictive quality really stems from the simple yet engaging gameplay. I've played a similar game like this but BoomBang Friends is much more in depth and overall more polished, but basically you have to "catch" a certain amount of BoomBang friends in 40 seconds. Could be 100 could be 40, and the higher levels the harder it gets. To "catch" friends you just move your mouse over them and they dissipate.



BoomBang Friends is one of the more unique games I've played as each level is completely different, graphics wise. You start out with sort of an airplane crash mode on a deserted island. You then have the island level, then something cool happens and you have actually two different level paths which then stem to more paths depending on a random spin. These could take you to a time traveling level arc or a witch craft arc. Surprises are everywhere and just watching the little 40 second levels is very engaging. My only problem so far with BoomBang Friends is lag. I've played it on multiple computers and only one could really handle the game seamlessly, the others lagged a bit which led to some very frustrating moments.

Overall though BoomBang Friends is a very cool and innovative quick action game that everyone should try out and become addicted to!

Rolling Hero 2 is a Physics skill game, developed by Pilphilip Georgiev and Yosif Lliev. This time you use your arrow keys to rotate the scene to get things rolling. Once he starts rolling there is no stopping so don’t let him fall off the world! Have fun!

Continue Reading about Rolling Hero 2

Most people who are using computers do not really know what a hosted desktop is. There are many definitions that could be used to define that term. There are some definitions which are very technical but difficult to understand. People who are not familiar with the complex computer terms must know what a hosted desktop [...]

Fans of the Diablo games will definitely want to take a look at this.

The upcoming Dungeon King: Dreadstorm Keep is set for release this Monday, priced at $10, and Bulletproof Arcade just sent over a gameplay trailer and some stylish screenshots from the game.

Like Diablo, or the more recent Torchlight, Dungeon King puts you in a  dynamically generated dungeon with hordes of monsters to hack’n'slash your way through. There’s treasure to be found along the way, but your primary mission is to take out the dungeon master Vulkhan.

There’s plenty of reason to mow through the scores of monsters you’ll be meeting on your adventure, as in all RPGs.  Namely, the exp and loot you get from battles. A total of 9 skills can be improved as you progress, with additional perks for maxing out any given skill. We’re also promised “Magic-Infused Axes, Amulets, Rings and Belts.”

Bulletproof Arcade told us that they’d eventually like to include a multiplayer co-op mode, and mentioned the game is intended to be the first in a episodic series. If the game plays as well as it looks, we’re guessing players will be demanding those plans are brought forward in a hurry.

We’ll have a full review of the game available on release day, but for now you can watch the trailer here.

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[Platform: Flash] No one sent Edible Castle the memo that sequels are supposed to be derivative and rushed. Instead, not only does new point-and-click adventure Back to the Cubeture: Era 2 feature the same excellent voice-acting, cheeky humor, and quirky art as its predecessor, but it's five times as long and offers a much more non-linear experience. This is pure silly fun, so box yourself into your seat and enjoy it.

Well, we've got some good news and some bad news. The opposite of the non-good news first: so many promising games hiding just below the horizon! Also, so many cool things going on for gamers to enjoy! The not-opposite of the non-good news: mobile companies are still ripping off small indie dev by stealing their ideas. Chocolate and cookies can't made the sadness that news brings us go away. But... it can help!

Link: Flood Runner 3
Developer: benrad
Genre: Distance/Action/Platformer
FlashMush Rating: 9.5/10

Decided to review Flood Runner 3 today, while it's not exactly a new game (far from it actually) it's still a great game and is still relevant today as it ever was.

The Flood Runner series is known for being...quite ridiculous I'd say. This is of course in a good way. Craziness is everywhere and it plays and looks a lot like an over zealous Anime than anything else. So of course Flood Runner 3 is no different. It features giant squids, sharks, dragons, Superman, and dinosaurs to just give you a small taste of what is feature. And I do mean small. There is so many things going on and things that are possible to do you will be overwhelmed.


