Bow Street Runner. Such a good name for a game, I thought. But wait, Bow Street Runners were actually the first professional police force in London. That being said, you take the role of a new Runner recruited by John Fielding, Henry Fielding’s brother who is the founder of Bow Street Runners. It’s an episodic adventure game spread through 5 episodes and claims to be historically correct which means that you learn something new while playing games! That’s always a good thing. First episode starts with a murder of a man lying dead in Covent Garden so you’re sent to investigate.

At the first glance I enjoyed the game’s professional use of different technology. Although it’s a Flash game, it’s elements include live action characters composited onto a 3d background much like in the old adventure games such as Phantasmagoria. It’s really nice to see such style so many years later with today’s technology and yes, it looks damn good. Much like in Phoenix Wright series (more on that later) you click your way through hot spots until you find certain clues which either raise your Esteem level, trigger other events or simply let you go to the next place. Leaving a scene means that you’ve done everything in it and that you don’t have to come back. That makes things a lot easier and it’s a system I personally prefer. Certain hot spots will trigger mini games in which you have to click and drag your mouse through a given shape, much like in Trauma Center or Dark Cut. It’s also one of the hardest and sadly most annoying parts of the game. Not only you have to be really precise, but the given time is brutally short so these mini games become near impossible towards the end of the game. There are of course other types of mini games too. By failing in some mini games, you don’t get the Esteem which you need to rank up. I haven’t found any other point of the Esteem bar except that it gives replay value to the game since you lose chances of building the bar further and thus not getting ranked up. In a certain mini game, failure changes the course of the storyline a bit which is always a good plus and makes you wonder what happens if you succeed.

It’s safe to say that the game is influenced by Phoenix Wright on the DS but done in a realistic way. Especially since you have to gather evidence and correctly present it to John Fielding at the end like in the court. I personally haven’t succeeded so instead of getting a game over, I got an alternate ending. In my second playthrough I encountered a couple of bugs which actually didn’t let me finish the game. Still, it’s a really amazingly done game from Channel 4 and is definitely worth playing.

- Luka M.,
C404.net

[ Play this Game ]

Kenney, the same person from the, dare I say, controversial article, is coming back with a new game. Is it a small and quick mini game like others? I proudly say no. As I start the game, I see the cutest intro ever seen in a flash industry. I’m not kidding. I really like to start the game over and over again just to see that “Kenney presents” intro. Not to fear, it’s not the same one as in the trailer (following below) but you get to see it in a final version. On with the preview of the actual game.

There’s not too much to say about the game since it’s basically a game based on Marble Madness from the 80’s. There are a couple of things worth mentioning and being looked forward to. Really nice, clean and modern graphics, new levels that don’t have anything to do with the original version of the game, high difficulty, different variations of obstacles (ways you have to unlock, electricity, moving platforms…) and of course a high score and a timer which you can’t go without. Especially in a game like this where it’s all about the time and the score. I am already seeing speed runs of this on YouTube since the same happen with Marble Madness. I’ve played through the first couple of levels vs. Marble Madness’ six levels and the game wasn’t as difficult as the original although some people are still annoyed by it’s current difficulty, which is a good thing. I am faithful to the original so I like it that way. You really need skill to grasp the physics of the ball/marble so I have to admit, non gamers will have a hard time playing it.
The graphics are a big plus and there are some cute details like stars which spawn as you accelate at a faster speed in a very subtle yet noticable way. If you’re a fan of Marble Madness or not, this is one of the games to look forward to. Here’s to hoping it will have as twice as much levels as I played through. Coming out whenever it’s coming out.

ps. There might be some competition going on with this game when it comes out but maybe it’s just me.

- Luka M.,
C404.net

[ View the trailer ]

Hello faithful readers!

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to write anything on here, but that’s not without reason: I have been working on a semi-secret project that is sure to please a lot of Flash developers. While working on this project, I found myself taking a good look at the modern flash scene and trying to figure out where it’s all headed.

Many reputable sources have written articles on the Flash game scene in the past year, including IGN and Edge Magazine. These articles have talked about how the scene is booming and how easy it is to break in to. What they don’t talk about is how difficult it is to STAY in.

I come from the old school. When I broke in to the industry, Flash games were not at the high level of quality you see today. Programmers did all their own art, sound effects were uncompressed and minimal, music was very rare, and typically illegally sampled from copywritten material.

