Hi, could you tell us a little about yourself and what you do?
Sure thing! I’m Ido. It’s a tricky one to pronounce, it’s originated from Hebrew. I love video games, and I’m an independent game developer. A highschool student as of today, but this is my last year. Hurray!

When and how did you become involved in Flash game development?
I was always curious about what’s happening behind the scenes in video games. I found video games and interactive worlds inspiring since I was a little kid. Eventually I got my hands on Flash 5 back in the day, and started out as an animator. I was never good at animating but it was fun, and in the long run also useful as I began to program games in Flash, using Actionscript 2 and then 3.

What do you like most about developing games in Flash?
I love how smooth it is to deliver the game to the player, since it’s played online. And everybody’s online. It’s incredible how a single indie production can reach millions. It gives the developer exposure and space to express creativity, while it gives the player a free game to play (well, in most forms). Win-win!

What were some of the first games you developed?
I developed little games in my early Flash years but none of them were worthy of a release. The first game I developed and actually released was the fan made game Portal: The Flash Version with my partner Hen who nailed the graphics. It was my ‘breach’ to the online game scene. I guess that’s how I am here!

Could you tell us about your future game trilogy, Echoes?
Echoes is an action-strategy game. It’s set in an extensive universe on a torn Earth almost three-hundred years in the future. It joins the famous Real Time Strategy genre with many elements from the Third Person Shooter genre, in a side-scrolling environment.
It is explored in three Acts, released as three games. Every Act is built from 5 stages and an unlockable challenge game-mode. Every stage has its own learning curve and objectives, and is loaded with dialogues carrying on the storyline of the series.

What kind of game-play can we expect to see in Echoes?
The gameplay in Echoes is combined. As mentioned, it joins RTS and Shooter. Ingame, this means you can switch live between Strategy-mode and Combat-mode.

- In Strategy-mode, you’re able to construct a base, recruit an army and control them around. To encourage that, some of the resources in the game are collected throughout the map by capturing Control Points.
- In Combat-mode, you’re able to join your army in the mission to repel the enemies. The cursor turns into a crosshair and the camera focuses on the hero - D.e.m. (name is storyline-related). Controls in Combat mode turn into action game controls. Dem is packed with abilities and weapons which he can carry out during the battle, to support allies and resist enemies. So basically you join your own army, and fight with them side by side in Echoes.

Every stage is filled with dialogues and cutscenes, each time revealing more about the universe of Echoes. All dialogues in the game are voiced, not a single line out!

How long has Act 1 been in progress and when will it be released?
We’ve been developing Act 1 and Echoes in general for some time now - the original design is over two years old! Echoes is a massive project, and it was not easy to develop independently, especially not for a perfectionist :). However I’m happy to say it’s a few weeks to release now.

When you are not developing games, what are some things you enjoy doing?
Hmm, random things I enjoy… I enjoy listening to music (I am pretty open about the genres), playing the drums (on and off for around two years), hanging out with mates… and I can drown myself into a 2 hour movie at 4AM after work spontaneously. And when I am not being teeny, I talk: I try to take opportunities to talk in front of a crowd. This is an opportunity that was given to me through the game industry after the first game I released, and I realized it’s a skill I must develop, especially because it’s not natural for me, deep down I’m kinda shy!

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Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions Ido. We look forward to playing Echoes.

Everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) should fly on over to the screw attack website to check out the awesome video review of Upgrade Complete that was recently posted there.

Upgrade Complete on Screw Attack

It really is nice to get positive feedback in any form for work you do, but when someone goes to all that effort just to provide you with positive feedback (and entertain viewers, of course) it really makes you smile. Upgrade Complete was one of those  games that recieved almost universal acclaim for its quirkiness, most often for how unique the idea behind it all was, when in actual fact the entire project was pretty much moulded around the idea of Johns “Achievement Unlocked”, only taking a jab at a different aspect of gaming. I actually however, quite like the feeling of upgrading items/weapons/computers to run the latest games, so I hope no Upgrade friendly developers took too much offence (The end screen was, at one point, criticised for being too insulting, oh well!).

I hope everyone is having a good year so far, and I’ll be getting back to you very soon with some exciting updates! Thanks to Dan for showing me this great link

Hi, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you do?
Hi, my name is Louis-Simon (louissi) and I live in Montreal, Canada. I am a flash games developer. I also studied in 3d animation and I am a pretty good artist. I like everything that is involved in the process of creating a game.

How and when did you first get involved in Flash games development?
I started using flash when I was 13. One of my teacher introduced me to the software and I really liked it. I started by animating stick mans but I moved to programming really fast. No one really knew how to code at my school so I had to learn by reading tutorials around the internet. I am really a self-thought person. My first game was about sheep simulation. You could buy sheep, shorn wool and send them to the butcher. I never finished that game but it was almost complete. I never stopped making experiments and starting games since then.