I did tag Flood Runner 3 as a distance game as it plays in the popular and familiar "runner" style. This is, however, where I would call it a game changer. This is not your ordinary runner game and even though Flood Runner 3 is almost a year old no other runner/distance game has really taken the initiative like Flood Runner 3 (and the original/sequel) have. What I mean by this is really all the things going on. Enemies, safe points, etc. There also isn't just one linear path, but really multiple disjointed paths in a linear fashion. This gives the setting and backdrop to have all these crazy features like the squids and dragons I mentioned earlier.

My only real problem with Flood Runner 3 if you can even call it that is the difficulty. Since there is so many things going on, it is really hard to die once you get going and can lead to long or infinite games it seems. Overall though Flood Runner 3 is one of the most awesome and epic flash games that exists currently.

Do you know someone who cheats in online games? A new study suggests there’s a strong chance they’re also less than honest offline too.

Popcap’s 2011 social Gaming Survey found that around 8% of players admitted to cheating in online games, with males marginally more likely to play unfairly. By far the biggest group of cheats were the 18-29 demographic.

Of the gaming cheats, half of those had also cheated in a relationship, and just over half had cheated on tests or exams.

Interestingly, cheats were also more likely to make legitimate item purchases in free-to-play games, where the item gave them an ingame advantage.

The picture being painted here is that dishonesty in one area of a person’s life is a strong indicator of overall dishonesty. A lack of regard for players in online games appears to correlate with a lack of regard for other people in the offline world – which may not be surprising, but is definitely worth remembering if you know someone who hacks in games.

You might also like these….

• Landmark legal victory for Jagex in Runescape botting case
• Majority of Runescape Players were Cheats
• Jagex Sues Thousands of Cheats
• Gaming blog RockPaperShotgun latest victim of hacking
• Backyard Monsters developer ignores major security flaw; says Kongregate is “unsupported”

After Skier’s Secret, here is Bachelor’s Mystery, the latest Room Escape game from Abroy. “Escape from this nice bachelor’s apartment before the real owner get’s home!” Have fun!

Continue Reading about Abroy – Bachelor’s Mystery

[Platform: Flash] Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and, in this spoof of one of the most popular escape-the-room designers to ever grace JIG's pages, No. 1 Game is very good at copying the trademark features that we love so much—photo-realistic graphics, fun-to-solve logical puzzles and even a happy coin ending! Of course, they throw in their own trademark: ten green escape men which you must find before exiting. It's not only a lot of fun to be part of the parody, you'll be left with an increased appreciation for the original's artistry and a temptation to replay the classics which inspired the clone.

It’s been awhile…

So, I have added Gaps Solitaire to All-in-One Solitaire game.
And I’m planning to add at least two more solitaire games: Spider and Free Cell.

I have moved website to another hoster, so it took me some days and nights to configure my first self-managed VPS.

We are working “hard” on Dolly The Sheep game.
There are still not all the graphics ready, but we are making levels already.
I think, I will be able to release a couple of smaller games, before we finish with DTS.
Here are some videos with gameplay:

Hands of War is a Tower Defense game from Axis. Place your towers and warrior so you can defend yourself from 10 waves of enemy warriors. After each wave you can use the spoils to upgrade your defenses for the next wave or wait until after the last wave before you upgrade. Have fun!

Continue Reading about Hands of War TD

[Platform: Flash] Need a dash of rainbow splashed across your logic puzzles? Conceptis delivers a cacophony of colorful curiosities with Color Pic-a-Pix Light, the latest addition in their Conceptis Light series. You might be familiar with Pic-a-Pix puzzles from their previous black-and-white edition, but this new batch adds the twist of color, meaning the logic gets more twisted, and the solutions more dazzling!

This is the Only Level 3 is the third installment in the TiTOL series created by John Cooney. “Just when you thought you completed the level, it’s going to happen all over again… master 30 new permutations of a brand new level from the minds of Tasselfoot and the programming claws of Jmtb02! Now featuring [...]

Continue Reading about This is The Only Level 3

Subtle Energy 2, the sequel to Subtle Energy, is a puzzler developed by Glagolev Pavel. Like before, your goal is to direct the streams of colored particles to corresponding colored chakras. Have fun!

Continue Reading about Subtle Energy 2

Kedili Oda is a Turkish Room Escape game developed by Palafil where you find yourself trapped in a room with a cat… Have fun!