Yet, there was a certain magic about them. People were taking a new technology and constantly pushing it in both technical and expressive manners.

This was the golden age of Flash games, where everyone simply did it because they loved doing it.

Nobody thought it would be a big business back then, but we all did our best to make the coolest stuff possible anyway.

Around this time, the online advertising industry was starting to recover from the dot-com crash of the late 90’s, and people were looking for places to advertise.

This was the start of Flash games becoming a real industry, although nobody recognized it as such at the time.

By 2003, the Flash scene was a bountiful place for independent developers. We made our games, and we ran our web sites. People came from all over to see our individual work, and we made a lot of ad revenue. Enough for most of us to quit our day-jobs and work on Flash full-time.

Back then, if you made a good game, it would get placed on the front page at Newgrounds.com (the most popular flash site of the time). With the number of developers being much smaller than it is now, these games would often sit on the front page, sometimes for weeks, getting massive amounts of plays from casual users too lazy to click beyond the pretty icons they saw. This massive exposure generated massive traffic kickbacks, and as a result, massive revenue spikes.

Needless to say, the bar kept getting raised as people fought for that coveted slot of exposure.
Like all good things, the ad boom came to an end and slowly leveled off. We didn’t care, even with the decline in ad rates, they still paid pretty well and we got by as long as we kept making good games.

The ad agencies became so saturated with gaming sites that they pretty much slammed their doors to anyone not already on-board. It was now nearly impossible to break into independent Flash as a career.

In just a few short years, we found ourselves grown up and out-dated. There was a new generation of developers. Kids tinkering with Flash in high school or college, learning how to make games and having a good time. It was like a natural resource… pure, unrefined talent just waiting to be tapped.

While many of the old pioneers clung to their precious sites and ad revenues, this new generation was all about making stuff for fun, just like we used to be. And they wanted their work to be seen.

In no time, Newgrounds was getting several new games a day and the front page was updated more and more frequently. The coveted slots were harder to get, and if you DID get one, they didn’t last very long at all. The traffic on our sites began to dwindle, and soon, our incomes were becoming tight.

At the same time, new sites started popping up with promises of developer empowerment through sponsorships. While you couldn’t make as much money from a sponsorship as you potentially could from advertising, you could make a decent living as long as you didn’t have a lot of bills and expenses. The money was a sure thing.

This was the perfect time for the new generation to thrive. Many of these developers still lived at home, and could rapidly make games for $500-$2000 a pop without any hardship. Sponsorships also gave us old-guys a way to supplement our dwindling ad revenues and kept us doing what we loved.

It looked like a new renaissance was upon us as the bar was being raised higher and higher by many people. It also turned out to be a curse. While many strived to push Flash farther and farther, most were simply producing large quantities of mini games and over-glorified tech demos.

Self-publishers got buried by massive quantities of Armor Games and Crazy Monkey Games logos, and more and more sponsorship sites were popping up every day. This was amplified by contests that had developers plastering sponsor logos in their work without any sponsorship, simply the CHANCE to win a few grand if your game was the best out in the pile.

My own website was making a mere 25% what it once had, and all i could do was bust my ass to get a new game done every month or two and hope a sponsorship would be enough to cover my bills. Many of my peers were in the same situation, some even abandoning their sites for the stability of an unsatisfying day job.

The fact I am still around tells you I’ve managed to get by, but my work suffered for it. Corners were cut, ambitious projects were sidelined in order to get quantity puzzle games out the door, and so on and so fourth.

Meanwhile, site traffic continued to drop because the sponsors got the lions share of the kickback traffic and the game’s lowered quality gave them shorter shelf lives on most sites.
Then I discovered a new option: Mochiads.

Mochiads accepted me into their private beta and I decided to do a little experiment. The Generic Defense Game project was my first stab at challenging the status quo, and it was a huge success (which you can real all about here).

Now I was making money from other sites hosting my game. This single game was supplementing my site revenue. An additional sponsorship from Kongregate was the icing on the cake!

It looked like Mochiads would be the answer to the sponsorship monster that was crushing so many creative people.

But the mass amount of games being published on a daily basis proved to be too much, and Generic Defense Game quickly got buried and started getting minimal views. Without the sustained views, the Mochiads could no longer make up the difference.

