While I typically refuse to review my own games, This little gem is going to be an exception. Generic Defense Game was built and distributed as an experiment to get some insight on the current state of the independent web-based gaming community.

Because of the nature of this game, I am actually going to review/score the actual experiment rather than the game itself.

The experiment was to create a game in a genre that has been completely over-saturated with carbon copy games, and distribute it to see how much money and popularity I could exploit from it. I wanted a game that would both mock this type of game, but would also make no pretenses at being original in any way. And so the concept of ‘generic’ defense game was born.

Within 2 days of starting, I had the basic engine for a run-and-gun shooter game, and so it came time to decide on what you would be defending, and what you would be defending from. I knew that I had to use zombies, because it’s illegal to hate a zombie game. But I didn’t want to just straight up copy other crappy games, or the experiment wouldn’t stand out enough to make a point. So I toyed with some other retarded objectives… and decided I would just make the game so generic… ALL my objectives could be dumped in.

As I started having fun with the overall ridiculousness of the game, I figured I may as well add a mouse-only mode and spliced in a turret defense system. From that point I started getting carried away designing mediocre weapons (the pellet gun is an obvious tip to this part of the design), generic texture filled backgrounds.. and minimally animated bad guys, which I could copy and paste and do some small tweeks for even more generic bad guys.

For the audio, I used a bunch of generic gunshot sounds, recorded some lame death grunts, and raided the Newgrounds Audio Portal for some royalty free music. It didn’t sound too bad in the end, but I assure you… there wasn’t much effort in the sound production.
Once I had it all together, I knew the game was starting to step beyond the original scope… but I didn’t care, I was having a good time just making something stupid. I did make sure to not add in any back-story, or actual ending… lest we end up with a polished action game rather than a generic game with minimal substance.

Now it was time for phase 2, securing some money and getting the game distributed. I was going to approach a site like Armor Games or Crazy Monkey Games for a sponsorship, but I decided to have a chat with Greg from Kongregate about the game first. I knew the other sites may not ‘get it’, and would just fork over money so they could stuff their game libraries a bit more with exclusively branded content, then spam it around the web and enjoy the kickbacks.
I needed a partner that could provide the same level of branding, but still let me control the experiment in a few ways. Kongregate got the concept and was more than willing to sponsor the game for more money than these types of games should ever warrant. They also allowed me to include Mochiads (in-game advertisements) in versions of the game that would be distributed, which was another experiment I had been dying to try.

The ads in the game were a real surprise to me. I did not expect the high level of performance the would ultimately yield. For the most part, developers can probably make a lot more money with these types of advertising than they can with a typical sponsorship. It’s amazing to me that more people aren’t taking advantage of them.
Once the sponsorship and advertising was secured, it was time to distribute the game. With some suggestions from Tom Fulp of Newgrounds.com, and some assistance from the Kongregate and Newgrounds communities, I was able to get the game posted on a lot of high-performance game sites and even got it through on Digg.

The launch of the game was a massive success… half the people hated it… half the people loved it… half found it too hard…. half found it too easy… EVERYONE played it.

By the first weekend of the launch, the game had been featured on most of the sites I submitted it to, and the in-game ad was making about as much money as all the advertisements on psychogoldfish.com combined. In 3 weeks, I was able to create a game that was popular enough to generate a generous sponsorship, and a long-term revenue stream from in-game ads.

So the experiment was a huge success… but at the same time… the findings are disturbing to me.

Some people are wondering what actually inspired this experiment. Obviously, making money is a big part of it all… but it really started the day I reviewed “Endless Zombie Rampage“. This game, while not the worst defense game, was the proverbial ‘last straw’.

I have been in this industry for nearly a decade, and I was there to see it rise from a small group of people making games just for fun, and producing really original and entertaining work. Now, a lot of commercialized sites have made it possible to earn a pretty good living in this industry without having to build your own income generating websites. These commercialized sites kicked off a whole new generation of talent, and really helped to raise the bar in quality…at least.. that was how it started.

