Porter's World

Here are the Prince’s top picks of the month, these are the best of the best from January of 2010.

1.) Alice is Dead: Chapter 2 – The incredibly popular point and click adventure delivers its second chapter with even more sketchy fairy-tale goodness.

2.) Battalion: Vengeance – The Battalion series brings itself to a closing with this final chapter; fans of the series won’t be disappointed.

3.) Transcripted – Transcripted is one of the more unique games to come out as of late. It’s fantastic art style and suiting ambiance track create a fantastic atmosphere worth checking out on its own. That aside, it offers a fantastic mix of both puzzle and action elements, definitely a must play for anyone interested in either genre.

4.) Civilizations Wars – Civilizations Wars is a very charming tactical strategy game with a lot of new additions to an already working concept. Fans of Nano War will be pleased with it’s fantastic visuals and enhanced gameplay through the ability to use spells.

5.) Helicops – Helicops is an entertaining action game with very nice pseudo 3D visuals. Tons of upgrades, various enemy types, and fast paced gameplay make this a must play.

If you haven’t checked out all of the above games, I strongly suggest you head over and give them a play, they’re all of excellent quality. Be sure to check back frequently to the greatest source of quality games on the net.

Both Games, Different Designs

Throughout the last few years I’ve studied what works in the flash gaming community and what doesn’t. There is without a doubt a number of tactics to be followed to ensure that your game is fit for this industry. Such tactics exist because there is a clear difference in how game design for the flash industry works when compared to game design for console systems. Everything from the difficulty to the controls used must be thought out differently when developing a flash game, not doing so could result in a great game, in the wrong market.

As much as I hate to admit it sometimes, there really is a difference in flash game design in comparison to console game design. Games developed for flash must be far more casual in most cases, and even when not casual must be developed entirely differently in other aspects. The controls in your game must be very clear, and very simple to use. Most flash game players don’t have enough hand eye coordination to press two or three different buttons as well as the arrow keys or WASD keys to move, it’s just too complicated and takes more time to get used to than most players have or are willing to give. Aspects such as difficulty must be decreased significantly in order to appeal to the majority of players. A good way to go about this is to make what you think is easy, hard, and move from there.

Flash game players have far less of an attention span compared to console players as well, for numerous reasons. Firstly, they don’t pay for your game, so they don’t feel compelled to stick around and get their money’s worth out of it. Secondly, there’s a lot more games out there, every day tons of new flash games come out, if your game doesn’t impress them very quickly, they’ll move on to the next one without thinking twice. Another reason your first impression must be so important is due to a games pre-release exposure. Flash games get very little exposure before release, if any. Console games will have trailers, articles, tons of talk among gamers for months to come, some times years. This allows users to have more patience when trying out the game, because they know it gets good from what they’ve seen. With a flash game however, they don’t know what’s coming, and if you don’t impress them right off, they’re not about to stick around and find that out.

The above brings quite the issue to any developers plate, especially those in favor of retro games. Many developers such as myself have a craving to develop games in the style of NES and SNES games, challenging, minimal instructions, and fun. The issue with this however, is that although such a game can be a top notch game in general, the flash industry isn’t always the best place for it due to the above reasons. If someone was to develop a new IP and have it play nearly identical to a hit SNES or NES game, it will do alright in the flash industry, but never live to it’s full potential in comparison to a non-flash platform. Games such as these just aren’t meant for the web, at least if you’re looking to get the money the game quality deserves. Such games in my opinion belong on systems such as the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP, or perhaps on Xbox Live Arcade.

With the above in mind, I urge all developers to really just develop what they want. I’m in no way saying you shouldn’t make  games such as Tower of Greed or Raider Episode 1, I’m simply warning you of the financial consequences of doing so. I myself will never stop trying to perfect a balance of both, but it certainly isn’t an easy one and I’ll lose out on a lot of potential revenue in the process. Either way, with the above knowledge you can further your planning methods in game development when trying to maximize your profits for your final product; remember though, it’s not all about the cash, making games for fun is where it’s at.

What NOT to do

Having your players not know how to play, complain, then rate your game down is something we all hate. One solution I see people doing far too often is forcing a tutorial upon the players, bad move. As much as you may hate reading comments about your players not knowing how to play, especially after they skip the tutorial, forcing one upon them still isn’t the way you want to go about it.

Let’s face it, 90% of players aren’t going to read our tutorials, especially if they’re not forced to. This creates a huge problem however, if our game is complicated even in the slightest, or has odd controls, or both, we’re about to run into some trouble. Having players not know how to play your game is just as bad as having a horrible game, it’s all the same in the eyes of the player. Throwing in a tutorial as the first level and making it mandatory works, but it also turns a lot of players away, that is, when they know.

Where a forced tutorial may turn players away, you can still throw a tutorial in your first level, or levels, and get away with it. An example of a game that had mini tutorials within levels that weren’t forced is Super Mario World. If you recall the game, there were help boxes (Blue and Red Boxes) all over the place when new concepts were introduced, it was up to you click on them or not, which often happened when a player died right after skipping one of those boxes. This strategy allows players to completely skip the instructions and have a good time, but have instructions right there in the gameplay before the area they died in if needed. This method really is a lot more powerful than it sounds, because it works. I almost never go into an instructions menu or tutorial menu in a flash game, I do however read signs or background instructions when they’re embedded in game, which is proof the method works. Raider Episode 1 for instance has signs throughout the game explaining things. I skipped these signs all together for my first attempt at the game, but when I died I started reading them to see what advice they had to offer, and I did this because I didn’t have to go out of my way to do so. Games such as Star Fox 64 told you to “Do a barrel roll!” mid action, the instructions popped up on screen and you followed them, but never did you go out of your way to learn how.

It really is a simple concept, but I can’t stress how much this can make or break a game. One of the most difficult decisions I find myself making in game design is how to get the instructions out to the player. Figuring out how you’ll ensure even the most novice of players can understand what to do and what is going on is incredibly important, and the above is generally the best solution. If you find yourself having problems getting your instructions across to players, pick up one of the above mentioned games and check them out, you’ll see how it’s done.

Here are this week’s useful links posted by me, for you, check them out,

1.) Manipulating Mp3’s: Learn how to reverse mp3’s with AS3, pretty neat.
2.) The Art of Debugging: Learn the ins and outs of debugging with this expansive explanation.
3.) Improve Your Game Over Screen: Learn how to keep players from leaving your game upon game over with a few simple additions.
4.) Introduction to OOP: A nice introduction to explaining the basics of Object Oriented Programming.
5.) Pre-loaders with AS3: One developers take on how to implement a pre-loader using AS3 (often an annoying task)

Check back with the Prince often, because I love you.