What was the first full game you completed?
I guess my first full game was Worms Level 1. Its a worm in the sewers killing zombie worms. It was decent. I really liked the worm idea, but it was too similar to the worms games.

How long was Neon Rider in development, and what were some challenges you encountered in developing it?
Neon Rider was a big project for me because it was the first time I was programing a game containing cars. It was a lot of work to learn, but in the end, by using Box2d I was able to code the movements of the game really fast. The whole game took around 2 or 3 weeks to complete. The part I most enjoyed was drawing the motorcycle and designing the look of the game.

What do you like most about Neon Rider?
When I started the project, I created a map editor. I really enjoyed creating levels and hopefully soon we will be able to share the map editor with all the users from ArmorGames to see everyone’s creativity.

What inspired you to create Age of War? What aspects of the game do you think made it so popular?
I started making a defense game, and I was looking for an interesting idea for the units. The game started with a gravity gun and etc, but I scrapped the idea and decided to make some “evolutions”. I was playing a lot of Starcraft at the time, and I really liked custom maps. One of the big trend was the “EVOLVE” maps. You could evolve into different species and etc. I guess the idea stayed in my head. I wanted to represent the fact that at all ages of our civilizations, there has been war. I think the “Ages” in the game made it popular. You just want to see what the units will look like in the next age.

Do you have any new games in the works or planned for the future?
I am currently working a on top-view survival shooter. I think there is some really nice elements in the gameplay that has not been combined in a flash game before. It will be a challenge to balance the game well, but its gonna be worth it. I am sure everyone will enjoy the game.

What are your favorite console games?
Castle Crashers
Pixel Junk Shooter
Soul Calibur 4

I only play FPS on PC, I hate aiming with a controller. On PC I play modern warfare 2 and I used to play a lot of counter-strike source.

When you are not developing games what are some things you enjoy doing?
I like to play games. I also play tennis and badminton. Being with my girlfriend or simply hanging out with friends when I can. I am a pretty normal dude, who is always working hard. I like to work.

Do you follow the winter Olympics? If you had to compete, which sports would you most likely compete in?
Haha, that’s a good question. By the way, the Olympics are in my country this year! Go Canada! TO answer the question, I would probably do some skeleton. Their helmets are awesome and the adrenaline rush seems incredible. I admire these athletes going at 100 km/h while lying on a luge face first.

I hope you got to know me better and I hope everyone will enjoy my games. I really put all my heart to make games that are fun to play.

~Thanks for reading!

Hello Crush the Castle fans!

The King is looking for some much needed feedback on all things Crush the Castle. Improvements, additions, subtractions, multiplcations, etc.  The King values each and everyone of your comments (good and bad), and looks to the future of the crushing castles.

To give your feedback, head to Crush the Castle Feedback and give him your one must HAVE feature as well as one feature you would like to see CHANGED or REMOVED.

The King thanks each of you for your feedback and wishes everybody happy crushing.

Game development is so much fun sometimes.  A lot of times it’s a monster rearing its ugly head, but recently I had an opportunity to make This is the Only Level Too, which quite possibly was the most rewarding game development experience I’ve had of late.

If unfamiliar to the game, its a game about playing the same level over and over again in various forms.  In the first level you may have to push a button to open the door, but in the second pass of the level you’ll have to drag the door open with your mouse.  Each time the level changes just enough within the level design to create a different experience 30 times over for 30 stages.

I worked on this project with a hardcore Flash gamer Tasselfoot, who is maybe better known for making walkthrough videos for various Flash websites and managing the community of the late Flash Flash Revolution.  His position in this project was level design and testing.  I’ll give myself enough credit as to say I was fairly involved in level design as well but it was really his initiative and design that rolled this project along.  I did the programming and the artwork, as well as porting my own homebrew tile engine to Actionscript 3 finally  (its been missing in action for a while).

We met in Irvine, CA one day for a grinding section of brainstorming and level design.  Tass came with a general level design (as seen at the top of the post) and together we came up with a good 30 stages.

Post-it Notes are really good for laying out level ideas, and the more and more we looked at each of the levels and progression we got closer and closer to nailing down level design.

It’s a back and forth though.  Some level schemes break other level schemes which means levels are incompatible with each other.  These have to reach compromise or be forfeited.  Luckily we managed to find a median for most level choices.  Levels such as the Ice Level (move in one direction until you hit a wall) nearly dictated the entire design (but we just HAD to have it).

One choice we made was to list all the level design on Google Docs.  With Google Docs you can share information between multiple individuals quite easily.  Since Tass wasn’t onsite for most of the project it was essential that we had a central meeting point to list notes and level progress.  It’s amazing how much incentive to finish a few more levels before the end of the day comes out of simple colour coding of spreadsheet squares.  I was printing out spreadsheets every day to see what my day was shaping up to be.