Today, everyone from high-school kids to seasoned vetrans, are whipping off generic games (not just in the defense genre) because the big commercial sites will dish out $500 or so, for pretty much anything that works (and even some things that don’t). The casual players tend to stick to these commercialized sites, because they brand all the games they sponsor to the degree that the players feel these sites are where all the games are coming from. For many casual players… these are the only sites they check for new games.

This is great for these sites, as they build strong user bases, and stronger revenue streams. This is good for the developers because they can earn sponsorships without having to put fourth a great deal of effort. This is bad for the industry because the quality content is being buried by the quantity content.

Anyone old enough to remember the Atari 2600 will probably have, at least, a basic recollection of what happened to the game industry back in the 80’s. What started as an industry with a few brilliant games, swept into a viable market where commercialized publishers with no hands on ties to the industry wanted to get their piece of the pie. They contracted massive quantities of generic games and clones of popular titles to the point consumers no longer knew the good games from the bad. The big companies were able to put out small games at bargain bin pricing, which is where a lot of the gamers at the time went to find new games. After a while, people stopped enjoying the games, and didn’t bother looking around to find the good titles, rather… they just quit buying in general.

I see the similarities between the piles of generic games that almost killed the gaming industry in the 80’s, and the generic titles that are being produced today. Eventually the casual players are going to lose interest, and only the established companies (the nintendos of the indy community, if you will) will have a shot at staying alive.

This experiment has completely validated that it pays more to make a bunch of generic games, then it does to push the envelope. It’s no wonder nobody in the media takes this section of the game industry seriously, the industry doesn’t take itself seriously, save for a handful of sites like Newgrounds and Kongregate.
Check out the game, and let me know what you think about the current state of indy web-games.

[ Try Generic Defense Game ]

For nearly a decade, Newgrounds.com has provided us with a variety of popular characters, ranging from original gangstas like Pico and Samurai Asshole, to the more modern hit, Alien Hominid.

Two years ago a group of long-time Newgrounds contributers (Mindchamber, NegativeOne & Luis) were sanctioned to bring this motley crew of characters into a single game where they could live togethet in harmony. And by harmony, of course I mean brutal destruction.

Newgrounds Rumble is a side-view arena rumble game in the same vein as the Smash Bros series, with all the action and mayhem one would expect from the ever-popular genre.

Artistically, this game is a beast. With a cast of 10 characters, all hand-drawn, and each having their own special level, it’s very apparent that the near 2-year production time was not wasted. The attacks and combos are all rendered beautifully, and the backgrounds could give any modern console game a run for their money.

The sound is amazingly impressive as well, especially when you consider it’s all backed into 8mb. Every character has distinct effects, and even some minor voice-work that makes it really feel like a classic arcade game. The music keeps the pace up and never gets annoying. It’s like chicken soup for the ears.

The gameplay is what really makes this game stand above the rest. Every character has a very unique fighting style, and the strategy changes dramatically based on which character you play. Each opponent has a certain vulnerability… and even the levels themselves change the way you will play. The way you can mix regular, fierce, ariel and crouch attacks lets you really feel like you are doing more than just mashing buttons over and over.

While this game has so many triumphs, it also has a few shortcomings as well. Some are petty nuances, like the letters on P-bot being backwards when facing left, some effect the actual gameplay.
The AI, while challenging, is pretty predictable. If you camp out at a powerup spawn point, they will pretty much keep coming right into whatever attack you have waiting for them, and you will horde all the powerups.

The combo chaining gets a bit annoying at times as well. There is a noticeable delay after each attack where it waits to see if you are going to keep the combo going. Typically this isn’t a big deal unless you find yourself needing to turn around because your opponent has jumped over you or something.

The junk yard level is kind of lame as well… you don’t have to throw a single punch… just stand as bait beside the crusher and it will beat all your opponents for you.

Take the good with the bad though, because in spite these small shortcomings, the game is damn fun. Everything from earning ‘grounds gold’ to unlock characters and levels, to the fact that every single character has an enjoyable story mode, and you have an extremely impressive title here.

