Max is finally back, 10 months after he first began damaging stacks of electronics and kitchen appliances with his cannon. This time he is equipped with some exciting new toys like the laser and machine gun. There are new targets to hit too, and other surprises along the way. A bonus game mode has been rumored. <-Right there, I just rumored it.
Go shoot some stuff already…
A quick note to say Max Damage 2 is coming soon to a theater near you! If you haven’t already, you should play the original Max Damage, or read the postmortem. MD2 is very close to complete. It features 50 challenging new levels plus new targets and new cannon shot types. Check out the trailer:
GlueFO 3: Asteroids Wars now out on irregulargames! This is the third (and final?) installment of the popular GlueFO series. Split asteroids, collect mineral ore and upgrade your ship. Watch out for competitor ships intent on cramping your style. This version features a storyline, much improved graphics, pilot rating system, lots of sweet upgrades, awards and survival mode. What more could you want?
Check it out exclusively on irregulargames before general release in a week or two.
I’ve started work on GlueFO 3, the third installment in my GlueFO series. I made the original GlueFO well over a year ago, and the followup GlueFO 2.0 over 6 months ago. The basis of the game is that you capture and fling tiny orbs in order to split bigger orbs. Splitting big orbs right down gives you more tiny orbs to collect and fire. Its Asteroids with a twist – you don’t have conventional ammo and instead use the tiny orbs that you split for this purpose.
Why two sequels?
When I made the first game I never imagined I would want to make two sequels. But for both sequels I felt I had enough additions and improvements to add to the core mechanic (which is pretty fun) to make it worthwhile. The first game was simple – it had unlimited levels and only a few upgrades. Although it was fun I thought I could make it more engaging and re-playable by adding context and variation, and I did this by making a Campaign mode with a specific target, along with achievements, challenges and extra upgrades. GlueFO 2.0 was more successful than the first (winning 3rd place in the Top of the World flash contest).
As a developer working on a sequel is a bit less fun than designing a new game. For me anyway, the most fun part of the development process is coming up with a new idea and bringing it to life with an early prototype. The polishing, balancing, beta testing, bug fixing etc that comes after this is somewhat less fun. The flip side is that making a sequel is less work than developing something from scratch – you can reuse code, fix bugs or design mistakes from the previous version, and hopefully end up with something that is actually a better game.
What’s new in part 3?
The third installment will be the game it should have been from the start, except that I could never have made it the first time because (a) I didn’t have the experience as a designer/developer, and (b) feedback and analysis from the first two versions informed design of the third. One big thing I think is lacking in GlueFO 2.0 is that the Campaign (and challenges) are arbitrary. Why are there 15 levels in the Campaign for example? [Answer: it just felt about right for the level of difficulty/ game length]. I’m addressing this in GlueFO 3 by having stage-based battles and a storyline to go with them. Other improvements/additions include:
Right now the game is almost feature complete – I need to add the achievements and get an artist to help out on some graphics. If you’d like to be involved in the beta testing leave a comment or email me: gordon[at]irregulargames.com
Woot woot! Rubble Racer won 9th place and $1000 in the Kongregate Stride contest. Apparently there were 169 entries and from what I saw the top 30 or so were pretty good, so I’m very happy to take a placing.
In other news, Sick Leave (which was my other Stride contest entry that placed around 25th) is now out on general release. Players did seem to quite enjoy this game with the main (and valid) criticism being that it was too simple. So I’m thinking about making a more in-depth version with levels/achievements/more story structure/bosses etc. Right now though I’m working on the 3rd and final installment of my GlueFO games.
Happy New Year, I hope you have a great 2010!
Ever had to take sick leave? Find that staying home being sick had distinct advantages over working? If so, Sick Leave is the game for you. Maximize your sick days by colliding with spikes or getting stung by bees. Keep your health low so that you don’t have to go back to work!
Sick Leave is my second entry in the Kongregate Stride “endurance” contest and will be there exclusively until some time after the contest ends. Endurance can be defined as the ability to withstand hardship or suffering – what could be more noble than injuring yourself in order to avoid the great evil of a boring cubicle job?
Rubble Racer is my entry in Kongregate’s Stride “endurance” themed contest. Its doing ok right now but there’s still a month to go in the contest and bound to be some quality entries. The concept here was a simple 1-button tunnel flying game, but with the addition of shields, collision physics, powerups, rubble and 2 ship types to spice up the typical game in this genre.
Drop3 – a unique physics-based game released on irRegularGames! Drop3 is a Tetris-inspired puzzle game featuring 2 main differences: (a) instead of filling rows you match shapes/colors in groups of 3, and (b) instead of a grid-based system it is physics-based, meaning the circles, triangles and rectangles bounce off each other when dropped. This is where a lot of the fun comes in – popping a group can lead to chain reactions as other groups are matched by tumbling shapes.
This game took about 2 weeks to make and is an indirect offshoot of my recent game-in-a-day attempt Gravity Shift. The game mechanic for Drop3 is just more fun than Gravity Shift turned out so I spent more time adding features and polishing. I threw in some achievements to increase the challenge and replay value, and also “crazy” mode where weird things happen every few seconds. “Monochrome” is my favorite crazy event!
Drop3 will be exclusively on irRegularGames for a while and if playing the illegitimate offspring of Tetris and Bejeweled sounds appealing, what are you waiting for? 
Gravity Shift has just been released on irRegularGames. I’d seen a number of other developers create a game in only one day, with some impressive results. I thought I’d better have a go and Gravity Shift is the result. It’s a failure in the sense that it took probably a day and a half, but other than that I’m pretty happy with it!