Another new option popping up was revenue sharing sites, like Kongregate and GameGum. These sites would give you a cut of any ad revenue your game earned. These programs were appealing, but also proved ineffective once a game was buried by the flood of new submissions always pouring in.
I would still need to rapidly produce mediocre content in order to stay afloat. And so I did, and have been doing so until I stumbled on to the work of one Adam Schroeder.

Adam had been working with Flash for several years, but had just recently decided to give Flash games a try after getting involved on the Kongregate Forums. He built a really basic game called Asteroids Revenge, which he hoped Kongregate may sponsor. The game wasn’t up to the standards of the time, and so Adam gave Mochiads a try. He found the same result as I did… the revenue wasn’t sustainable for very long and his game was soon buried.

Adam was still unfamiliar with how people were making money for their work, so he did something crazy. HE ASKED AROUND!

Long story short (click the link above if you want the long story), Adam discovered that by merely talking with several sites and being patient, you could get better sponsorships. By listening to feedback and putting in extra work, you could even get GREAT sponsorships.

Adam didn’t stop there. He talked to many other sites about their outlooks on the business and actually published his findings.

When I first read his stories on FlashGameSponsorship.com, I was immediately drawn to the information provided by Ezone (creators of Sling) and Flipline Studios (creators of Papa Louie), and saw mention of the Holy Grail: Non-Exclusive Licensing!

These guys were doing it right. Making stuff that was high-quality fun and self publishing without any sponsors. They were talking to the right people and getting their games out on the blog-o-sphere, thus bringing the players to THEM (getting banner ad exposure as well as Mochiad views). And as if that wasn’t enough, they were also selling non-exclusive copies of their games to other high-quality sites and making far more than anyone was making with lump-sum sponsorships.

After reading this collection of information I was also impressed by Kongregate’s Premium Sponsorship program, which is really more like advanced funding for game development than a traditional sponsorship. You get a very large sum of money, typically enough for a person to live on for a year, to develop a high-quality game of your own design. The program is based on royalties. The more the game is played, the more royalties you get. The initial funding is merely an advance on these royalties, meaning you get a small cut of the game’s initial profits, but end up with the majority cut once the term of the advance is fulfilled.

With these great methods for serious developers to utilize, more and more people are turning their heads. Many venture capitol sites like Kongregate are popping up ready to fund developers or buy licensed content to power their business models.

While it’s easy to be drawn to these sites, I am seeing a trend of cookie-cutter gaming sites trying to cash in on this movement. Who knows how long the landscape will last, but for now… this is where the opportunities will lie.

Adam is currently working with his partner, Chris, on a new site, which gives developers a place to show their pre-published work and get the best sponsorship possible via auction, with additional potential for multiple, non-exclusive deals for high-quality games. The site is still in development, but I’ll definitely give it a plug when it’s up!

Meanwhile, the place that originally kicked off the industry, Newgrounds.com, continues to grow as well. Soon, it will empower developers who want to break free from the system, and keep them unshackled.

How do I know this? It’s a secret…..

I got a hand on one of the more hyped games this moment which is mainly advertised on Newgrounds by an author named Jazza Studios. I’ve been really looking forward on seeing it because the shown screenshots and the trailer (followed below) are showing some spectacular artwork in action. We can’t know how the game actually runs and plays until we try it ourselves so I went for it.

For all the people who don’t know the background story; Paladin is a 5 part movie which was in the works since 2004 and finished in 2007. In the end, the author published a DVD and is now making a game.

The first reaction on running the game was absolutely positive. So much work was put into this and in such a small amount of time that the author deserves a proper praise for that. The interface is clearly inspired by Blizzard’s Diablo which can be mistaken as to saying it’s a ripoff but it’s more of a fan art and the author’s love for medieval fantasy style.

At first, as I walked around I thought I’d see a beat ‘em up system in Dad ‘n Me style but it’s actually an RPG style of gameplay where you get to click like crazy to attack enemies and do some minor combos. I was dissapointed for a bit to see a lack of variety in what’s it’s supposed to be a hack ‘n slash game with RPG elements. In the tutorial, I learned that there’s a jump attack and a kick which allows you to kick enemies onto the floor and give yourself more time for other zombies. Not only that, but it’s a whole new world of fighting out there since it allows you to deal with multiple enemies in a different manner. It becomes a bit repetative for now because all I did was going forward and clicking my way through the levels but the game should feature different levels and different gameplay so it’ll make up for that.