Tass was constantly testing and providing feedback while I coded, which is different than what I am used to.  Usually it’s a an unaided experience until the last few moments of the project, in which I start getting feedback before features get locked down.  It’s a whole different experience when you are constantly working with a game tester.

There was plenty of research too.  I ran a poll on the website to see who knew what “Sticky Keys” were just to make sure levels were easily understood.  We have an alphabet-based level too, and we went into keyboard layouts to make sure that a good majority of the players could hit the keys for that level (or at least replicate them).

One of the more interesting things are the levels we decided NOT to include. We had planned a Left Gravity level but I decided to nix it towards the end of the project.  Some ideas sound really good on paper but once you realize you have to rewrite your entire character jumping and interaction script it becomes a deadly time sink.  Another level that was modified was the “Rembrandt” level, which we instead went with a fingerpainting-style art (I thought it looked better).  We even had a brown-bag artwork choice for that level that was never implemented.

There are so many tile types in this game.  In the first game every tile functioned the same, but in this game we had a lot of features that relied on changing tile types.  If you’ve played through the game you’ll probably be able to relate all these tiles to those levels.   This was an easy reason why this game took so much longer to produce than its predecessor.

In the end we ended up with a solid 30 stages inside the one level design.

Once again, it was a fun project because its fun level design and programming.  It’s like taking a VW Bug and adding more and more random accessories to it until it has everything including an ejector seat.  I appreciate Tass’s enthusiasm to help me finish the project and work on it with me and I appreciate the warm reception the project has received.

In light of the recent tragic earthquake in Haiti, Armor Games has pledged 50% of all Crush the Castle proceeds from this week to be donated to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund as part of Apps for Haiti Week. Apps for Haiti will run from January 18-22. You can download Crush the Castle from iTunes and support the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund by clicking HERE.

Thank you Armor Games for your support to help the Haitian people in this time of need.

UPDATE #1 : $850 was raised on Monday to help Haiti relief. Let’s try and raise even MORE money today. Thanks to everyone who is supporting the cause.

UPDATE #2 : $740 was raised on Tuesday. So far the grand total raise for Haiti is $1,590.

UPDATE #3 : $686 was raised on Wednesday. Total raised is now over $2,000!!

UPDATE #4 : $756 was raised on Thursday.

UPDATE #5 : $810 was raised on Friday, bringing the total contribution to $3,842!

Thanks again to everyone who participated. I’ll be making the donation to the Red Cross Haiti Relief fund next week. (I’ll post confirmation once the money has been donated)

Donation has been made (CLICK HERE)

Please continue to keep the People of Haiti in your thoughts and prayers as they continue to rebuild their lives from this tragedy.

Hello Armor Gamers! It’s that time of year again for Jay is Games Best of Casual Gameplay 2009 awards. Jay is Games reviews the best of online games, and with that said, many of Armor Games’ games have made the list of nominees! So first and foremost, congratulations to our talented group of developers! We would appreciate your support in voting for our developers, who put a lot of hard work in making the highest quality games for everyone to play for free. To make voting a bit easier on you (there are A LOT of entries this year!), we have put together a voting guide with a selection of popular AG games.

Action or Arcade:

• Hedgehog Launch 2 (Jmtb02)
• I Love Traffic (Jmtb02)
• Super Sloth Bomber (Megadev)

Interactive Art or Webtoy:

• How to Raise A Dragon (Gregory Weir)

Interactive Fiction:

• Llama Adventure (Jmtb02)

Physics:

• Crush the Castle (JoeyBetz)
• Fragger (Harito)

Platform:

• This is the Only Level (Jmtb02)

Puzzle:

• Knightfall 2 (Megadev)

Shooter:

• Upgrade Complete (Tony)

Tactical or Strategy:

• Bubble Tanks Tower Defense (Hero Interactive)
• Gemcraft Zero: Gem of Eternity (Gameinabottle)
• Phage Wars 2 (JoeyBetz)
• Warfare 1944 (ConArtists)

Make sure to head on over to Jay is Games, and show some love for Armor Games! You can vote HERE every day until the end of the voting period. Thanks for your support, and again, congratulations to the Armor Games developers!!

Voting ends Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 11:59PM.

Hi, Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
My name is Danny Yaroslavski, ie Coolio Niato. I’m an undergrad Computer Science student living up in the cold reaches of Canada (*cough Toronto) and make online flash games, some of which include Lightbot, Streamline and RhythmWorld.

How did you come up with the name Coolio Niato?
Much like many other developers who start with a strange alias (see The-EXP or Jmtb02) it tends to stick after a few years and gets to the point that you can’t really change it anymore. As such, Coolio Niato came about when I was in elementary school, I had no e-mail address and my best friend had one called Coolio-Viato. Now being the unimaginative child I was, I changed one letter and kept using this name for animations/games I made. As to what Viato means, neither my friend nor I now have a clue to what it was.