I would love to see a sequel to this with even more characters, more power-ups and some of the minor flaws removed and possibly some online play. It could definitely roll with the big dogs of the console world.

[ Let's get ready to RUMBBBLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEE ]

While many games have edgy titles with clever word-play, or fancy buzz words, ‘Endless Zombie Rampage‘ (by Sean McGee)  is so much more than a mere title.  It’s a complete description of all the game has to offer.  Endless zombies….

You will have to forgive my cynicism, you see… after playing ‘The Last Stand‘ my hopes for the defense game genre were sparked after having been extinguished for years. Then I played this pile of mediocrity and it pissed on the embers of my newfound hope, leaving only a smelly column of urine steam.

First, lets explore the graphics in this game.  They are okay, but there is NO variety here.  There is a base that’s got no detail… the hero who’s legs only move front to back no matter what direction you walk, and the zombies, which are all the exact same sprite with some color swaps.

Like ‘edgy’ games of the 90’s, this game relies on blood to make it ‘cool’.   Well, if blood is enough to make a game good in your opinion, this game deserves to be published on every major console, because it has plenty of that. Unfortunately… if blood is the only reason you buy a game… you can’t play it anyway because you are 12 years old and the ESRB rating would be too high for you.

The sound on this game is on par with any generic defense game… it has gun shots… blood splatters and one background loop.  The loop is actually decent… a nice moody ambient deal that would work well with a better game.

At it’s core, this game is just a generic bit of crap whipped off in no time at all to get some money from CrazyMonkeyGames, one of many sites (*cough*ArmorGames*cough*) that is more concerned with branding a large quantity of games rather than being associated with quality.  Not that there is anything wrong with that… if it makes money, it’s hard to fault them for it. I just can’t help to think back to the old Atari days when publishers used to shell out for any crappy old game too. The strategy almost killed an entire market.

In this game, you run around a big patch of dirt and aim with whatever gun you happen to have, at generic zombies.  They take a lot of ammo to put down, and the reload times are just painful. The mechanics keep you frustrated rather than satisfied with shooting the crap out of whatever you can.

The zombies are all the same, barring some variances in their speed and health.  AI-wise… there is nothing special about any color of zombie.

When you survive a day, you are rewarded with exp points that you can cash in for weapon upgrades.  While this feature COULD have been enough to make a player strive to unlock things, the rate at which you are rewarded is slower than a paraplegic track star with downs.  It took till about day 4 before I could get a weapon that was going to be any better than my basic pistol, and after all the mundane repetitiveness I had to endure to get that far, the novelty of having a new gun was short lived. Don’t bother trying the other game modes if you die… they aren’t really any different… the zombies just change their primary target.

On that note, dying in this game is actually a relief.  You can quit playing… and while you don’t feel like you accomplished anything, you at least have some closure.
I would be willing to bet that if this game wasn’t a ‘zombie’ game, it wouldn’t have nearly as much publicity.  You see… you HAVE to like zombie games.  If you admit to finding the zombie genre boring and over-saturated, all the Romero and Resident Evil fanboys will harass you endlessly on your local bbs, and your e-reputation will be destroyed. That would be a shame…
Reflecting on this game… I can’t honestly say it’s really ALL that bad… I’m just disappointed… again.

Give it a try and tell me what YOU think.

[ Survive the endless repetition! ]

That’s right folks, WGM has just hit the benchmark of 100 reviews!

Since this is such a special occasion, I thought that I would review something from another special occasion, Pico Day 2007.

Pico is the mascot character of Newgrounds and has been around since the beginning of the web-game industry.  The original Pico game, Pico’s School, was a revolutionary piece of independent work that not only aided in catapulting Newgrounds to the top of the independent flash scene, but also inspired an entire generation of up-and-coming game developers, including myself.

April 30th is Pico day.  While it’s not the TRUE anniversary of the original game (mostly due to the fact nobody can recall the exact date) is IS the birthday of Pico’s creator, Tom Fulp. This year marked the 2nd annual celebration of Pico day.