Continue Reading about Kedili Oda

The Visitor: Massacre at camp happy is from the same creator that brought you, The Visitor, and The Visitor Returns! This one by ZeeBarf, has an arcade style to it. You still have all the blood and gore, but you move around with the arrow keys. To move to the next level you must devour [...]

Continue Reading about The Visitor: Massacre at camp happy

Link: Swarm Control
Developer: joeybetz
Genre: Defense/Upgrades
FlashMush Rating: 8.5/10

ArmorGames just keeps sponsoring great games, the latest being Swarm Control! Bears and bees have always been in an eternal conflict. Bees make honey and the bears want it and will do anything for it. Including dressing up in pimp outfits and space suits.

Wait what? Yes, you read that right. Like a lot of the ArmorGames sponsored games, Swarm Control is very silly. But that does not mean it doesn't have what it takes to play with the big dogs. What I mean by this is, Swarm Control actually brings out a new unique form of gameplay for defense games that I have not seen before. The overall premise of the defense game mechanics is there and it functions almost like a tower defense game as you have towers (bee houses) and select the type (different bees affect different bears better or worse). You then have bears coming at you from both sides in linear paths. However, the bee towers do not just auto fire and this is where the unique idea comes from. You actually click the swarm of bees around the tower and sort of flick them with a mouse movement at the bear you want to attack. This is crazy cool and very intuitive, also gives huge incentive to make this a mobile touch screen game on any device such as the Iphone, Droids or even tablets like the Ipad 2.



The game overall is very creative. The different bears and bees make for some interesting dynamics but more importantly just some laughs. The upgrade system (well trap system) increases strategy levels for the defense part and works very well with it all. I do have one major problem though with Swarm Control. It's hard to explain but basically you have all these different types of bears and bees, but their interactions are too limited. What I mean by this is for instance the note bees do very well against the disco bears but nothing else. And with a limited amount of bee towers you sort of have to designate one tower for that type of bee although it is only useful against one bear. The same can be said for a lot of other bee types. So you end up essentially with some wasted towers except for a few times when those bears come. You can switch bee tower types mid game but it takes a little bit to load up and later on the bears (and their multiple types) come very frequently and you can get overrun fast.



Overall though, Swarm Control is a very nice game. Has great graphics that tie in well with the theme and offers some truly unique gameplay mechanisms. Everyone should play this right away!

Island Tribe 2 is a time management game and the sequel to Island Tribe created by Realore. This time you’re helping the tribe rebuild the island totems. Use your time and materials wisely to complete this game. Have fun!

Continue Reading about Island Tribe 2

Earlier we showed you NimbleBit’s letter to Zynga after the company appeared to heavily “borrow” elements of their game.

If you thought it might be coincidence, you’ll want to take a look at a new article by Edge magazine, which charts the various accusations of plagiarism Zynga has faced on their rise through the casual gaming charts.

As if the apparent disregard for IP owned by other companies wasn’t enough, Edge also notes that the company won a case against Vostu a year ago, for plagiarizing Zynga’s games.

You can read the full article here.

You might also like these….

• NimbleBit has a message for Zynga
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Hey everyone! I haven’t spoken a lot about game dev recently, but I started doing a side project and thought it would be good devlog material.

The Inspiration

Last Saturday (January 21st) I topped off my evening by rocking all the high score tables in the new word game, PuzzleJuice. I really love that game, and as I drifted off to sleep that night I started thinking about how easy it would be to make a word game of my own.

(EDIT: My girlfriend informs me that I had the idea a week before PuzzleJuice, but my brain has re-written history and I don’t believe her.)

I mean, how hard can it be? Get a little dictionary of words, spell some things out… Should be no problem, right? I decided to find out. Laying there in bed, I wasn’t heart-set on releasing a commercial product; I just wanted to see if I could make something up quick.

Day One: Sunday

I spent my morning coming up with a theme. I wanted something casual and cute; my girlfriend suggested penguins as a central theme, so penguins it was! I thought up a quick and easy central mechanic (a variation on a Boggle-like interface) and started prototyping what was initally dubbed “Word Fishing.”

