The main concept is that the player’s actions effect the movement of the blocks to be avoided. This in essence makes the player their own worst enemy. I was experimenting around with nested spring feedback systems and this concept of player as AI when I stumbled upon a fun and playable prototype that went on to become this game.
I spent about 7 days developing the version I submitted to the Experimental Gameplay Project website and then I worked for a bit longer polishing it up to get it ready to seek sponsorship. I’m happy to report that Armor Games picked up the primary sponsorship on it and Contentric officially launched yesterday!
It was great to work with Dan from Armor Games and I definitely recommend them to any other flash developers out there who are looking for a good sponsor.
I’m really quite happy with how this game came together. I was able to get a ton of playtesting feedback early on which really helped me perfect the gameplay to where I wanted it. I also got to write the music for the game which people seem to be enjoying as well so that is always a treat.
Here is a gameplay trailer I put together with some rough edits that show me getting a little over 13,000 points.
As usual I welcome any feedback positive or negative and would love to hear from you.
Greetings Earthlings! I am making an appearance to broadcast some brief news from the studio.
Dave has been too busy in the game development trenches to update this blog recently so as an ambitious underling I am stepping up. If I do a good job perhaps I won’t be vaporized at the end of the day!
What has been going on lately? Well–many things!
Hybrid Mind Studios is now officially an LLC. Dave was excited to take that step this February after a successful first year in 2009 that saw the release of six Flash games and one iPhone game.
Two of these games have been finished and will be launching any day now. The third game still requires a bit more time in the oven though.
Dave did have a chance to tell me that both the Flash Gaming Summit and the Independent Games Summit in March really inspired him and made him thankful to be part of such an exciting profession!
He got to meet many fellow independent game developers as well as meet many of the publishers that have sponsored or licensed his games over the past year. That was quite a treat as normally there is little face to face contact when working from a home office.
Well–that’s all I have time for this morning. There will be more updates soon as the new games fire from the studio launch tubes. Let’s hope I don’t get vaporized for taking the initiative and updating this blog for Dave!
The goal is to try and blow up as many robots as you can in ten fast paced rounds. There are six different robot types which all explode in different ways.
Here is a gameplay video of the iPhone version in action:
I’ve been drawing in the evening again as a good way to wind down from the brain rigors of game development all day. Now don’t get me wrong–I have an absolute blast making games but doing anything that intense for so long can cook you by the end of the day and I need a way to stretch out a little mentally.
I think I’ve been getting pretty cooked because most of my time these past few weeks has been spent learning all about various performance optimizations and graphical rendering methods in an effort to get Flash to run better on the iPhone via CS5 Beta. I’ve learned a virtual truckload of information though and it will help to improve my games both in the browser on older computers and on mobile devices for sure. This is information I’ll be sharing in a different post at a later date though.
As another way to wind down I’ve also been watching a good bit of Buffy the Vampire Slayer lately as a few of my friends have been cranking through episode after episode–season after season. I watched it back when it had originally aired but it has been fun to see it again years later. The themes, scenes, and stories have rubbed off on my subconscious though and clearly inspired the above drawing from last night:
This drawing is from a week or two ago. Just one of those drawings that is stream of conscious style. You just let the pen flow and move and you try to figure out what you want to draw as you see it. I find that is the kind of state I like to draw in when I am just trying to relax and day dream a little.
Help the atom on each level recover its lost electrons! You only have 60 seconds total to collect all 100 missing electrons from the different levels.
The screenshot above shows 4 of the 20 available levels. 10 levels are picked at random each time you play. The entire game only lasts 60 seconds (as per the contest rules.)
I created the background textures by cropping and filtering some lovely watercolor textures made by Hillary Luetkemeyer. The artist released them for use and remix under a CC Attribution license.
Feel free to leave any feedback below in the comments.
Greetings Earthlings! I am making an appearance to broadcast some brief news from the studio.
