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 ]

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! ]

Just what a click and point game needs, TRAIN OF DEATH! Railway to Heaven by Gamershood puts a nice twist on the C&P genre with a time limit of sorts, involving you in a cage on some train tracks with a not to concerned train coming right at you.

While fairly decent art, there’s just two things you will see actually moving: the TRAIN OF DEATH and you getting hit by it and oh yes you shall get hit by it often trying to beat this. Myself, I would rather see pre- rendered backgrounds than basic flash hand drawn but you will be franticly clicking on everything to much to care.

Sound wise, you cannot get better than a train slowly coming up ready to crush you. The audio makes this C&P game want to kick yourself fairly hard to try and find what you need faster.

I haven’t even beating it yet as I wanted to post this for people to play. It’s like a horror/scare/the Saw movie type C&P. While situations in games like this isn’t uncommon it still makes you wanna crap yourself, turning around the cage looking for stuff than you see the train is right on you, hehe. Game play wise, standard hover the mouse over stuff and click, with the edges making you turn around. I’m sorta pissed though as there was no top hatted mustache twirling baddy but not everything can be perfect.

[ Play Railway To Heaven ]

varStudios has been developing visually stunning vector-style games for some time. Games like Neon and Lumination put them on the map for as some of the best mouse-busting game designers in the web-game industry.

Abstract Sea, their latest game, continues the tradition of stunning your eyes and busting your mouse.

I REALLY wanted to love this game. As a designer myself, I really can appreciate the overall style of this game, and fired it up with high hopes.

What I found was a game that certainly delivered artistically, but fell a bit short in the fun department.

The game is straight monotone color. Everything is all on the play area, from battleships to the score display, nothing is segregated. The explosions look very cool with the spinning boxes that fly off of enemy ships as you blast them into the sea, and all the alpha effects just look great. The game is just gorgeous.

Even the sound is great. The music isn’t really anything special, but the effects really help the game. Your bullets make no sound unless they hit something, which is a huge help when you are evading and firing at the same time.

You can watch your own boat while listening to the sounds. If your bullets go quiet, you know can move your attention to aiming for a split second, then resume a defensive watch. Not a lot of games use sound to this degree, and it’s just another thing that made me want to love this game.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is simply a recycled single screen 360 degree shooter game. There’s not a huge variety in the weapons you can get, although this may be due to the simplistic vector style art. There is a good AMMOUNT of weapons, but they don’t really FEEL all that unique, and the single color blocks used to represent your bullets is probably the reason for this.

The other thing that gets old is the variety in enemies. I think there are severl types of boat, but in the frantic assault they all tend to look the same and only vary in minor ways such as overall armor and the amount of shots they can fire.

I tried to give this game a long thorough play, and I really did have fun with it for a few minutes. But after the initial enjoyment wore off, and the variety screeched to a halt, I just got bored and let the enemy ships sink me.

I think this is still a good game to waste time with, but beyond killing a few minutes, there’s not much to this game to keep you coming back.

[ Play Abstract Sea ]

I remember when I was younger, watching my dad try and play Doom.  I gave him such a hard time for leaning his body and trying to look around the corners in the game.  I guess he was just so immersed in the game environment he felt like he was actually in it, but it was still pretty funny to watch.

I never thought I would catch myself doing the very same thing, let alone with a web game. But those bastards over at FreeWorldGroup (with DX Interactive) got me ducking and diving through their new game, ‘Missile Game 3D HS‘.

Missile Game is not an incredible feat of gaming genius by any means. You play as a missile trying to fly through a tube with rotating obstacles, and it’s all 1st person view. The art is simple black and white circles with varying shapes cut out, and lines to indicate the walls.The sound is pretty plain, and the music, while certainly not bad, is nothing to write home about. Even the control is extremely basic…. you just move the mouse.

But what you don’t expect from such a simple game, is just how easily you get sucked in. As you start shooting down this 3d tube at break-neck speeds, you no longer care about any of the shortcomings the game may have, all you want to do is not run into a wall.

I could write a large review, as I have in the past, but I really think this is one of those games that you just have to play.  Words and screenshots will not do it justice. I’m not sure I would play this game for large amounts of time, and I probably won’t play it next week… but damnit, I am having a blast (pardon the pun) with it right now!

[ Play Missile Game 3D HS ]

Sometimes games get a lot more buzz than they deserve… this time, it’s a game with a shitload of bees, so maybe it makes sense.

Bee Dodger, by Steven Colie and ShirtTurtle is a rather generic side-scrolling ‘avoid the enemies’ game with very little to offer in the way of innovation. The reason I feel it’s getting a lot more hype then it deserves is the involvement of Dan Palidin, a talented artist who worked on award winning games like Alien Hominid and Dad n’ Me.

The art in this game is pretty decent, considering there’s only about 4 different ‘characters’ and none of them have many animations (the wings actually flap though!). The background is just a bunch of motion lines with an underlying color that changes as you progress. Because of the similarities in style to Dan Palidin’s art, however, people seem to be much more impressed then they would otherwise. Maybe they think Dan was the artist on the game… I don’t know.

The sound is also pretty weak in the game. The effects are pretty minimal, but at least they aren’t annoying. It’s the music that really carries this game. The music IS actually done by Dan Palidin and is a bit of a Radio Disney sounding song. You know.. those wacky dance songs that drill into your brain because they have some silly phrase that gets repeated over and over? Well in this case, it’s watermelon.

The gameplay is pretty simple and easy to pick up, but really, not very much fun. Basically you fly around with the arrow keys and try not to hit other bees. That’s it.