I spent a lot of time toying around with different UI design elements, and fleshing out the codebase for what was to come (game-jam style, not proper-engineering style). I only put in 3 or 4 hours this day, but it was good start. Most of all, I got a bunch of research done on what lay ahead of me.

Day Two: Monday

On Monday I setup my first dictionary-lookup chunk of code – an older, out-of-date word database with an OK search algorithm. The best part was that it was mostly cut-n-paste from some fellow devs – it pays to network!

I then moved on to actually implementing the gameplay. I got some temporary art in place, implemented a simple mouse click-to-select interface, and was able to actually play what I had envisioned less than 24 hours before. Hooray! Prototype #1: Complete.

As I was playing the game into the evening, I was surprised at how fun it was. I mean, I love Boggle to start with – but this new twist on mechanics seemed to be playing out really well. There was no timer implemented yet, so it felt somewhat freeform… That would go on the to-do list.

It was around this point I decided to make this a proper commercial application!

Knowing a word game would work much better as a mobile application, I started eyeballing my 2-year-old Nexus One (Android phone). I’ve never made a mobile application before… could I do it?

Monday night was spent downloading Android development interfaces, debugging tools, and drivers of various sorts – the whole time being hand-held by the wonderful FlashDevelop documentation. That’s right, I just pressed “New Project > Mobile App” and my folders came pre-stocked with all the batch files and automated certificate generation routines I could ever want.

I got the app working fine in the Android simulator on my desktop, but I couldn’t manage to get it over to my phone… Very frustrating. But still, I put in about 6 hours of work this day, and I’m starting to get really stoked.

Day Three: Tuesday

The first thing I did on Tuesday morning was fix my deliver-to-phone problems. Turns out it was really stupidly simple: the USB port at the front of my computer wouldn’t maintain a debug connection to my drivers. Everything else worked fine, but moving it to the back panel solved all my problems. Sometimes computers are really really frustrating!!

I was avoiding implementing a touch-friendly draw-to-spell interface (it just felt like grunt work!) but I managed to pull it off with just an hour of work. I patched all the memory leaks, converted all my graphics to cached bitmaps, switched my phone to GPU-rendering, and generally worked on mobile optimizations. For my first stab at doing all of this, it was much, much easier than I expected.

In the evening I implemented some visual pizazz – particle effects, simulated gravity for falling blocks (instead of prototype-instant-teleportation), and other things that just give the game a bit more “crunch.” It was around this time I started looking for a proper artist to dress the game up for me.

I topped the night off by updating the dictionary words to the official, tournament Scrabble word list (the tournament version includes naughty words, unlike the home version).

In total, the day was probably 7 or 8 hours of work, and the Android app was running really nicely on my older Nexus One. My thinking was, if I can get the game performing really well on that old equipment – I wouldn’t have to worry about further optimizing for newer equipment.

Day Four: Wednesday

After not getting enough sleep, I spent Wednesday morning trying to cut down on the CPU overhead. One of my best optimizations was rewriting the dictionary search routine – now implementing a Binary Search Algorithm. I also implemented “live spellcheck” (it detects proper words while you are spelling, instead of waiting to search after you’re done), which changed the game a surprising amount.

More mobile optimizations in the afternoon – in this case, the simple act of deliberately manipulating the frame rate to very low numbers when there’s no action. Other than saving CPU time, this also has the benefit of not bleeding your mobile battery dry. No reason to render the motionless Main Menu at 60 FPS!

In the evening, I finally bit the bullet: I signed up for the $99 Apple Developer account, installed iTunes, and created some certificates. With only 2 hours of work, I had my first-ever iPad app running on my device!

Of course, transitioning my app from the smaller-screened Nexus One to the larger-screened iPad2 unveiled a bunch of scaling errors I made in my code. I spent the bulk of the evening fixing up all of my dynamic-screen-size handling classes and trying to make things pretty.

And that brings us up to date. It’s Wednesday night as I write this! I’ve put in about 6 hours of work today and the game could be launched in the app-store right now, if I wanted to shoot myself in the foot marketing-wise.

Coming Up

Now that I’ve got the last few days out of the way, I’ll try to update my blog once-per-day with more details on what’s going on.