Newgrounds put up $15k in prize money and a bunch of other great giveaways for members of the community who submitted pico-themed flash movies and games.  While a ton of great content was submitted on that day, only one could be the best game in the show: Pico’s Surprise Party.

Pico’s surprise party is an incredibly fun game that really captures the spirit of the original pico game.  It’s short, it’s numerous, and it’s damn fun! The story starts out with Pico’s friends luring him out of class so that they can spring a surprise party for him on his birthday.  Just like in the original Pico game, a group of social outcasts, this time the nerds, decides to unleash their fury on the popular kids.  The nerds show up at the party before Pico and proceed to slaughter all the guests.  When Pico shows up, he’s pissed…..
The graphics in this game are fantastic.  The stylized characters and backgrounds really make this game feel animated and really help illustrate the contrast between child-friendly cartoon visuals, and rated-R blood and violence, a theme that was also at the core of the original Pico.

The sound effects are all pretty decent, although there’s not a lot of variety.  But who needs variety in a game where all you do is shoot the crap out of people?  Okay… so maybe some variety in the music would have been nice.  The one techno loop that plays over and over gets old pretty fast, and doesn’t actually stop during cut scenes or boss fights.

The way this game plays is the real draw.  It starts out like a typical run and gun game, but once you start playing you realize there is so much more to it.  Pico can not only run and jump, but can also do a delayed back flip in the air, and a commando roll for dodging projectiles.  These maneuvers are critical to avoiding enemy attacks.  When you are clear to attack, the game also has auto-targeting, allowing you to keep your focus on evading attacks rather than lining up your shots.  Every enemy feels like a miniature fire-fight, and that makes things a lot more fun than you typically get from a run and gun game.

The game is pretty short, but the challenge of it stretches the playtime out to an enjoyable 20-30 minutes.  You will probably die a lot, but you can continue as much as you need to to get through the game and enjoy everything it has to offer.

This is possibly the perfect tribute game to the legendary Pico franchise, and even if it weren’t a pico-related game, it would still be a ton of fun!

[ Play Pico's Surprise Party ]

A 20th century propeller powered bomber from the future is sent back in time to battle futuristic alien invasion from beyond Pluto…. or something. With a premise like this, how can you possibly go wrong?

B29 Assault is a modern classic. The overall look is a combination of classic 2-d, arcade-style sprite work and arial photography, resulting in a rich looking aerial combat game with plenty of varying scenery and lots of cool explosions.

The sound effects in the game are all great. It really helps the game feel like a classic arcade game, but the music could have been a bit better.  While it’s not terribly annoying, it is the same generic techno crap people have been using in flash-based games since the dawn of Fruity Loops.

The gameplay is certainly unique for a game of this genre.  While typical top-down air-shooters only allow your plane to shoot in one direction, B29 Assault lets you use the mouse to aim special weapons.  Not only that, but it’s rather intuitive with it, allowing you do do things like draw a line for a force field or drag a missile locking path across enemy fighters.

Simple touches like changing direction after beating a boss help make the game feel like a constant adventure rather than a series of levels. The variety in weapons isn’t massive, but it’s enough to keep things interesting, as is the variety in enemies and bosses. The game is really fun, and the varying waves of attack, and the difficulty of the bosses keeps it challenging.

B29 Assault may have a plot thinner than an OJ Simpson alibi, but that shouldn’t deter anyone from checking it out.

[ Play B29 Assault ]

Just over a month ago I reviewed a game called Crusader Tank. The game was fun but had a few flaws, and didn’t really have much in the way of visual variety.

Gametop (the creators of Crusader Tank) has just released a new game, and it seems they have made a lot of improvements in “Holy War: Invasion”.

But were they enough?

First, let’s just get the fact out of the way that this is pretty much the exact same game as Crusader Tank.

The graphics are the same bitmap rendered stuff you saw in C.T., only with a few new objects… oh and the ground is green instead of brown now.

You obviously don’t play as a tank in this game, rather as an armor-clad engineer with a big gun. Still, it’s the same top-view, run and gun play you experienced in C.T.

