Here's the posts for: August, 2008

Game Development / Games We Play — 4 Comments 30
Aug 08

Samarost 2

Continuing the IGF theme, I’m going to talk about one of my favourite web games. This game won Best Browser game in 2007.

Samarost 2!

Designed by Amanita Design (from the Czech Republic) the game mixes incredible artwork with simple point-and-click and physics based puzzles. Its a mixture between Creatures, Monkey Island and Where the Wild things are.

Yeah, you know that book. It has the same spooky alien feel, anyway.

The story is basically – man gets dog stolen, goes after dog, rescues dog, then on the way home gets stranded on another alien planet/shell/possibly living creature.

Its very satisfying to play. Instead the of the character interracting with the objects on screen, you simply use your cursor to play with everything you can see to manipulate the world around you. You might need the character to weigh something down, or carry something, or you might not. Its all part of the puzzle.

This game is a big inspiration to me! But the art is far beyond anything I could ever do. I don’t even know how they did it!

-Dim

Random Musing — 5 Comments 29
Aug 08

The Independant Games Festival

Hey folks. You know what the IGF is, right? every year independant game developers (wait, thats us!) compete to win fame and glory at the Independant Games Festival. Tom and I entered last year with BR’s Climate Chaos. We got through the first stage, but our judge couldn’t understand what the characters were saying to each other so he didn’t complete the game! Ohhh what a shame, right?

Anyway I’m sure we’re going to enter again this year. Maybe we’ll do a little better?

The due date for 2009 entries is the 1st of November (2008) so get to work, guys! How awesome would it be to have one of our own win this thing? :P

Last years winner was Crayon Physics Deluxe from Kloonigames. They won $20,000 too! (I wouldn’t mind that…)

These are the awards:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($20,000)
Excellence In Visual Art ($2,500)
Excellence In Audio ($2,500)
Excellence in Design ($2,500)
Innovation Award ($2,500)
Technical Excellence ($2,500)
Audience Award ($2,500)

Man I’d be thrilled with any of those…if Tom Fulp can do it…

-Dim

Random Musing — 6 Comments 27
Aug 08

“Have fun Stormin’ da Castle!”

Just wanted to let everyone know that ‘Castle Crashers‘ came out today on Xbox live!

Castle Crashers was developed by The Behemoth, and both Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin played a HUGE role in the game.

Tom Fulp (Creator of Newgrounds) has made Flash gaming what it is today, and helped pave the way for sites like ArmorGames. If you have an Xbox go buy the Game. That’s an order!! :)

-Daniel

Game Development — 11 Comments 22
Aug 08

The Arrow of Time

Hey folks, long time no post!

After a string of smaller games, Tom and I decided (or someone decided) we should knuckle down and come up with something big and exciting, like we used to in the good old days, hehe…

So I’m writing about the latest game from The Super Flash Bros, “The Arrow of Time”. Bow shooting games are popular, thats a fact. People love the simplicity of Bowman and ther crazy defense action of Bowmaster Prelude.

So Tom and I thought we’d take our own personal touch to the genre and make some crazy massive defense bow shooting game.

Its got 5 levels, 5 bosses, loooads of enemies, a story, lots of upgrades and actually hundreds of potential weapon types. Basically Tom came up with a really clever system of combing different powers to create new ones. It means people can experiment with the stuff they unlock forever! It was supposed to be a fairly simple looking game but as soon as I got my hands on it I went crazy and designed a million sprites, all destructable and stuff.

We’ve even got Evan Merz back to do some stunning music for it! This is going to rock!

arrow-of-time-01-da-vinci

More stuff soon!

-Dim

Random Musing — 24 Comments 21
Aug 08

Glitches Are Features… right?

I believe it was Will Wright, creator of the SimCity, Sims, and Spore franchise that was set on the fact that glitches in gaming were “features, not bugs.”  It’s a funny way of thinking about it, but it’s really hard to explain this to the everyday viewer.  Quite honestly, I can barely understand it either.

A recent video from EA games does a very good job explaining this phenomenon.

Wow, this was just about the most well-played response to a fan video ever.