I think it’s really exciting that I was able to take my AS3 coding skills and a free IDE (FlashDevelop) – and use them to generate a market-worthy Android and iOS application in just 4 days of part-time work.

As tweeted by Ian Marsh of NimbleBit, here is the Tiny Tower dev’s response to Zynga’s new game about building towers. It probably makes the point without much more explanation from us.

 

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Ever wanted to be part of an official world record attempt? MuchDifferent needs 1,000 players to play its Unity powered FPS game this Sunday, as it tries to set a record for the most players simultaneously involved in one (realtime) battle.

The battle is intended to be between game developer and game player, so choose your side depending which of the two you are. We’re not convinced it will be quite as orderly as the promo screenshots suggest, but it should be an epic battle however it plays out.

The record attempt is part of a bigger push for publicity around their new server architecture, which was designed to cope with games on a massive scale. With most FPS games supporting 64 simultaneous players at most, a server structure capable of handing two teams of 500 players each would potentially change multiplayer gaming.

More info on MuchDifferent’s website here.

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Global Game Jam is coming up, and that reminded me: I still haven’t talked about my last jam game! I made a video here (the first 3 minutes is talking about game jams in general, the rest is about the game):

So the last half of the video there, I start summarizing the new things I’ve learned with Project Corona. Here’s a list:

• First time to not over-think pre-game organization
• First time drawing exhaust trail things
• First time rolling own mini-physics engine
• First time implementing inverse kinematics
• First time making fast-paced action game
• First time making an action game with no “badguys”
• First time making a monochrome game
• First time making all audio myself (except midi source) (and it being decent)
• First time making all art myself (and having it look good)
• Based on a true story – educational game I guess
• First time implementing deep parallax

Anyway, if you want to check it out, here’s a link to the last build I made. It’s meant to run 800×600 or so, so if your browser window is huge you might have to resize to get the right performance out of it.

Some tips while playing:

• The point is for you to grab the film cannisters from the sky and return them (gently!) to the airbase.
• Your maximum velocity goes up with your score.
• The “end game” (at least for me) is discovering the moon. Can you make it there?

I’ve pretty much abandoned the project at this point, but I still go and play it once and a while. Let me know what you think!

The long awaited Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 4 launches on notDoppler tomorrow at around 8am GMT (that’s midnight on the  West Coast), and we’re pretty confident in saying it will be one of the top games of the month.

The previous installment in the series (Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 3) received millions of plays around the internet, including over 5 million on Kongregate alone, and SCGMD4 looks to be a much more polished game.

The distribution version of the game will be released around major portals on February 2nd, so if you’re holding out for Kong badges or Newgrounds medals before you play the game, you only have one extra week to wait.

The Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe devs note that they’ve included a new easter egg on their website that can only be found from within the game. There’s also a trailer for the game here which includes no gameplay at all.

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Link: Reeelz
Developer: GameInABottle
Genre: Puzzle/Action
FlashMush Rating: 9/10

Thought for today I'll review a fairly older flash game but one that is in my all time favorites; Reeelz. Reeelz is one of the most unique puzzle style games that is out now and surprisingly hasn't really been copied as of yet.

So what is Reeelz exactly? It's a puzzle style game that combines heavy elements of casino slots and small time gambling. Of course Reeelz isn't an actual online gambling site but just mimics the behavior small time and for fun and games. You have a slot at the top of the game with various sliders. The goal is to make all the different combinations of slider pictures that is given to you. There is a nice difficulty curve here where as you beat one set of slider combinations, then you can play the next set which has more, and so on and so on.


This style of gameplay really leads to fast, quick games that retain tons of replay and addictive qualities. I found myself playing this game for hours the first time trying to complete every combination set. Like I said earlier, I'm really surprised more games of this gameplay don't exist as it's a very simple concept that is highly addictive. I mean while it's only mimicking gambling behavior, gambling in general is huge. Just look at Las Vegas.

Overall, Reeelz is a gem in the flash game world and it'll always be a favorite of mine and I hope it'll become one of yours.