The first time I played the game I did rather enjoy it. After that, I didn’t really feel any desire to play again, so for people like me, it’s good for maybe 2-5 minutes.

Overall, the game just comes off as an interactive music video, because the music is the only real draw to this game.

[ Listen To Bee Dodger ]

Cosmic Crush by Bill Northcott is a great “big fish little fish” type game, but with planets.

Using the arrow keys, you start out as a lil piece of space rock, looking for slightly smaller rocks, untill you start to get to unicron size and go after planets haha. A great feature is the gravity the other planets use to effect your course, adding a nice challenge.

With 2 modes and a bunch of levels, the only thing that is really lacking would be some audio loops, but the effects were ok and able to be turned off, which is always nice. Oh, and as you can tell by the screen shot, some pretty graphics =) . SO GO PLAY.

[ Play Cosmic Crush ]

This game, pardon the pun, is a hidden treasure, especially for anyone looking for something quick and simple to play.

Pirates & Treasure, by Tim Drew, is basically a small collection of mini-games bundled together with a very funny story of one pirate captain’s quest for rum and riches. Fans of games like WarioWare will want to check it out.
The art is very simplistic and stylized, but very well presented, and fits the lighthearted nature of the game quite well. The sound is pretty good, mostly ambience and effects, but they fill the silence of your lonely, lonely life well enough.

The gameplay isn’t anything spectacular. It’s mostly simple point and click or arrow reaction type mini-games, but the overall variety of play makes this game so much fun.

The only bad thing I have to say ’bout this game is it’s too short. When you beat it (in about 10 minutes) you will unlock the minigames gallery, which has all the games you just beat, plus one new sliding square puzzle.

Even though it ended to fast, and there’s not much replay value, the first play-through is a lot of fun, so give this game a go right now, or ye’ll be walkin’ the plank matey!

[ YARRRR!!! ]

I never really got into model trains as a kid. I’ve never been the biggest fan of click and shoot survival games. I find drawn out growth and level building stuff to be tedious. I very much prefer free movement to locked paths. With all of these elements present, I should theoretically hate Rail of War. But you need to remember, to a degree, I am a math guy, and four negatives multiplied together yeaild a very large positive!

This game is nothing short of awesome. It’s hard to explain the parallel, but playing this felt a lot like playing Mechwarrior 2 and 3 back in the glory days of PC gaming.

The artwork, terrains and explosions are all rendered with high detail and have plenty of variety, even when a straight single-texture background probably would have been forgiven. The enemies are re-used a lot, but not because there is a lack of unique sprites, rather there is just a metric shit-ton of enemies. And when you start getting surrounded and swarmed the firefights are just insane.

The sound and music really help draw you in, making it feel like a real war game, in spite the fact you are playing from a distant top-down perspective.

The gameplay is great. While you are limited to movement via railway tracks, there are plenty of railway switches. So even though your base path is pre-defined, it’s not just one straight trail, you can mix it up and get some extra bonuses by taking different branches.

The train itself is easy to drive, you just click a throttle guage and it starts rolling up to your desired speed. You don’t need to worry about moving and shooting at the same time, so you can really focus most of your attention on what counts: BLOWING SHIT TO HIGH HELL.

The gameplay alone isn’t enough to make this fun for more than a level or 2, but as you progress you do get more money and you have a very nice selection of upgrades you can buy. More train cars… guns for said cars… bigger and badder engines, and so on.

The levels are also a bit deeper than just getting from point A to point B, so you have to think from time to time. Plan your direction, scout the rail branches, and find fuel on the way. It’s not a fantastic storyline by any means, but all the small elements really do add up to make each level feel unique, rather then the repetitiveness found in other games of this style.

And if that’s not enough to keep you playing, you can also dive in and make your own levels with a very simple level editing tool.

The amazing thing is that this web game is pretty much just a demo for the full downloadable game. It’s so good I may even go ahead and get myself the full version!

But for now, I’m still blowing shit up in my browser and loving every minute of it!

[ Play Rail of War ]

There is no spoon.

Seriously, there are no spoons in this game at all…..

woah……

Much like the star of the Matrix Trilogy, Keanu Reeves, Matrix Rampage is far from profound, lacks depth, and is rather monotonous…. but it sure is pretty.

In the game you play as Neo, battling in a multi-floor building against an endless supply of agents armed with guns, swords, staves and even the plants and furniture found in the building.

The best thing about this game is the level of interactivity you have with the actual level. EVERYTHING takes damage. You can strip the walls down, break the floors, smash the furniture, etc. And anything that isn’t actually PART of the building can be picked up and used as a projectile.

The music is a typical flash-game techno loop, which is forgivable in a Matrix game I think. The sounds are your basic punch and groan brawler effects and really go well with the classic, arcade-style, pixel art.

While the art is very pretty, there’s not a ton of variety. All the agents are the same sprite, all the floors in the building recycle the same wall, door, stairwell graphics, etc…

The gameplay itself is very oldschool brawler, ala Double Dragon. You can walk, run and jump, pick up any weapons or health packs you want, and mash the crap out of the attack button. Like I said… there’s not much depth to it, but with all the different weapons you can grab, and the stuff you can smash you can easily milk a half hour of enjoymeny out of this game. Short-term fun aside, the game really lacks any sense of accomplishment. You don’t get any real sense of urgency or progress aside from tracking how many kills you have, and last time I checked… counting wasn’t that fun. With the mechanics in this game I REALLY hope Gamebrew is planning on expanding it to have a ton of levels with even more stuff for me to smash. I want to feel like a drunk Mel Gibson at a bar mitzvah god damnit!

[ Play Matrix Rampage ]