While this game is pretty much 90% recycled, it does have a lot of small improvements I feel I should point out.

First, the health, weapon and progress displays have been completely redesigned to fit vertically on the screen. This makes them easier to read during gameplay, and the visual quality of the guages are much nicer.

You can also toggle weapons as you get them. The weapon upgrades in each level are still present , but now you can jump from your gun to missiles on the fly when you need to take out a heavy tank quickly.

The sounds are about the same, although the music isn’t quite as annoying this time around.

A nice new touch is that the level scrolls slower when your character is at the bottom of the screen, giving you a way to change the pace when you get swarmed.

Perhaps the best change to the game is the inclusion of W,A,S & D being able to control your movement. This makes it much easier to move around and fire with the mouse for laptop users.

The difficulty of the game has been pushed up just a bit, so there is a little more challenge in this game, which would have made the game more interesting had I not gotten bored with this game style playing Crusader Tank for 20+ minutes a mere month ago.

If you are like me and you played Crusader Tank to the point of boredom, you probably will find this game lacking in any relevant improvement to the core gameplay. However, if you missed C.T., I would highly recommend playing this game instead. It’s addressed all the flaws C.T. had, except repetitive gameplay.

I’ve never had a problem with people rehashing a game engine. Sonic the Hedgehog had like 4 good games on the Genesis with pretty much the same game. SEGA just made sure to make compelling changes to each sequel to keep things fresh.
If it don’t FEEL like a new game, it ain’t a new game.

[ Play Crusader Tank... err ... Holy War: Invasion ]

Awww man, I loves me some side scrolling shooters, and Agent Wing Defenders (final) by Lan is a great addition to the many that are out there.

Graphics are very well done and I’d suggest trying it out on high quality as I encountered no slow down on my lil comp. While everything looks prerendered, I like the pixelish looks to it, making it seem ever more like a classic scroller. Good cut scenes and thank god you can skip them. After playing several times you already know what’s going on and don’t need the tips or the story line so much.

From the main loop to the explosions, the sound comes through all around. A “turn off sounds” button would have fleshed it out completely but no other real complaints.

What makes a great 2d side scrolling shooter? Play the game and you’ll see. The gameplay is top notch with a very easy to control plane and a good fire rate. Nice option on being able to use the arrows or WASD to move, with A for shields S to shoot (arrows) and H for shield and J to shoot (WASD) with ENTER to pause. The waves start out easy, so don’t worry about power ups, as they will come and when they come you’ll need them. As you can see in the screen shot, there’s some fun enemies. I won’t give away to much except I’m gonna be late for work from this one. GO GO GO GO GO!

[ Play Agent Wing Defenders ]

This is perhaps the hardest review I’ve had to write in a long time. It’s not that there is really any challenge, rather, I’m still not quite sure what the hell I think about this game…

Crazy Flasher 3 by Andy Law is a horrible, and yet, fantastic game all at the same time. The art is very stylized and it looks good; but it also looks a bit half-assed at times. Yet, the half-assed look is almost a part of this game’s charm. The characters aren’t drawn with a lot of detail, but they are fairly well animated, and at times they look like classic Double Dragon baddies, as drawn by Salvador Dali.

The backgrounds are all great, and are definite homages to games like Double Dragon and Street Fighter 2. The interface and cut-scene art is also pretty sharp, but not too sharp to be in total contrast to the stylized in-game art.

I think it’s all growing on me… I think I do, in fact, like the way this game looks… I think…
The sound is a bit of a mish-mash of arcade-quality fighter sounds, and lame sound recordings, presumably of Andy Law himself. The fact that the sounds aren’t 100% polished almost compliments the weird look of the game rather than detracting from it.

The music isn’t too bad; a classic street fighter song, some metal loops, some ambient electronica. It all works well and makes the game feel that much more like a classic arcade fighter game.

The gameplay is where I really loved/hated this game the most.

