I’m working on a simple concept right now.  I’ll just leave you with this teaser image for the game upcoming (next week even!).  Have a great weekend!

Like Shift?  iPhone and iPod Touch users may now play Shift on their own devices wherever they go!  We’ve setup two versions.

Shift Lite - FREE - You get the WHOLE Shift 1 game and all the tasty puzzle goodness.  The game you play online is the same here!

Shift - $0.99 - An additional 25 never-before-seen levels to wet your appetite to the point that you’ll probably eat your phone.  Plus you get to do a few more snazzy things.

And if you STILL yearn for more levels, well, we see a looming Shift 4 on the horizon…

That’s right, I’m making a text-based puzzle adventure.

It’s very small, and decidedly so!  I’m testing out a new concept and I want to make sure it works.  I’ve been working on this new Text-Based Adventure game format that is heavily inspired by SMS text messages and suggestive text input.  All the input starts to autofill as you type and works to help you work through the game as easily as possible.  Start typing keywords and actions and they change colour.  Write longer ones and the code starts making suggestions for you.  It really helps streamline the game.

The problem I’ve had with text games in the past is that it’s really hard to figure out what I am trying to write in the game.  In fact I spend half my time just trying out words to see if they work.  I may just be impatient but that irked me.  I want to help alleviate some of those weird issues.  And since we have a platform like Flash in full-colour and powerful enough to display complex messages in interesting ways I might as well do that!

I must admit, I know nothing about the interactive fiction community.  I know it is huge and that I am possibly treading on toes and taboos but I really curious if my game design would work in an older (dare I say?) game genre.

In Llama Adventure you are a Llama.  You interact with someone named. “Master,” who is putting you through a series of obstacles and “kill rooms,” which are essentially trap-triggered puzzles.  Think Goonies.  Get through all the rooms and live to see another day!

It’s not an epic Interactive Fiction by any means, but it’s a small little title to get my toes wet.  Expect it soon next week, I hope to finish it this week.

Yesterday I launched a game called I Love Traffic.  Gameplay consists of moving traffic through an intersection without causing collision, backup, or running out of time.  Any and all lights can be turned any colour at any time!

There’s a bit of story behind why it was made.  In all honesty I hate traffic.  I get caught at every single red light on my way home and it is not because I am a bad driver.  It’s because my car is cursed!

My car has the amazing ability to turn traffic lights red.  Whenever the light is green in my lane the approach of my car will instantly flip it to red.  It’s some amazing phenomenon that occurs and others have started to see it too.  Even when other people drive the car they make note of its bizarre supernatural traffic light interaction.

So on my way to work one day, I pondered, “How can I make traffic and intersections more fun?”  And after a few brainstorming sessions I started building models of roadways and the ways cars interact while on the road.

I created some basic principles to apply to all vehicles:

A) Vehicles drive only as fast as the car in front of them.  If a vehicle reaches within 1 - 2 vehicle lengths away it will decelerate to match the speed of the vehicle in front.

B) All vehicles accelerate and decelerate at different rates.  Everyone has different ways of driving and different vehicle types to facilitate those habits.

C) Vehicles have a maximum speed and cannot go backwards.

D) Vehicles will not stop unless they have reason to (other vehicle, intersection, etc)

Since these principles apply to traffic lanes, it only made sense to make each lane function as it’s own little ecosystem.  Lanes then interact with each other through overlap and collision!

That’s where I found the game.

After sketching several lane layouts I built 20 fundamentally different designs that enhance different types of lane interaction.  Obviously there are traditional 4-way intersections, but the game’s flexible lane-by-lane style opened up new interactions.  One lane crossing several, like design #6 above, creates walls of car backup to deal with.  Meanwhile design #8 (above) deals with cross-traffic and watch multiple directions at once.

And from there the game was made.  Different vehicle types helped facilitate different experiences each time the intersection was revisited.  Trucks were made slow, police cars super fast, and motorcycles were made to accelerate faster than any other vehicle.

That said, the game is finished and out on Armor Games!  Go Play I Love Traffic, let me know what you think!

After playing Castle Clout we were inspired to make two things.  A really awesome remake and a really awesome trebuchet, all while using the word ‘awesome’ too often.  Joey and I spent the last half of our Friday making this really cool medieval weapon.