Note: This was written near the end of January 2012 and as such reflects the state of the technology and markets at the time. Everything is moving so fast a lot of the information below is subject to change, so bear that in mind. HTML5 game development and indeed the abilities of web browsers are [...]

[Platform: Flash] Centered on the mechanic of changing your color to interact with different objects, Coloraze, a puzzle platformer by Colin Brown, is a simple concept done well. It's one of those works where a string of gameplay elements are introduced in the beginning, then paid off in the long run with a string puzzles that force them to interact in interesting way. Each individual level won't take too much time to play, but with a good ninety included, plus a solid number of levels made by the community using Coloraze's solid level editor, you won't be running out of game any time soon.

Amber Escape is a new escape game from Tomislav Podhraski and Vjekoslav Krajacic. You awake bound by wire and left laying in the corner of a strange room. But someone is on your side, leaving you a message and lending you a little help in getting out. Have fun!

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[Platform: Flash] Flex your carpentry muscles and laugh in the face of physics in this stacking physics puzzler. Click and drag a variety of wooden pieces into position, figuring out the best way to pile them into a relatively stable design while also attempting to collect blue stars and avoid pesky red ones. It's the perfect chance to redeem yourself for that failed wood shop class, but with fewer splinters!

Modern Classic Room Escape is a new room escape game from Games Novel. You must find a way to escape this modern deco room. Have fun!

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Link: Cave Puzzles: A Gift
Developer: Helgiii
Genre: Puzzle/Platformer
FlashMush Rating: 8/10

Seems like I haven't reviewed a puzzle platformer game in forever, although that may not be the case. Either way, reviewing a pretty great one right now! Cave Puzzles: A Gift is well...all about getting your girlfriend a gift. Maybe I should follow the advice of this game myself.

Overall it is a fairly typical puzzle platformer but does have a few stand out qualities which is a must have in this over saturated puzzle platformer market. What first stands out is the artistic style and graphics I guess. I throw the word artistic in there as this game seems to have some of that thrown in. It's not just a graphical style, has some character to it. Guess it's kind of hard to explain. An example, however, would be the title logo I have shown above.


The other thing that I really enjoyed about Cave Puzzles: A Gift was the puzzles themselves which is pretty surprising as you would think most puzzle level designs I have seen by now. But nope, Cave Puzzles did offer some new twists and ideas to the genre or at least presented them in interesting and humorous ways. Examples would be that there was a lot of pushing of objects to either create staircases or prevent falls, air currents were very interesting and portals were introduced as well. Who doesn't love portals (or Portal). I found Cave Puzzles: A Gift to be a nice break from all the other trite and predictable puzzle platformer games out there and urge everyone to play it!

For our Education Through Expeditions project Craig threw out the idea of using canvas and making a presentation. This was a great starting point as we threw around some ideas and decided to make a presentation-quizz-game type thing. The featured expedition on their website is currently a walk for water through Africa. The website gives information on the people, the wildlife and the location that the explorers will encounter on their journey, so maybe the game could give the user a chance to travel across the same route in Africa encountering the same attractions. The user would then be asked certain questions about the area they are currently in and could only advance when they have shown the correct knowledge for that area.

Still in the initial ideas process but I really like this idea and I think we should develop upon this.

Together Alone is a Puzzle game from QwokGames. You have to choose a path of tiles to walk in order to get to the exit. The problem is, once you step off the tile it shatters and you can’t go back. Then again, you must shatter all of the tiles before you are allowed to [...]

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The Hunting Of The Snark is a hidden object game from Hairy Games based on Lewis Carroll’s famous story of a mysterious creature, the Snark, living on the lonely island. Help the crew find supplies to search for this elusive creature. Have fun!

Continue Reading about The Hunting Of The Snark

[Platform: Flash] Tomatea has outdone themselves with this amazing and delightful little gem, packed full of use of found objects, letter puzzles, number puzzles, and some other treats that we won't spoil. Just solve a ton of color puzzles and you too can enjoy the refreshing feeling of going out after the rain and enjoying the wonder of mother nature. It's time to dive into this amazing new room escape and taste the rainbow.

Hi everyone, Vlad here.