Anyway, when I program my games the random user #44,349 always tends to find a random glitch or error in a game.  They send me an email telling me how much they [loved, hated] the game and how the [glitch, bug, error] made their gameplay that much more [terrible, awesome, exciting, blah].  These bug reports are really helpful, and we’ll fix them.

So whenever you do see a bug on an Armor Games game, try hitting up the author.  We are usually down to earth with the community so if you send us an email we’ll usually fix the bug (sometimes even credit you!).  I know that the first 72 hours I usually get a bug report that is so perplexing I could never understand how someone would arrive at it.

And yes, it’s a feature, not a bug.   So [deal with it, enjoy it, tell us about it].

Game Development — 9 Comments 11
Aug 08

Hedgehog Launch Contest Update

Oh yes, we have not forgotten about your entries for our dashing new contest!

We are busy around here (seriously busy) and will be going through extreme video verification shortly.  Also were having a problem…it’s hard to assemble the large amount of hedgehogs we have imported from Minovia Cay to act as the panel of judges for this competition.  Minovia Cay hedgehogs are not the brightest bulbs in the rodent chandelier.

I’ll be looking at the entires next week and by the end of th week we should have some results.  Thanks to everyone who participated!  Thanks for crushing all my hopes and dreams for becoming the greatest player at one of my own games for once!

Random Musing — 35 Comments 6
Aug 08

We Love You Too, Finland

Google recently launched a new tool for monitoring where people are searching from.  When it came to “Armor Games” as a search query, well, we were a bit surprised.  My guess would have been the United States or Canada on top for search volume (although they were rather high) or the United Kingdom purely on how much we know Europe loves casual gaming.  Instead, it  was that country that everyone holds close to their heart, yes… it’s Finland!  Finland holds that highest ratio of searches for Armor Games, followed closely but Croatia and Slovenia:

Now this is not to say that we get the most traffic from Finland.  And this graph is not saying that the order of the countries on this list is the traffic rank for each.  It’s just an indication of what percentage of searches are going towards our site via Google.   So, Finland, what makes our site so appealing to find?  Why does your population of 5.3 million search for us so frequently?  Is it because we share the same colours in our logo and your flag?  Is it our shared respect of folk music?  Who knows.

Additionally, the United States has a breakdown of region as well.  Utah and Oregon seem to be the victors here, followed closely by Arkansas and Idaho.  Most interesting thing about this map is that large chunk of white space right in the middle of the United States.  What’s going on Wyoming?

And another interesting graph is the search for “Last Stand 2″, which resulted in a very territorial breakdown of where people are searching for it:

Apparently Michigan and the Northeast love their zombie killing, or at least are looking for zombies to kill.  Anyway, these maps are a lot of fun to check out.  It gives you an interesting perspective on how location makes a big difference in what people search for and how frequently.

Game Releases / Office News — 8 Comments 1
Aug 08

Phit Launches for iPhone

After several years of Flash/web game production, for the first time ever Armor Games has launched a game… somewhere else!  Our first iPhone game, Phit, recently launched for the iPhone and iPod Touch.   Phit is a notch above it’s predecessor with over 100 levels of aggravatingly challenging puzzles and a nice facelift of graphics and features.

The premise of Phit is simple:  Drag blocks around the screen to fit them into the shaded region at the bottom of the screen.  This is simple at first with just a few blocks and a few different possible arrangements.  But as the blocks become smaller and more tangled it definitely becomes a challenge.  Personally, by level 22 I was beginning to feel the pressure.

On a personal note, it was really interesting to see the dynamic difference a touch interface can make for a game like this.  The game feels much more controllable with finger-based controls instead of the mouse, and being able to shove tons of blocks around with multiple fingers is much more intuitive.

Phit is avaiable via iTunes and works on the iPhone and iPod Touch.  If you have either, you can purchase the game for $1.99 via the iTunes Store (link).  It’s definitely a treat and something that works perfect on the iPhone/touch for bus rides or on your lunch break.  I’ve probably spent about an hour on it already just from small game breaks from doing my own programming.  I’m sure you’ll enjoy it :) .