We started the build around 12pm.  We grabbed supplies and were back at the office in about an hour, and spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what final design we wanted.  Here’s what we bought:

20 feet of PVC
6 End Caps (PVC)
10 45 degree Connectors (PVC)
13 T Connectors (PVC)
2 4-Way Connectors (PVC)
Twine
PVC Pipe Cutter
PVC Glue
PVC Grease
Duct Tape

We decided on a standard design, nothing too fancy.  Simplicity works wonders.

After cutting a bunch of the pipe, remeasuring, and then recutting again, our design started to come together!

We forgot a crucial part of the trebuchet: the weight.  Luckily earlier that day we bought about 3 pounds of peanuts and other mixed nuts for the office snack bar, and were lucky enough to snag it in-time for the build.

We fired a few shots inside and magically it worked!  We then took it outside to see how far we could launch a Ball Revamped squishy.

With the peanut weight we can launch about 15-30 feet without additional manpower.  That’s pretty good for a 2-3 hour build.  After about 5 more tries we also discovered that the ball is the best item to launch.

Dan also had the idea of trying to push down on the trebuchet arm as fast as possible, and then we suddenly had a range of 30-60 feet!  It was a pretty awesome experiment, and we learned a lot of about Trebuchet physics to pick up and start this project.

And with that, here’s a screenshot of our newest game (click to embiggen).    We’re going for the Castle Clout style but we’re going to have a few more features and some new art style.  We have permission from the original artist, of course, so all due respect for his design is there.  I’ll let Joey update you on that news as it comes around, since he’ll be leading that project.

But seriously, trebuchets are fun.  Spend a couple hours making one, you won’t regret it.

Tony’s other child, Indestuctotank, turns 2 years old today.  He’s so overwhelmed with emotions that he managed 8 grammatical errors in only two lines of typing!

He made it a LONG time ago for an Armor Games game development contest and it did tremendously well.  He then went on to win more of our contests, and then eventually become a full-time game developer for Armor Games!  Since then he’s developed in-house titles like Shift and Shore Siege.

Cheers Tony!  Can’t wait to see a third, and no AE doesn’t count.

Hey everyone,

Joey and I have been working on this game for quite a while and we’re really getting into the nitty-gritty of testing and balancing the game at the moment.  But for now, we have a few screenshots of the gameplay.  The gameplay is very cannon-shooting-other-cannons, but the game is all real-time in-rounds so you have to keep aiming, shooting, and defending yourself as you go.  This isn’t turn-based combat!

Here are a few screens:

We’ll have this thing out in the coming days, so stay tuned.

Also, we won’t call it Bunkers.  We’ll find something better to name it :).

A couple Fridays ago we found a spider in the office and decided to ask you guys about it.  Being totally ignorant about types of spiders, it was only fitting that we asked our community (who probably has dealt with more spiders in their time) to figure out the make and model year of the spider.

Probably within a few minutes we got our first answer back, and for the most part everyone agreed.  So we decided to name it after our first ID’er, UberDead49.  Thanks to your help we can now be more careful about these Wolf Spiders instead of shooing them into cups with our hands.  I didn’t know they bite.  Good to know.

Now that we’re done playing with spiders, we hope to move on to more deadly things.  We’re hoping for some sort of snake or land shark next.

(This picture is small, click on it to see larger)

Joey and I are still working on our “Bunker Shooting Other Bunkers” game, but I just wanted to post the semi-finished store as it stands today . It’s a fairly large amount of info to squeeze into a single screen (720 x 400) and we’re pretty happy with it.  Buy items from the center column and then organize at will to give your bunkers the weapons and defensive items you want.

The weapons in the game will correspond to the weapons on this page making it much easier to remember what is what.  Also icons follow you throughout the game to give you further assistance in choosing and placing weapons.

Flash 10 is giving us a hand in 3d transitions as well, check the game out at the end of the month!  We’ll update with some in-game screenshots soon!

Know what kind of spider this is?  It’s about 1.5 inches in diameter and was found today at the Armor Games Office in California!  We’ll name it after you if you can ID it.

Otherwise we’re naming it Frank.  Please help him/her/it.