The actual fighting in this game is really simple and fun. You get your standard attack/jump/super-move buttons and you face off against a group of baddies all competing to win a cash prize. When you get into the fighting you quickly learn that, with a few direction changes, you can do cool stuf like grabbing your opponents for a nice punch-to-the-face combo, or hurl them at other enemies. While there isn’t a ton of combos you can preform, there is enough to let you fight strategically and feel like you are doing a bit more than mashing buttons.

What ruined this fun combat system for me was the control layout.

Pretty much every keyboard game uses the arrow keys for movement, and keys to the left for other actions. This game uses W, A,S & D for movement, and B, N, M & Space for the actions. The result of this layout is that your hands are crammed closer together than what is considered a comfortable position for keyboard gaming. To make matters worse, all the action keys are directly above the touch-pad on my laptop, so I ended up accidentally bumping that with the bottom of my hand a few times and losing focus on the game window.

The other thing that bugged me a bit about this game was the rate the difficulty increases. You go from matches that are quite easy, to matches that require you to upgrade your weapons to get anywhere.

While the premise of upgrading to proceed is a great idea, the fact that the good upgrades cost more than you can make in the starting matches means you have to replay the same fights over and over a few times to get rolling.  I got the sword pretty fast, but given how slow the attack rate was with it, it was more of a burden than anything.
The story mode in this game is pretty much generic. The extremely bad dialect and poor english translation is just another instance where poor quality actually adds to the overall quirkiness of the game. It almost becomes a good thing… (It worked for Zero Wing, right?)

Fans of oldschool beat-em-ups will really enjoy this game. It’s definitely worth trying, even for non-fans of the genre, just to enjoy all the quirks that make this game lovable.

If you use a laptop, you might need to disable your touch-pad though… unless you really want that “Free Apple I-Pod”…

[ Play Crazy Flasher 3 ]

Solarsarus by The Super Flash Bros is an oddly nifty dinosaur flinger bounce off planets get high scores and blow up said dinosaurs, um, game.

While the art is as good as you would expect from them I do wish more was added, as in effects and maybe even having the dinos bite chunks out of the planets or something. While it is all well done, looks wise it is missing a little zazz .

Good loop and who knew planets colliding with themselves and dinosaurs sounded just like playing croquet.

An easy game to play and even easier to get hook on, use your mouse to left click, drag and release the dinosaur into the planets and watch them all bounce around. Myself, I find it good to bounce the dinos off each other, getting lucky and have them fall back below the line, then you get to use them again. While not a terribly in depth and psychological thriller it is an awesome waste of time complete with hi scores and exploding dinosaurs. It really can not get much better unless there is a sequel .

[ Play Solarsarus ]

Fans of Wii-compatible games, rejoice!  Extra-Toxic has partnered with Nintendo to deliver an amazingly addictive and original experience.

Chick Chick Boom pits you against the maniacal Poster Bunny who is hording a collection of official Nintendo desktop wallpapers.

In typical Nintendo fashion, you will be pitting cute little critters (in this case, orb-shaped chicks) against each other in an arena setting.

The art is really stylized and cutesy, but not overly impressive but it does have a kind of ‘Loco Roco‘ thing going on.
The sounds in the game are great and match the look of the game, as does the music, which does get annoying after a while, but doesn’t quite make you want to shove a bic pen in your ear until your eyes turn blue (or red if you are auditing taxes at the moment).

What makes this game such a pleasant experience is the interface.  In order to win you have to select an attack, and then you need to trace a symbol to execute it.  Based on how well you trace, your attacks have more impact.  This sounds simple, but you also have to trace symbols to get your chicks to avoid oncoming attacks, so the amount of time you have to trace a symbol can be quite brief when reacting to things.

Even with my Wacom tablet, this game was pretty challenging in later levels.  I can only imagine how hectic it would be with a WiiMote.

Each level you beat unlocks an official Nintendo desktop image you can download, which is a very cool reward system for this game, but once you have unlocked them all, the single player gameplay doesn’t leave much replay value.  Still, for a free game… it’s pretty damn good.
This game would be awesome as either an online multiplayer game, or a 2 player Wii game, so let’s hope there is a follow up title in the near future!

[ Play Chick Chick BOOM ]