Let me start by saying that the title is a bit misleading. For starters it is not an actual bout but more a decision making process. It also gives the impression I’ll write more about this or that I have some kind of plan about this subject. I don’t, it just happens that I think I’ll travel this road again.

Game Design

The game design for this game states that:

1. The player’s objective is to reach the top of the “structure” (named just to make sense) where the action rolls;
2. The “structure” has several “floors” (again just for easier comprehension);
3. The player can fall to the previous “floor”;
4. It is guaranteed that the player will see at least three “floors”;

Application Design

One thing that I know for sure is that we will be blitting all graphics and that the player token has three different blit objects and two of those rotate thus negating copyPixels and putting the dreadful draw method to work.

Another thing I know is that each “floor” is a tilemap, also blitted and that each tile is 64×64.

And now the assumptions begin. How big is each “floor”? I have no idea but let’s say that a rather large “floor” has 50×50 tiles. If the player will see at least three floors and on later stages all “floors” are rather large we are talking about 7,500 tiles to be rendered with a astonishing number of 30,720,000 pixels to be copied… each frame.

The “floor” where the player is will only render the tiles on screen (88 max) but the other two lower “floors” can potentially be fully rendered given the camera specs. Even if all three “floors” only rendered tiles on screen (which won’t happen by design) there would still be 7,500 objects to manage and that’s tiles only since we need to add to this all the remaining entities: player, enemies, decorations, effects, etc, but to make it worse the bottom two levels will be zoomed and probably in full view which means not only that all their blit objects will be visible but also that at least 5,000 of those objects will use draw instead of copyPixels… Did the headache kicked in already or is it just pure performance insanity?

Implementation

One of the great things about copyPixels is that it only renders the intersection between the target bitmapData rectangle and the source rectangle positioned at the destination point. What this means is that if we have 1,000 objects to render but only one actually has an intersecting rectangle, most of the processing time is running the array, vector or list and – more important and processor heavy – calling the functions that will in the end render.

The draw method also does this with a matrix… more on this later.

The solution was to write a BlitTileMap class that builds the tilemap in one big texture before it is used. While it uses much more RAM this class allows to address pretty much every problem stated earlier.

First and foremost the number of objects managed and therefor the performance lost with running their container (in our case, a linked list) and calling functions. From a potential 7,500+ we now have 3. The other issue that this addresses is the number of pixels it will render or try to render, from potentially 30,000,000+ to the worst case scenario of 1,050,000. And last but not least, considering the lower “floors” will be zoomed out, instead of using draw to render 5,000+ objects it will render… 2!

But the draw method also has a funny and helpful consequence. The smaller the scale, the faster draw executes which in terms of performance is relevant considering the zoom out will be achieved through scale. Less objects taking less time to render will be (I hope) quite a performance boost.

Did I just write all this? Wow!… Later!

War has raged on for centuries between bees and bears. Bears always come for more honey and the bees can do nothing but sting them softly and hope that they go away. Not this time! This time the bees are taking over and ensuring that the bee civilization, not bears, will dominate the land. Will you be up to the challenge? Let’s find out!

In a strong statement about the power of HTML5 for gaming, Aditya Ravi Shanker has ported the original Command & Conquer game to browsers.

When Command and Conquer was first released in 1995, it was unthinkable that it would ever be able to run in a browser, nevermind being powered by HTML.

It’s not the complete game, granted. But work is ongoing and the progress already made on the project is stunning.

You can try the demo for yourself here.

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Curved Seashells is the latest Room Escape game from TimeFall. “Escape from this simple room by collecting all the seashells needed to solve the last puzzle!” Have fun!

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This was probably the inevitable next step for a company that’s mastered the art of turning casual gamers into high spending gaming addicts, but Zygna appears to be readying a move into real-money gambling. A spokesman said negotiations were underway with several potential partners for the move.

After a difficult public launch, followed by suggestions that the social games market had plateaued out, expansion into another market sector is the obvious way to go for the company. Zygna Poker is already the internet’s most played poker game, and its clear that turning even a fraction of its 30 million monthly users into paying customers would significantly increase profit for the company.

Any move into gambling is sure to spark further ethical debate around the company’s policies, following previous concerns over their attitude to IP infringement, player addiction, and Facebook wall spam.

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