It was a lot of fun to work on a small project and have a short deadline. It really forces you to make design decisions quickly. The idea for Gravity Shift somehow popped into my head after thinking about 5 or so other ideas that probably wouldn’t have worked nearly so well (for a 1 day game at least). I used the Box2D physics engine and also reused a bunch of code from other games. The game mechanic is completely new, I think it’s turned out a fun short-play game that is somewhat addictive.
It will be up on irRegularGames for a few days before general release, and I’d appreciate any feedback. It will be interesting to see if it gains any traction, you can view the current stats on plays and hosts.
Max Damage is the latest irRegularGame and perhaps my most successful to date. Its a physics-puzzle game where you shoot cannonballs at stacks of targets with the goal of causing sufficient damage to pass the level.
Inspiration
Bloons is the modern father of flash aim-and-shoot type games so there is an obvious influence from there. I’d actually been thinking about this game for a couple of years and was surprised no-one had made a physics-based version of Bloons, although since making Max Damage I discovered other games like Fragger, Crush the Castle and Roly Poly Cannon which are somewhat similar. The main differentiation in Max Damage is the idea of a damage level to targets, where these other games have a more black-and-white destroy/crush/topple mechanism. The inspiration for this was actually the car crash mini-game in Burnout (2 or 3?) that I had played on Playstation many years ago. This was a great little game-within-the-main-game where you crashed your car and tried to create the most monetary damage possible. It was awesome to watch the ensuing carnage after a crash and replay in slow motion, etc.
Development
This was my first game using the wonderful Box2D Flash physics engine. I procrastinated working on this game for a couple of years because I first had to learn AS3 and then get to grips with Box2D! Once I had the basic structure working I built a level editor and started making levels. I tried to make each level a little different from the others and to gradually increase the overall difficulty (while keeping some difficulty variation so that players didn’t simply get frustrated that all the levels were very difficult towards the end). You could say that levels come in 2 types: puzzle levels where a particular strategy or trick is required, and more open levels where many different strategies could work. I added different cannonball types and basically thought up as many levels as I could where it didn’t feel like you were just doing the same thing over. The particle effects and flaming cannonball types were late additions that I think really added something.
Stats
At time of writing Max Damage has had approximately 3.8 million views on over 1300 hosts in about 5 weeks. This doesn’t include plays of non-exclusive versions (at armorgames, addictinggames, etc). This is certainly my most successful game in terms of plays/distribution so far. I think this one has been more popular because it has decent graphics and intuitive, fun gameplay. Some of my previous games have been somewhat niche and have either been more graphically basic or required more effort upfront to work out how to play. In my own view neither of these is necessarily a bad thing but in terms of flash game distribution shiny graphics and easy to pick up gameplay go a long way.
How not to implement microtransactions
Microtransactions are a hot topic in flash games right now with several providers having recently launched services. From a developer perspective the advantages are clear – they offer another revenue stream to potentially make a decent living. For players the value is less obvious, to some it appears that things that were previously free are now being charged for. And indeed in games where the microtransactions are not well thought out this can be the case. But microtransactions should allow good developers to include extra content and make more in-depth flash games as there is more incentive to make games that players want to play for more than 5 or 15 minutes. This should be good for the overall quality of flash games.
My plan with Max Damage was to make the first 28 levels free and the remaining 21 buyable. But some early release feedback convinced me that this would have been a mistake – there was simply not enough content in the game to be selling it. Mochiads version control proved invaluable here as I was able to quickly rip out the buyable levels code and have it updated in all versions regardless of where they were played. [On a side note version control also allowed me to change the timeout calculation ("calculating final damage") from a time-based to a frame-based one so that it was consistent for all players regardless of their machine speed]. The end result was a game that had very minimal microtransactions – only a “level unlock” item that allowed levels to be played in any order. The rate of sales for this item is extremely low, but on the flip side it is unobtrusive and hasn’t produced any of the negative feedback that has come with most microtransaction games to date. The main thing I’ve taken from this is that you need to have the right style of game with sufficient content, and think carefully about any microtransaction implementation early in the design process.
Feedback
Getting feedback on your games from portal comments is a funny thing. If something in your game bothers players you will most definitely hear about it. Many, many times. But a good design choice is unlikely to be commented on. You also really have to wade through the noise to find the valuable feedback, but there are usually a few well-reasoned comments to go with the dozens of useless ones (”sux 0/5″, “no mute button”, or even “great game”).
The main sticking points with Max Damage seemed to be the music, the Max character graphic, and the design of a couple of levels. Well, music is a tough one as it is so subjective; I think I’ll provide 2 music options in future games to cater for this, the only real downside being increased filesize. Aaron did a great job on the graphics, but I think the problem with the Max character was mainly that he looks kid-like and this might not appeal to the adolescent crowd (who are much too cool). I’m thinking of having a few customizable Max looks in the next version. Finally there were 2 levels in particular that produced a lot of complaints. Level 24 (Trick Shot) is a puzzle-type level that requires a bit of lateral thinking. I totally stand by this as being a good level and think a game needs a decent level of challenge. If a player really gets stuck it’s not too hard to find a walkthrough or buy the level unlock! Level 33 (Boxed Art) was also a contentious one, and in this case I agree with the complaints as even I don’t have a reliable strategy to complete it, and too much luck was required.
I already have some good ideas for Max Damage 2, but I’ll leave those for a future post…