Besides fighting, there are also spells. I haven’t really got around those because the game itself is still in early stages. The only one I got to test is the shield which wasn’t all that fun since it’s just for defending yourself.

Since it’s a hack ‘n slash game with RPG elements, you’re bound to see some kind of stats! By killing all the enemies, you get experience points and as you get experience points, your level grows and thus, you can raise your strength, stamina and such. This is already a big addition to an already huge game. By huge, I mean both in quality and quantity.
Like it’s not enough, the game features voiceovers and fully animated cutscenes.

Being impressed by amazing detail of graphics and then slighty dissapointed by combat, I am definitely looking forward to playing this with all new levels and combat features, especially spells.

Based on author’s words, Paladin the game should be coming out in December 2007.

Making a game? Send an email to webmaster[at]c404.net for a possible preview article on this website.

- Luka M.,
C404.net

[ View the trailer ]

As more and more web-game developers start trekking into the land of multiplayer gaming, we are finally starting to see a larger variety of game genres appearing beyond the simplistic turn-based games of yesteryear.

Host, by Caulder Bradford (aka RiftMaster, aka Bubbles) and Edmund McMillen (aka That Gish Dude) presents us with a platform/brawler game in the vein of Super Smash Bros.

Let’s start with the art:

Your characters are essentially blobs of flesh possessed by a host organism and protected by a skull. Each player can customize their skull by giving it different features like horns, markings and hair, and a variety of teeth. Aside from a few interchangeable parts, however, each character is essentially the same.

The level art is very basic and minimal, which makes it very easy to separate the players from the landscape, and the landscapes are nice and moody.

The setup interfaces are fairly pretty as well, if a little confusing at first. You start with with a grid of holes you can drop your host organism into to join existing games, or you can create a new game by popping it into a big sphincter. Once you are in the setup screen you have more holes that seemingly have no purpose. In actuality, these are how you pick which level you will be playing in.

You can look at any part of this game and just know it’s been drawn by Edmund.

The music in the game is nothing short of amazing. The well composed title and menu songs just add to the twisted appearance of the game, and the in-battle music is very atmospheric and not distracting in any way.

The sound effects aren’t anything fancy, but are very fitting for all the beating and squishing and squirting that goes on in the game. Everything just comes together perfectly to keep the game as grotesque as possible.

Of course, at the end of the day, no multiplayer game is worth a damn without quality gameplay.

The gameplay in host is very simple. You roll… you jump… you skull-punch… and if you’re feeling lucky, you may even fire a maggot or 2.

The premise of the game WAS to be a simple beat-em up game that people can just hop into and play, and I think to that extent it has succeeded indefinitely.

That said, there are a few factors that hampered my enjoyment of the game. Getting in to a game without a ‘room exists’ or ‘room is full’ error is a bit of a pain, especially since I just wanna get in as fast as possible and beat some heads.

Of course, when I do get in, the beating of the heads is not so simple. To win a round, you need to rack up 3 kills. This would be a very fun prospect, except for 3 things.

1) When you punch an enemy, a lot of times you hit where they were a few milliseconds ago, and by the time the punch animation is done, they have skipped just enough out of the way you miss.

2) Since they are now behind you, you want to turn around… but unless the animation has played all the way through and you are not touching the attack button, you can’t turn around, and it makes you feel like you have lost control of your character, and thus your connection to the game.

3) Falling too far kills you… so if you happen to have got stuck in the “I can’t turn” situation and you are on a high branch, you immediately may want to jump to safety…. and if you miss the next branch… you die.

I don’t really mind dying in these kinds of games… but when a simple death also takes down your kills, it just frustrates the shit out of you and takes a lot of the fun away form the game.

If you somehow manage to choke down your frustration ling enough and land a kill, you get to eat your victim’s heart, and your organism increases in size. I have yet to see what the full growth does, and so far it doesn’t seem to make you much stronger… but it’s still pretty neat to just… eat people’s hearts after beating them down.

If you get lucky enough to actually win a game, the victory screen lets you, and you alone, roll around and taunt the other players. Every multiplayer game needs this feature…. especially the ones I am good at!

On thing Host excels at is keeping players in sync. I know from personal experience, keeping a fast, multi-user game (especially one made in flash) in sync is a real challenge. The Flash player never runs the same speed on any 2 browsers, let along on any 2 computers, and network latency is always an obstacle. And yet, even the laggiest players still sync up respectably.

