Crush the Castle is now available on the iPhone!

Download Now!

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!

I just launched my latest game called Phage Wars 2, the sequel to Phage Wars. The game consists of genetically modifying a virus and competing against other viruses for total domination. The game is centered around fast paced strategy where you must take over as many cells as possible to eradicate all foreign life forms.

If you are unfamiliar with the original Phage Wars, here is a little bit of back story. When I was in college, I had to do a senior project before I graduated. After a doing a fair amount of research on what style game I wanted I came across this game called Galcon for the iPhone (also on the Mac). I loved the gameplay and found that I wanted to make something similar in Flash. I had previously built an AI engine from another project in college so I was already halfway there. The cellular life forms idea came from my professor wanting to see a game centered on microscopic life. Needless to say I got an “A” on the project and ended up collaborating with Armor as a sponsor for the game.

Phage Wars 1 was a huge technical challenge for me, as I really wanted to pit hundreds of viruses against each other. I ended up optimizing the game so much that I could get 500 viruses on screen and still have it run within a decent frame rate. I also found that the power of Flash 10 helped a little bit as well, which is why the original had such a large disclaimer for requiring Flash 10.

When I was tasked with Phage Wars 2, I wanted to do something different with the UI as well. Phage Wars 1 had hardly any UI, so I figured the sequel should have a lot. I also didn’t want to do the typical game menus that you see in every game either. Instead I wanted to create a testing environment where you run an experiment and see a bunch of data afterwards, kind of like a science lab. Going with that theme, I always remembered looking at the equipment scientists use and how old most of their computers were archaic and built on legacy software. I tried to replicate that as much as possible, harking back to the old Mac OS 6 and 7 for reference. I was lucky enough to collaborate with John on the UI, so that really helped a lot.

I also wanted to create new elements of gameplay that I wanted in the original, but never implemented. These are the new cell types and the Genome Sequencer. The sequencer came about from hearing Carlie talk about her biology classes and how the Genome is usually represented as a chart. This ended up being the perfect way to upgrade your virus over the course of the game. Using Gene Proteins to upgrade your virus, rather than the typical point based system.

Phage Wars 2 plays out more like a science experiment, than a typical game. I’ve added enough geeky things in it that I hope play to some internal geek in us all.

If you haven’t played Phage Wars 2 yet, check it out at Armor Games here. If you’ve played #2, but haven’t played the #1, check out the original here.

Just wanted to Thank everyone who bought a copy of Shift on the iPhone / iPod touch. With everyone’s support Shift became the #1 Puzzle game on the App store.

Make sure to congratulate Tony on his amazing game.

If you haven’t had a chance to try it, download it here.

Shift
Shift-Lite

I’d also recommend checking out these great games on the App Store as well.

Bloons
Defend Your Castle

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…

Remember that game I said I’d be releasing before Christmas? That small side project that you guys won’t have heard much about. Well it’s nearly done, and here is a trailer of sorts. I’ve included the title at the start, in case it’s a bit too obscure for you to remember.

Coming to a Computer Screen near you on May 19th!! Mark your Calendars.

AND THAT’S NOT ALL!

Because released at pretty much the same time for all you gadget junkies - SHIFT for iPhone/iPod Touch!
A rather brilliant remake of Shift 1 with tonnes (and I mean tonnes) of extra levels.
A free version will be available for you to give it a try, and it’s not one of those crummy free versions that last 2 seconds, either, it’s rather substantial (about the length of the original game itself!).

Here are some screenies!

So, what do you guys think?

Check the App-Store on May 19th to get your FREE copy of Shift on your iPhone/iPod touch.

Captain Tony, signing off.

Do you have enough Slaughtering of Robots in your diet?

How about Aliens? Badass Lizard Bikers? Zombies!? Ok, you’ve probably killed a fair few zombies recently if I know you guys, but Lizard Bikers? THAT’S EXTREME!
Also I hear there’s Ninja in there somewhere as well, but they move so fast I must have missed them, since I lack lightning reflexes. You may have better luck, however.

So why am I bringing up this supposed lack of action on your part? Well I’ve been hard at work the past couple of months on a game designed by a rather awesome individual, who goes by the name of Chandler.

Chandler had drawn up a design document for a rather amazing game. You can customise your character, buy weapon upgrades, compete in Dancing competitions with Master Ninja Grovers, blast through roadblocks on a motorcycle and explode a whole load of crazy stuff!

The game is known as JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE MIND. And here’s some screenshots of this upcoming blastathon.

The fantastic realisations of Chandlers sketches were by Michael Swain, the MASTERMIND behind the Blockhead series of cartoons and a game about conquering the world who’s name I can’t recall at the moment.

“But when can I expect to see it!?” I hear you cry…well hold on, you’ll have to wait, A WHOLE 5 MINUTES! ‘Cause this games going up right now! (6th of May 2009 for you future readers, with your fancy flying cars and world peace.)

So, I hope you enjoy and have fun!

Tony.

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.

Con and I just launched our latest game called Crush the Castle. I tackled code and Con did the art. The game consists of destroying castles with a huge Medievil Trebuchet. What more could you want?

Little bit of history on this game, just about every one at the office here loved Castle Clout by Liam Bowmers so we decided to make our own version. We were lucky enough to get permission from Liam as well.

To give even further inspiration, John and I decided to make our own Trebuchet in the office here with a fair amount of success. After terrorizing the town with it for a few hours, it was off to actual development.

I started doing some research on 2D physics engines, and I realized there are quite a few out there. One of the most prominent ones used in the flash community that I saw is Box2D. Now I did some tests with Box2D and it is very fast and powerful, but one of the things that bugged me was that it was a direct port of the C++ version and that it had very little done to it for Flash optimizations.

I did some more research and found another awesome engine that suited my needs perfectly. It’s called Glaze and it’s made by Richard Jewson and it’s fast. Really fast. I mean I was able to throw quite a bit at it before I saw any stutter. This meant that castles could be huge and menacing without a big drop in performance.

Anyways, once I got the engine figured out the rest was just making the actual trebuchet. With alot of testing and data adjusting, I was able to finally get a realistic looking Trebuchet working. The best part was making my first castle and realizing how much fun it was to just demolish it.

Knowing that, I built a castle editor so you could crush castles of your own design. Let me tell you, nothing is more satifying than building crazy castles and destroying them with bombs. We created a forum post so players can post their own castles and rate others. Check it out when you get a chance, and see some of the castles created in the office here.

The game is done and finished so check it out on Armor Games Crush the Castle.

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!