How did you become interested in Flash gaming, and how did you begin developing games in Flash?
It started with enrolling in an animation class. There, maybe a few weeks in, the instructor showed us how to make buttons and use tellTarget for simple interactions. When I realized that I could make my own games, games of the likes of Thing Thing and Ultimate Flash Sonic, I was extremely excited. My first game, “Falling Objects 1” was horrible; it used keyPress and shoddy collision testing. My second, “Stench of Blood” was no better. But seeing the kinds of games on Armorgames (then called Games of Gondor) and Newgrounds; games including Marvin Spectrum and Short Circuit, it inspired me to work at coding more to finally complete my first big break, “Streamline”. Nowadays, ByteJacker and Tigsource are my greatest motivation.

Many of your games have themes relating to song or music. Is this something you have a background or interest in?
Much like the creator of Wii Music, Miyamoto and I have one thing in common. Neither of us have any talent when it comes to playing/making music. But in the same ways that Guitar Hero and Singstar allow people to overlook this fact, I try to get gamers to enjoy music in an interactive environment. I try to test myself; combining different genres with rhythm games. Mouse Avoider, Shoot em Up, Platformer, these were all different challenges I set to combine with rhythm and it worked out fairly well. Whenever I run out of game ideas, I often just listen to music until something pops into my head. And often at times, a song may just be so crucial in the development of the idea, I then have to make the game based on the song, sort of as a tribute to it and the artist behind it.

Which of your games do you like the best? Which game did you have the most fun developing?
I feel like Lightbot is my best accomplishment. It started with trying to combine the preliminary concept behind Bill the Robot (on Newgrounds) and then adding on to it. First I created a user-friendly interface that allowed for concepts like functions and recursion to be implemented. Later, it grew to be an educational experience. This was often at times a first for players, trying to think about the backbone of functional and procedural programming (on a very basic scale). The fact that I created a puzzle game that was enjoyable and sort-of-in-a-small-way taught programming makes me proud.

Besides Lightbot, I would have to say Rhythmworld and Music in Motion are my other favorites. Rhythmworld allowed players worldwide to submit songs and sync them on their own without any complicated interfaces much like some music/ddr game sites require. And Music in Motion was proof that platform games and music can mix. I felt like I used up all of my creative juices on that game, haha, I couldn’t think of any new ideas for months.

You are a young developer, what are your plans for the future? Do you plan on continuing Flash development, or are there other goals?
I’m definitely planning on continuing game development. Flash games, possibly later also iPhone/XBLA as well. Either way, I don’t think I’m ever going to leave Flash behind simply because it’s a great way to reach a large amount of people and let them play your own games for free. In the end that’s all any indie developer wants. I am working towards a degree in Computer Science to broaden the scope of my programming knowledge to make more technically advanced games, and maybe in the far future when I grow old and bitter and have no more game ideas I’ll get some boring office job. *shudders* Until then expect to see more!

Are there any games you have in development or any plans for future games?
Lately I’ve been making lots of engines and prototypes. Platformers, Dynamic Lighting, 3D, Multiplayer Online. It’s fun to experiment with engines but in due time they will all be put to good use.

Lightbot 2 is always on my mind and I’m thinking of ways to make it more of a learning experience without just slapping on new gimmicks like enemies and whatnot. But there is a working level editor for user levels and I plan to release the game by 3rd Quarter 2010.

People often ask if I’m going to make a new rhythm game, and to answer… who knows? It’s often a matter of finding the right song that inspires me in a new way. Either way, keep a look out.

Do you play any console games? What are your favorite types of games?
Lets start with the fact that I’m a Nintendo enthusiast. I own a Wii and enjoy playing basically any game with the name Mario in the title. (New Super Mario Bros, Mario Galaxy, etc) But besides these, I tend to stick to games on the Gamecube or N64, favorites being F-zero GX, Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and Smash Bros. Oh and LOZ Ocarina of Time. Whew, almost left that one out.

What are some things you like to do when you are not developing Flash games?
I enjoy playing Tennis, Squash… any racquet sport really. I also enjoy dance, Latin being my favorite style but having Michael Jackson be my biggest inspiration. On occasion I will try to see a Raptors/Blue Jays game (Basketball and Baseball for you non-Canadians) or catch a play.

Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions!

My good friend Kevin Willson directed a video that was submitted to the ‘Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest. The video is now one of the 6 Finalist. The name of his video is ‘Casket’ and its by FAR the best video in the contest. Click through to watch the video and vote for it. You can cast a vote everyday between now and Jan 31st.

Our buddy Mark Carr did an awesome Video Review of Sonny 2.

Click Here for Video Review

Make sure to leave a comment on his blog if you enjoyed it!