I can’t say I really enjoyed this game very much when I just hopped in and played… but I was lucky enough to be involved with a lot of the beta testing, and it was extremely fun to play with actual friends. With so many people playing now, however, it’s hard to get your buddies into one room.

If you like games that let you beat on random strangers, I have no doubt you will love Host. For the rest of you…. try it anyway…. OR ELSE!

[ Play HOST ]

[ Check out the contest ]

Alkie Kong 2 has been out for a full week now and the reviews have been loaded with people asking how to beat specific levels. So I thought I’d whip off a little walkthrough to address them without having to reply to 100 individual people.

Keep on readin’ to see the full walkthrough…

Read the rest of this entry »

[ Take on Alkie Kong 2 ]

It’s been quite a while since we had an update around here… but hopefully that will change pretty soon.

For the past few months I have been working a ton on getting some projects moving, a new game and a trip to northern Ontario for my brother’s wedding that have kept me really busy.

Being an indy flash developer, it’s always a challenge making enough money to pay the ol’ bills… but recent developments have put me in the unfamiliar position of an anticipated steady income.

I’m working on some really exciting stuff that will benefit and empower my fellow Flash authors.  I’m not a liberty to go into specifics right now, but I will keep you posted as things progress.

Anyway, with all that said… I find myself with a lot of stress free time that I can spend doing… pretty much anything, so you can expect me to get back into the habit of posting gaming news and reviews for your enjoyment.

And on that note, I have a walkthrough to write….

I recently had the opportunity to interview Kenney Vleugels, best known for his work with Armor Studios, the official development brand for Armor Games. This was quite an interesting interview, because Kenney has made a very good living making generic mini-games, and he was brave enough to chat with me knowing full-well my opinions on such games.

Kenney, like many, got started with his career at a very early age. In 2004, at the age of 14, he had developed his first Flash game, and was shortly contacted by Daniel McNeely of Armor Games.

Daniel was impressed with Kenney’s first game and was hoping to pick up the young talent to help promote Armor Games, which was still in it’s infancy at the time.

Kenney had developed a new game called Mario’s Time Attack, a very simple Super Mario game where you run through a series of levels to give a deserted princess peach some water before the time limit runs out.

The game was simple, but kind of fun, and so he was offered a $500 Armor Games sponsorship. For a 14 year old who was only on his 2nd game ever, $500 was a fortune!

His parents did not approve of the idea.

His mother worried these games would interfere with his education, and his father was weary of the legalities involved due to his age. But, like any 14 year old with a $500 carrot dangled in front of him, he took the sponsorship behind their backs.

“They had this perfect story of me getting money for making games. Of course, I couldn’t say no but my parents were a little fishy about this since it didn’t sound really legit. … I just went on with it. Come on, it was my dream!”

“I signed up for PayPal and combined it to my Junior bank account” he said. ” After I got my first payment I almost pissed myself, Bill Gates; Here I come.”

Kenney told me how, after his first paid game, he decided to really push himself and make his next title something more innovative. Mario’s Time Attack used ripped sprites from licensed Nintendo titles, so this time he wanted to do more of his own art. He developed a web-cam game called ‘Dress Up Yourself‘, where you can drag goofy eyes, facial hair, teeth, etc.. onto your own webcam image.

While the webcam was innovative, and he certainly put more effort into the game, the end result wasn’t as well received as his previous title, and so his next sponsorship offer was noticeably lower.

“Because that [first] game was made using sprites, I had a hard time making my next which should contain my own art. So it took me fairly long before I made my next game, I just showed it to them and they gave me a certain amount which I forgot (I wasn’t very happy about it though) and I published it.”

Before talking to Kenney, I took a stroll through his collection of games. What I found was far from impressive. I was able to see the appeal of “Mario’s Time Attack”, but could also understand why “Dress Up Yourself” wasn’t so well received. The game merely took your webcam image and let you drag stuff onto it. More of a gadget than a game.

In fact, Kenney’s game library consisted mainly of unimpressive mini-games, many of which were clones of other games that had recently seen success on other sites (compare Jack Russell to Line Rider, for example), and sequels of said games. I asked him about this.

“Yeah, making lot’s of mini-games for AG earns you more than making 1 or 2 large and expansive games. So that kinda kept me making small games.”

Posted in Interviews, Gaming News | 33 Comments

Bookmark this page on Digg, Kinja, FURL, Redit & other sites